[HN Gopher] Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoug...
___________________________________________________________________
Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's
work
Author : sealeck
Score : 265 points
Date : 2021-04-16 20:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (standardnotes.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (standardnotes.org)
| nt2h9uh238h wrote:
| Trying to give feedback (heavy user of evernote, notion)
|
| Hate: - huge lack of basic hotkeys: CMD+N for new notes - no
| styling / formatting at all in the free version, which is a huge
| bummer. - CMD+, doesn't show the "preferences window" I expected
| - Markdown styling
|
| Love - extremely fast (evernote and notion became exremely slow
| to the point I'm close to dropping both) -
| pugworthy wrote:
| Can we at least acknowledge that there's an apparent eternal
| stream of "the best note app" being constantly developed or
| improved or touted?
| ExtraE wrote:
| Why is this better than the built in notes app on my phone or
| Atom and a private GitHub repo? That's what I use and I'm yet to
| have a problem.
| sealeck wrote:
| It's end-to-end encrypted?
| tanin wrote:
| Shameless plug. I wrote a go app that keeps syncing your notes to
| GitHub/gitlab.
|
| I simply maintain a giant plain text note. Sometimes I hope there
| is a better way to search, but it's decent enough.
|
| https://github.com/tanin47/git-notes
|
| It runs on Mac, windows, and Ubuntu
| remram wrote:
| Feedback: Every platform option takes you to a page with the same
| text:
|
| > Your download has started. Didn't start? Click here to start
| manually.
|
| Both for Android and Web, your download will NOT start until you
| click the link, which takes you to Google Play and the web app,
| respectively.
| layer8 wrote:
| The alternativeTo link at the bottom has some screenshots and
| reviews: https://alternativeto.net/software/standard-notes/about/
|
| Not a native application, not my cup of tea.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| After almost a decade of use I moved away from Simple Note
| (originally with notational velocity...) to Standard Notes over a
| year ago (their obligate unencrypted cloud storage was a deal-
| breaker for me. I use standard notes for a more or less
| unfiltered brain dump, so security is my #1 priority), and have
| been pretty happy with it, using it cross-platform. The support
| is pretty good - the forums (well, the slack) are quite active.
|
| There're one or two minor issues (not being able to search within
| individual notes, and some scrolling bugs on iOS iirc that I need
| to report at some point), but given that I'm using it across 4
| platforms (iOS/macOS/Windows/Android), it seems to be working
| really well.
|
| And the lead developer seems quite sincerely committed/principled
| to the software's principles, which is nice.
|
| edit: I haven't tried out Joplin/Obsidian, which people seem to
| like here. Oh gosh I think I'm ok for now - my current solution
| solves my problem.
| whisk wrote:
| I do seeking for a lifetime note recently to store all my data.
| But considering lifetime, choosing subscription should be
| cautious.
|
| The price $2.48/month means $1488/50 years, I would rather choose
| a buyout payment for $200.
| aorth wrote:
| If you pay them $200 now, how do you know they will be around
| in ten years, let alone fifty?
| duxup wrote:
| Screen shots guys... you gotta have screen shots!
|
| Even folks who love the philosophy want screenshots.
| titzer wrote:
| ..and a link to the source code.
|
| After the long rant about software complexity, I wanted to see
| their code to see if they walk the walk.
| titzer wrote:
| ..which I googled for and found on GitHub.
|
| > We believe in building software that _lasts_.
|
| (emphasis theirs).
|
| So, I had a look. Their GitHub has dozens of repos, and the
| desktop one depends on the _web_ one? Wait, the whole thing
| is written in typescript? I have absolutely nothing against
| typescript, but I honestly would have expected a boring
| language, with a simple repo, not with git submodules....and
| definitely not something that depends on web tech, of any
| kind.
| akst wrote:
| Is it really that surprising they're using web tech?
|
| Putting whether it's an appropriate use of web technology
| or not aside, I'm not quite sure how they would be able to
| build a cross platform application [2] with a small team
| [1] without largely relying on code reuse of some kind. For
| better or worse, web tech has been the status quo for some
| time. Ironically making this the boring route for making
| these apps.
|
| As much as I hate how resource intensive these apps are,
| it's also not really that surprising they're built this
| way, knowing the current alternatives and their barriers to
| entry.
|
| Maybe one day we'll have lighter weight alternatives, that
| are just as easy to use. or maybe they exist and they're
| just not that well known -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| But yeah their "building something that lasts" just sounds
| like marketing speak
|
| [1] I'm assuming it's a small company (since I've never
| heard of this before)
|
| [2] the app appears to support iOS, Android, Linux, macOS,
| windows & the web
| ironmagma wrote:
| The web has lasted a long time with near 100% backwards
| compatibility. It will likely continue to last.
| buzzert wrote:
| I don't know much about TS/Yarn, but is this really all the
| dependencies they have? https://github.com/standardnotes/de
| sktop/blob/develop/yarn.l...
|
| That's pretty insane if so. Especially for a "simple" note
| taking app.
| ncallaway wrote:
| That's the transitive closure of their dependencies, yes.
|
| This file contains their list of direct dependencies
| (which is a lot smaller, but that just tells you how much
| of a dependency explosion you get when you use `npm`
| packages): https://github.com/standardnotes/desktop/blob/
| develop/packag...
|
| One thing to note is the yarn.lock is probably the
| transitive closure of the compile-time dependencies
| (`devDependencies`) and run-time dependencies
| (`dependencies`), so it's possible that the dependencies
| that actually ship with the application are quite a bit
| smaller.
|
| For example, `webpack` is in the devDependencies, which
| is the build tool. So the `yarn.lock` is listing all of
| the dependencies both for the runtime libraries that get
| used, but also the dependencies for all the build tooling
| as well.
| fhrow4484 wrote:
| +1, I knew some stores require screenshots to be part of the
| app listing, so I clicked on the iOS and Android links to see
| those.
|
| The app store preview shows iPad form factor so that's pretty
| useful.
|
| But for desktop, I clicked on windows expecting a Microsoft
| store link, but instead it starts an immediate 101MB binary
| download, so beware.
| smichel17 wrote:
| It's okay, my browser prompts me before downloading a file,
| so it's far from "immediate".
| julianlam wrote:
| In my experience, some browsers will start the download
| before you've given the go-ahead, so the download completes
| faster.
| smichel17 wrote:
| I'm aware that _some browsers_ (ie, chrome & friends) do
| this, by default at least. I find it pretty hostile
| behavior. I don't think this site did anything wrong.
| jerednel wrote:
| The comments here prove their marketing could use work. SN
| Extended is basically a completely different app than the free
| version. Nested folders, smart tags (i organized a workflow with
| untagged notes going to an inbox folder, notes with due:yyyy-mm-
| dd being pulled into a Next Items folder etc..)
|
| Also there is a markdown editor, an editor that encrypts and
| stores attachments in an S3/webdav/drive/dropbox folder. There is
| a simple spreadsheet editor as well that I use for simple
| personal sheets.
|
| None of this you would really internalize on a cursory view of
| the homepage or by really even downloading the free app.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| I'm happy with Standard Notes. I just checked and my oldest note
| is from 13/04/2017 so it has been a few years.
|
| I don't use the desktop app as the web version works fine. The
| Android app works fine as well. Sync is great and note edit
| history is great. I mostly use plain text and the task editor for
| ticking off things.
|
| It works, it's open source, it gets out of your way and Mo and
| team are responsive when rare issues come up. I use it every day
| and I'm happy to be paying for it to support it.
| 3v1n0 wrote:
| I've given the Android version a quick try, but the task editor
| is not supported in the free version, isn't it?
| thecodrr wrote:
| SN's free version is...very limited. Almost all their cool
| features are in the paid version. Cool features being
| different editors. But even with that, their feature parity
| across platforms is not really great.
|
| (Aside: you can check Notesnook (https://notesnook.com) out
| as an alternative. Disclaimer: I am the dev).
