8 ms·

I've been building a Markdown note-taking app for 3 years

533 points by craftzdog 7y ago

iraldir 7y ago
Nice, will give it a try. Advice, loose the uppercase on every word in "End-to-end Encryption Support, Smart Scroll Sync for Side-by-side View, New Logo, and More."
xref 7y ago
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. Anyone have a good comparison vs Inkdrop?
- PikachuEXE 7y ago
  I switched from Wunderlist to Todoist + Joplin (and I switched to Wunderlist from Google Inbox...)
  - fmjrey 7y ago
    Any particular reason you still need Todoist even though Joplin can also handle some To Dos?
- hashhar 7y ago
  Joplin kicks ass. The only area it might need improvement is regarding showing the tags associated with a note without having to click a button. The mobile app, web-clipper and desktop apps are all wonderfully done.
  - jfreax 7y ago
    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.
  - wj 7y ago
    Is this the only other note taking app besides Evernote that has a web clipper? That has been the killer feature for me. Will have to check it out.
    - ymolodtsov 7y ago
      OneNote, Bear and Notion all have web clippers.
      - waz0wski 7y ago
        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 http://happenapps.com/#quiver http://happenapps.com/#quiver
- dvdgsng 7y ago
  I like Joplin, but writing markdown on mobile is a real PITA. They really should provide additional UI elements to create bullet points and alike.
  - laurent123456 7y ago
    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.
    - dvdgsng 7y ago
      alright then, can't wait. thanks for the info.
prepend 7y ago
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. [0] https://zettelkasten.de/ https://zettelkasten.de/
- hboon 7y ago
  > 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. You can use Notes if you have longer texts?
  - prepend 7y ago
    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.
- codetrotter 7y ago
  > 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.
vortico 7y ago
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.
- diminoten 7y ago
  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!
paraknight 7y ago
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?
weystrom 7y ago
> 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.
- felixfoertsch 7y ago
  Most important comment. Took me about 3 unnecessary minutes to find that information; should have looked in the comments first.
- atorodius 7y ago
  But Bear is also subscription based? Which buy-once app are you using.
  - weystrom 7y ago
    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.
    - vladharbuz 7y ago
      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.
      - weystrom 7y ago
        My point is that it's a big competition for him. 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.
Legogris 7y ago
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!
- jfreax 7y ago
  You can already self host it by using a CouchDB compatible server. See: https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/synchronizing-in-the-cloud https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/synchronizing-in-the-cloud I didn't not try it myself, but it looks quite easy to setup.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    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.
- tmoravec 7y ago
  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.
- laurent123456 7y ago
  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. [0] https://joplinapp.org https://joplinapp.org
  - melicerte 7y ago
perenzo 7y ago
Also end-to-end encrypted without a central server and using rich text instead of markdown https://collect-app.com/ https://collect-app.com/
- nasredin 7y ago
  The 40+MB download tells me this is Electron(?)
jookyboi 7y ago
For a code-snippet focused alternative with plugins for major editors and support for team libraries: https://www.cacher.io https://www.cacher.io
laurent123456 7y ago
The smart scroll on the editor is pretty nice. I don't know of any other Markdown app with dual view that does this.
- albertzeyer 7y ago
  Visual Studio Code does this.
- maddening 7y ago
  Joplin also does this.
  - laurent123456 7y ago
    I'm the Joplin dev and was impressed by his smart scrolling, because currently we don't have this :-)
- jaden 7y ago
  Haroopad http://pad.haroopress.com http://pad.haroopress.com also does this.
snickerman 7y ago
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.
- jaden 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing, I hadn't heard of https://typora.io https://typora.io before. The extremely minimalist web site on mobile made it seem like the page hadn't loaded. Subscriptions are the best way to support products with a smaller user base. Plus it has ongoing cloud storage.
stockkid 7y ago
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. - [0] https://github.com/dnote/dnote https://github.com/dnote/dnote
- nasredin 7y ago
  MacOS only. SavedYouAClick :)
  - gcmeplz 7y ago
    It works on linux too -- I just downloaded it to test it out.
- cabalamat 7y ago
  > I have also been building a Markdown note-taking app alone for 2 years So have I: https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki 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.
  - appletrotter 7y ago
    We're proud of you too.
- samel88 7y ago
  > 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... [0]: https://www.textually.net https://www.textually.net
pedrocr 7y ago
I really like gollum for this: https://github.com/gollum/gollum 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.
mrunkel 7y ago
Looks very nice, I just signed up. 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 7y ago
  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.
paddypad 7y ago
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.
- vmurthy 7y ago
  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 :-)
  - zrobotics 7y ago
    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.
r3bl 7y ago
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. 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/f607a6970af9e4b40795ec5bea7b852c/note:SylrWAak3Z https://community.inkdrop.app/note/f607a6970af9e4b40795ec5be...
- craftzdog 7y ago
  Hi Aleksandar, Great to know that you are continuing to use my app! high five
  - norswap 7y ago
    Hey Takuya, the above says that you can only export as HTML, does that mean that you can't export all your notes as Markdown? It also says relative links between notes are not supported — is that still the case? Thanks for your hard work!
- mzehrer 7y ago
  BTW there s desktop client for Nextcloud notes, Qownnotes https://www.qownnotes.org/ https://www.qownnotes.org/
tadelle 7y ago
Boostnote FTW
nasredin 7y ago
The recent trend of terrible introductions is very annoying. 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.
WA 7y ago
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-that-includes-revision-history https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28354346/couchdb-view-th...
kokica 7y ago
Does it have code/text block collapse support? I've been looking for an app that can do this for years.
faeyanpiraat 7y ago
App looks promising, but is there a way for it to not convert tabs into spaces automatically?
AmericanChopper 7y ago
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?
- matwood 7y ago
  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.
dgellow 7y ago
Is there a way to not have the cloud features and use dropbox/icloud for syncing instead?
- craftzdog 7y ago
  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.
  - dgellow 7y ago
    > 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 :)
- noisy_boy 7y ago
  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). [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writ...
mostlyjason 7y ago
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.
- darrmit 7y ago
  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. This is also double the cost over 5 years.
- 2-m3m3n70 7y ago
  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.
- jammygit 7y ago
  Happy standard notes user. I wish each app was native mind you, but for a single dev project that would be insane
pacifika 7y ago
FYI, a notetaker without inline images is a nogo for me. I need illustrations and screenshots with my notes. i'm happy to host the images externally.
- kupo 7y ago
  Check out Boostnote: https://boostnote.io/ https://boostnote.io/
- banachtarski 7y ago
