Obsidian has been my go-to for a while now when it comes to note-taking, and for good reason. It's well laid out, it's easy to use, and it's completely free for both personal and commercial use. Even paid features like Obsidian Sync, which you can use to synchronize notes to other devices, can easily be replaced by managing the synchronization between your devices yourself. With that said, I've recently been using a lesser-known self-hosted note-taking app called Blinko, and it's slowly replacing Notion for me.

Blinko runs in a Docker container, and you can deploy it in seconds using the pre-made compose file that the developer distributes. It's a very simple note-taker on the surface, but it has a lot of depth and additional features that make it more than just a notes app. It has a full tagging system, notes history, a complete markdown editor, and support for local AI to assist in creating and retrieving notes. Plus, you can upload your music to Blinko for controlling within your browser so that you don't have to switch applications while working.

Blinko takes some major strides to differentiate itself from other note-taking apps, the biggest of which is how it discerns between a "Note" and a "Blinko". A Blinko is something that you jot down quickly, and the default view is the "Blinko" view when you navigate to the app. The idea is that you open the app, take down something quickly, and then come back to it later.