It looks good, and I like your pricing model more than the Standard Notes one (I don't want to drop $149 at once on a web app, but the 75% discount for doing so makes the monthly price seem way too expensive). Two things that stop me pulling the trigger:
1. I need a web app. I want to be able to call up my notes from a computer, anywhere, without installing anything.
2. A 60 day trial seems like the wrong way to test a note taking app - it makes me feel like you're going to hold my data hostage unless I migrate away within that timescale. A much smaller (5-10MB) quota with no time limit would allow me to test it properly, and it's already a part of my workflow by the time I hit the limitations of the free account, so I'm more likely to actually upgrade.
> A much smaller (5-10MB) quota with no time limit
That's interesting and I basically agree with your opinion. You will be more comfortable to try it.
But I suspect that many free riders will come eat the server resources.
This is not a startup.
I would rather like to be small.
I agree with your suggestion, but 5 megabytes is a _LOT_ of text. I would suggest capping the trial version at something like 20 notes, which is more than enough to test it out but not enough to really use the service longterm.
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.
Congratulations on the launch! Great to see end-to-end encryption made the cut. It seems hard to put the burden on users never to lose their login password though — they lose all their data when they do.
Have you looked at the Tanker SDK? It’s an open-source, cross-platform SDK for end-to-end encryption (with a zero-knowledge key distribution service), that’s very user friendly when it comes to recovery.
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.
Should I be as impressed as I am that one guy has an app that works on 5 different operating systems even if he is using a cross platform framework or has cross platform front end development become that easy?
Whichever it is, great job! I don’t need something like this right now, but I am favoriting it just in case I do later.
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.
Basically all the comments here are just critiques. My 2 cents: excellent work, its extremely hard to stick with something for 3 years, especially with people's constant criticism and worries it isn't "big enough". The attitude of the developer seems quite wise and seasoned. Hearing things like "I'm making tools I use" and "I'd rather be small and opinionated" or "I'll take paying customers over droves of free users" makes my heart warm. Congratulations and good work -- ignore haters and people with "suggestions" after their cursory 30-second glance at your work you've been eating / breathing for 3 straight years. My go-to response to such things has become "wow in X years I didn't think to google 'note taking app', thanks for that amazing suggestion!" :P (end salty solo-dev rant)
This definitely looks great. But I feel like 5 USD a month is a bit much for _"just a note taking app"_. Like I pay 5 USD a month for Spotify and the value it gives is substantially higher than a note-taking app, and I do not mean to offend you with that. Maybe I'm saying this because I'm still studying, maybe it will different coming September when I'm working and got an income. I don't know.
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
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
)
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
I really like the project but I struggle with the fact that almost all Markdown editors, even note-taking applications, only offer you a rendered view separately from the file you edit. When I am taking notes, they should be rendered where I type them down in order to be easily digestible. Even later on, I will probably make a few smaller edits, so I can't solely rely on the rendered review.
So far, I've only discovered Typora, which is an application unfortunately plagued with performance and interopability issues - and I even had some data loss bugs. So, are there any alternative, "rich" (i.e. pictures, tables, math, code) WYSIWYM note-taking applications?
What are the "interoperability" issues you're referring to? I'm a very happy user of Typora and I've, thankfully, not experienced any data losses. The only thing that keeps me from using it more is that it's not the most smooth experience. When I take notes in Notepad++, for example, it's instantaneous. Which makes for a much more enjoyable experience.
I use NotePlan on my phone for WYSIWYM notes and calendar entries, with GTD support. It used the same (Dropbox) directory as my Kiwi app, which is a personal wiki with WYSIWYM.
On my desktop I have Sublime text with a (free) markdown plug-in for WYSIWYM note creation, and I keep the open “project” my NotePlan/Kiwi folder.
The result is a sprawling set of notes, documents, calendar data, etc inside a single wiki, editable from anywhere, and no one owns my data because at the end of the day it’s really just a bunch of text documents sitting in a Dropbox folder on my PC.
It has replaced all of my calendar, to-do, and notekeeping tools. Frankly, if NotePlan devs wanted to, they could probably subsume “personal wiki” too - the core functionality is already there, I just find the kiwi UI a little more suited to it.
This seems like an intrinsic part of the nature of Markdown editors. Typora lets you input in Markdown, but seems to immediately hide Markdown markup in favor of a WYSIWYG-like view, making it arguably not a Markdown editor at all.
For most people, and I think I include myself in this group, the point of Markdown is that the raw source is readable even without being rendered.
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.
The author here.
I think so. I don't like ads, too.
People started visiting my webpage after I started talking about my stories, instead of pitching my product.
a) Joplin is free and seems to do the exact same thing? (+actual working todo-lists)
b) Having md-notes and a dual view seems redundant... In general I either work with the notes, then the "nice view" helps nothing and on the rare occasion, I print/share it, I'm more than fine with an export button. Inline math would be great though
c) all of these apps seem to think that you'r really needing yet another sh*y webapp on your desktop. Why not store files on your android-sd-card in a flat file structure, which you can easily sync (syncthing, termux...) and edit with your texteditor of choice on the desktop.
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!
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.