  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.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    OT, but I believe that is the most diplomatic means of asking, "did you even read the article?" I've read. :-)
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  iOS notes works fo me.
TheGrumpyBrit 7y ago
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.
- craftzdog 7y ago
  The author here. > 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.
  - zrobotics 7y ago
    Another point is that 10mb is a lot of text, especially for users like me who use these types of note-taking apps as todo lists. For persistent notes I already have directory I store locally w/ cloud backup, but a webapp would be nice for my running todo list. That will hopefully never top 10mb,so a free user like me would really eat into hosting costs. Perhaps a solution to people like the OP who are concerned about data being held hostage is to make it clear that after the trial period their data can be exported, that way they don't have to feel there is risk of it being held hostage.
    - ansible 7y ago
      In my note taking "system" (vim on a text file inside a GNU screen session) for work, I think I've only hit 1MB total for the last 10 years. If the OP is going to do a time-unlimited demo, it should be really small, like 5K or less. The point is the same: try it out for a little while, and see if it works for you.
sridca 7y ago
HN groupthink
surfsvammel 7y ago
I love it! I have been waiting for something like this to replace Bear.
- blumomo 7y ago
  Why is it that you want to replace Bear?
  - surfsvammel 7y ago
    I need to run it on a Windows machine as well. It’s the only reason really.
tomrod 7y ago
Many of us speak about adverts that inform as being ethical. I consider this post one of them. I wish all ads were like this one, a story.
- craftzdog 7y ago
  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.
shapiro92 7y ago
i am the only one that keeps using sticky notes on windows and google keep? do people take that many notes that they need to invest in such a fancy tool?
- Mithriil 7y ago
  I see some reasons to do so. You can write a blog in Markdown and generate your own static website with it, you could write a diary in Markdown, which I do, or you could take notes of code implementation, which could require LaTEX for nice mathematics and code fences to organize small chunks of code.
00deadbeef 7y ago
It looks nice but it being Electron and subscription-based means I won't buy it. I'm pretty happy with Quiver.
- jaden 7y ago
  https://happenapps.com https://happenapps.com in case anyone else, like me, wanted to check it out. It's Mac only.
  - 0xDEEPFAC 7y ago
    Mac only w/ electron? What is the point of using a slow fake-webrowser if not for compatibility?
    - durub 7y ago
      No, Quiver doesn't use Electron and is Mac only. Inkdrop is cross-platform.
      - 0xDEEPFAC 7y ago
        It does use electron. "At that time, I was new to develop apps on top of Electron and ReactJS. As Inkdrop grew, I have learned a lot of good practices from it. I found that it can be improved much better in terms of implementation."
        00deadbeef 7y ago
        Inkdrop uses Electron but Quiver doesn't.
- 0xDEEPFAC 7y ago
  amen, this app just serves as another example of nobody wanting to make true native desktop stuff anymore. Thing is its easier than ever with QML and C++... : ( https://medium.com/commitlog/electron-is-cancer-b066108e6c32 https://medium.com/commitlog/electron-is-cancer-b066108e6c32
cabalamat 7y ago
I suggest you remove the misplaced apostrophe after "fox".
eevilspock 7y ago
Why all that effort to have synced Side-by-side View instead of implementing an editable WYSIWYG view, like Typora? (Typora is nice, and popular, but it has some serious performance and usability issues. Some competition would be good.)
- craftzdog 7y ago
  The author here. That's a personal preference. I don't like WYSIWYG but do prefer plain Markdown.
  - eevilspock 7y ago
    Sure, I get that, totally. When you are in the Markdown view. But when you need to view the rendered rich text form, isn't it much more efficient and far more user-friendly to show just that, and allow it to be edited? In other words, Inkdrop's two views could be Markdown and WYSIWYG (both editable), rather than Markdown and Side-by-side.
fock 7y ago
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.
- techntoke 7y ago
  I agree 100% and like the way you think. I'm under the impression that a lot of these additional services are just trying to skim a few dollars for people that are too naive to do a quick Google Search, or that just search in the iTunes App Store. I wouldn't be surprised to find a bunch of Joplin or Laverna source code in this app.
mdhughes 7y ago
Why, so have I, and so has every other programmer on Earth. https://mdhughes.tech/thoughtpy/ https://mdhughes.tech/thoughtpy/ This has been mostly used as my engineering notebook, in lieu of stacks of Moleskines. Simple command-line tool for editing and searching, a pipeline to any Markdown app for display, and DropBox for syncing, that's all I needed. I could also use it on mobile with Pythonista, with some changes to get a DropBox path and open it in Editorial or Drafts, but so far just having the files is good enough. My point is, every programmer should be capable of making certain basic tools of their own, such as note-taking, blogging, a calculator, and scripting languages.
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > every programmer should be capable of making certain basic tools of their own, such as note-taking, blogging, a calculator, and scripting languages. I'd counter that by adding "...and wise enough to know better than to actually do it."
  - mdhughes 7y ago
    Without the experience of making and supporting such tools, you'll never acquire wisdom, or many useful skills. Thought.py is maybe my 4th note-taking system, simpler and more precisely what I needed than any previous. Practice makes perfect. Doing nothing makes nothing.
    - jamesgeck0 7y ago
      > Without the experience of making and supporting such tools, you'll never acquire wisdom, or many useful skills. There's nothing special about those specific tools. Instead, you'll acquire the wisdom and skills from the experience of making and supporting different tools. Ideally tools that don't already exist thousands of times over.
      - mdhughes 7y ago
        Go ahead and invent some totally unique tool nobody's ever seen before. I'll wait. You, uh, you got one yet? No? The point is to make your own version of a thing; it doesn't have to be one of those few I listed. To see that some other design or implementation doesn't satisfy you, and analyze why, and do it "right". You can only get that by writing something you can compare to something else. If you do invent a thing for the first time—which you won't—it would be terrible. It'll take many iterations, your own or more likely someone else's. That's how Human tool-making works, from the first half-assed rubbing-sticks-together fire to nuclear weapons (the first Atomic Bomb was not the best…) And to a certain extent, I don't consider people incapable/unwilling to do this "programmers". Merely typists.
mremco 7y ago
Hi Tayuka, 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 https://tanker.io/product JS SDK: https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk-js https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk-js
- craftzdog 7y ago
  Thanks! I'll take a look.
program_whiz 7y ago
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)
- thanatropism 7y ago
  This attitude you applaud is Emersonian self-reliance. I agree it's refreshing to see it.
  - gooseus 7y ago
    Indeed, I was wondering what familiar sense of righteousness was stirring while reading this comment: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#SELF-RELIANCE http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#SEL... Always worth a(nother) read.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  I'll agree, however even rude critiques can often be useful if you can disengage your emotion chip.
  - GuiA 7y ago
    Critiquing is a skill. The onus is as much on the critiquer to formulate their critique in a constructive, actionable way as it is on the critiquee to take the critique in stride. That said, good crit skills are very hard to develop, and environments where effective critique sessions can be carried out very hard to build (because it’s fundamentally about trust). And it’s skill that is just not taught in engineering; people familiar with critique will be mostly people who went to art school, and even then many art schools do a pretty bad job at teaching it (I had a design teacher who, during critiques, would make students... vote on their favorite /facepalm).
