I just switched to the Joplin markdown note app (from DS Note, and Evernote before that). It’s free, works on desktop and mobile, etc etc. Frankly I love it and wish I switched earlier.
Joplin is really great. I use it since a few month. Unfortunately, I have some problems with the Windows version that I have to use at work: After a few days it eats my memory (2GiB+) or hangs completely (I have to kill it with the task manager).
Otherwise it's great. The UI could use a little polishing, especially regarding the tagging system.
Quiver recently added one as well, works decently and actually fetches images to store locally unlike Evernote web clipper
Some javascript-heavy segmented pages don't clip correctly, but firing up the browsers reader-mode usually clears all the js crap and allows page content to be cleanly clipped
Improving the mobile text editor is high priority (and has been tried a few times already), but currently there's no good React Native or web mobile code editor that can be used. CodeMirror for mobile is being developed so maybe we can use that once it's stable. I've actually already tried to integrate the beta in Joplin, which worked but it's not stable yet.
I like these apps because I’ve been trying note taking for 30 years and have had many false starts of solo projects over the years. So when someone releases it makes me a little happy.
I like markdown because the interoperability is high. I’d like a command line way to just create a new note in one line that gets stuck somewhere that can be added on or moved around later (eg, “note Inkdrop should be investigated and forked later on #notes #hn #app”).
My problem is that phones are just too slow for me to fire up and start a note so I tend to wait and forget before I can write down. I’ve seen a lot of approaches to digital zettelkasten [0], but the UX requires a lot of familiarity that lead me back to eventually (not) writing my own.
> I’d like a command line way to just create a new note in one line that gets stuck somewhere that can be added on or moved around later
On the Mac, I wrote an Alfred workflow that lets me type "c this is a note" in Alfred, hit <enter> and the line is appended to a file called "cap.txt". I then go through that file at the end of the day.
On iOS, I just use Reminders app's quick launch action to create a new Reminder and go through them at the end of the day.
This is kind of what I do. But I would like a better way to sync Notes. It’s nice to go back through every once in a while to transfer to something more permanent but that takes work and messes up the date stamps for figuring out log and timeline.
> My problem is that phones are just too slow for me to fire up and start a note
How so? Is your phone really old and slow or something?
On my iPhone X it takes two touches from the home screen to get into the notes app (first touch) and start a new note (second touch), and this takes about two seconds (I measured the time). Not counting the touches or time taken to unlock the phone and to get to the home screen but that time is short too.
This is a dumb question but have you tried, like, putting your chosen Note App somewhere prominent in your phone? Like, on the first page of the home screen, or in the dock if you’d on iOS?
But whatever works, if you prefer to lose an idea because it’s “faster” to wait until you’re at a keyboard, it’s your life.
Or just keep a physical notebook of some kind with you. That’s faster than any digital method for just capturing an idea.
> I’d like a command line way to just create a new note in one line that gets stuck somewhere
5 min hackjob that saves my day every day:
# `note foobar` opens vim on a timestamped foobar file within a folder
# `note` just opens the same folder in netrw
# also, using tpope/vim-vinegar and liberal use of `-` to go back and forth
function note() (
local title="$1"
local timestamp="$(date +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z)"
local dir="${HOME}/Dropbox/Notes"
mkdir -p "${dir}"
cd "${dir}"
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
exec vim "$timestamp-$title.md"
else
exec vim .
fi
)
Good point and easy enough to add, although it does not fit my use case: I want the files to be readable on mobile, plus I only put non-confidential, to-be-public, or already public data in there.
I'm of the "organize everything in random .md files spread throughout my filesystem" type, but my friends would find this handy, and the design is beautiful.
I think people are underestimating the value of design in this space.
This is competing with every single idiosyncratic note taking activity that we all go through, and find probably at least marginally functional. Lots of people were taking notes before this app, it's not like this is opening a new door into how to live. What it's doing is taking the pains the half-solutions of the past were providing, and trying to offer a "better way".
I dunno if it actually is a "better way" yet, but for $0 bucks over 60 days, I'm willing to find out!
Do you or do you plan to add any kind of sharing/collaborative editing to notes at all? Is the plugin system versatile enough to allow e.g. syncing notes to Jekyll blog posts?
> Electron Markdown editor with monthly subscription to boot.
Beautiful as it is, you're competing with Bear using the sub model, and my common sense to use buy-once native apps (like Sublime Text). This is a non-starter for me.
