Hey everyone! :)
I am currently looking to replace Obsidian with a self-hostable alternative (that preferably also uses Markdown - but it’s not a must) but instead of storing the files directly on disk has a way to have all the files within in an encrypted vault / binary format.
Reason being I have very very sensitive data that needs to be stored (employee & medically related).
I read that Logseq used to support this feature but it has since been deprecated, some light googling didn’t surface any results other than that so I would be delighted if anyone had any suggestions!
Thanks so much in advance for any and all help! :)
edit: Forgot to mention that it needs to support Linux as well as Android
If you are dealing with compliance seek help from a professional
If you are storing manly on one device and are looking for a relatively “simple” solution for encryption at rest I would suggest to just encrypt the folder/directory/image the data are living in.
Of course, this way you have to decrypt the data while you are using it. However, it separates the responsibility from the note taking app.
This may or may not be a good solution for your use case, but it should be fast and easy to implement.
I used to do this with some mildly sensitive data using a mac encrypted disk image with plain markdowns files inside. I accessed the files with vscode, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work with Obsidian. It may just be a bit of a hassle to open the vault each time.
I wanted to write the same thing. have the notes app do the notes thing and handle encryption elsewhere.
as to apps, I suggest QOwnNotes. it’s markdown, highly configurable so you can make it minimalistic AF, stores notes in invidual files and folders. it also has a bunch functionality like syncing to nexctcolud and such, but I’d advise against it, just use it as a notes editor. you don’t have to selfhost anything, make it use the e.g. Documents/Notes folder and you can use syncthing to securely replicate it to other devices.
If you like the command line you could consider jrnl
You can selfhost Standard Notes. The notes are encrypted client side before they reach the server.
Joplin can encrypt and it is selfhostable and uses Markdown
Benefit: apps for every platform
After some more research it seems that Joplin only E2E encrypts notes at transport and not at rest[1]? e.g. it only stores plain text files on the harddrive just like Obsidian does? This sadly makes it not viable for my use case :/
No it is fully encrypted, even on the server. This topic was years old. You can read a good explanation here
