Looking for Some Good Note Taking Apps on Linux? Here are the Best Note Apps we Found for You

No matter what you do — taking notes is always a good habit. Yes, there are a lot of note taking apps to help you achieve that. But, what about some open-source note taking apps for Linux?

Fret not, you don’t need to endlessly search the Internet to find the best note taking app for Linux. Here, I’ve picked some of the most impressive open-source note taking apps available.

Best Note Taking Apps for Linux

Do note that this list is in no particular order of ranking.

1. Joplin

Key Features:

• Markdown support
• Support for attachments
• Encryption support
• Cross-platform including Android app

Joplin is an impressive free open-source note taking app that supports encryption. With the features offered, it’s also one of the best Evernote alternatives out there. In fact, I moved from Evernote to Joplin just because of the features offered.

You can choose to add to-do lists, plain notes, or use it as a markdown editor to write something. It’s available for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. You can also choose to sync your notes using Dropbox, OneDrive, NextCloud or WebDAV.

If you’re curious, you can read our detailed article on Joplin to know more about it.

How to install it?

You get an AppImage file to install Joplin. I’ve tried it on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and it works as expected. To look for the file, you can head to its official website or explore their GitHub page.

In case you don’t know how to install it, follow our guide on using AppImage files to get started.

In either case, if you want to use the terminal, you can type the command below to install it through a script (which also adds a desktop icon in the process):

wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/master/Joplin_install_and_update.sh | bash

Joplin

2. Simplenote

Key Features:

• Markdown support
• Simple user interface
• Easily sync using your Simplenote account
• 32-bit package available
• Cross-platform including mobile apps

As the name suggests, it is a simple free and open-source note taking app.

Developed by Automattic (the company behind WordPress), Simplenote lets you seamlessly sync your notes across multiple devices. It supports Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and macOS as well.

Unlike some others, you will notice that the interface is dead simple and may not offer a bunch of features. However, you get the ability to add tags to your notes.

How to install it?

It offers .deb / .rpm packages along with an AppImage file. You can find the files in its GitHub releases section.

Simplenote

3. Laverna

Note: This isn’t actively developed anymore — but it still works as expected.

Key Features:

• Markdown support
• Encryption support
• Sync support

Laverna is an interesting open-source note taking application that also offers encryption (which is optional).

You can use it as a web-based note taking app or as something on your computer. It’s available for Linux, Mac, and Windows as well.

While it features all the basic functionalities for a note taking app in addition to the encryption support, you don’t get a mobile app to use. So, this is something that you can use only if you’re a desktop user and get most of the things done on a web browser.

How to install it?

It provides a zip file which is available on its official website. Once you download it, you need to extract it and launch the executable file to get started.

Laverna

4. Standard Notes

Key Features:

• Markdown support
• Encryption support
• Sync support
• Version history of notes (paid plan)
• Cross-platform including mobile apps
• 32-bit package offered
• Offers premium options

Yet another open-source note taking app that offers encryption for your notes and attachments.

Unlike Laverna, Standard Notes is being actively developed. While it offers a great deal of features, some of them are limited to paid subscribers as “extended features” or extensions which is on the expensive side (for monthly subscription). You can also refer to our separate article on Standard Notes to learn more about it.

Overall, you get the markdown support, ability to encrypt attachments and notes, version history, backup support (to OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.) and more such useful features.

How to install it?

It offers an AppImage file to install it on your Linux distro. You just need to head to its official website to download it. In case you don’t know how to use the file, refer to our AppImage guide.

For other available packages or source, you can refer to their GitHub page.

Standard Notes

5. Boost Note

Key Features:

• Markdown support
• Suitable for developers as well
• Cross-platform

Boost Note is a useful note taking app for programmers using Linux. You can write your codes and also use it to write notes, documentations, and much more.

It offers a clean and intuitive user interface and offers all the basic features for a note taking app on Linux.

How to install it?

You can opt for the .deb file available for Ubuntu on its official website. If you want to try it on other Linux distributions, you will also find an AppImage file to get started.