Yeah, but Bear has this huge following around it already and is OSX native, although it is missing e2e encryption support so Inkdrop has this going for it.
As for me I'm just using sublime text with a bunch of plugins and Markor on my phone. Resilio to sync between the devices.
I also use Bear and really like it, but I don't think the fact that something already has a huge following around it should be an argument. By that rationale we'd never switch to anything new.
Bear has a development team and it's $1.49 monthly, even cheaper if you buy annually (I know that that it leverages iCloud, but even then - you can spend 1$ and get 50 gigs of storage to use for anything you want).
Not to even mention that there are so many alternatives. Markdown editor is the new todo app. Everybody is doing one, just look at this thread.
I would love, love, love if I could self-host this and would happily pay a fee if it meant I got the source for the backend and could do that. Product looks great, but I will hold off until I find such an option.
I have been looking for years for a viable self-hosted Evernote/OneNote replacement I can sync between devices.
Takuya; You can differentiate from your competitors on business model!
Why would you use CouchDB when flat files already maintain revision history in a Git repo? That is the advantage of Markdown and you've somehow made it more complicated than it should ever be. Google Drive also retains file revisions for you.
You could have a look at Standard Notes. It has a self-hosted version, Markdown support through a plugin, end to end encryption, and it syncs across devices. I use the "regular" service that syncs over their servers, but the self-hosted version should work, too.
If I may make a suggestion: I develop Joplin [0] a similar note-taking app, and it can sync with Nextcloud or WebDAV (some have made it works with the Nginx WebDAV module for instance), allowing you to control all your data.
It may or may not have all the features of Takuya's app though.
I've been using Typora which is a similar or even a better tool and it's free for now. I hope typora doesn't go the subscription/saas route. Everything is a subscription these days and you probably would be better off going with a different revenue model since the competition is heavy in the note taking market.
Running a project for three years alone on the side takes a lot of discipline. So often we become 'passionate' about some projects and quickly abandon them once the initial excitement wears off. Congratulations to the author!
Eerily, I have also been building a Markdown note-taking app alone for 2 years [0]. It is also e2e encrypted, but compared to Inkdrop, needs more work on the UI. But it works perfectly as a CLI.
> Running a project for three years alone on the side takes a lot of discipline.
My congratulations!
I could not agree more! I also worked on a Markdown editor for many years (in my case 5). But, the unique perspective I take at this was requiring that much time. In my case, it is really an editor for developers that know their Web stack... Stylo[0] supports styling the Markdown using CSS, live. It allows to do things such as highlighting tagged text parts that we want to concentrate on among other things. Only for Mac though as I also am an independent developer and want to concentrate on features that actually matters for producing texts.
It took me every bit of discipline I had, and it continues...
It helps to be working on something you want to exist and use every day. You've already validated your product/market fit at that point, even if your market only consists of 1 person.
Ignore the people muttering about the subscription. If your tool scratches an itch, the price and how you pay is irrelevant.
One thing, the email sent to verify my account got marked as spam by google. Not sure why, SPF and DKIM both marked as PASS. Maybe they just hate Amazon SES.
The author here. Thanks!
Yeah this app is basically for professional use.
I'm providing it to only those who got more productivity with it and who would think that is worth more than the price.
I don't know why emails got marked as spam.
Imho, notetaking Apps are solving problems that shouldn‘t be solved by them. Encryption / sync should be done by the system via git, Nextcloud, Dropbox, ...
Most of the rest is provided by a decent text editor.
Not really. There must be a small(big?) subset of people who don't want to setup git,nextcloud,dropbox etc. to get encryption/sync working. As a hacker it might offend your sensibilities of "one thing well" but not everyone is a hacker :-)
This is a markdown notes app though, who realistically is the target market besides hackers? The only people I have met who like markdown are programmers.
I've been a happy user of this product for about half of its lifetime (in the middle of my 2nd yearly subscription).
If I were to build one, it would be quite similar: intuitive design, some GTD support, Markdown support. It has all the features that I need, and the developer is easy to reach when there's a problem (I've been mentioned in a few changelogs). I appreciate the openness of the developer about the features he's gonna build next. I'd prefer it to be open source, but I understand that financing an open source project wouldn't be as easy from the business perspective. $50/year (IIRC) is really, really worth it for me.
