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← Cancel your subscriptions · Mission 2 of 10

Cancel Evernote: your own encrypted notes app, for £0

Evernote's paid plans charge every year to sync notes you wrote. Joplin does the notebooks, tags, to-dos, search and web clipping for nothing, syncs through storage you already have, and encrypts every note before it leaves your laptop. Your old notes come with you.

30 minBeginnerTools: Free (Joplin Cloud sync is optional and paid)Step 1 free
Tested 8 Oct 2026 · Joplin 3.7.21 portable (JoplinPortable.exe), Windows 11, 16GB laptop
A notes app with notebooks, tags, to-dos and search, running on your own machine
Your old Evernote notes and Markdown files brought across, tags and dates included
Sync to a folder you control, with every note encrypted before it's written there
  • Your notes on your phone too, through the same encrypted sync
  • A clear picture of where Joplin replaces Notion and where it doesn't
Before you start
  • About 1GB of free disk space (more on that in step 1)
  • About 1GB of free RAM while it's open
  • No account, no payment, no admin rights
01/05Get Joplin running, no installer needed0 done
STEP 01 of 05~5 min

Get Joplin running, no installer needed

The portable version runs from a single file, so there's nothing to install and nothing to ask permission for.

  1. Go to the official releases page ↗ and download JoplinPortable.exe (361MB for version 3.7.21). The official download page ↗ links to it under "full installation details".

  2. Make a new folder for it, for example Documents\Joplin, and move the file in there. Joplin keeps all your notes in a JoplinProfile folder right next to the .exe, so don't leave it loose in Downloads.

  3. Double-click JoplinPortable.exe. The first start takes 10 to 15 seconds while it unpacks, with no admin prompt.

  4. On a Macdownload the .dmg from joplinapp.org/download ↗ (there's a separate Apple Silicon build), open it and drag Joplin into Applications. With Homebrew, brew install --cask joplin does the same. On Linux: the official install script sets up the app and its desktop icon:

    Linux (official script)
    wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/dev/Joplin_install_and_update.sh | bash
    Joplin with Home, old-evernote and Recipes notebooks, two to-dos and a note called Boiler service
    Joplin at the end of this mission. Notebooks and tags on the left, notes in the middle, the note on the right. All the notes are fictional.
    TipPrefer a normal install? Use the installer from joplinapp.org/download ↗, or winget install --id Joplin.Joplin -e. The portable version is used here because it leaves nothing behind in Windows.
    CarefulEncryption (step 4) scrambles your notes in the sync folder, not on this laptop. The JoplinProfile folder here stays readable, so anyone who can open your computer can read your notes. Rely on your login and disk encryption for the local copy.
✓
CheckpointJoplin opens with a Welcome! notebook of five notes. With the Windows portable version, a JoplinProfile folder also appears next to the .exe.
If it breaksWindows says it protected your PC + 1 more
Windows says it protected your PC
Click More info, then Run anyway, but only for a file you downloaded from the links above. The official file is digitally signed by "Joplin".
My disk filled up more than I expected
Every time it starts, the portable version unpacks itself into your temp folder (around 700MB) and clears it again when you quit. If space is tight, use the normal installer instead.
Still stuck? Ask the community
Next mission · Cancel your subscriptionsCancel your budgeting app: a free, private budget on your own PC
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