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Nope, you don't get any of the extras with the free version.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| I tried them all: - Joplin - Standard Notes - Simplenote -
| Onenote, Evernote, Keep
|
| I ended up using the iOS/macOS built-in notes app. It just works.
| Hear me out why:
|
| + it is free, incl. tables, dark mode, basic formatting, pictures
| inline + sync works great (Joplin was the worst of them all) +
| the UI is simple, clean and intuitive. Apps feel polished and
| smooth + I can rely on apple that the app will not suddenly be
| discontinued from one day to the other + all apps have identical
| features
|
| What I really wished apple notes would offer:
|
| - encryption - AAA webapp - better tables (if you need tables,
| you will suffer with the current implementation)
|
| I will not go back to the alternatives as they provide an overall
| worse package for my daily use.
| xipho wrote:
| Vim + potwiki. command mode -> space-w-w to my index, and notes
| away.
|
| https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1018
| bibinou wrote:
| Click [Web] and it starts https://app.standardnotes.org/
|
| Nice shade of blue.
| zenjester wrote:
| tried it left because of price, lack of options, lack of reliable
| sync https://joplinapp.org/ is far better and cheaper option
| ericol wrote:
| Exactly this. Joplin kinda blows the competition out of the
| water in every aspect.
|
| The sync works flawlessly and this is one of the strongest
| features it has.
|
| I set it up using WebDAV and never ever had to worry about it
| working.
| novok wrote:
| When I tried the joplin app 9 months ago, the mobile app on
| iOS was just plain broken.
|
| As far as E2EE note apps with mobile and desktop apps that
| sync go when I last looked in 2020, you have Standard Notes,
| Joplin, Inkdrop, Amplenote, Day One and DevonThink. I tried
| out Inkdrop seriously, but it wasn't better enough for me to
| switch and was more expensive than standard notes.
|
| A lot of these apps are $5/month, and I feel like that is too
| much compared to the $3/month far more sophisticated utility
| apps like 1password are sold for.
| sldksk wrote:
| For Joplin, review the sync settings. Sorry I forget which
| one it is but on iOS there was a bad default and once you
| change it the mobile app works like a dream.
| novok wrote:
| No it was broken to the point where I couldn't even just
| write a note with a keyboard properly. Even if that was
| fixed the fact you have to change a bad default out of
| the box is indicative alone.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Another happy user here :-)
|
| I use it with NextCloud sync to a Heztner NextCloud instance.
| Data is all mine, they can even be E2E-encrypted if I want.
|
| Now a healthy plugin ecosystem is forming as well.
|
| I've already sent some money once or twice and I am actively
| looking for places where I can contribute code as well.
|
| Recommending others consider that as well.
| ahofmann wrote:
| After many years with google keep, evernote, standard notes,
| simplenote, org mode, plain files in git etc. I finally found
| joplin and couldn't be happier.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I use Joplin too, and export my notes to
| https://notes.stavros.io. If you want a site like that from
| your notes, you can use the script I wrote:
|
| https://gitlab.com/stavros/notes/
|
| It's a bit ad-hoc, but it works well.
| zikzak wrote:
| I wish more apps used git as a sync option. GitJournal is a
| great client for Android phones and then any editor on desktop
| platform works fine (plain text or markdown notes). I use it
| with vs code and Dendron.
| flyingfsck wrote:
| There's a great iOS client too. I was overjoyed to stumble on
| it.
| drannex wrote:
| You can load a custom extension repo, and get access to all of
| the extensions for free - https://github.com/kylejbrk/standard-
| notes-open-extended
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Yup. I switched from evernote which was syncing poorly to
| Joplin and it's been great. Writing ~daily notes for over 2
| years between ~three devices and it's had a problem exactly
| once due to onedrive changing their APIs out from under Joplin
| Jiocus wrote:
| +1. I remember checking out Standard Notes and their longevity
| mission is very positive. They seem to have a solid product,
| but their approach just doesn't click for me.
|
| Been using Joplin for a couple years. It's one of those few
| open-source apps that managed to find a golden ratio of
| functionality but still to the point, a coherent pleasant
| experience across desktop and mobile.
|
| Missing a basic collab or note sharing functionality though.
| It's all open formats and that, sure one could hack around it,
| but more in the spirit of mutual access to encrypted notebooks
| for example.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| As a second data point, I've been using Standard for a little
| over a year now, and haven't had any syncing issues. Maybe I've
| been lucky, or maybe it's gotten better than it used to be.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| I sometimes (once every few months?) get a
| duplicated/conflicting file-pair appear. It's a bit annoying,
| but not very annoying. Can't remember it happening recently.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I really miss tomboy (not the new ng version). I used it for
| years and it was amazing. Rich text without having to use
| markdown. Razor fast responsiveness when searching. Instant
| hyperlinks just by typing the name of another note. Excellent
| keyboard shortcuts too.
|
| I really miss it but it was no longer maintained and falling into
| disrepair on newer OSes due to lacking support for DPI scaling
| and dark modes.
|
| I use onenote now as it comes with O365 anyway but like most
| things microsoft it's bloated and slow. It offers a lot more
| features (tomboy couldn't even do inline pictures!) But fast
| responsiveness means more to me.
|
| I'd consider standard notes but there's so many of these apps
| around and most are not WYSIWYG editors but instead markdown with
| a separate preview window. I hate that. And they tend to be slow
| electron stuff which makes them no better than onenote.
|
| Not sure if this one is an exception but if so I might try it.
| sneak wrote:
| Onenote is not end to end encrypted. Total nonstarter.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Agreed but I don't really care about the privacy of my notes
| tbh. They're mostly web clippings and technical information I
| spent time to dig up, not my innermost thoughts.
|
| However something self-hosted would be nicer.
|
| With other O365 services it's more of a problem indeed. I use
| cryptomator on top of OneDrive to mitigate.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| OneNote does allow you to password protect (which encrypts)
| sections within a notebook, however.
| sneak wrote:
| It's not open source, so there is no clear indication
| without RE that "password protection" encrypts anything at
| all.
| qPM9l3XJrF wrote:
| Seems Zim Wiki is still being actively maintained, I liked it
| better than Tomboy when I tried them both years ago
| flarg wrote:
| Zim is the best, good speed, files stored as plain text, fast
| indexing. I use it for personal and work, auto backup with
| Dropbox or G Drive.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Thanks, that's one I will try!