If you’re curious, you can also check out their GitHub page to explore more about it or fork it.

Boost Note

6. Tomboy Notes (Next Generation)

Key Features:

• Lightweight note taking app
• Sync support
• Cross-platform

How about a lightweight and dead simple note-taking app?

Well, you might be aware of the old Tomboy note taking app which is no longer developed. Fortunately, there’s a next-generation version of the Tomboy notes. You can configure the path to store notes and get started taking notes quickly.

The app is merely ~2 MB to download. So, if you were looking for a lightweight solution — this is it. It may not be available for smartphones — but you can surely use it on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

How to install it?

You can find .deb / .rpm and other packages in their GitHub releases section. For other Linux distros, you can follow documentations in their GitHub page to know more about it.

Tomboy Notes NG

7. RedNoteBook

Key Features:

• Traditional Journal-style note taking app
• Templates available
• Offline-use

RedNoteBook should be a good choice for users who wanted an offline note taking app on Linux.

Yes, it does not support synchronization and if you’re someone who doesn’t want the sync feature, RedNoteBook should be a traditional-style note taking app with a sidebar for calendar.

It’s mostly tailored for users who like to have an offline journal. It also provides a couple of templates for you to make it easy creating certain notes.

How to install it?

If you’re using Ubuntu (or any other Ubuntu-based distro), you can install it via PPA. Here’s what you have to type in your terminal to install it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rednotebook/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rednotebook

For all other Linux distributions, you can get the Flatpak package.

RedNotebook

8. TagSpaces

Key Features:

• Rich user interface
• Supports managing documents
• Sync support
• Offers premium options

TagSpaces is a beautiful note taking app available for Linux. Not just limited to creating notes, but you can manage photos and other documents as well.

Unlike some other note taking apps available, it doesn’t offer encryption. So, you can try tools like Syncthing to sync your data safely along with the support Dropbox and Nextcloud.

You can also opt for its premium plans if you want special features and support.

How to install it?

You can find the .deb file and an AppImage file in their GitHub releases section to install it. In either case, you can build it as well.

TagSpaces

9. Trilium Notes

Key Features:

• Hierarchical note taking app
• Encryption supported
• Sync support

Trilium Notes is not just another note taking app, it’s a hierarchical note taking application with focus on building personal knowledge bases.

Yes, you can use it for common use as well — but it’s tailored for specific users who want the ability to manage the notes in a hierarchical fashion.

I haven’t used this personally — except for testing it. Feel free to try it out and explore more.

How to install it?

Simply head to its GitHub releases section and grab the .deb file to install it on Ubuntu. If you’re looking for other Linux distros, you can build it from source or download and extract the zip file as well.

Trilium Notes

Wrapping Up

That concludes my recommendation for note taking apps on Linux. I have used plenty of them and currently settled for Simplenote for quick notes and Joplin for collection of notes in chapters.

Do you know some other note apps available for Linux that you think should be included in this list? Why not let us know in the comment section?

Which note application do you prefer? I am curious to know what you normally look for in the best note taking application on Linux.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Beaker Browser 1.0 Beta: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

I recently reviewed the Beaker Browser. About a week after that review was published, the devs released Beaker 1.0 Beta. And that changes almost everything I had observed in the previous article.

This made me do an entire article on the new Beaker Browser.Here’s what’s been changed!

No more Dat, Beaker now uses Hypercore protocol

One of the most significant changes to Beaker is the introduction of a new protocol. Up to now, Beaker has used the Dat protocol to distribute content. Beta 1.0 replaces Dat with Hypercore.

One of the components is Hyperdrive version 10, which was released the same days as Beaker. Hyperdrive is “a POSIX-like filesystem implementation, written in Node.js, that’s designed to be the storage layer for fast, scalable, and secure peer-to-peer applications.”

Like BitTorrent, Hyperdrive can be used to share a large collection of files. However, unlike BitTorrent, the contents can be modified.

Switching to the new protocol brings the following changes:

• Performance is now vastly superior thanks to new data structures.
• Connection-reliability has improved thanks to a switch to a hole-punching DHT.
• A new “mounts” feature for composing multiple Hyperdrives into a single hierarchy.