Nice to see a product using CouchDB. From a quick glance, the revision utility seems to use CouchDB's revisions. Just a note to the dev: The _rev is not intended as a revision tool in CouchDB. Data will eventually be erased. See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28354346/couchdb-view-th...
If this is aimed at developers, why would they want to use it over their existing editor? I use VSCode and I write markdown in it all the time. A lot of other common editors also have support for it. Why would I want to use a seperate tool?
Good question. My answer is I see this tool as a note taking app that uses Markdown. Not a general Markdown editing tool, though it may also handle that functionality. Does that make sense?
I write code all day in VSCode/Intellij, yet I write all my notes in the Apple Notes app. While not perfect (I would prefer to write them in MD), it currently has the fewest trade offs for me. The most important feature being that I can easily view/write notes anywhere on any of my devices.
Nope, because I don't like file-based sync. It's slow, unstable and hard to implement. People will say "how about Google Drive/OneDrive/Box support?" Hell awaits you.
From a developer point of view, maybe. From a user point of view it’s a quite reliable and well known mechanism to sync between platforms. Dropbox is already what I personally use to manage my documents between all my devices, it’s part of my various workflows. I personally don’t want to add other syncing mechanisms if I can avoid as that forces me to create/manage an additional account and give my trust to an additional platform.
Of course I may be an outlier but I don’t think that’s the case, Dropbox is well established. Inkdrop looks really, really nice and I might be a user of such a tool, but only for the editing and categorizing part but if I cannot disable the syncing using your backend that’s a blocker for me.
Anyway, congrats for the work that you’ve done, I hope you will change your mind at some point :)
I use writer plus[1] which is a free Android app and writes to .md files that I sync to my computer via syncthing. Then you can use any markdown application on the desktop (there are several open source ones on Linux).
Just signed up for a Standard Notes subscription today. How does this compare? Seems they are both e2e encrypted with Markdown and code highlighting. Standard notes also has rich text and todo list plugins.
I’m a happy StandardNotes user and IMO it looks like it’s very similar but StandardNotes is more mature and has more functionality. If anything this might be slightly prettier.
I tried Standard Notes for a while but got frustrated by the fact that the Markdown editor is basically unusable. For some reason there's 5 or more different editors available and not a single one of them produces readable text.
So when you look at an article like this and there's this paragraph explaining how image support has been improved with a GIF demonstrating inline images scrolling in both the editor and the preview window, what is it exactly that prompts you to write a comment like this.
281 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 310 ms ] thread"End-to-end Encryption Support, Smart Scroll Sync for Side-by-side View, New Logo, and More."
Anyone have a good comparison vs Inkdrop?
The mobile app, web-clipper and desktop apps are all wonderfully done.
Otherwise it's great. The UI could use a little polishing, especially regarding the tagging system.
Some javascript-heavy segmented pages don't clip correctly, but firing up the browsers reader-mode usually clears all the js crap and allows page content to be cleanly clipped
http://happenapps.com/#quiver
I like markdown because the interoperability is high. I’d like a command line way to just create a new note in one line that gets stuck somewhere that can be added on or moved around later (eg, “note Inkdrop should be investigated and forked later on #notes #hn #app”).
My problem is that phones are just too slow for me to fire up and start a note so I tend to wait and forget before I can write down. I’ve seen a lot of approaches to digital zettelkasten [0], but the UX requires a lot of familiarity that lead me back to eventually (not) writing my own.
[0] https://zettelkasten.de/
On the Mac, I wrote an Alfred workflow that lets me type "c this is a note" in Alfred, hit <enter> and the line is appended to a file called "cap.txt". I then go through that file at the end of the day.
On iOS, I just use Reminders app's quick launch action to create a new Reminder and go through them at the end of the day.
You can use Notes if you have longer texts?
How so? Is your phone really old and slow or something?
On my iPhone X it takes two touches from the home screen to get into the notes app (first touch) and start a new note (second touch), and this takes about two seconds (I measured the time). Not counting the touches or time taken to unlock the phone and to get to the home screen but that time is short too.
It’s probably only 2 seconds vs 1 second. Not a huge time amount.
But whatever works, if you prefer to lose an idea because it’s “faster” to wait until you’re at a keyboard, it’s your life.
Or just keep a physical notebook of some kind with you. That’s faster than any digital method for just capturing an idea.
I currently keep a paper notebook for the reason you give.
5 min hackjob that saves my day every day:
You can also add your own file type if necessary.
