5 Joplin plugins you need to use to improve your note-taking

There’s no end to the number of note-taking software applications available to users today, but Joplin is among the best. It’s an open-source alternative to tools like Evernote or Notion, with cross-platform support between Mac, Windows, and even Linux, secure encryption, and complete offline functionality. You can even access notes on the go through iOS and Android. Joplin has numerous community-made extensions that make it even better and enhance the overall user experience. These are some of the best Joplin plugins you can get your hands on right now. Many Joplin plugins can be installed from within the application just by going to the Settings menu, while others can be downloaded from GitHub.

5

Rich Markdown

An easier-on-the-eyes alternative

By default, Joplin’s markdown viewer can seem a bit less than elegant. For example, bolded text looks like **bolded text,** and headings are designated through hashtags. For instance, something in the style of the text “An easier-on-the-eyes alternative” would look like ### An easier-on-the-eyes alternative.

That’s not always easy to read. Rich Markdown lets you do away with that view and instead take notes in a view that more closely resembles a traditional text editor. It also adds cascading style sheets (CSS) that allow you to further customize the appearance of Joplin and how it operates. It’s a prime example of how the community has come together to produce a plugin that preserves the basic tools of Joplin while still improving on them.

4

Note Tabs

Open multiple notes at once

By default, Joplin works with a single note at a time. However, the Note Tabs extension makes it possible to have multiple notes “open” in a tabbed format at the top that will feel immediately familiar to anyone who likes to maintain numerous windows at once in Chrome or Firefox. After installing this plugin, you’ll need to restart Joplin for everything to work properly. However, once you’ve opened it, swapping from one note to another is as easy as selecting the correct tab at the top of the editor. Positioning tabs is as simple as dragging from the column on the left and dropping it into the spot at the top of your screen.

3

Outline

Overviews at a glance

Larger and longer notes can be hard to parse, especially if you have multiple headers and subheaders within a given space. Outline is a useful plugin that provides another column in the editor and gives you a quick overview of all the headers and how they’re organized. In addition, you can click on any one of the headers to jump straight to where that section begins. It’s a powerful tool under any circumstances. Still, if you have a note that’s especially long, and you’re trying to find a specific part of it, this is a phenomenal way to quickly navigate the document.

One thing to note: The Outline plugin only supports atx-style headers — the standard format that Joplin works with — instead of setext-style headers. Use the default markdown style to denote different header styles, rather than using setext markdown.

2

Templates

Consistent formats with a click

Joplin can be used for many different things, and some people use it for drafting documents. That’s where templates can be especially useful. For example, if you’re writing a blog post, it might follow a specific format each and every time. By creating a template in Joplin, you don’t have to worry about formatting — you can simply create a new note based on an existing template and fill in the blanks. Templates can also be used to onboard team members into specific note-taking patterns, for academic research, and much more. The plugin can be downloaded from the Joplin settings menu, and then further templates can be created by tagging an existing document with “template.”

Related

You are using OneNote wrong if you haven’t tried these templates

Use these templates and create an ideal OneNote page in seconds

1

KanMug

Kanban any note

Kanban is a great way to stay on top of different stages of any given project. If you aren’t familiar with it, Kanban is a type of visual task management system where the status of a given job is broken up into different stages, like “to do,” “in progress,” and “completed.” A given task is presented as a card that moves from column to column as the work progresses. The KanMug plugin lets you turn your Joplin notes into a visual kanban board with drag-and-drop functionality that makes it easy to grasp how different stages are progressing.

Joplin is good on its own, but better with plugins

Joplin’s extensive community support and huge number of plugins make it an ideal choice for someone who wants to take notes, draft documents, and much more while customizing the application to suit their own needs. We would recommend Joplin in its base state, but by combining it with the different extensions available, it becomes a much more powerful tool — and it’s totally free to start, too.