Show HN: Joonote – A note-taking app on your lock screen and notification panel

[kilgarenone]

I finally built this app after many years of being sick of unlocking my phone every goddamn time I need to take or view my notes. It particularly sucks when I'm doing my grocery and going down the list.

I started building last year June. This is a native app written in Kotlin. And since I'm a 100% Web dev guy, I gotta say this wouldn't have been possible without this AI to assist me. So this isn't "vibe-coded". I simply used the chat interface in Gemini website, manually copy paste codes to build and integrate every single thing in the app! I used gemini to build it just because I was piggybacking on my last company's enterprise subscription. I personally didn't subscribe to any AI (and still don't cuz the free quota seems enough for me :)

So I certainly have learnt alot about Android development, architecture patterns, Kotlin syntax, and obeying Google's whims. Can't say I love it all, but for the sake of this app, I will :)

Anyway, I finally have the app I wish existed, and I'm using it everyday. It not only does the main thing I needed it to do, but there's also all this stuff:

- Make your notes private if you don't want to show them on lock screen. - Create check/to-do lists. - Set one time or recurring reminders. - Full-text search your notes in the app. - Speech-to-text. - Organize your notes with custom or color labels. - Pin the app as a widget on your home screen. - You can auto backup and restore your notes on new install or Android device. - Works offline. - And no funny business happening in the background https://joonote.com/privacy

It's 30-day trial, then a one-time $9.99 to go Pro forever.

I would love you all to check it out, FWIW.

Ok thanks!

[comrade1234]

I don't think you should name it that...

[kilgarenone]

yeah damn it. I don't want to say it, but I know it sounds like that lol

[written-beyond]

My god it's the perfect app.

I've never said YES BUY immediately after reading a title before but this is it.

My phone frequently gets cluttered with tens of different note taking, calendar, Todo type apps because I am literally trying to solve this exact problem.

When I need to make a note I need something instant and now, but which lets me set an alarm/reminder with it too. I am a forgetful person, I find it extremely difficult to remember which notes app I am using because I usually drop them because they're never really solving my problem.

Thank you for this. I am going to install it and try it out over the week, if it's experience lives up to your description/screenshots then you have an immediate customer.

[kilgarenone]

I just woke up, and this made my day! Thanks! Feel free to reach out to me about whatever :)

[anotherpaulg]

I appreciate the ability to rapidly capture a note/thought/todo without friction and context switching.

I solved this problem with a twilio sms number. When I send a text to it, the content gets prepended to my obsidian todo.md file. This was easy to arrange with a few lines of Python glue.

iOS makes it easy to text or share to sms from almost any context.

[skeledrew]

Hmm I've never thought of having notes available on my lockscreen. Hardly even ever see it because face+fingerprint unlock combo.

I've been using Orgzly[0] as my note taker (and a lot more) and ButtonMaster[1] for rapid access. Unlock phone, swipe the floating BM button left, type my note (and maybe add properties, keywords and more) and hit save. Just now realizing too that it also supports creating notes via its notification. Never thought of using STT, but I have FUTO Keyboard[2] so that's also handled. And Syncthing[3] keeps it all synced with my laptop. All working together seamlessly for years.

[0] https://orgzlyrevived.com/ [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mozapps.bu... [2] https://keyboard.futo.org/ [3] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncth...

[kilgarenone]

Alright everyone, I have updated the website to show the phonetic notation below the app name in the header to roughly convey what I intended it to sound like: /ˈzhooːnoʊt/

Didn't mean to be insensitive or anything here. I apologize if I offended anyone here.

[graypegg]

I was reading it as "joon note" originally! I only realized I was misreading it when coming back to the comments. If you wanted to change up the name, maybe "June Note"? It has a nice ring to it IMO, and doesn't stray too far from your original name. Nature-y too, which seems to be a bit of a theme.

Really nice job on the app though! I think written-beyond's comment says more than enough: you've made what should be a default feature, that no one had thought to make.

[kilgarenone]

lol, yeah...about the name..I think it's too late to change it now? Didn't realize it sounded a certain way until much later.. I wanted it to be "Zuunote"(like zoo-note but domain taken) but it was already taken by my other project, so "Joonote" sounded closest to it to my mind at the time...yeah crap haha

[dmd]

Funny, it doesn’t look jooish

[kilgarenone]

uh no idea what jooish would look like..

[arikrahman]

Mythical Show HN pull

[amadeuspagel]

Cool idea. I've been looking for a notes widget for the KDE panel, so I don't forget what I was doing when I open a different program. Maybe even showing the content of the clipboard would be enough.

[politelemon]

Great demo video as well, I appreciated that it didn't waste time. I'll echo the comments here though, the name doesn't sit well with some audiences.

[kilgarenone]

ya I'm totally open to change it, but do you think its too late now?

[ashwinnair99]

Simple idea, right surface. Lock screen is the most underused real estate on a phone. Curious how you handle the note limit before it gets cluttered.

[kilgarenone]

You can turn on the "Combine Notifications" setting in the Settings page. This will have the individual notifications live under a single so-called summary notication.

[vincentabolarin]

This is a very useful feature as an app.

It will definitely come in handy when it is much needed.

The video walk-through is solid.

It seems like a genuinely good app which does what it says it does.

Great job!

[__turbobrew__]

That is a poor choice of naming. Sounds like JewNote.

[--_--]

I was going to say that too. Perhaps it came from a non-native English speaker. Please change it.

I like the idea, if it's actually safe and you can't use this to get into your phone through some tricky means like a buffer overrun.

[kilgarenone]

ya...totally didn't occur to me. Probably would've been obvious to me if English was my first language..

[ifh-hn]

As a native English speaker who had to Google joonish to see what people were talking about, what is the big issue with the name?

[hermanzegerman]

They think it sounds too similar to jew.

But I don't know why that would be offensive in that context

[FileForge]

Super cool. Anything that saves time is valuable and this does that simply and effectively!

[bryanhogan]

Any plans on possibly making the notes be local markdown files similar to how Obsidian does it?

[kilgarenone]

Yeah I will add Markdown support. Added to the roadmap :)

[SachitRafa]

The name could have been better

[anonym29]

I believe the politically correct phrasing would be Jooishnote.

[analognoise]

First they controlled Hollywood.

Then they controlled all of Politics.

Then they controlled when we went to war.

Now you want them to control your notes???

/s but “Joo” is filterspeak for “Jews”. Sounds antisemitic as fuck.

[mireofthedeep]

Joo is also Finnish for "yes" or "yep", name sounds like "yes-note".

[kilgarenone]

oh man, I swear it had nothing to do with Jews lol. But now i know how it sounds like. Sorry! love you all.