Since Beaker switched over to a new protocol, all previously created websites don’t work anymore. They did include a tool to convert sites from Dat to Hypercore. I tried it on a couple of one-page sites and it failed. It only created a new site that was totally empty of content.

New Beaker-website creating tools

The Beaker devs introduced several new tools to make editing easier. Now when you edit or create a site, you will get a split-screen view with a code editor on the left and a preview window on the right. The preview is updated whenever you save your work.

Beaker Site Editing

Besides the editor you can also open a file manager to import and manage files and images. They also included a terminal application called webterm. This terminal can only interact with the contents of the site you are working on, but it is still pretty cool. webterm only comes with 10 simple commands. If you are adventurous you can write your own commands for it, using Javascript.

You can pop out each of these tools into their own window. If you have all three open, the left-hand panel can get crowded very quickly.

You can see more information about the release here

Final thoughts on the Beaker Browser 1.0 beta release

When I saw the announcement for Beaker Browser 1.0 Beta, I was hopeful that some of the complaints I had in the review would be fixed. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

My biggest problem with Beaker Browser was that it was hard to find dat powered content. In the previous version, there was a page with a list of about a dozen projects running on the Dat protocol, but that was it.

If you dig around on the new version, you can find a list of people who have profiles created on Hypercore. Unfortunately, most of those pages are either blank or something someone quickly threw together. I imagine that this will change with the final version of 1.0 is released.

Beaker User Directory

I did enjoy the editing tools. It made it very easy to slap together a quick webpage with a couple of lines of Markdown. I did create a site, but I’m not going to leave Beaker Browser running 24/7 to seed it. There currently isn’t any other way to do it.

What are your thoughts on the Beaker Browser? What are your thoughts on the peer-to-peer web? Please let us know in the comments below.

If you found this article interesting, please take a minute to share it on social media, Hacker News, or Reddit.

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Open Source YouTube Alternative PeerTube Needs Your Support to Launch Version 3

PeerTube (developed by Framasoft) is a free and open-source decentralized alternative to YouTube somewhat like LBRY. As the name suggests, it relies on peer-to-peer connections to operate the video hosting services.

You can also choose to self-host your instance and also have access to videos from other instances (a federated network, just like Mastodon).

It is being actively developed for a few years now. And, to take it up a notch, they have decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the next major release.

The funding campaign will help them develop v3.0 of PeerTube with some amazing key features planned for the release this fall.

PeerTube Instance Example

PeerTube: Brief Overview

In addition to what I just mentioned above, PeerTube is a fully-functional peer to peer video platform. The best thing about it is — it’s open-source and free. So, you can check them out on GitHub if you want.

You can watch their official video here:

Note: You need to be cautious about your IP address if you have concerns about that on PeerTube (try using one of the best VPNs available).

PeerTube’s Crowdfunding Campaign For v3 Launch

You’ll be excited to know that the crowdfunding campaign of €60,000 already managed to get 10,000 Euros on Day 1 (at the time of writing this).

Now, coming to the details. The campaign aims to focus on gathering funds for the next 6 months of development for a v3 release planned for November 2020. It looks like a lot of work for a single full-time developer — but no matter whether they reach the funding goal, they intend to release the v3 with the existing funds they have.

In their announcement post, PeerTube team mentioned:

We feel like we need to develop it, that we have to. Imposing a condition stating « if we do not get our 60,000€, then there will not be a v3 » here, would be a lie, marketing manipulation : this is not the kind of relation we want to maintain with you.

Next, let’s talk about the new features they’ve planned to introduced in the next 6 months:

• Upon reaching the €10,000 goal, they plan to work on introducing a globalized video index to make it easier to search for videos across multiple instances.
• With €20,000 goal, PeerTube will dedicate one month on improving the moderation tools to make the best out of it.
• With 40,000 goal, they would work on the UX/UI of playlists. So, it will look better when you try to embed a playlist. In addition to this, the plugin system will be improved to make it easier to contribute to PeerTube’s code.
• With the end of the campaign reaching 60,000 goal, PeerTube’s live-streaming feature will be introduced.