bovermyer 7y ago
I love this! I've been using Notion for notes because I don't like Evernote, OneNote, or Google Keep. This may replace Notion for me. I'll give it a try!
Improvotter 7y ago
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.
- otachack 7y ago
  The notes are markdown and in the FAQs he mentions the location of the local data cache. I imagine you can simply copy all your notes from the cache, clean up any incompatible metadata, and import them to your next note app. Don't let paying for software stop you if you can afford it. This looks like quality software and we should support it, if able. If you're looking for free note software that's tied to a company, Firefox has a note taking app that syncs between phones/web browser (it's a bit buggy and logs out at times), and Google has Keep that also has apps and available on the web.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    So pretty much a Joplin clone?
  - Improvotter 7y ago
    I'm all for supporting the things that are good. But at what point do we say "enough!"? All of these subscription services start to add up, going from free to 5 USD a month is a bigger jump than I'm willing to take. Why aren't there any services out there that offer 1 USD/EUR plans?
- Raphmedia 7y ago
  They do offer a student discount of 60% off for 12 months.
sitruc 7y ago
I love this idea. I am more than a little jealous as I have wanted to build something like this since college. I just save my .md note files to a cloud drive and load them as a project w/ sublime text. It's not as beautiful as this but it works.
shatteredvisage 7y ago
I was one of your volunteer beta testers years ago and provided some feedback. I still get a little salty when I see this app since you still terminated my account and made me pay :) hope you've been well
killdashnine9 7y ago
Can't you just kill the process and relaunch the app again. I heard it does wonders for men usage. "I use arch/Firefox by the way." As you would have expected. I'd never use arch or Firefox but that's the land of things. If you use Windows you have to expect these things. Obligatory 'churning along here on Linux.' That is the end of this message. use Linux who the truck uses Windows anymore.
killdashnine9 7y ago
Joplin is great but what pos uses Windows. Get it together man Linux is free. Only a more-on! Would ever use trucking windows
killdashnine9 7y ago
Get with the times you fucking jew
killdashnine9 7y ago
I would only slit my wrists in a Windows scenario. Change to Linux before you do so too
bloopernova 7y ago
oh lord I've become "that guy". My first instinct was to say something along the lines of "well emacs and deft will do blah blah blah blah blah". 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!
killdashnine9 7y ago
Kill dash ten,man, fucking ditch fuxking windows
pault 7y ago
This has been on my to do list for three years. :)
vault 7y ago
Nobody's mentioned notable yet: https://github.com/notable/notable https://github.com/notable/notable
- fbnlsr 7y ago
  Notable is amazing. I spent weeks trying to find a good note taking app until I stumbled upon Notable. It works really well. Before that, I was using a bunch of .md files stored in a Github repo. ;)
Uehreka 7y ago
A good looking Markdown app with syncing and clients for macOS, Linux, iPhone and iPad? I have been looking for this for years.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Look at Joplin
techntoke 7y ago
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.
- cloverich 7y ago
  If it is saturated (and by inference, unwanted), why do note taking apps consistently front-page? I can think of two possible reasons. One, there is no clear winner, and nobody has made the note taking app everyone _really_ wants. Or two, note apps are a bit like IDE's, where people use them all the time and subtle preferences mean a variety of apps doing the same thing is preferred.
  - fock 7y ago
    well, the basic gold standard for note taking are GUI apps like evernote and onenote (their GUI works well). I guess upvoters are the people on HN using plain-text, expecting a real nice GUI for their plain-text-markup-files, only to find yet another text-editor based on electron and it's own sync-thing...
  - techntoke 7y ago
    It really comes down to the subscription-based model being profitable for people that think paying for something means they'll get a better product. People will find an open source solution and rebrand it for a $5 or $10/mo and have it sync to a server somewhere, and then move on to rebranding another solution. You can find a ton of apps in the app store where they do this.
    - cloverich 7y ago
      > You can find a ton of apps in the app store where they do this. But those do not consistently front-page as well, do they?
Quanttek 7y ago
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?
- pwinnski 7y ago
  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.
  - Quanttek 7y ago
    Arguably, tables or pictures are not readable in raw Markdown. While Markdown is already readable, such rendering makes it much more readable.
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      True. At the cost of hiding the Markdown source.
- czr 7y ago
  iirc Notion, Bear, and Ulysses all support single-pane markdown (although I'm a happy Typora user, so I can't speak to their relative merits)
  - Quanttek 7y ago
    Unfortunately, I have a Windows computer and, as a student, find such monthly subscriptions quite financially unbearable
scarface74 7y ago
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.
- nathan-io 7y ago
  I certainly am. The only thing I disagree with is the lack of a web client. It just seems like you could save a ton of work by starting with the web client, then create desktop versions via something like todesktop.com. Then you're spending less time on updates - it's just one desktop version, and the iOS + Android versions are just consuming data from your API anyway. Love the BYO CouchDB feature - very interesting!
  - test6554 7y ago
    A web client seems like it would incur hosting and other costs.
  - Too 7y ago
    A high quality note taking app is all about sleek UI. "Just consuming data from an API" is going to be 5% of the development effort.
    - nathan-io 7y ago
      You're right there, not sure what I was thinking there. Regardless, my original point is still valid. You could serve web/MacOS/Windows/Linux users with a single UI.
nilsocket 7y ago
Boostnote is a similar open source project. Even they look similar.
- sylk 7y ago
  Plus you don't pay out the ass for someone to hold your data. I tried InkDrop and couldn't justify the steep price point for something so trivial. I backup everything on my own and watch Boostnote grow as a competitor, but free...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Bizarro 7y ago
Can anybody comment on the vim-keybindings plugin for Inkdrop. I've tried Notion, but I would really love a markdown/note-taking app with good vi-keybindings.
- jhoh 7y ago
  Long time Notion and vim user here. Just set up Inkdrop and tried the vim-plugin and all basic features work great. For things like switching files or navigation in general it seems like you'll need to use the software's standard bindings. But it looks like you can edit them. If you plan to switch from Notion I recommend using the paste-as-markdown plugin. With this you can just copy a whole document from Notion and paste it into Inkdrop. Works flawlessly!
huppys 7y ago
Keep up your good work! I read your article about v3, about a year ago. It's damn interesting to follow your journey.
rcdwealth 7y ago
ehm, sorry, isn't markdown in itself editable with any text editor and thus no further "application" is necessary. The point of markdown is that every text editor can edit it.
btreecat 7y ago
Great work man, this is one of the few tools/use cases where I think mark down is really the right choice. Limited set of keywords means you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about formatting. In the end it's easy enough to convert to HTML/PDF as an export to share. On top of that, the tool looks slick af. I don't think I want the cloud sync feature, have you considered an option to license the software with out that for a prorated cost?
cvs268 7y ago
Thanks for sharing! :-) Inspiration for the rest of us to keep at it with our side-projects.
rcdwealth 7y ago
