QOwnNotes and Iotas sync with Nextcloud in two different ways

30 April, 2026 - Categories: notetaking, database - Tags: QOwnNotes, Iotas, file sync, Nextcloud, SQLite

By Steven Rosenberg

I just found out that QOwnNotes doesn't handle file sync with Nextcloud in the same way as Iotas.

Instead, QOwnNotes relies on the Nextcloud desktop app to sync the Markdown files generated by QOwnNotes with those on the Nextcloud server.

I've already been thinking of testing the Nextcloud app, even though it's not needed for Iotas, which does the sync on its own with flat files on the Nextcloud side and an SQLite database for Iotas.

I'd still like to see how well Nextcloud sync works. A reliable, Dropbox-like sync system would be pretty nice. Until recently, I had no idea that sync — or a separate app that does it — was even part of Nextcloud.

Even if I get sync working for QOwnNotes and Nextcloud, I don't think that Nextcloud will recognize the tags that QOwnNotes can give to notes, though that would be nice.

Despite the hurdle of syncing with Nextcloud, some of the things I appreciate about QOwnNotes are:

• Notes are stored in plain text files instead of a database
• Notes can be stored in nested folders
• Notes can be further categorized with multiple tags

In contrast, this is the situation for Iotas:

• Notes are stored in a SQLite database. They only "become" actual files if you export them.
• Notes can have a single category. They can't have multiple categories, and there are no tags or folders, though a Category in Iotas mirrors a folder in Nextcloud.