You can also find the details of their roadmap on their site.

Wrapping Up

The ability to have a global inter-connected video index among multiple instances is something that was needed and it will also allow you to configure your own index.

The content moderation tool improvement is also a huge deal because it’s not that easy to manage a decentralized network of video hosting services. While they aim to prevent censorship, a strict moderation is required to make PeerTube a comfortable place to watch videos.

Even though I’m not sure about how useful PeerTube’s live-streaming feature will be, at launch. It is going to be something exciting to keep an eye out for.

We at It’s FOSS made a token donation of 25 Euro. I would also encourage you to donate and help this open source achieve their financial goal for version 3 development.

Support PeerTube

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Getting Started With Nano Text Editor [Beginner’s Guide]

Nano is the default terminal-based text editor in Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions. Though it is less complicated to use than the likes of Vim and Emacs, it doesn’t mean Nano cannot be overwhelming to use.

In this beginner’s guide, I’ll show you how to use the Nano text editor. I am also going to include a downloadable PDF cheat sheet at the end of the article so that you can refer to it for practicing and mastering Nano editor commands.

If you are just interested in a quick summary of Nano keyboard shortcuts, please expand the next section.

Essential Nano keyboard shortcuts (click to expand)

Shortcut	Description
nano filename	Open file for editing in Nano
Arrow keys	Move cursor up, down, left and right
Ctrl+A, Ctrl+E	Move cursor to start and end of the line
Ctrl+Y/Ctrl+V	Move page up and down
Ctrl+_	Move cursor to a certain location
Alt+A and then use arrow key	Set a marker and select text
Alt+6	Copy the selected text
Ctrl+K	Cut the selected text
Ctrl+U	Paste the selected text
Ctrl+6	Cancel the selection
Ctrl+K	Cut/delete entire line
Alt+U	Undo last action
Alt+E	Redo last action
Ctrl+W, Alt+W	Search for text, move to next match
Ctrl+\	Search and replace
Ctrl+O	Save the modification
Ctrl+X	Exit the editor

How to use Nano text editor

I presume that you have Nano editor installed on your system already. If not, please your distribution’s package manager to install it.

Getting familiar with the Nano editor interface

If you’ve ever used Vim or Emacs, you’ll notice that using Nano is a lot simpler. You can start writing or editing text straightaway.

Nano editor also shows important keyboard shortcuts you need to use for editing at the bottom of the editor. This way you won’t get stuck at exiting the editor like Vim.

The wider your terminal window, the more shortcuts it shows.

Nano Editor Interface

You should get familiar with the symbols in Nano.

• The caret symbol (^) means Ctrl key
• The M character mean the Alt key

When it says “^X Exit”, it means to use Ctrl+X keys to exit the editor. When it says “M-U Undo”, it means use Alt+U key to undo your last action.

Open or create a file for editing in Nano

You can open a file for editing in Nano like this:

nano my_file

If the file doesn’t exist, it will still open the editor and when you exit, you’ll have the option for saving the text to my_file.

You may also open a new file without any name (like new document) with Nano like this:

nano

Basic editing

You can start writing or modifying the text straightaway in Nano. There are no special insert mode or anything of that sort. It is almost like using a regular text editor, at least for writing and editing.

As soon as you modify anything in the file, you’ll notice that it reflects this information on the editor.

Nothing is saved immediately to the file automatically unless you explicitly do so. When you exit the editor using Ctrl+X keyboard shortcut, you’ll be asked whether you want to save your modified text to the file or not.

Moving around in the editor

Mouse click doesn’t work here. Use the arrow keys to move up and down, left and right.

You can use the Home key or Ctrl+A to move to the beginning of a line and End key or Ctrl+E to move to the end of a line. Ctrl+Y/Page Up and Ctrl+V/Page Down keys can be used to scroll by pages.

If you want to go a specific location like last line, first line, to a certain text, use Ctrl+_ key combination. This will show you some options you can use at the bottom of the editor.