that is not even a free software by definition https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html hahhahahah, the guy (author) thinks he will become next FB/Google 1984-style Orwellian by giving people possibility to make 5 notes for free, thus to reach and create demand and earn some serious money while spying on their private data. Even Suckerberg is better than that.
1nverseMtx 7y ago
Electron. As if I need another app taking up more RAM than needed
samel88 7y ago
Honnestly, my congratulations! I am in the same boat as you and 3 years is a long time especially when doing big/risky refactoring. I did my refactoring mainly to manage my application state, I really thought I would never gonna make it (and I was working in Swift, in Javascript it would have been nearly impossible to do the same thing...). But it was worth every second I spent on it: code is the main value of independant developers, so we should take great care of it! I wish you good luck with your project and hope it will work.
miccah 7y ago
Hi Takuya, Congratulations on the success! Your business is very inspirational to me. Thank you for all the great posts.
traviswingo 7y ago
Awesome job releasing! That’s really difficult to do - and few people can say they have.
ShakataGaNai 7y ago
As a user of just slightly less than a year now - thank you! Ever since I gave up Evernote, I had been on the hunt for a clean note taking replacement and Inkdrop has been that for me. The new v4 looks great and works great!
m0zg 7y ago
Do people actually use all these "note taking" apps? I just use Google Docs for longer notes, and Apple Notes for ephemeral stuff, like dimensions of stuff I need to buy at Home Depot. The benefit of Docs is I can work with them anywhere and search is quite good. I've tried a few of such apps but for the life of me I can't see why I'd want to use them. The app looks great. The dev is clearly talented.
rareutilities 7y ago
I am looking to transition away from OneNote. Any tools to automate the transition to a new app like this?
rc-1140 7y ago
> I built it because I wanted it. I loved reading this line in Takuya's post. It felt a lot more real than all of those "made with " and "we open source" taglines that other projects throw around.
jbverschoor 7y ago
Still looking for something similar where I can also simply add links from Dropbox and other directories.
- playpause 7y ago
  Can you clarify what you mean with a use case?
  - gingerware 7y ago
    file:// :)
sam0x17 7y ago
So I think this is a really cool idea, some feedback: 1. would love to be able to toggle whether the markdown syntax is shown vs a polished/rendered view of the markdown without the # symbols showing etc. For me the whole point of writing markdown is that moment when you get to see it rendered all nicely on github, and this hybrid mode doesn't quite do it for me 2. tags are cool, but a folder hierarchy would be more appropriate for notes imo. I immediately wanted to right click on the side bar and create folders, but that's not a thing. 3. Accessibility via web browser, as other people have mentioned, would be nice 4. ability to export any note to PDF or a single HTML file with inline styling 5. option to use github's exact markdown stylesheet 6. The whole note "status" thing I think is a bit niche. I wouldn't use it at all as I have project management software for that sort of thing. I would use this for storing random bits of knowledge, how-to-type stuff, research/project ideas, that sort of thing. It's a cool feature, I just wish it was optional and there were more options for how to organize the notes.
alphagrep12345 7y ago
Maybe a dumb question - but how did you create apps on so many different platforms? Did you have to separately code everything? Or did you use some framework?
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  Definitely not a dumb question, I was wondering that too. My first guess for cross-platform desktop apps these days is Electron, and Inkdrop's UI looks a little Electron-y. But it would be really interesting to hear if it's something else. For the mobile apps, afaik React Native is the most capable cross-platform mobile framework right now. Again, would be really interesting if it's something else (or hardcore if they're both native apps).
crooked-v 7y ago
I like the design of this app a lot, but as with others like this, it feels like it wants me to double-pay for sync/storage I already have with iCloud or Dropbox.
- quarkral 7y ago
  Yea I would like it if the author offered a one-time purchase for the app without sync functionality at say $60. I mean if you are having trouble with server space for hosting text files, then maybe you shouldn't be building your own cloud storage service. There are lots of existing sync solutions without server space limitations, and you can still have end-to-end encryption by just saving the encrypted text file to local storage and decrypting it only in memory.
norswap 7y ago
Cool! Does it support inter-note linking so that it can act like a kind of personal wiki? That would be a killer feature for me.
ylbss 7y ago
Man, I want this, but I was burned by Collate.
jammygit 7y ago
In the spirit of tiny SaaS companies that offer great products, fman is a cross platform dual pane file manager I like. (No affiliation, I just love that people can make a living making things like this) https://fman.io/ https://fman.io/
test6554 7y ago
I worked on a markdown flash card app briefly because so many accounting terms referenced other terms in their definitions. By linking flash cards together I could quickly jump between flashcards to review unfamiliar terms. Rather than wikipedia where everything about a subject is recorded, flash cards were meant to be a distilled set of facts for a single term from a single course or textbook you were studying. I overhauled my models when I realized that the same field or subject (which I organized into Decks) used the same term in two different contexts to mean different things. That also meant I could not reference cards simply by name in the markdown. So I updated all links to reference by id rather than name. So I had to build some UI to select cards by name and generate links. Then I hit a wall when I realized I would need a good way to encode and render math formulas and that's when my hobby project died. Also, in the end, I found that having such quick linked access to knowledge I was studying made me less likely to remember the material, not more. I relied too heavily on the cards and the ability to just click on a term I didn't remember.
mrcoder111 7y ago
any single pane note taker with latex support?
frosted-flakes 7y ago
If you're targeting your service to developers, you shouldn't set irritating password requirements like "alphanumerics and symbols". Whatever that means, because my password is still being rejected even though it satisfies both requirements (it has both letters and symbols). Yet, you allow 4 character passwords ("4-100 characters"). What's the logic in that? Edit: it looks like the password requirement is actually "any characters except whitespace". You should fix the error message.
fredgrott 7y ago
Thanks for posting this as I was looking for the exact same info as I will be designing-developing a productivity suite based on my ADHD experience of using productivity structure to control my ADHD. very useful story
foxyv 7y ago
Dang it I was hoping this would be like a Sublime Text style individual license and no cloud stuff. I can't upload work documents outside our network and I hate monthly fees for software. If I was working anywhere else though I would totally consider this, even though $5 a month is pretty steep for a markdown application with cloud sync. I would probably spring for their yearly pricing of $49.90.
- SimplGy 7y ago
  +1 for A local only version of this that stores plain text somewhere on my hard drive. Optionally as an encrypted zip archive.
SimplGy 7y ago
I love markdown. It’s been my primary way of taking notes for many years. A key benefit of the format to me is that text files will never be deprecated and are infinitely portable. I saw mentioned a local cache. Would you add a pitch or squeeze page on this topic to help convince users like me? I want to love your product. The scrolling alone; beautiful. Example user stories: * can always see all notes as simple, well named, plainly organized, easy to read text files. * Can output/sync certain folders of notes to plain text files. (To, for example, a Dropbox folder target)
velobro 7y ago
This supports what I've always wanted in a markdown note taking app... being able to directly copy and paste an image from the clipboard.
arisAlexis 7y ago
sounds very agile