| winter_blue wrote:
| > _I really miss tomboy (not the new ng version). I used it for
| years and it was amazing. ... I really miss it but it was no
| longer maintained and falling into disrepair on newer OSes due
| to lacking support for DPI scaling and dark modes._
|
| You could contribute to it, and try to bring the project back
| to life!!! (I mean, any/most of us here on HN could!)
|
| Tomboy is free and open-source software, licensed under the
| LGPL license[1]. It's also written in C# (which is pretty
| wonderful language to work with on a GUI application,
| especially compared to C or C++ or even maybe Vala).
|
| It would be wonderful to breathe a new life to it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomboy_(software)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I can't really, I haven't developed for years anymore. I
| don't have the chops to do it.
|
| Also, the Gnome team seems to have deprecated it in favour of
| a rebuild called tomboy-ng that's written in something new
| (Delphi I think?). And lacks the benefits of the old one like
| fast responsiveness and auto hyperlinking. I don't like it at
| all :)
| da39a3ee wrote:
| > And they tend to be slow electron stuff
|
| I've read this a couple of times on HN. Can someone fill me in
| here? Is the claim that electron apps are slow justified? If so
| why, technically, are they slow?
|
| The main one I use is Slack and it is perfectly fine on my
| machine.
| thekyle wrote:
| I do consider the Slack desktop app to be a resource hog.
| Even on my brand-new M1 MacBook Air it sometimes takes a few
| seconds for channels to load. On my older Windows computer
| it's borderline unusable with how bad the text inputs lag.
| Sometimes I will have typed out an entire message and hit
| send before any of the text appears in the input box.
|
| In fact, this morning a colleague of mine was showing me on
| Zoom that their Slack desktop app never finishes loading
| instead just displaying a white screen, so they need to use
| the website instead. Although I guess that's more of a
| comment on software quality than bloat.
|
| I don't mean to say that all Electron apps are slow and
| clunky. VS Code for example is very impressive for an
| Electron app.
| jcelerier wrote:
| how can you say that this is perfectly fine :
| https://streamable.com/lzhvjf
|
| takes ages to open, takes ages to resize, etc etc. my hands
| shake whenever I have to interact with that mess (thankfully
| ripcord exists)
|
| my computer is an intel 6900k (16-core) with 64 gb of ram and
| a gtx 1080 so processing power is not an issue.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| I guess you're right! I'd never noticed the laggy resizing
| (I use a laptop so nearly always have apps taking up the
| full screen). But I see that also (recent MBP w/ 32Gb RAM).
|
| I just did a comparison with slack running in chrome and,
| maybe I'm saying something silly here, but the difference
| seems to be that I'm simply _unable_ to resize the chrome
| window at the same speed when the tab inside is displaying
| slack. So I was unable to "leave the content behind" as
| you did in your video of the electron app (and as I was
| also able to do with the electron app).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The problem with Electron apps is that they're using an
| embedded browser. As more and more apps are moving to
| Electron you're running a whole lot of browsers altogether on
| one system.
|
| I don't want to waste hundreds of MBs of memory just on one
| small app :)
|
| There's good Electron apps, yes. Like VS code, which is fast
| and optimised and uses very little resources. But most
| Electron apps are wasteful. Even the other ones from MS like
| Teams are horrible.
| thecodrr wrote:
| It's mostly hearsay. Electron is highly optimized (it's
| chromium after all). Making an electron app doesn't make it
| automatically slow and clunky. That's absurd. Sure it is a
| browser and it takes a little more Ram than you are used to
| (but most machines nowadays have 8 to 16 gigs of RAM so not a
| huge issue).
|
| What does make an electron app slow is the app itself.
| Obviously. You have VSCode that is blazing fast even for
| humongous files and you also have some other not so fast
| apps.
|
| Another huge issue raised is size. To be honest, 100 MB isn't
| abnormal for a desktop app. Look at any Qt app, it can be
| around 100 MB too. Same for dotnet.
|
| Of course native is better but most developers don't have the
| resources for that.
|
| Edit: I see people down voting without giving any reason. I
| know this is an unpopular opinion but come on. The days when
| you could use VSCode as an example of slow, clunky Electron
| app are gone. What's slow and huge is Jetbrains IntelliJ or
| Visual Studio; both native. VSCode proved that you can make a
| fast electron app; it just needs work like any other thing.
| dsissitka wrote:
| > I see people down voting without any reason.
|
| What makes you think they didn't have a reason? I didn't
| downvote you but you've made a few divisive assertions. For
| example, your "blazing fast" is my "performs acceptably".
| thecodrr wrote:
| A typo. I meant "without giving any reason".
|
| Also, I'd be interested to know what you count as blazing
| fast.
| infinityplus1 wrote:
| Try opening a big complex html file and scroll
| immediately in VS Code and in Sublime text. Sublime Text
| blows VS Code out of water. This lag made me switch back
| to Sublime Text from VS Code.
| jakear wrote:
| Curious if you tried with extensions disabled? I just
| attempted opening both a 100k and 1m line html file in
| both VS Code and ST, in the 100k case they both were
| quick to open but Code was a bit smoother in scrolling,
| in the 1m case ST took a long time to open (showed a
| loading progress bar for a few seconds before anything),
| and while Code was choppy to scroll ST was almost
| unusable.
|
| That being said, with extensions enabled it can be a
| totally different story - some extensions will try to
| load the text content on every editor opening or even
| edit, which gets unusable _very_ quickly. (Yes they run
| in a separate process, but that's not a cure-all)
|
| Tested on 2018 MBP.
|
| (On VS code team, had nothing to do with the editor perf)
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Are you referring to the way VS Code is slow to display
| the syntax highlighting on file open sometimes? (Is that
| when it's getting highlighting via LSP?)
| infinityplus1 wrote:
| Yes. While syntax highlighting is getting rendered,
| scrolling lags a lot which is really annoying when you
| want to get to a specifc part of the file quickly. Once I
| noticed this, it was very hard not to see the same lag
| everywhere. LSP-I don't know how this works.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| VS Code is the exception to the rule. MS has spent lots of
| time optimising it.
|
| However most apps don't, and even MS' other apps are total
| crap, like MS Teams. If it was so easy to take the lessons
| learned from VS Code and apply it to their other apps they
| would do so I'm sure.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I meant MS' other electron apps by the way. Can't edit
| anymore.
|
| Skype for Business for Mac also comes to mind. Sometimes
| it takes up 800MB of memory. For an IM app..... :X
| billyjobob wrote:
| IntelliJ is not native, it's Java, which ironically used to
| be considered a slow VM unsuitable for desktop apps, until
| Electron came along and was like "you think that's slow?
| Hold my beer!" Now I much prefer Java desktop apps over
| Electron ones.
| kushan2020 wrote:
| Hey if you want to give my app https://bangle.io a try, it
| checks off your requirement of being a WYSIWYG note taking web
| editor.
|
| I would say the friction to try it out is pretty low as there
| is nothing to lock you in. It simply reads and writes data in a
| markdown format directly to your hard drive -- think VSCode but
| for notes.
| ivan_ah wrote:
| Wow this is excellent. It's very nice it can access local
| filesystem like a regular app, but nothing to install (other
| than to open a webpage).
|
| Good stuff!