This is competing with every single idiosyncratic note taking activity that we all go through, and find probably at least marginally functional. Lots of people were taking notes before this app, it's not like this is opening a new door into how to live. What it's doing is taking the pains the half-solutions of the past were providing, and trying to offer a "better way".
I dunno if it actually is a "better way" yet, but for $0 bucks over 60 days, I'm willing to find out!
Beautiful as it is, you're competing with Bear using the sub model, and my common sense to use buy-once native apps (like Sublime Text). This is a non-starter for me.
As for me I'm just using sublime text with a bunch of plugins and Markor on my phone. Resilio to sync between the devices.
Bear has a development team and it's $1.49 monthly, even cheaper if you buy annually (I know that that it leverages iCloud, but even then - you can spend 1$ and get 50 gigs of storage to use for anything you want).
Not to even mention that there are so many alternatives. Markdown editor is the new todo app. Everybody is doing one, just look at this thread.
I have been looking for years for a viable self-hosted Evernote/OneNote replacement I can sync between devices.
Takuya; You can differentiate from your competitors on business model!
I didn't not try it myself, but it looks quite easy to setup.
It may or may not have all the features of Takuya's app though.
[0] https://joplinapp.org
Subscriptions are the best way to support products with a smaller user base. Plus it has ongoing cloud storage.
Eerily, I have also been building a Markdown note-taking app alone for 2 years [0]. It is also e2e encrypted, but compared to Inkdrop, needs more work on the UI. But it works perfectly as a CLI.
- [0] https://github.com/dnote/dnote
SavedYouAClick :)
So have I: https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki
> quickly abandon them once the initial excitement wears off
I use CatWiki for all my notes so keep tweaking it.
My congratulations!
I could not agree more! I also worked on a Markdown editor for many years (in my case 5). But, the unique perspective I take at this was requiring that much time. In my case, it is really an editor for developers that know their Web stack... Stylo[0] supports styling the Markdown using CSS, live. It allows to do things such as highlighting tagged text parts that we want to concentrate on among other things. Only for Mac though as I also am an independent developer and want to concentrate on features that actually matters for producing texts.
It took me every bit of discipline I had, and it continues...
[0]: https://www.textually.net
https://github.com/gollum/gollum
It's just markdown files in a git repository when you're in your full environment. But you get a read-write web wiki interface to use from anywhere.
Ignore the people muttering about the subscription. If your tool scratches an itch, the price and how you pay is irrelevant.
One thing, the email sent to verify my account got marked as spam by google. Not sure why, SPF and DKIM both marked as PASS. Maybe they just hate Amazon SES.
If I were to build one, it would be quite similar: intuitive design, some GTD support, Markdown support. It has all the features that I need, and the developer is easy to reach when there's a problem (I've been mentioned in a few changelogs). I appreciate the openness of the developer about the features he's gonna build next. I'd prefer it to be open source, but I understand that financing an open source project wouldn't be as easy from the business perspective. $50/year (IIRC) is really, really worth it for me.
EDIT: Here's a link to a note that I've made when I was looking for a new note-taking solution: https://community.inkdrop.app/note/f607a6970af9e4b40795ec5be...
It also says relative links between notes are not supported — is that still the case?
Thanks for your hard work!
The first sentence on any new app should be...
App is a (what it can do) for (Windows/Mac/Linux) written in/with (languages/libraries/frameworks)
And FFS if it's an Electron app, SAY SO!!!!! Some people do avoid those on principal.
I write code all day in VSCode/Intellij, yet I write all my notes in the Apple Notes app. While not perfect (I would prefer to write them in MD), it currently has the fewest trade offs for me. The most important feature being that I can easily view/write notes anywhere on any of my devices.
From a developer point of view, maybe. From a user point of view it’s a quite reliable and well known mechanism to sync between platforms. Dropbox is already what I personally use to manage my documents between all my devices, it’s part of my various workflows. I personally don’t want to add other syncing mechanisms if I can avoid as that forces me to create/manage an additional account and give my trust to an additional platform.
Of course I may be an outlier but I don’t think that’s the case, Dropbox is well established. Inkdrop looks really, really nice and I might be a user of such a tool, but only for the editing and categorizing part but if I cannot disable the syncing using your backend that’s a blocker for me.
Anyway, congrats for the work that you’ve done, I hope you will change your mind at some point :)
[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writ...
This is also double the cost over 5 years.