Once you step foot in the note-taking landscape, you’ll be greeted with FOSS, freemium, and paid applications designed to help you record all your ideas. Whether you’re a self-hosting manic who prefers the privacy of FOSS services or a casual user who prefers convenience above all else, you’ll find plenty of note-taking solutions out in the wild.

But if you’re a coding enthusiast who extensively uses Git’s version control facility to keep an eye on painstakingly-created applications, you may be disappointed by the limited note history options on most note-taking platforms. The solution? Combine Git with your favorite note-taker, of course. While it may sound like a wacky project idea, Git works surprisingly well with most of the note-taking applications out there, including the community-favorite Joplin.

So, here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can use Git to version your Joplin-based note repertoire.

Installing Git on your PC

And setting up an empty Git repo

For folks unfamiliar with Git, it’s a tool that tracks the changes in your project files and lets you revert to older versions of the code whenever you want. It’s available on the big three operating systems, and serves as the heart of the version control system for your Joplin notes.

1. Download the setup file for Git from its official website and use it to install the app on your system. If the barrage of options seems too complicated, you’ll be fine if you leave everything at default and press the Next button like there’s no tomorrow.
2. Once the installation wizard has worked its magic, launch the Git Bash utility.
3. Register a username and email as the global profile on Git using these commands:

   git config --global user.name "yourname"
   git config --global user.email "yourname@youremail.com"

4. Switch to the directory that you wish to configure as the local Git repository using the cd command.

   cd /path/to/git/repo/folder/

5. Use the git init command to initialize an empty repository at the location.

   git init

Configuring the export2git plugin in Joplin

Now that you’ve deployed a Git repository, it’s time to switch to Joplin and install the export2git, which not only lets you save your notes as .md files for the Git repo, but can even commit the changes directly to your repo. Assuming you’ve already set up Joplin beforehand,

1. Head to the official link for the Save Note as Markdown and Commit to Git plugin and download its .jpl file.
2. Launch Joplin, click on the Tools header, and choose Options.
3. Navigate to the Plugins tab, press the Cog icon adjacent to Manage your plugins, and tap Install from file.
4. Pick the .jpl file you downloaded earlier and tap the OK button.
5. Press the Restart button when Joplin prompts you to reboot the app.
6. Once again, select Options from the Tools header.
7. Click on File Export2Git Settings and press the Browse button under the Local GitRepos Folder Path section.
8. Choose the directory where you'd initialized the empty Git repository, hit Apply, and tap the Back button.
9. Once you’re done editing the notes, you can press the Export as MD and Commit to Git button.
10. You can confirm whether the procedure was successful by switching to Git Bash and running the git status command. git status

Control your note revisions like a pro with Git and Joplin

If you followed all the steps properly, Git should display a log containing all the commits you’ve made to your file. In case you want to switch to an older version of your notes file, you can use the git revert command inside Git Bash.

Although I’ve used Joplin as the test subject for this experiment, the overall process should be the same for other note-taking applications, including Obsidian. While we're on the subject, Obsidian’s Git plugin needs a little more tinkering than its Joplin counterpart, but you can even use it to sync your notes to a private GitHub repository.