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| > Find out what it feels like to write with total privacy.
|
| This made me laugh. You mean like on a piece of paper?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| A piece of paper doesn't have the same level of privacy as
| something like Standard Notes. Anyone who finds your written
| paper notes can read them.
|
| Standard Notes is encrypted, and password protected. It can't
| ever be read by the provider or the host (which is the major
| problem with the majority of syncing notes apps), and it can't
| be read by a nosy friend or family member, unless you leave
| your computer unlocked and unattended (at which point all bets
| are off anyway).
|
| It offers much, much better privacy than a piece of paper.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| How do you know I'm not burning the notes afterward?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I mean, if you never want to read your notes again, sure,
| that's more secure. But writing stuff you will immediately
| burn and never want to read again in the future is such a
| different thing from using a syncing notes tool that the
| comparison doesn't really make sense.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| I just thought the implication of the copy was funny,
| wasn't really making a serious comparison of every
| possible use case and threat model for pen and paper
| versus this tool. Each has its own advantages.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I am 100% sure there is no root kit installed on my piece of
| paper transmitting every pen stroke to the internet. I am
| 100% sure there is no defect in the design of the piece of
| paper that could make it instantly readable to the entire
| world once discovered.
|
| You can't say that about any software or hardware.
| tartoran wrote:
| Private journaling is likely to end up encrypted forever
| and not accessible to the families of deceased persons.
| Sure, it could be argued that it was encrypted on purpose
| but one never knows. Someone may suddenly pass and their
| loved ones would never get access to this piece of their
| work even if the author intended to share it and never got
| to leave the encryption key (they never expected their
| sudden departure)
|
| Sure, this same thing could be argued about electronic
| mail, computers and other encrypted devices but I feel
| something deeper would be lost a lot more often.
|
| Imagine Kafka used an encryption tool on his work or
| countless of other silent authors whose work only came to
| life after their death when somebody else discovered it.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| Well, unless there are technological improvements in
| processing speed that allow for future decryption, right?
|
| Food for thought though, for sure.
| crooked-v wrote:
| That's a problem with encrypted stuff in general, and as
| a society we really haven't worked out any better way to
| manage that yet than measures like "keep a clearly-
| labeled master password in a safe deposit box where your
| estate can get at it".
| justsomeuser wrote:
| I agree, the tech stack under pen and paper is very light
| compared to computers. But it's only as secure as your
| physical security.
|
| With an encrypted hard drive and a strong key, the files
| remain private even when the physical security is breached.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| A piece of paper (in the USA at least) also has stronger
| constitutional privacy protection than digital files
| uploaded to cloud storage/sync services.
| neolog wrote:
| They can be read by another program on your computer too.
| jively wrote:
| Best notes app I've used - love the encryption philosophy.
| Editors could be better.
|
| I actually real like the blogging integration.
|
| Definitely recommended over bloat ware like EverNote, OneNote
| etc.
| ApolloVonZ wrote:
| Even though I mostly stay away from the Google ecosystem, I do
| use Keep for several years now. Mainly because of how easy it is
| to export notes as sorted individual html files that I can import
| as formatted text into Scrivener where I organize all my writing.
| I wish the native MacOS Notes app would be better but I lost once
| all of my notes after an iCloud error. Even Apple couldn't help
| me on the phone. The structure was still there on their servers,
| but strangely the notes were empty.
| bmarquez wrote:
| I have a love/hate relationship with Standard Notes (and with
| most encrypted editors in general).
|
| Standard Notes is one of the few apps that has end-to-end
| encrytion AND password protection on the desktop (or Face ID on
| mobile devices). Joplin is E2E but refuses to encrypt locally,
| meaning someone who browses your computer can view your notes
| unless you use Joplin Portable in an encrypted container (with
| the added performance overhead).
|
| However, compared to Joplin, uploading images to notes is a pain.
| Standard Notes has multiple text editor options and they all
| suck. Only the "bold" editor allows you to upload images, and
| using FileSafe is extremely fiddly. Personally I would rather
| have one really good text editor than a bunch of half-baked ones.
|
| But Joplin is sluggish compared to both Standard Notes and
| Obsidian.md. Obsidian.md has the benefit of having everything as
| plain text files, for easy editing in other apps (there's also no
| need to export anything if they go out of business compared to
| Standard Notes/Joplin). But Obsidian's mobile app is still in
| development, and I'm a bit iffy about buying another subscription
| just for encrypted sync.
|
| ...And, if open source doesn't matter to you, there's always
| Microsoft OneNote.
| brnt wrote:
| Ive changed from Joplin to QOwnNotes. I dont think it does
| encryption, but it is just a folder of markdown files so is
| flexible to use.
| animesh wrote:
| It does encryption. Some detail here:
| https://www.qownnotes.org/blog/2016-10-02-Note-encryption-
| wi...
| crooked-v wrote:
| > But Obsidian's mobile app is still in development, and I'm a
| bit iffy about buying another subscription just for encrypted
| sync.
|
| Obsidian's pricing seems a bit weird to be in general, in that
| its publish/hosting functionality is priced around individual
| workspaces rather than either users or total usage.
|
| Because of that I'm never going to actually use said publish
| functionality (even though I would have paid for it in an
| instant if it was set up differently), because my use cases for
| it would involve publishing from a number of different small
| workspaces for entirely different audiences, and the devs
| apparently haven't considered at all that people may want to do
| that.
| thecodrr wrote:
| You should give Notesnook[1](i am the developer) a try as well.
| It should solve most, if not all, of the above issues and its
| cheaper than every other notes app out there as well.
|
| [1]https://app.notesnook.com/ (it has a 14 day free trial)
| interestica wrote:
| I really wish there was an alt without a subscription model.
| What happens to note access when off subscription?
|
| is dark mode an option on the free tier?
| thecodrr wrote:
| > What happens to note access when off subscription?
|
| Nothing at all. You can still edit and access them as
| normal. There's no limit on the amount of notes you can
| make on the free tier.
|
| > is dark mode an option on the free tier? Yep.
|
| As for the subscription model, it's necessary to support
| development of a Web & mobile app where versioning is much
| harder as opposed to a desktop version.
| grillermo wrote:
| It is not safe(long term wise) for me as long as it relies on a
| closed source app that develops a probably dead in a few years
| company.
| dsizzle wrote:
| It is open source. The code is here
| https://github.com/standardnotes
| rdschouw wrote:
| Plus you can even self-host and the mobile apps support this
| out of the box.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| In addition to it being open source as mentioned, the server is
| open source too and you can run your own self-hosted instance:
| https://standardnotes.org/help/47/can-i-self-host-standard-n...