Jump to a specific line in Nano

Cut, copy and paste in Nano editor

If you don’t want to spend too much time remembering the shortcuts, use mouse.

Select a text with mouse and then use the right click menu to copy the text. You may also use the Ctrl+Shift+C keyboard shortcut in Ubuntu terminal. Similarly, you can use the right click and select paste from the menu or use the Ctrl+Shift+V key combination.

Nano specific shortcuts for copy and pasting

Nano also provides its own shortcuts for cutting and pasting text but that could become confusing for beginners.

Move your cursor to the beginning of the text you want to copy. Press Alt+A to set a marker. Now use the arrow keys to highlight the selection. Once you have selected the desired text, you can Alt+6 key to copy the selected text or use Ctrl+K to cut the selected text. Use Ctrl+6 to cancel the selection.

Once you have copied or cut the selected text, you can use Ctrl+U to paste it.

Delete text or lines in Nano

There is no dedicated option for deletion in Nano. You may use the Backspace or Delete key to delete one character at a time. Press them repeatedly or hold them to delete multiple characters.

You can also use the Ctrl+K keys that cuts the entire line. If you don’t paste it anywhere, it’s as good as deleting a line.

If you want to delete multiple lines, you may use Ctrl+K on all of them one by one.

Another option is to use the marker (Ctrl+a). Set the marker and move the arrow to select a portion of text. Use Ctrl+K to cut the text. No need to paste it and the selected text will be deleted (in a way).

Undo or redo your last action

Cut the wrong line? Pasted the wrong text selection? It’s easy to make such silly mistakes and it’s easy to correct those silly mistakes.

You can undo and redo your last actions using:

• Alt+U : Undo
• Alt +E : Redo

You can repeat these key combinations to undo or redo multiple times.

Search and replace

If you want to search for a certain text, use Ctrl+W and then enter the term you want to search and press enter. The cursor will move to the first match. To go to the next match, use Alt+W keys.

By default, the search is case-insensitive. You can also use regex for the search terms.

If you want to replace the searched term, use Ctr+\ keys and then enter the search term and press enter key. Next it will ask for the term you want to replace the searched items with.

The cursor will move to the first match and Nano will ask for your conformation for replacing the matched text. Use Y or N to confirm or deny respectively. Using either of Y or N will move to the next match. You may also use A to replace all matches.

Save your file while editing (without exiting)

In a graphical editor, you are probable used to of saving your changes from time to time. In Nano, you can use Ctrl+O to save your changes you made to the file. It also works with a new, unnamed file.

Nano actually shows this keyboard shortcut at the bottom but it’s not obvious. It says “^O Write Out” which actually means to use Ctrl+O (it is letter O, not number zero) to save your current work. Not everyone can figure that out.

In a graphical text editor, you probably use Ctrl+S to save your changes. Old habits die hard but it could cause trouble. Out of habit, if you accidentally press Ctrl+S to save your file, you’ll notice that the terminal freezes and you can do nothing.

If you accidentally press Ctrl+S press Ctrl+Q nothing can be more scary than a frozen terminal and losing the work.

Save and exit Nano editor

To exit the editor, press Ctrl+X keys. When you do that, it will give you the option to save the file, or discard the file or cancel the exit process.

If you want to save the modified file as a new file (save as function in usual editors), you can do that as well. When you press Ctrl+X to exit and then Y to save the changes, it gives the option to which file it should save the changes. You can change the file name at this point.

You’ll need to have ‘write permission’ on the file you are editing if you want to save the modifications to the file.

Forgot keyboard shortcut? Use help

Like any other terminal based text editor, Nano relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts. Though it displays several useful shortcuts on the bottom of the editor, you cannot see all of them.

It is not possible to remember all the shortcuts, specially in the beginning. What you can do is to use the Ctrl+G keys to bring up the detailed help menu. The help menu lists all the keyboard shortcuts.

Always look at the bottom of the Nano editor

If you are using Nano, you’ll notice that it displays important information at the bottom. This includes the keyboard shortcuts that will be used in the scenario. It also shows the last action you performed.

