Credit: Jerome Thomas / MakeUseOf

There are many note-taking tools out there, including Notion, Obsidian, and OneNote. However, one free tool stood out to me — the markdown-powered Joplin, thanks to its open-source, offline-first, and privacy-focused nature. When Joplin is paired with the Joplin Web Clipper and cross-platform syncing, it ensures that everything I capture is perfectly synced and easily accessible.

If you use Joplin but not the Web Clipper, you’re missing out because it can greatly enhance your note-taking workflow. It ensures nothing valuable slips through the cracks when researching or seeking inspiration online. I’ve started using it regularly, and I can’t imagine Joplin without the clipper.

Joplin Web Clipper

Joplin Web Clipper is a browser extension that lets you capture and save web pages, selections, screenshots, or URLs directly into your Joplin notebooks for organized, secure offline access.

Joplin Web Clipper offers something unique

It packs a lot of useful features for a free tool

Joplin’s Web Clipper is a completely free extension for Google Chrome and Firefox that saves text, links, screenshots, and other web content into Joplin notes. It’s one of the best tools for research, documentation, and organizing information across devices. Furthermore, because Joplin is open-source, its web clipper is fully featured, provides full offline access, and can be used without restrictions (no feature lock-out and unlimited captures).

Since Joplin is very privacy-focused, it uses end-to-end encryption to ensure clipped content is secure no matter where you store it. With incidents of unauthorized access and data breaches on the rise, the Joplin Web Clipper provides peace of mind, knowing your sensitive information is protected using state-of-the-art encryption.

Speaking of security, I like the fact that you have to explicitly grant the Joplin Web Clipper permission to communicate with the desktop app. It won’t work if you don’t do this because it requires the desktop application to be running as well. While this might seem like an unnecessary extra step, it ensures no background processes have access to your notes and other data without permission.

Joplin Web Clipper quickly captures information online

Got to get it before it’s lost

The Joplin Web Clipper offers several ways to clip content from the web. As Afam noted when he ditched Evernote for Joplin, the Joplin Web Clipper provides a simple way to turn web clippings into notes without needing extra clean-up. You just pick Clip simplified page, and it’ll convert the clipped content to Markdown without images, ads, menus, and needless clutter. All you get is easily editable content, and it’s the option I use the most.

You can also use Clip complete page (Markdown) or Clip complete page (HTML). These options clip everything, including the images, links, and formatting from the original webpage, and save it to a notebook as a new note. The former converts it to Markdown (better for editing), and the latter downloads the full HTML. I rarely use these options unless I feel the need to archive content that might be removed or changed later.

If I want to clip part of a webpage, including text, images, and links, the Clip selection option comes in handy. I use this to grab specific quotes, images, and paragraphs without capturing unnecessary content from the rest of the page.

Clip screenshot allows me to capture visible sections of a screen and save them to a notebook as an image. It’s a fast screenshot tool for grabbing diagrams, infographics, or anything easier to save as an image rather than text.

Clip URL just creates a new note and inserts the link to the webpage. I prefer this over browser bookmarks since it keeps the links alongside my related notes and research. They’re easier to find this way.

Before clipping the content, I can select the notebook it should go in and the tags to use. Tags make it easy to organize and find related notes across different notebooks. They offer a quick way to filter and search for specific clippings.

Syncing the clippings across devices

Accessing the clippings anywhere is not that hard

Now here’s the best part: I can access the clippings on another computer or on the Joplin mobile app. I can do this without creating any type of Joplin account. Well, Joplin Cloud is available, but it’s not a mandatory option. There is a free tier that is just for working on notes shared by others, but it doesn’t provide synchronization or storage.

Luckily, I can use third-party synchronization options, such as OneDrive and Dropbox. If I want to go fully open-source, I can use self-hosted options like Nextcloud, WebDAV, and S3. The sync options are easy to set up by going to Tools > Options > Synchronization. I need to do this on any machine I want to sync my Joplin notes.

I can also enable end-to-end encryption for the synced notes here while I’m at it.

I prefer to sync with OneDrive for convenience. Once synced, I access them on my phone to work on my notes on the go. I enabled synchronization on the mobile app by going to Configuration > Synchronization.

Joplin

OS Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, FreeBSD, Terminal

Developer Laurent Cozic (and community)

Joplin is a cross-platform, privacy-focused note-taking and task-management app. It supports rich features like Markdown notes, notebooks and tags, end-to-end encryption, a web clipper, self-hosted sync (via WebDAV/Nextcloud/Dropbox) or managed cloud sync with Joplin Cloud. It works offline, allows importing from Evernote, supports plugins and themes, and gives full control over your data.

The best web clipper for my note-taking setup

Before Joplin, I was a Notion user. While I sometimes miss the forward slash menu, nested pages, and database features, Joplin’s notebook structure and control are better suited for my workflow than any other proprietary software right now. With the Joplin Web Clipper, I can capture ideas I see on the web and turn them into full-fledged notes later.