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| I've been using the web version for several years.
|
| I've never committed to a note taking app for that long.
|
| Kudos to the team, I love your vision and impressed with the
| implementation.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I use two open source note taking apps on my Android device.
| Anything that needs to be protected and private stays in Standard
| Notes. Everything else goes into Markor. Markor strikes an
| amazing balance between features and simplicity. Syncthing
| handles sync. Standard Notes does fine for the other stuff, but
| as said by other commenters, even it's Extended editor options
| are lacking, and there's also no convenient way to "share"
| content from another app into Standard Notes. People have been
| asking for that feature for years, but bizzarely it seems never
| to have been prioritized.
| PaulBGD_ wrote:
| I used Standard Notes paid for over a year, and switched to
| Obsidian recently.
|
| My experience with SN was that the editors are half fleshed out,
| incompatible with each other, and make it hard to use with other
| tools. The notes can be markdown, html, text, or other formats as
| well as being encrypted. This makes exporting very annoying to
| use.
|
| Contrast to other tools like obsidian.. it's just markdown. I can
| sync it across devices just by sharing the folder. SN is a great
| concept, but there's a lot of design decisions I hated while
| using it.
| aftergibson wrote:
| I did the exact same swap recently. Obsidian is far superior.
|
| I even paid for the 5 year Standard Notes subscription as I
| believed in the project and assumed design improvements would
| come, but the editor experience never improved and just feels
| clunky.
| onedr0p wrote:
| I bought the 5 year sub and completely agree on the desktop
| app clunkiness, it's been so many years but there's still no
| right click menus. I use it once in awhile and still find
| myself trying to right click > archive or right click > pin
| or whatever.
| inakarmacoma wrote:
| Also moved everything to Obsidian. The free plugins from
| developer contributors are fantastic. Sync to mobile is free
| with some know-how, otherwise the paid option seems fairly
| priced.
| actinium226 wrote:
| Obsidian looks cool, but there's no web version? One thing I
| really like about SN is that it's in the cloud.
| andrewrothman wrote:
| I'm in the process of the same switch.
|
| I've liked Standard Notes. It's really nice that it's open
| source and encrypted. However I ran into some instances of
| cross-device conflicting edits which were a bit annoying, and
| Obsidian's UI and Second Brain features swayed me to try it.
| The graph view is really cool and I realized I didn't need
| syncing as much as I thought.
|
| Obsidian does seem to also have a paid sync feature (no mobile
| app yet). For now I've been emailing myself from my phone and
| taking small audio memos, then typing them into Obsidian when
| back at my laptop. Not an ideal workflow but it's not bad and
| has some advantages.
| Tistron wrote:
| I set up syncthing on my two computers and my phone. It was
| surprisingly simple and works pretty well (after I turned off
| battery optimisation on it on the phone). using Markor as an
| acceptable way of making small edits and notes on my phone
| for fleshing out later.
| thecodrr wrote:
| Conflicts are normal in syncing. Even git has conflicts.
| Although SN's conflict resolution is a bit weird where it
| creates multiple copies of the note...I think this may be
| because they mark conflicted notes on the server using
| timestamps.
| ysee wrote:
| There was a Standard Notes app on fdroid. I don't know why they
| removed it
| rvieira wrote:
| I've been enjoying using Noteplan and Obsidian.
|
| The main reason is actually data freedom. By having all the data
| as plain text I can sync it and backup as I like, move between
| platforms (macOS, Linux) and if I get bored with those apps or
| they disappear I switch easily or even write my own.
| eclipxe wrote:
| Love Noteplan!
| justusthane wrote:
| Obsidian is amazing. I can't wait for it to get WYSIWYG
| Markdown editing.
| [deleted]
| cascom wrote:
| Why would you not just use a doc saved on an encrypted cloud
| drive (e.g. text file saved via Cryptomator on google drive?).
| It's cross device, secure, and free(ish)
| thecodrr wrote:
| Standard Notes is a phenomenal note taking app and one of the
| first to bring encryption in note taking. They take security very
| seriously and have multiple third party audits.
|
| With that said, the bad outweigh the good. I don't mean to be a
| pessimist here (SN is inspirational) but:
|
| 1. Their free plan is extremely lacking. You can't even try out
| many of their editors.
|
| 2. Their pro plan mostly only offers editors. I am not sure how
| having 3 kinds of rich text editors is helpful but they have
| them.
|
| 3. They don't allow any form of account recovery. Which sounds
| really epic on paper but once you forget your password, you lose
| all your data.
|
| 4. The feature parity between their different apps across
| platforms is abysmal. The android app is notoriously feature
| lacking compared to the Web version. (They did put out an update
| which hopefully changes things).
|
| 5. In my extensive usage of the app, conflicts are very normal. I
| have no issue with that but there's no way to resolve them
| without creating duplicate copies of the note which clutters up
| the UI.
|
| 5. the UX is poor. No right click on notes, no distraction free
| mode, no way to collapse the huge notes list.
|
| 6. Search and organization seems like an after thought. The only
| way to organize is via tags. Tags are nice and all but there's
| not much you can do with them.
|
| 7. Their pricing seems absurd.
|
| 8. The development seems to be going no where. They are active
| but many of the above issues are still not addressed.
|
| But as I said, it's not all bad. Most people won't notice the
| above in their initial usage. They have a solid app with okay
| features.
|
| If you are a new user looking for encrypted notes and all that
| hosh posh or just an alternative to SN, you should also give
| Notesnook[1][2] a try; it solves all of the above issues in a
| sensible way. Do note that I am the dev so I am obviously biased.
| It's not perfect but I think it is a better alternative.
|
| [1]https://notesnook.com/
|
| [2]https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook/ (it's not open
| source but the repo has some good FAQ that you might be
| interested in reading).
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I have tried many note-taking apps. From Evernote to Google
| Keep to OneNote to Standard notes yo plain old notepad to
| Zotero to Word and really honestly many more.
|
| If you say this list is all over the place, then that is
| because requirements vary depending on purpose, not the other
| way around.
|
| After almost a decade of experimenting, I have come to realise
| that the best note-taking tool by far is org-mode.
|
| It is free, it is extensible, it is not going anywhere in next
| decade+, it let's me encrypt on my own terms, it let's me store
| and share on my own terms, it is as lightweight or as
| heavyweight as I want, it can be as pretty or as ugly as I
| want, I can edit it anywhere, search and organization is
| ridiculously advanced compared to anything else out there (or
| everything else is ridiculously behind).
|
| Its biggest strength and arguably biggest weakness is its tied
| to Emacs. It is a horrible learning curve for beginners, which
| is why it took me a decade to get to org-mode in the first
| place, but once you have climbed that hill, you are basically
| on top of the world.
|
| Everybody serious about note-taking should give org-mode a try.
| pkulak wrote:
| > I can edit it anywhere
|
| Can you pull it up on your phone when you're out and need to
| jot something down? (Honestly wondering, I've always toyed
| with org mode, but half my notes are taken on the run.)
| Dangeranger wrote:
| Yes, you can use BeOrg or MobileOrg for mobile use.
| thecodrr wrote:
| > its tied to Emacs
|
| "What's emacs?" that's what a your every day Joe is going to
| ask you. The very reason note apps/platforms exist is to
| simplify the on boarding process. Of course that's a two
| edged sword. You give normal users an easy way out but now
| pro users get frustrated because they can't use their
| favorite tool.