533 points by craftzdog 7y ago

Nice, will give it a try. Advice, loose the uppercase on every word in "End-to-end Encryption Support, Smart Scroll Sync for Side-by-side View, New Logo, and More."

xref 7y ago

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. Anyone have a good comparison vs Inkdrop?

PikachuEXE 7y ago
I switched from Wunderlist to Todoist + Joplin (and I switched to Wunderlist from Google Inbox...)
- fmjrey 7y ago
  Any particular reason you still need Todoist even though Joplin can also handle some To Dos?
hashhar 7y ago
Joplin kicks ass. The only area it might need improvement is regarding showing the tags associated with a note without having to click a button. The mobile app, web-clipper and desktop apps are all wonderfully done.
- jfreax 7y ago
  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.
- wj 7y ago
  Is this the only other note taking app besides Evernote that has a web clipper? That has been the killer feature for me. Will have to check it out.
  - ymolodtsov 7y ago
    OneNote, Bear and Notion all have web clippers.
    - waz0wski 7y ago
      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 http://happenapps.com/#quiver http://happenapps.com/#quiver
dvdgsng 7y ago
I like Joplin, but writing markdown on mobile is a real PITA. They really should provide additional UI elements to create bullet points and alike.
- laurent123456 7y ago
  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.
  - dvdgsng 7y ago
    alright then, can't wait. thanks for the info.

prepend 7y ago

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. [0] https://zettelkasten.de/ https://zettelkasten.de/

hboon 7y ago
> 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. You can use Notes if you have longer texts?
- prepend 7y ago
  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.
codetrotter 7y ago
> 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.

vortico 7y ago

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.

diminoten 7y ago
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!

paraknight 7y ago

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?

weystrom 7y ago

> 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.

felixfoertsch 7y ago
Most important comment. Took me about 3 unnecessary minutes to find that information; should have looked in the comments first.
atorodius 7y ago
But Bear is also subscription based? Which buy-once app are you using.
- weystrom 7y ago
  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.
  - vladharbuz 7y ago
    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.
    - weystrom 7y ago
      My point is that it's a big competition for him. 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.

Legogris 7y ago

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!

jfreax 7y ago
You can already self host it by using a CouchDB compatible server. See: https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/synchronizing-in-the-cloud https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/synchronizing-in-the-cloud I didn't not try it myself, but it looks quite easy to setup.
- techntoke 7y ago
  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.
tmoravec 7y ago
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.
laurent123456 7y ago
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. [0] https://joplinapp.org https://joplinapp.org
- melicerte 7y ago

perenzo 7y ago

Also end-to-end encrypted without a central server and using rich text instead of markdown https://collect-app.com/ https://collect-app.com/

nasredin 7y ago
The 40+MB download tells me this is Electron(?)

jookyboi 7y ago

For a code-snippet focused alternative with plugins for major editors and support for team libraries: https://www.cacher.io https://www.cacher.io

laurent123456 7y ago

The smart scroll on the editor is pretty nice. I don't know of any other Markdown app with dual view that does this.

albertzeyer 7y ago
Visual Studio Code does this.
maddening 7y ago
Joplin also does this.
- laurent123456 7y ago
  I'm the Joplin dev and was impressed by his smart scrolling, because currently we don't have this :-)
jaden 7y ago
Haroopad http://pad.haroopress.com http://pad.haroopress.com also does this.

snickerman 7y ago

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.

jaden 7y ago
Thanks for sharing, I hadn't heard of https://typora.io https://typora.io before. The extremely minimalist web site on mobile made it seem like the page hadn't loaded. Subscriptions are the best way to support products with a smaller user base. Plus it has ongoing cloud storage.

stockkid 7y ago

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. - [0] https://github.com/dnote/dnote https://github.com/dnote/dnote

nasredin 7y ago
MacOS only. SavedYouAClick :)
- gcmeplz 7y ago
  It works on linux too -- I just downloaded it to test it out.
cabalamat 7y ago
> I have also been building a Markdown note-taking app alone for 2 years So have I: https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki 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.
- appletrotter 7y ago
  We're proud of you too.
samel88 7y ago
> 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... [0]: https://www.textually.net https://www.textually.net

pedrocr 7y ago

I really like gollum for this: https://github.com/gollum/gollum 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.

mrunkel 7y ago

Looks very nice, I just signed up. 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 7y ago
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.

paddypad 7y ago

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.

vmurthy 7y ago
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 :-)
- zrobotics 7y ago
  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.

r3bl 7y ago

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. 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/f607a6970af9e4b40795ec5bea7b852c/note:SylrWAak3Z https://community.inkdrop.app/note/f607a6970af9e4b40795ec5be...

craftzdog 7y ago
Hi Aleksandar, Great to know that you are continuing to use my app! high five
- norswap 7y ago
  Hey Takuya, the above says that you can only export as HTML, does that mean that you can't export all your notes as Markdown? It also says relative links between notes are not supported — is that still the case? Thanks for your hard work!
mzehrer 7y ago
BTW there s desktop client for Nextcloud notes, Qownnotes https://www.qownnotes.org/ https://www.qownnotes.org/

tadelle 7y ago

Boostnote FTW

nasredin 7y ago

The recent trend of terrible introductions is very annoying. 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.

WA 7y ago

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-that-includes-revision-history https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28354346/couchdb-view-th...

kokica 7y ago

Does it have code/text block collapse support? I've been looking for an app that can do this for years.

faeyanpiraat 7y ago

App looks promising, but is there a way for it to not convert tabs into spaces automatically?

AmericanChopper 7y ago

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?

matwood 7y ago
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.

dgellow 7y ago

Is there a way to not have the cloud features and use dropbox/icloud for syncing instead?

craftzdog 7y ago
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.
- dgellow 7y ago
  > 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 :)
noisy_boy 7y ago
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). [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writ...

mostlyjason 7y ago

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.

darrmit 7y ago
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. This is also double the cost over 5 years.
2-m3m3n70 7y ago
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.
jammygit 7y ago
Happy standard notes user. I wish each app was native mind you, but for a single dev project that would be insane

pacifika 7y ago

FYI, a notetaker without inline images is a nogo for me. I need illustrations and screenshots with my notes. i'm happy to host the images externally.

kupo 7y ago
Check out Boostnote: https://boostnote.io/ https://boostnote.io/
banachtarski 7y ago
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.
- mikestew 7y ago
  OT, but I believe that is the most diplomatic means of asking, "did you even read the article?" I've read. :-)
qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
iOS notes works fo me.