The market for markdown editors and note-takers is already saturated. Joplin appears to have all the features yours does and probably more, plus it is open source. There are a handful of other open source Markdown editors as well for note-taking that have most (if not more) of the features you are including. I don't know why anyone would pick a subscription service when they can get the same thing for free and have access to the source code to help implement their own features. Plus syncing with Joplin can be accomplished on multiple providers like Google Drive.
[+] [-] TheGrumpyBrit|6 years ago|reply
1. I need a web app. I want to be able to call up my notes from a computer, anywhere, without installing anything.
2. A 60 day trial seems like the wrong way to test a note taking app - it makes me feel like you're going to hold my data hostage unless I migrate away within that timescale. A much smaller (5-10MB) quota with no time limit would allow me to test it properly, and it's already a part of my workflow by the time I hit the limitations of the free account, so I'm more likely to actually upgrade.
[+] [-] craftzdog|6 years ago|reply
> A much smaller (5-10MB) quota with no time limit
That's interesting and I basically agree with your opinion. You will be more comfortable to try it. But I suspect that many free riders will come eat the server resources. This is not a startup. I would rather like to be small.
[+] [-] robbiemitchell|6 years ago|reply
Why? How often do you retrieve your notes from some random computer that doesn't have your other preferred (or required) software installed?
[+] [-] jammygit|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hendersoon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __afk__|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcdwealth|6 years ago|reply
Mamma mia!
Why not pay US $5 to Digital Ocean and run your own NextCloud and you have all the notes in your own server. Encrypted.
[+] [-] stockkid|6 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] cabalamat|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] samel88|6 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] anderspitman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nasredin|6 years ago|reply
SavedYouAClick :)
[+] [-] mremco|6 years ago|reply
Congratulations on the launch! Great to see end-to-end encryption made the cut. It seems hard to put the burden on users never to lose their login password though — they lose all their data when they do. Have you looked at the Tanker SDK? It’s an open-source, cross-platform SDK for end-to-end encryption (with a zero-knowledge key distribution service), that’s very user friendly when it comes to recovery.
Website: https://tanker.io/product
JS SDK: https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk-js
[+] [-] craftzdog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r3bl|6 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] craftzdog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mzehrer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarface74|6 years ago|reply
Whichever it is, great job! I don’t need something like this right now, but I am favoriting it just in case I do later.
[+] [-] xref|6 years ago|reply
Anyone have a good comparison vs Inkdrop?
[+] [-] hashhar|6 years ago|reply
The mobile app, web-clipper and desktop apps are all wonderfully done.
[+] [-] dvdgsng|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PikachuEXE|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] program_whiz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sriram_malhar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Improvotter|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prepend|6 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] lloeki|6 years ago|reply
5 min hackjob that saves my day every day:
[+] [-] codetrotter|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hboon|6 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] jeena|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarejunba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weystrom|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Quanttek|6 years ago|reply
So far, I've only discovered Typora, which is an application unfortunately plagued with performance and interopability issues - and I even had some data loss bugs. So, are there any alternative, "rich" (i.e. pictures, tables, math, code) WYSIWYM note-taking applications?
[+] [-] zeppelin101|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkades|6 years ago|reply
I use NotePlan on my phone for WYSIWYM notes and calendar entries, with GTD support. It used the same (Dropbox) directory as my Kiwi app, which is a personal wiki with WYSIWYM.
On my desktop I have Sublime text with a (free) markdown plug-in for WYSIWYM note creation, and I keep the open “project” my NotePlan/Kiwi folder.
The result is a sprawling set of notes, documents, calendar data, etc inside a single wiki, editable from anywhere, and no one owns my data because at the end of the day it’s really just a bunch of text documents sitting in a Dropbox folder on my PC.
It has replaced all of my calendar, to-do, and notekeeping tools. Frankly, if NotePlan devs wanted to, they could probably subsume “personal wiki” too - the core functionality is already there, I just find the kiwi UI a little more suited to it.
[+] [-] czr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwinnski|6 years ago|reply
For most people, and I think I include myself in this group, the point of Markdown is that the raw source is readable even without being rendered.
[+] [-] mrunkel|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] craftzdog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vault|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fbnlsr|6 years ago|reply
Before that, I was using a bunch of .md files stored in a Github repo. ;)
[+] [-] tomrod|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] craftzdog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fock|6 years ago|reply
b) Having md-notes and a dual view seems redundant... In general I either work with the notes, then the "nice view" helps nothing and on the rare occasion, I print/share it, I'm more than fine with an export button. Inline math would be great though
c) all of these apps seem to think that you'r really needing yet another sh*y webapp on your desktop. Why not store files on your android-sd-card in a flat file structure, which you can easily sync (syncthing, termux...) and edit with your texteditor of choice on the desktop.
[+] [-] Legogris|6 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] vortico|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bloopernova|6 years ago|reply
This looks really slick, and actually fills a need I identified about a couple of years ago. Namely a OneNote style app but with Markdown.
Nice job, I hope you get a lot of paying users!
[+] [-] eevilspock|6 years ago|reply
(Typora is nice, and popular, but it has some serious performance and usability issues. Some competition would be good.)
[+] [-] craftzdog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techntoke|6 years ago|reply