|
| I am sure org-mode is as good as you say though.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Yes, Emacs for average Joe is a non starter. Which is why I
| mentioned anyone serious about note taking. Most average
| joes are not really serious about maintaining, organizing
| and retrieving information. Anybody who is, OTOH,
| eventually builds up a monstrosity. Its like putting floors
| on a tent and one day waking up to Empire State. Now the
| very foundation that allowed quick start starts limiting
| your construction and daily use. Emacs is exact opposite of
| that. It is only useful if you are already aware of complex
| requirements of _your_ note taking flow, and allows to
| mould itself to suit them.
|
| One more factor hindering Emacs adaptability is its very
| unique nature. There nothing else like it out there, nobody
| encounters it before they explicitly start off on it with
| clear intent.
| scpedicini wrote:
| I read the Wikipedia entry for it but it didn't really shed a
| lot of light on these types of questions:
|
| 1. Can I embed images and more specifically can I embed
| animated GIF files?
|
| 2. Can I embed MP3s and play them within the note?
|
| 3. Does it support rich text editor functionality including
| the ability to insert tables easily from programs like
| Microsoft excel?
|
| 4. Can I use multiple fonts in the same individual note
| including monospaced ones and broad support for Unicode?
|
| 5. Can I easily sync and edit the data on my iPad, then on my
| android phone without having to worry about where the data is
| stored?
|
| 6. Will it automatically OCR embedded images and allow me to
| do text searches across my entire set of notes based on that
| text?
|
| If the answer to most of these questions is no, then it
| doesn't sound like org-note is the best note taking editor as
| you claim, it just sounds like it's the best editor for your
| _specific set of criteria_ which does not apply to all
| notetakers. And that 's the problem with trying to narrow
| down the best note editing tool, it's such a broad area that
| every notetaker will have their own idiosyncratic needs and
| priorities.
|
| As for me, I have also experimented with a great deal of note
| editing utilities and the only one that has reasonably met
| most of my requirements is Evernote.
|
| EDIT: of course if the answer is yes, then I may just have a
| new favorite note editor.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| 1. Embedding of images is pretty much file linking. It can
| display and let you intract with images inline, but that
| may not be up to your requirement.
|
| 2. Same as above, except playback will require a plugin.
|
| 3. Absolutely! Tables are fully supported, with automatic
| formatting and formulae and lots more. This is one of the
| strong areas of org-mode.
|
| 4. You can get bold, italic, monospaced varieties inline,
| with minimal markdown-like syntax. If you are asking for
| rich text mixing two different fonts, then no.
|
| 5. Yes! Since everything is stored in text files, you can
| syc them via any means you deem fit. I personally have
| multiple Syncthing nodes (desktop, laptop and phones) and
| it works flawlessly.
|
| >it's the best editor for your specific set of criteria
|
| You are right. Perhaps better description would be org-mode
| is the worst note-taking tool, except all others.
|
| Why I would deem it best is because after decade of
| experimenting, I've cone to realise that plaintext is the
| king. Rich editors with inline images, media and fancy
| fonts are nice and _necessary_ when you 're preparing
| presentations or impressing someone, but when time comes to
| actual utility when talking about years upon years of notes
| and other documents, everything else falls short very
| quickly.
|
| Images and videos cannot be grepped, searching through
| formatted documents like Word where search program has rk
| ignore all the formatting is inherently slow and ultimately
| inaccurate. Compressing and encrypting and sharing
| plaintext is a breeze. Plaintext can be read thoroughly or
| skimmed through as needed. While writing plaintext, I don't
| have to worry about messing up formatting of whole document
| by entering right character at wrong place and then
| fiddling about it for hours.
|
| Rich text is nice for when your notes are small. They are
| nice to feel. But when you are rummaging about a mountain
| (which everyone eventually builds up if they document
| anything seriously), nothing matches sheer speed and
| utility of plaintext.
|
| Which leaves either dumb text or markdown. Markdown is
| nice, but org-mode is markdown in steroids. Even the simple
| act of being able to collapse sections with single key is a
| huge huge QoL improvement. Then there or org-babel for
| inline programming like Jupyter, org-roam for back links,
| org-ref for bibliography, pdf-tools with org roam for
| inline PDF annotation, and you can still grep everything
| mentioned here.
|
| Ultimately the purpose of notes (for me, goes without
| saying) is to preserve and eventually refer to,
| information. And plaintext, in my personal anecdotal
| opinion and experience, beats every other medium for
| storing, transferring, modifying and analyzing information.
| sjy wrote:
| What's the experience of searching and editing your org-
| mode notes on your (presumably Android, since Syncthing
| doesn't exist on iOS) phone like? I've been interested in
| org-mode for a while, but most advocates seem to spend
| all their time in front of a keyboard.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| After using org-mode since beginning of pandemic, I've
| realised that I do little to no editing on my phone.
|
| But for that little editing, Orgzly all from f-droid is
| pretty great. As a side bonus, it handles TODOs from my
| org-agenda to generate Android notifications! Very handy
| and very private.
|
| I'm not sure of Syncthing story on iOS as I don't have an
| apple device, but you can always store your notes on
| dropbox/icloud/whathaveyou. Unfortunately I lack any
| experience to be helpful with Apple devices otherwise.
| billyjobob wrote:
| Not sure how useful it is given Apple's restrictions, but
| it does exist: https://www.mobiussync.com/
| yokoprime wrote:
| Mobius Sync is an implementation of SyncThing for iOS
| kzrdude wrote:
| How do you organize suites of notes in org-mode? Do you
| keep very big documents or one file per project or
| current task, or how is it divided? And is it possible to
| have links and hierarchies?
|
| I'm still shopping for a good vim-based note taking
| solution.
| ynniv wrote:
| I use deft. A hot key brings up the list, then typing
| narrows the list based on name or content.
|
| https://jblevins.org/projects/deft/
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Like the sibling comment said, org-deft is pretty
| fantastic. I have a single folder with many many org
| files. I have tags in them for general attributes and
| link/backlink via org-roam so I can instantly get a
| bird's eye view of which notes relate to which.
|
| While actually editing, org-roam has simple double-
| bracket syntax that auto-completes existing filenames. If
| filename doesn't exist, it is created when the link is
| accessed first time automatically.
|
| Hierarchy gets established automatically as I track back
| links, or via org-roam graph view. But really, once I
| started linking notes extensively (because its so easy
| with org-roam), I realised that my structure ended up
| mostly as a graph rather than tree. However, org-mode
| itself has excellent tree style syntax within individual
| file, which comes in handy.
|
| Searching/analyzing can be done either from withing Emacs
| via elisp or externally via ripgrep/fd (I'm still noon at
| elisp)/
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Having used it extensively, you can setup org-mode
| however you want: a file per month, a file per thought, a
| file per project and everything in between.
|
| It is also the only note taking system I have seen that
| will let you link to an email. If you want to add a todo
| entry deep in some meeting notes reminding you to checkup
| on that email in 3 weeks, you can. And those todos will
| then show up in your agenda view.
|
| Unfortunately this doesn't work if you don't already use
| Emacs as your email client, which I guess you don't if
| you aren't also using org-mode.
| cyberlab wrote:
| > 1. Can I embed images and more specifically can I embed
| animated GIF files?
|
| This would use a lot of resources and quickly burden
| Standards Notes' servers. If it means we can't add images
| and Standard Notes is free because of that, that's a price
| I'm willing to pay.