TheGrumpyBrit 7y ago

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.

craftzdog 7y ago
The author here. > 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.
- zrobotics 7y ago
  Another point is that 10mb is a lot of text, especially for users like me who use these types of note-taking apps as todo lists. For persistent notes I already have directory I store locally w/ cloud backup, but a webapp would be nice for my running todo list. That will hopefully never top 10mb,so a free user like me would really eat into hosting costs. Perhaps a solution to people like the OP who are concerned about data being held hostage is to make it clear that after the trial period their data can be exported, that way they don't have to feel there is risk of it being held hostage.
  - ansible 7y ago
    In my note taking "system" (vim on a text file inside a GNU screen session) for work, I think I've only hit 1MB total for the last 10 years. If the OP is going to do a time-unlimited demo, it should be really small, like 5K or less. The point is the same: try it out for a little while, and see if it works for you.

sridca 7y ago

HN groupthink

surfsvammel 7y ago

I love it! I have been waiting for something like this to replace Bear.

blumomo 7y ago
Why is it that you want to replace Bear?
- surfsvammel 7y ago
  I need to run it on a Windows machine as well. It’s the only reason really.

tomrod 7y ago

Many of us speak about adverts that inform as being ethical. I consider this post one of them. I wish all ads were like this one, a story.

craftzdog 7y ago
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.

shapiro92 7y ago

i am the only one that keeps using sticky notes on windows and google keep? do people take that many notes that they need to invest in such a fancy tool?

Mithriil 7y ago
I see some reasons to do so. You can write a blog in Markdown and generate your own static website with it, you could write a diary in Markdown, which I do, or you could take notes of code implementation, which could require LaTEX for nice mathematics and code fences to organize small chunks of code.

00deadbeef 7y ago

It looks nice but it being Electron and subscription-based means I won't buy it. I'm pretty happy with Quiver.

jaden 7y ago
https://happenapps.com https://happenapps.com in case anyone else, like me, wanted to check it out. It's Mac only.
- 0xDEEPFAC 7y ago
  Mac only w/ electron? What is the point of using a slow fake-webrowser if not for compatibility?
  - durub 7y ago
    No, Quiver doesn't use Electron and is Mac only. Inkdrop is cross-platform.
    - 0xDEEPFAC 7y ago
      It does use electron. "At that time, I was new to develop apps on top of Electron and ReactJS. As Inkdrop grew, I have learned a lot of good practices from it. I found that it can be improved much better in terms of implementation."
      - 00deadbeef 7y ago
        Inkdrop uses Electron but Quiver doesn't.
0xDEEPFAC 7y ago
amen, this app just serves as another example of nobody wanting to make true native desktop stuff anymore. Thing is its easier than ever with QML and C++... : ( https://medium.com/commitlog/electron-is-cancer-b066108e6c32 https://medium.com/commitlog/electron-is-cancer-b066108e6c32

cabalamat 7y ago

I suggest you remove the misplaced apostrophe after "fox".

eevilspock 7y ago

Why all that effort to have synced Side-by-side View instead of implementing an editable WYSIWYG view, like Typora? (Typora is nice, and popular, but it has some serious performance and usability issues. Some competition would be good.)

craftzdog 7y ago
The author here. That's a personal preference. I don't like WYSIWYG but do prefer plain Markdown.
- eevilspock 7y ago
  Sure, I get that, totally. When you are in the Markdown view. But when you need to view the rendered rich text form, isn't it much more efficient and far more user-friendly to show just that, and allow it to be edited? In other words, Inkdrop's two views could be Markdown and WYSIWYG (both editable), rather than Markdown and Side-by-side.

fock 7y ago

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.

techntoke 7y ago
I agree 100% and like the way you think. I'm under the impression that a lot of these additional services are just trying to skim a few dollars for people that are too naive to do a quick Google Search, or that just search in the iTunes App Store. I wouldn't be surprised to find a bunch of Joplin or Laverna source code in this app.

mdhughes 7y ago

Why, so have I, and so has every other programmer on Earth. https://mdhughes.tech/thoughtpy/ https://mdhughes.tech/thoughtpy/ This has been mostly used as my engineering notebook, in lieu of stacks of Moleskines. Simple command-line tool for editing and searching, a pipeline to any Markdown app for display, and DropBox for syncing, that's all I needed. I could also use it on mobile with Pythonista, with some changes to get a DropBox path and open it in Editorial or Drafts, but so far just having the files is good enough. My point is, every programmer should be capable of making certain basic tools of their own, such as note-taking, blogging, a calculator, and scripting languages.

zimpenfish 7y ago
> every programmer should be capable of making certain basic tools of their own, such as note-taking, blogging, a calculator, and scripting languages. I'd counter that by adding "...and wise enough to know better than to actually do it."
- mdhughes 7y ago
  Without the experience of making and supporting such tools, you'll never acquire wisdom, or many useful skills. Thought.py is maybe my 4th note-taking system, simpler and more precisely what I needed than any previous. Practice makes perfect. Doing nothing makes nothing.
  - jamesgeck0 7y ago
    > Without the experience of making and supporting such tools, you'll never acquire wisdom, or many useful skills. There's nothing special about those specific tools. Instead, you'll acquire the wisdom and skills from the experience of making and supporting different tools. Ideally tools that don't already exist thousands of times over.
    - mdhughes 7y ago
      Go ahead and invent some totally unique tool nobody's ever seen before. I'll wait. You, uh, you got one yet? No? The point is to make your own version of a thing; it doesn't have to be one of those few I listed. To see that some other design or implementation doesn't satisfy you, and analyze why, and do it "right". You can only get that by writing something you can compare to something else. If you do invent a thing for the first time—which you won't—it would be terrible. It'll take many iterations, your own or more likely someone else's. That's how Human tool-making works, from the first half-assed rubbing-sticks-together fire to nuclear weapons (the first Atomic Bomb was not the best…) And to a certain extent, I don't consider people incapable/unwilling to do this "programmers". Merely typists.

mremco 7y ago

Hi Tayuka, 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 https://tanker.io/product JS SDK: https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk-js https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk-js

craftzdog 7y ago
Thanks! I'll take a look.

program_whiz 7y ago

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)

thanatropism 7y ago
This attitude you applaud is Emersonian self-reliance. I agree it's refreshing to see it.
- gooseus 7y ago
  Indeed, I was wondering what familiar sense of righteousness was stirring while reading this comment: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#SELF-RELIANCE http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#SEL... Always worth a(nother) read.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
I'll agree, however even rude critiques can often be useful if you can disengage your emotion chip.
- GuiA 7y ago
  Critiquing is a skill. The onus is as much on the critiquer to formulate their critique in a constructive, actionable way as it is on the critiquee to take the critique in stride. That said, good crit skills are very hard to develop, and environments where effective critique sessions can be carried out very hard to build (because it’s fundamentally about trust). And it’s skill that is just not taught in engineering; people familiar with critique will be mostly people who went to art school, and even then many art schools do a pretty bad job at teaching it (I had a design teacher who, during critiques, would make students... vote on their favorite /facepalm).

bovermyer 7y ago

I love this! I've been using Notion for notes because I don't like Evernote, OneNote, or Google Keep. This may replace Notion for me. I'll give it a try!