If you get too comfortable with Nano, you can get more screen for editing the text by disabling the shortcuts displayed at the bottom. You can use Alt+X keys for that. I don’t recommend doing it, to be honest. Pressing Alt+X brings the shortcut display back.

Download Nano cheatsheet [PDF]

There are a lot more shortcuts and editing options in Nano. I am not going to overwhelm you by mentioning them all.

Here’s a quick summary of the important Nano keyboard shortcuts you should rememeber. Download link is under the image.

Download Nano Cheat Sheet (free PDF)

You can download the cheatsheet, print it and keep at your desk. It will help you in remembering and mastering the shortcuts.

I hope you find this beginner’s guide to Nano text editor helpful. If you liked it, please share it on Reddit, Hacker News or in various Linux forums you frequently visit.

I welcome your questions and suggestions.

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How to Format a USB Disk as exFAT on Linux [Graphically and Command Line]

Brief: This tutorial teaches you how to format a USB disk in exFAT format on Linux systems. Both GUI and command line methods have been discussed.

For a long time FAT has been the default choice of filesystem for formatting disks. It is compatible with pretty much all the major operating systems.

The one major problem with FAT filesystem is that you cannot transfer a file larger than 4 GB. This means even if your USB disk has 32 GB of free space, if you try to transfer a ISO image or some other file greater than 4 GB in size, the transfer will fail.

This creates a problem in situation like when you are creating a bootable USB of Windows in Linux. You cannot use NTFS and FAT filesystem has that 4 GB size restrictions.

To overcome the limitations of FAT filesystem, Microsoft came up with exFAT filesystem. And in this tutorial, I’ll show you how to format a USB disk in exFAT filesystem.

• Format disk as exFAT using graphical tool
• Format disk as exFAT using command line

Prerequisite

Starting Linux kernel 5.4, exFAT filesystem support is enabled in Linux kernel itself. Check which Linux kernel version you are running. If it is kernel 5.4 or higher, you should be fine.

Otherwise, you’ll have to enable exFAT support explicitly. In Ubuntu-based distributions, you can use these packages for this purpose:

sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

Method 1: Format disk as exFAT using GNOME Disks tool

Formatting a drive using GNOME Disks is a straightforward job. It comes preinstalled in a number of Linux distributions.

Plug in your external USB disk. Now, look for Disks in menu and open the GNOME Disks application. As a first step choose the drive that you want to format and follow the steps with me.

Warning: Pay attention to the disk you are selecting to format. Don’t format your main disk accidentally.

The commonly used file systems like Ext4, NTFS, FAT will appear first. To use exFAT, choose “Other” and then click on “Next“.

Final step: choose exFAT file system on this screen and then click Create. Job done!

See how easy it was to create a exFAT disk in Linux graphically? Now, let me show you the terminal method as well.

Method 2: Format disk as exFAT in Linux command line (for advanced users)

fdisk is a dialogue-driven command-line utility that creates and manipulates partition tables and partitions on a hard disk. In fact, it is considered one of the best partitioning tools for Linux.

Plug in your external hard disk then type the following command in the terminal:

sudo fdisk -l

This will list down all the hard disks and partitions in your computer. Identify the partition that you want to format in your external hard disk. Size of the disks should give you a hint. For me, the USB disk was labelled as /dev/sdb1.

Once you have identified your USB disk, format it as exfat using the command below. Replace /dev/sdXn with your disk’s device ID. LABEL is basically the name you want to give to your disk like Data, MyUSB etc.

sudo mkfs.exfat -n LABEL /dev/sdXn

Optionally, run fsck check to make sure the formatting has been done properly.

sudo fsck.exfat /dev/sdXn

That’s it. Enjoy the exFAT disk.

Did you succeed to create exFAT disk?

I hope you find this tutorial simple enough, and a step forward to build a solid partitioning knowledge foundation.

Sometimes easy and simple tips and tricks will make you a better Linux in the long term. Our frequent readers know that first hand but if you discovered It’s FOSS recently, you may take the opportunity to explore our handy tutorials.