| irrational wrote:
| OP is asking about org-mode, not Standard Notes.
| cyberlab wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. But my point still stands!
| bngybmgrglflps wrote:
| "Encrypt, store, share [files] on your own terms" is
| elegantly handled by (Rob Pike's) Upspin.
|
| Practically: upspinfs fusermounts a cloud storage bucket.
| (TCO: $0.01/GB/mo.) Transparent public-key crypto. Sharing is
| built into the protocol. Sane defaults.
|
| https://upspin.io/doc/faq.md
|
| https://youtu.be/ENLWEfi0Tkg
|
| Building notes on top feels almost too straightforward to
| monetize. (For that matter: 1password, any number of small-
| scale B2C things, ...)
| bebna wrote:
| like u said notes are really personal. I personally prefer
| paper the most, but if its about electronic notes, I settled
| with a folder that gets synced with syncthing to all devices
| and also got git for easy offsite backups with push. (yeah,
| syncthing does that too, but I like to have a history in my
| backups, to allow for single file and state restores)
|
| In this folder I categorise with subfolders and use simple
| markdown files to write down stuff and todo.txt for when I
| need tasklists. A dedicated file in root is used for
| collecting random stuff before there get sorted and another
| to collect all links that I wanna bookmark.
|
| This works very well on different types of devices at the
| same time. On android Markor is a good editor for it, on
| desktop/macs I recommend typora for the nice interface and
| obsidian.md for the nice navigation between files, if you
| don't have already have setup a favourite editor. Also works
| well with vim/emacs/vscode or anything else that handles
| plain text files.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I use Syncthing too! I will have to look into got backups
| sometime soon, so thanks for reminder.
|
| I once waivered between markdown and org-mode. But the
| ecosystem of Emacs packages that build _on top of_ org-mode
| is mindblowing. Tables with formulae, inline programming
| (in your language of choice), back links, PDF annotations,
| bibliography, automatic conversion to HTML /PDF/LaTeX,
| still unmatched repetitive tasks in TODOs, even simple text
| collapsing, and so much more. And none of this weighs down
| your particular setup because you just ignore what you
| don't use and it never loads!
|
| I personally realised that I'm never going todo any serious
| editing on my phones so Orgro/Orgzly work very well on
| Android. And since everything is plaintext, any org file
| can be opened in any editor and edited normally. I have a
| simple editor app from f-droid which works very well.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| 5.1. No keyboard shortcuts. Not even for a 'New Note':
| https://github.com/standardnotes/forum/issues/1119
|
| The refund process is not automatic either, be prepared for a
| back-and-forth with customer support if you want to cancel a
| subscription.
| cyberlab wrote:
| > 3. They don't allow any form of account recovery. Which
| sounds really epic on paper but once you forget your password,
| you lose all your data.
|
| I actually like this. It's not a misfeature, but a feature. Too
| often email is a single point of failure and it's how the bulk
| of account takeover attacks happen. Compromise an email
| account, and you compromise every account attached to that
| email. Just don't forget your password to Standard Notes. Can't
| be hard right?
| thecodrr wrote:
| > It's not a misfeature, but a feature.
|
| It's inconvenient and unnecessary. I don't get what can be so
| hard about just giving the user the encryption key. In the
| recovery flow you can just ask the user for the recovery key
| to decrypt the data and reset the password. That's how
| Notesnook does it. The email can never become a single point
| of failure like this.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| If there is another piece of data that can be used in the
| same way as the password (or to override/reset the
| password) then it is completely equivalent to the password
| itself from a security perspective.
|
| If you can lose the password, what prevents you losing
| _both_ the password _and_ this secondary key at the same
| time? If you store them in separate places, then just store
| two copies of the original password in those two places.
| thecodrr wrote:
| What you say is right and that is how password managers
| work. However, human habit is that people generally keep
| their password in their heads. The point of giving a
| secondary key is that:
|
| 1. Since it is longer, the user is forced to store it in
| a file or some other place
|
| 2. The message behind "recovery key" is different to the
| "password" so users react different to it. Giving it more
| value and attention.
|
| 3. Encryption keys are still rare in clients so it stands
| out and the user again gives it more attention.
|
| With that said, it is entirely possible that the user
| won't save the key or lose it. In which case, nothing can
| be done.
|
| It isn't an ideal solution to account recovery problem
| but so far I have found this to be the only solution if
| you are going the zero-knowledge route.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Well yeah they don't offer any account recovery -- that's a
| sign the encryption might be trustworthy. It's only a negative
| if you don't care about that.
| thecodrr wrote:
| I myself thought no account recovery automatically meant
| safety. It sounds very cool. However, in the past week alone,
| around 10 users of Notesnook came asking for a way to recover
| their account because they had forgotten their password.
|
| I mean, why should privacy be at such a huge risk to users'
| data?
|
| For the tech savy, Notesnook offers account recovery by
| giving the user option (actual kind of forcing) to save the
| encryption key someplace safe. Not ideal, of course, but
| better than nothing.
| mkl wrote:
| So they download the encryption key (unprotected so no
| password needed) as a file, and they keep the file safe?
| That's the kind of thing I've been thinking about for an
| idea of mine. What did those 10 users ask about? How to use
| the encryption key file?
| TylerE wrote:
| The problem with that sort of thing is that you now have
| one of two situations
|
| 1. Either the key is only as secure as what ever random
| online service you have it backed up on (in which case,
| it might as well be stored at SN and save the user all
| kinds of headaches)
|
| 2. The key isn't backed up, and this won't be realized
| until the worst possible time.
| mkl wrote:
| Well, putting a couple of USB drives in a sock drawer,
| garden shed, etc. is pretty secure. Point 2 is the tricky
| one, as communicating that necessity seems challenging.
| TylerE wrote:
| Unless your house burns down, or you get flooded out,
| etc.
| mkl wrote:
| Yes, that's why the garden shed or some other non-house
| location is good (leaving it with relatives in another
| city would be good too, and at work would be an option
| for some).
| thecodrr wrote:
| 1. That is up to the user. They can save it wherever they
| like: a secure online storage, a USB, a piece of paper...
|
| 2. True but there are a couple of things you can do: i)
| regularly remind the user via email and in-app
| notification to backup their recovery key. ii) force the
| user to download/copy the recovery key on login/signup.
|
| By force, I really do mean force. Don't let the user use
| the app until they click the download recovery key
| button.
| thecodrr wrote:
| No, what the recovery key actually was because it asked
| for it in the recovery UI.
| mkl wrote:
| I see. Were they able to restore access once you
| explained? Or had they not saved it somewhere safe? I'm
| trying to understand the communication requirements
| around such a feature.
| thecodrr wrote:
| For most of them it seemed unnecessary; people don't
| realize the meaning of client-side encryption. I try to
| keep explanations very short and to the point.
|
| > had they not saved it somewhere safe?