Improvotter 7y ago

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.

otachack 7y ago
The notes are markdown and in the FAQs he mentions the location of the local data cache. I imagine you can simply copy all your notes from the cache, clean up any incompatible metadata, and import them to your next note app. Don't let paying for software stop you if you can afford it. This looks like quality software and we should support it, if able. If you're looking for free note software that's tied to a company, Firefox has a note taking app that syncs between phones/web browser (it's a bit buggy and logs out at times), and Google has Keep that also has apps and available on the web.
- techntoke 7y ago
  So pretty much a Joplin clone?
- Improvotter 7y ago
  I'm all for supporting the things that are good. But at what point do we say "enough!"? All of these subscription services start to add up, going from free to 5 USD a month is a bigger jump than I'm willing to take. Why aren't there any services out there that offer 1 USD/EUR plans?
Raphmedia 7y ago
They do offer a student discount of 60% off for 12 months.

sitruc 7y ago

I love this idea. I am more than a little jealous as I have wanted to build something like this since college. I just save my .md note files to a cloud drive and load them as a project w/ sublime text. It's not as beautiful as this but it works.

shatteredvisage 7y ago

I was one of your volunteer beta testers years ago and provided some feedback. I still get a little salty when I see this app since you still terminated my account and made me pay :) hope you've been well

killdashnine9 7y ago

Can't you just kill the process and relaunch the app again. I heard it does wonders for men usage. "I use arch/Firefox by the way." As you would have expected. I'd never use arch or Firefox but that's the land of things. If you use Windows you have to expect these things. Obligatory 'churning along here on Linux.' That is the end of this message. use Linux who the truck uses Windows anymore.

killdashnine9 7y ago

Joplin is great but what pos uses Windows. Get it together man Linux is free. Only a more-on! Would ever use trucking windows

killdashnine9 7y ago

Get with the times you fucking jew

killdashnine9 7y ago

I would only slit my wrists in a Windows scenario. Change to Linux before you do so too

bloopernova 7y ago

oh lord I've become "that guy". My first instinct was to say something along the lines of "well emacs and deft will do blah blah blah blah blah". 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!

killdashnine9 7y ago

Kill dash ten,man, fucking ditch fuxking windows

pault 7y ago

This has been on my to do list for three years. :)

vault 7y ago

Nobody's mentioned notable yet: https://github.com/notable/notable https://github.com/notable/notable

fbnlsr 7y ago
Notable is amazing. I spent weeks trying to find a good note taking app until I stumbled upon Notable. It works really well. Before that, I was using a bunch of .md files stored in a Github repo. ;)

Uehreka 7y ago

A good looking Markdown app with syncing and clients for macOS, Linux, iPhone and iPad? I have been looking for this for years.

techntoke 7y ago
Look at Joplin

techntoke 7y ago

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.

cloverich 7y ago
If it is saturated (and by inference, unwanted), why do note taking apps consistently front-page? I can think of two possible reasons. One, there is no clear winner, and nobody has made the note taking app everyone _really_ wants. Or two, note apps are a bit like IDE's, where people use them all the time and subtle preferences mean a variety of apps doing the same thing is preferred.
- fock 7y ago
  well, the basic gold standard for note taking are GUI apps like evernote and onenote (their GUI works well). I guess upvoters are the people on HN using plain-text, expecting a real nice GUI for their plain-text-markup-files, only to find yet another text-editor based on electron and it's own sync-thing...
- techntoke 7y ago
  It really comes down to the subscription-based model being profitable for people that think paying for something means they'll get a better product. People will find an open source solution and rebrand it for a $5 or $10/mo and have it sync to a server somewhere, and then move on to rebranding another solution. You can find a ton of apps in the app store where they do this.
  - cloverich 7y ago
    > You can find a ton of apps in the app store where they do this. But those do not consistently front-page as well, do they?

Quanttek 7y ago

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?

pwinnski 7y ago
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.
- Quanttek 7y ago
  Arguably, tables or pictures are not readable in raw Markdown. While Markdown is already readable, such rendering makes it much more readable.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    True. At the cost of hiding the Markdown source.
czr 7y ago
iirc Notion, Bear, and Ulysses all support single-pane markdown (although I'm a happy Typora user, so I can't speak to their relative merits)
- Quanttek 7y ago
  Unfortunately, I have a Windows computer and, as a student, find such monthly subscriptions quite financially unbearable

scarface74 7y ago

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.

nathan-io 7y ago
I certainly am. The only thing I disagree with is the lack of a web client. It just seems like you could save a ton of work by starting with the web client, then create desktop versions via something like todesktop.com. Then you're spending less time on updates - it's just one desktop version, and the iOS + Android versions are just consuming data from your API anyway. Love the BYO CouchDB feature - very interesting!
- test6554 7y ago
  A web client seems like it would incur hosting and other costs.
- Too 7y ago
  A high quality note taking app is all about sleek UI. "Just consuming data from an API" is going to be 5% of the development effort.
  - nathan-io 7y ago
    You're right there, not sure what I was thinking there. Regardless, my original point is still valid. You could serve web/MacOS/Windows/Linux users with a single UI.

nilsocket 7y ago

Boostnote is a similar open source project. Even they look similar.

sylk 7y ago
Plus you don't pay out the ass for someone to hold your data. I tried InkDrop and couldn't justify the steep price point for something so trivial. I backup everything on my own and watch Boostnote grow as a competitor, but free...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Bizarro 7y ago

Can anybody comment on the vim-keybindings plugin for Inkdrop. I've tried Notion, but I would really love a markdown/note-taking app with good vi-keybindings.

jhoh 7y ago
Long time Notion and vim user here. Just set up Inkdrop and tried the vim-plugin and all basic features work great. For things like switching files or navigation in general it seems like you'll need to use the software's standard bindings. But it looks like you can edit them. If you plan to switch from Notion I recommend using the paste-as-markdown plugin. With this you can just copy a whole document from Notion and paste it into Inkdrop. Works flawlessly!

huppys 7y ago

Keep up your good work! I read your article about v3, about a year ago. It's damn interesting to follow your journey.

rcdwealth 7y ago

ehm, sorry, isn't markdown in itself editable with any text editor and thus no further "application" is necessary. The point of markdown is that every text editor can edit it.

btreecat 7y ago

Great work man, this is one of the few tools/use cases where I think mark down is really the right choice. Limited set of keywords means you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about formatting. In the end it's easy enough to convert to HTML/PDF as an export to share. On top of that, the tool looks slick af. I don't think I want the cloud sync feature, have you considered an option to license the software with out that for a prorated cost?

cvs268 7y ago

Thanks for sharing! :-) Inspiration for the rest of us to keep at it with our side-projects.

rcdwealth 7y ago

that is not even a free software by definition https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html hahhahahah, the guy (author) thinks he will become next FB/Google 1984-style Orwellian by giving people possibility to make 5 notes for free, thus to reach and create demand and earn some serious money while spying on their private data. Even Suckerberg is better than that.