Don’t forget to subscribe and let me know your questions and suggestions in the comments below.

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FreeFileSync: Open Source File Synchronization Tool

Brief: FreeFileSync is an open-source folder comparison and sync tool with which you can back up your data to an external disk, a cloud service like Google Drive or any other storage path.

FreeFileSync: A Free & Open-Source Tool To Sync Files

FreeFileSync is an impressive open-source tool that can help you back up your data to a different location.

This different location can be an external USB disk, Google Drive or to any of your cloud storage locations using SFTP or FTP connections.

You might have read our tutorial on how to use Google Drive on Linux before. Unfortunately, there’s no proper FOSS solution to use Google Drive natively on Linux. There is Insync but it is a premium, non open source software.

FreeFileSync can be used to sync files with your Google Drive account. In fact, I’m using it to sync my files to Google Drive and to a separate hard drive.

Features of FreeFileSync

Even though the UI of FreeFileSync might look old school — it offers a ton of useful features for average users and advanced users as well.

I’ll highlight all the features I can here:

• Cross-platform support (Windows, macOS & Linux)
• Compare folders before synchronizing
• Supports Google Drive, SFTP, and FTP connections
• Offers the ability to sync your files on a different storage path (or an external storage device)
• Multiple synchronization options available (Update files to the target from source or Mirror the files between target and source)
• Two-way synchronization supported (changes will be synced if there’s any modification on the target folder or the source folder)
• Version control available for advanced users
• Real-Time Sync option available
• Ability to schedule batch jobs
• Get notified via email when sync completes (paid)
• Portable edition (paid)
• Parallel file copy (paid)

So, if you take a look at the features it offers, it’s not just any ordinary sync tool but offers so much more for free.

Also, to give you an idea, you can also tweak how to compare the files before syncing them. For instance, you can compare the file content / file time or simply compare the file size of both source and target folder.

You also get numerous synchronization options to mirror or update your data. Here’s how it looks like:

However, it does give you the option to opt for a donation key which unlocks some special features like the ability to notify you via email when the sync completes and so on.

Here’s what different between the free and paid version:

So, most of the essential features is available for free. The premium features are mostly for advanced users and of course, if you want to support them (please do if you find it useful).

Also, do note that the donation edition can be used by a single user on up to 3 devices. So, that is definitely not bad!

Installing FreeFileSync on Linux

You can simply head on to its official download page and grab the tar.gz file for Linux. If you like you can download the source as well.

Next, you just need to extract the archive and run the executable file to get started (as shown in the image above)

Download FreeFileSync

How To Get Started With FreeFileSync?

While I haven’t tried successfully creating an automatic sync job, it is pretty easy to use.

The official documentation should be more than enough to get what you want using the software.

But, just to give you a head start, here are a few things that you should keep in mind.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you just have to select a source folder and the target folder to sync. You can choose a local folder or a cloud storage location.

Once you do that, you need to tweak the type of folder comparison you want to do (usually the file time & size) for the synchronization process and on the right-side, you get to tweak the type of sync that you want to perform.

Types of synchronization in FreeFileSync

When you select “Update” method for sync, it simply copies your new data from the source folder to the target folder. So, even if you delete something from your source folder, it won’t get deleted on your target folder.

In case you want the target folder to have the same file copies of your same folder, you can choose the “Mirror” synchronization method. So, here, if you delete something from your source, it gets deleted from your target folder as well.

There’s also a “Two-way” sync method which detects changes on both source and target folder (instead of monitoring just the source folder). So, if you make any changes on the source/target folder, the modification will be synchronized.

For more advanced usage, I suggest you to refer the documentation available.

Wrapping Up

Another open source file synchronization tool is Syncthing that you might want to look at.

FreeFileSync is a pretty underrated folder comparison and sync tool available for Linux users who utilize Google Drive, SFTP, or FTP connections along with separate storage locations for backup.

And, all of that — with cross-platform support for Windows, macOS, and Linux available for free.

Isn’t that exciting? Let me know your thoughts on FreeFileSync in the comments down below.

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