Note-Taking Markdown Editors

After 4 years, in 2020, I’ve returned to this topic because “Simplenote” has been stagnant this whole time.

Notion is revolutionary and I still use it today, but it has its shortcomings, among which I would include the fact that the client is a very “inert” application, the fact that it saves in its own format rather than plain text files, the fact that it is not self-hosted or open source, but it makes up for all this with its brilliant design and ideas.

Crossnote is an online-only markdown note-taking application with a visually appealing design, developed by the author of the Markdown Preview Enhanced extension. It allows users to retrieve and save their notes directly to a GitHub repository, and by examining the commits in the 0xGG/crossnote repository, it is clear that Crossnote is actively under development. Because it can be self-hosted, Crossnote is comparable to and even better than StackEdit in terms of functionality and features.

Simplenote was my go-to editor around 2016, but they haven’t made any significant improvements in years, and I think Automattic let it go to waste. I used it because it had decent text search and was very fast, but I disliked that it isn’t open source, that it doesn’t support images, and that it lacks dual-pane editing, with editing on the left and preview on the right. In retrospect, I realise that choosing Simplenote was a mistake, so all the data was moved to markdown files in VSCode, with some sensitive data also stored in Notion.

Standard Notes: The Almost Perfect Note-Taking Solution

Standard Notes is a pretty well-rounded offering, even in the free version. There is just one flaw that is a deal-breaker for me. The flaw is that the notes in the free version can’t be in the Markdown format, and for me that’s not up for discussion.

Everything else is almost perfect and more than enough, even in the free version, if I ignore this drawback. There’s unlimited device syncing, the web app is great, the desktop app is great, there are nice native mobile apps, and there’s the Listed platform, which is essentially a public blog journal for your notes.

There are a few things I’m not entirely clear about. The whole platform is 100% open source, and the server can be self-hosted, which they highly recommend. I don’t understand what’s stopping me, or what the limitations are in the self-hosted version, if there are any. It is clear that the server component can be self-hosted, and according to their documentation I can also host the web application and compile both the desktop and mobile applications, but the client compilation is not something that many people do, as each application already has the option of specifying which server to connect to.

As for my dilemma, it turns out that many people have the same doubt, see here and here, and yes, I have to solve the Markdown problem in the self-hosted version somehow. Fortunately, the solution is quite acceptable.

But now listen to this. When it comes to the web and desktop Electron applications, the solution to the markdown limit is really solid, in the form of edior add-ons, listed at jonhadfield/awesome-standard-notes. As far as I know, the best editors are Append Editor and Rich Markdown Editor by Outline.

Now that the “markdown limit” has been solved on the desktop, I wonder if it still applies on the mobile phone. Surprisingly it does not! It seems that the mobile app is web based as well, and these upgrades will normally work on the mobile phone as well. I can’t be sure, but I think so.

According to one comment on Reddit: “So I set up an extension over the web and it syncs with my Android app? Presumably the mobile app is also web-based, so upgrades should work there too. I’m not sure, but I think that’s how it works.

StackEdit

StackEdit is a browser-based markdown editor that offers an aesthetically pleasing and efficient user experience. It seamlessly synchronizes with various cloud services.

For personal use, it is perfect, although image support is not excellent. However, it should allow importing from Google Photos, which did not work for me due to active blocking by Google. Nevertheless, since it can be integrated with Gist and GitHub, that is the only way to work with images.

At one point, it was rumored that StackEdit was no longer being developed and that “Classeur” was the true successor. However, several years later, they migrated from the classeur.io domain to stackedit.io, so StackEdit is still the current version.

Other Note-taking Tools

QOwnNotes is a highly efficient, cross-platform, open-source, file-based notepad that has advanced capabilities to import Evernote notes, sync with NextCloud or any other backend, as it stores all data in plain .md files. To install it, use scoop/brew install qownnotes. It has undergone significant improvements and is now a respectable package that even includes a web clipper browser extension, an excellent CLI snippet manager, supports automatic git push, etc. QOwnNotes continues to be actively developed and improved on its repository pbek/QOwnNotes, making it a truly superb package.

Joplin je vrlo poznat i podržan

MarkdownPad is a simple desktop markdown editor for Windows, not open-source.

AlephNote is an open source, lightweight desktop note-taking application that supports synchronisation with Simplenote, Standard Note, Nextcloud and other “normal” backend platforms, is only available for Windows and is essentially a stripped down version of QOwnNotes.

• Milanote is online tool to organize ideas and projects into visual boards, limited to 100 notes in free version.

• Turtl is an open-source desktop app, an actively developed note-taking app, offering a generous free plan for cloud service.

Research Helpers

Weava and PowerNotes are annotation tools for organizing research, rather than note-taking applications.

GitJournal and the repository GitJournal/GitJournal are well-suited for Android and iOS devices. It includes support for YAML Frontmatter, however, there is an issue with correctly identifying dates in the “yyyy-mm-dd” format, for which I have submitted a support ticket.

Notable is a desent Markdown-based note-taking app with repository. It is not open-source, but since it uses Electron, it is cross-platform. It’s not bad because it has Fuzzy search and a very decent UI, but it doesn’t handle folders well and lacks flexibility with YAML frontmatter.

Note-Taking like chatting

Heynote is an open-source tool that works across different platforms, with its source code stored in the heyman/heynote repository on GitHub. Developed in JavaScript, Heynote manages to deliver excellent performance despite being built on Electron. One limitation is the inability to search the entire Notes folder, given that Heynote exclusively operates within a single file. However, I personally appreciate the simplicity of a single file for quick note-taking. I have optimized its location within my “drafts” folder, seamlessly integrating it into my “second-brain” notes system. Unfortunately, Heynote lacks the capability to insert images via paste, and I sorely miss having a timestamp for each note, which I consider a crucial feature.

Duck Note is a web application that syncs with Google Drive, supporting images but not through copy-paste. It features channels similar to Slack, uses Markdown format as standard, and each message is clearly marked with an accurate timestamp. Messages can be archived, everything is exportable, and it includes a reliable search function. Despite its initial appearance, this is actually a very useful tool. A significant drawback is also its lack of open-source availability or self-hosting capability.

Strflow is a free app coded in Swift, with some paid features, exclusively available on Apple devices. It shares a similar concept to Heynote but allows for multiple files. Users need to pay for cloud sync, which raises questions about why one wouldn’t choose Telegram or a similar platform instead. One unique feature is the ability to change the date of a message, altering the message order. Another valuable option is the ability to paste images directly, as well as the ability to link directly to notes - which can be useful for tasks. It includes groups and tags, similar to folders and files.

Memos is a useful online tool that offers strong team support for efficiently capturing and sharing thoughts. This open-source, lightweight note-taking service can be found on GitHub and also allows copy-pasting of images and can also be integrated with Telegram bot.

docker run -d --init --name memos --publish 5230:5230 --volume /Users/Storage/Treasury/drafts/memos/:/var/opt/memos neosmemo/memos:stable

It supports local image and pdf storage, it has a webhook that can send a payload with each update, making it quite useful overall. Perhaps its biggest drawback is that it is browser-based, but that may not be a significant issue after all.