1nverseMtx 7y ago

Electron. As if I need another app taking up more RAM than needed

samel88 7y ago

Honnestly, my congratulations! I am in the same boat as you and 3 years is a long time especially when doing big/risky refactoring. I did my refactoring mainly to manage my application state, I really thought I would never gonna make it (and I was working in Swift, in Javascript it would have been nearly impossible to do the same thing...). But it was worth every second I spent on it: code is the main value of independant developers, so we should take great care of it! I wish you good luck with your project and hope it will work.

miccah 7y ago

Hi Takuya, Congratulations on the success! Your business is very inspirational to me. Thank you for all the great posts.

traviswingo 7y ago

Awesome job releasing! That’s really difficult to do - and few people can say they have.

ShakataGaNai 7y ago

As a user of just slightly less than a year now - thank you! Ever since I gave up Evernote, I had been on the hunt for a clean note taking replacement and Inkdrop has been that for me. The new v4 looks great and works great!

m0zg 7y ago

Do people actually use all these "note taking" apps? I just use Google Docs for longer notes, and Apple Notes for ephemeral stuff, like dimensions of stuff I need to buy at Home Depot. The benefit of Docs is I can work with them anywhere and search is quite good. I've tried a few of such apps but for the life of me I can't see why I'd want to use them. The app looks great. The dev is clearly talented.

rareutilities 7y ago

I am looking to transition away from OneNote. Any tools to automate the transition to a new app like this?

rc-1140 7y ago

> I built it because I wanted it. I loved reading this line in Takuya's post. It felt a lot more real than all of those "made with " and "we open source" taglines that other projects throw around.

jbverschoor 7y ago

Still looking for something similar where I can also simply add links from Dropbox and other directories.

playpause 7y ago
Can you clarify what you mean with a use case?
- gingerware 7y ago
  file:// :)

sam0x17 7y ago

So I think this is a really cool idea, some feedback: 1. would love to be able to toggle whether the markdown syntax is shown vs a polished/rendered view of the markdown without the # symbols showing etc. For me the whole point of writing markdown is that moment when you get to see it rendered all nicely on github, and this hybrid mode doesn't quite do it for me 2. tags are cool, but a folder hierarchy would be more appropriate for notes imo. I immediately wanted to right click on the side bar and create folders, but that's not a thing. 3. Accessibility via web browser, as other people have mentioned, would be nice 4. ability to export any note to PDF or a single HTML file with inline styling 5. option to use github's exact markdown stylesheet 6. The whole note "status" thing I think is a bit niche. I wouldn't use it at all as I have project management software for that sort of thing. I would use this for storing random bits of knowledge, how-to-type stuff, research/project ideas, that sort of thing. It's a cool feature, I just wish it was optional and there were more options for how to organize the notes.

alphagrep12345 7y ago

Maybe a dumb question - but how did you create apps on so many different platforms? Did you have to separately code everything? Or did you use some framework?

SkyMarshal 7y ago
Definitely not a dumb question, I was wondering that too. My first guess for cross-platform desktop apps these days is Electron, and Inkdrop's UI looks a little Electron-y. But it would be really interesting to hear if it's something else. For the mobile apps, afaik React Native is the most capable cross-platform mobile framework right now. Again, would be really interesting if it's something else (or hardcore if they're both native apps).

crooked-v 7y ago

I like the design of this app a lot, but as with others like this, it feels like it wants me to double-pay for sync/storage I already have with iCloud or Dropbox.

quarkral 7y ago
Yea I would like it if the author offered a one-time purchase for the app without sync functionality at say $60. I mean if you are having trouble with server space for hosting text files, then maybe you shouldn't be building your own cloud storage service. There are lots of existing sync solutions without server space limitations, and you can still have end-to-end encryption by just saving the encrypted text file to local storage and decrypting it only in memory.

norswap 7y ago

Cool! Does it support inter-note linking so that it can act like a kind of personal wiki? That would be a killer feature for me.

ylbss 7y ago

Man, I want this, but I was burned by Collate.

jammygit 7y ago

In the spirit of tiny SaaS companies that offer great products, fman is a cross platform dual pane file manager I like. (No affiliation, I just love that people can make a living making things like this) https://fman.io/ https://fman.io/

test6554 7y ago

I worked on a markdown flash card app briefly because so many accounting terms referenced other terms in their definitions. By linking flash cards together I could quickly jump between flashcards to review unfamiliar terms. Rather than wikipedia where everything about a subject is recorded, flash cards were meant to be a distilled set of facts for a single term from a single course or textbook you were studying. I overhauled my models when I realized that the same field or subject (which I organized into Decks) used the same term in two different contexts to mean different things. That also meant I could not reference cards simply by name in the markdown. So I updated all links to reference by id rather than name. So I had to build some UI to select cards by name and generate links. Then I hit a wall when I realized I would need a good way to encode and render math formulas and that's when my hobby project died. Also, in the end, I found that having such quick linked access to knowledge I was studying made me less likely to remember the material, not more. I relied too heavily on the cards and the ability to just click on a term I didn't remember.

mrcoder111 7y ago

any single pane note taker with latex support?

frosted-flakes 7y ago

If you're targeting your service to developers, you shouldn't set irritating password requirements like "alphanumerics and symbols". Whatever that means, because my password is still being rejected even though it satisfies both requirements (it has both letters and symbols). Yet, you allow 4 character passwords ("4-100 characters"). What's the logic in that? Edit: it looks like the password requirement is actually "any characters except whitespace". You should fix the error message.

fredgrott 7y ago

Thanks for posting this as I was looking for the exact same info as I will be designing-developing a productivity suite based on my ADHD experience of using productivity structure to control my ADHD. very useful story

foxyv 7y ago

Dang it I was hoping this would be like a Sublime Text style individual license and no cloud stuff. I can't upload work documents outside our network and I hate monthly fees for software. If I was working anywhere else though I would totally consider this, even though $5 a month is pretty steep for a markdown application with cloud sync. I would probably spring for their yearly pricing of $49.90.

SimplGy 7y ago
+1 for A local only version of this that stores plain text somewhere on my hard drive. Optionally as an encrypted zip archive.

SimplGy 7y ago

I love markdown. It’s been my primary way of taking notes for many years. A key benefit of the format to me is that text files will never be deprecated and are infinitely portable. I saw mentioned a local cache. Would you add a pitch or squeeze page on this topic to help convince users like me? I want to love your product. The scrolling alone; beautiful. Example user stories: * can always see all notes as simple, well named, plainly organized, easy to read text files. * Can output/sync certain folders of notes to plain text files. (To, for example, a Dropbox folder target)

velobro 7y ago

This supports what I've always wanted in a markdown note taking app... being able to directly copy and paste an image from the clipboard.

arisAlexis 7y ago

sounds very agile