|
| I had to delete 2 user accounts because they hadn't saved
| the key at all. All others had saved and were able to
| recover access. However, most didn't even realize they
| had saved it until I asked them to check their phone
| storage. A normal user would do anything to get past
| dialogs and popups, including clicking on random buttons.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| the way they have their free and paid features separated seems
| pretty lame. with other note taking services, if i decide to go
| back to the free tier for a while it will still be useable for
| the most part but with standard notes i would lose basic
| features like the ability to organise notes or to edit them in
| the same way. so basically once you start paying you are locked
| in for life
| Shacklz wrote:
| > 7. Their pricing seems absurd.
|
| I actually really like their pricing model. You can buy years
| in advance, and they occasionally offer steep discounts (I
| think I bought two decades in advance around new year?). In a
| time where more and more services offer me no other way than
| some crappy monthly subscription that I cannot pay in advance
| and without auto-renewal, this is really much appreciated.
|
| That being said, a lot of your points seem valid - I've started
| using SN quite some time ago and haven't really noticed any new
| features since (except for some editor-improvements).
| Organization is indeed something that probably could use some
| love, the tags do suffice for me personally (especially with
| that one extension that lets you create folders with tags), but
| barely. While I appreciate their stability with regards to UX
| (it looks/feels the same since forever), the features you
| mentioned (collapsing, rightclick-menu) would not hurt.
|
| Their 'lack of new features' however is, as far as I
| understood, somewhat intentional - back when I bought it I've
| read somewhere on the page that they explicitly have the
| philosophy to also say 'No' to new features if they think it
| threatens their guarantee of long-term stability/support. Which
| I think is a very admirable stance these days where short-term-
| KPIs seem to dominate entire industries.
| thecodrr wrote:
| > Their 'lack of new features' however is, as far as I
| understood, somewhat intentional.
|
| Um that sounds great but I don't see how a simple thing like
| a "right-click menu" endangers longevity? All their talk of
| simplicity and yet they allow you to add a whole spreadsheet
| editor? I suppose adding editors is simple stuff that's why
| they have so many. Maybe longevity = less work?
|
| Features are not bad. Some features are necessary. Some
| features enhance the general user experience and even make
| things simpler. Stagnation is not longevity, it's just slow
| death.
|
| As for pricing: sure, the long term plan is appealing but
| they ask $9/mo? Which is the most expensive note taking app
| out there, I think.
|
| You buy for 5 years or 20 years but what if nothing in the
| service changes in 20 years but your situation/use case
| changes drastically as is normal? What do you do of the
| additional money you paid? You can't get it back.
|
| I don't think 5 year commitment speaks of longevity, that's
| just marketing. Longevity would be them taking the money
| after 5 years, not before.
|
| I personally love monthly models because I spend exactly the
| amount I need and I can stop/pause when I want and start it
| again when I want. Its freedom and there's no commitment.
| That's why I added only 1 monthly plan in Notesnook.
|
| A service should ask you to commit long term because the risk
| is always too high. Instead it should allow for multiple ways
| to get your data out in case it ever goes down. And if it
| goes down, you can be sure that you lose only 1 month of
| fees.
| ay wrote:
| I used the app quite actively for a couple of years and maybe
| had one conflict at most.
|
| Maybe I don't do edits as intensely as you do.
|
| The free plan was perfectly adequate for the first year, then I
| explored the editors in the paid plan but found I got used to
| plain text much more so switched off all the add-ons. Was happy
| to compensate developers for a great app.
|
| Forgotten password recovery is very simple:
|
| Export an unencrypted backup on one device, delete the account
| from everywhere, recreate the account, reimport the backup.
|
| Search in a single big list worked absolutely fine for me but
| maybe it's just the way my brain works :-)
|
| I didn't notice much feature disparity but then again maybe I
| just like minimalism.
|
| Same about the UI - it's perfect. Very fast and no clutter.
|
| Not sure what is absurd about their pricing. I paid the 5 year
| plan mainly as a token of thanks, because the app is absolutely
| perfect for my taste and use.
| thecodrr wrote:
| It's great that SN works well for you but reading about your
| workarounds/compromises do not make SN better but you as a
| user better.
|
| For example, as you detailed, there is a way to recover your
| password but you have to do all the steps manually (although
| I still don't know how you are going to delete your account
| without your password...).
|
| > Same about the UI - it's perfect.
|
| I am curious as to how no context menu for notes makes for a
| perfect UI for you.
|
| The point is of course there are workarounds and ways to make
| things work for you and that's okay for a free app. If you
| pay for a service, you want that service to do every thing
| you want because that's the whole point.
| ay wrote:
| All I care is a distributed text replication to all of the
| available platforms, with no lock-in and decent search.
| Standard notes does it perfectly.
|
| Context menu? Not sure what would I be using it for. But
| then again it's my mode of operation.
|
| I also have Simplenote, which also works well, but the e2e
| encryption (and lack of account recovery!) is what attracts
| me to standard note.
|
| About the plan. The point is: the free plan is absolutely
| perfect for me, and I choose to pay just to say thanks for
| a great product.
|
| The only thing missing for me is ability to see multiple
| accounts merged in a single UI - that would allow very easy
| sharing of notes.
|
| For that I use iCloud or simplenote.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > Standard Notes is a phenomenal note taking app and one of the
| first to bring encryption in note taking. They take security
| very seriously and have multiple third party audits.
|
| > They don't allow any form of account recovery. Which sounds
| really epic on paper but once you forget your password, you
| lose all your data.
|
| You can't have both. If the service has account recovery after
| you lose your password or encryption keys, it can only mean
| that there is no any meaningful encryption. Just don't lose
| your passwords, it's quite simple these days with passwords
| managers.
| thecodrr wrote:
| > You can't have both. If the service has account recovery
| after you lose your password or encryption keys, it can only
| mean that there is no any meaningful encryption.
|
| Incorrect. Check Notesnook[1]. It solves both of those
| things.
|
| [1]https://notesnook.com/
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It is obvious that you misunderstand something. Please
| respond with how exactly they achieve this.
| thecodrr wrote:
| It's very simple.
|
| Since the encryption key is basically derived from your
| password, Notesnook allows you to backup the encryption
| key.
|
| This encryption key + a random salt is used to encrypt
| all the data client-side.
|
| In case you forget your password but have the encryption
| key somewhere safe, you can easily use the encryption key
| to have your data decrypted.
|
| Notesnook does the above by sending a recovery link to
| your email. After you click on the email, it
| authenticates you for a short period of time (30m) and
| shows the recovery UI. You can put your recovery key in
| the input. The app downloads the encrypted data from the
| server, decrypts using the key you gave, and if
| successful, asks you for a new password. Once you give
| the new password, it re-encrypts everything using the new
| encryption key.
|
| All this happens in 2 steps. You can try it out yourself.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| If you have the encrypted key 'somewhere safe', it is not
| account recovery because your key was never lost. It is
| just a more elaborate password change.
|
| As I've said, you can't have both meaningful encryption
| (as in service operators can't decrypt data by
| themselves) and account recovery (as in you've lost
| credentials necessary to access account).
| thecodrr wrote:
| > If you have the encrypted key 'somewhere safe', it is
| not account recovery because your key was never lost. It
| is just a more elaborate password change.
|
| Uh...what? I think you misunderstood. You use the
| "password" to access your account, encryption key to
| decrypt the data. You lose the password, you lose access
| to your account _and_ your data. However, server has the
| ability to grant you access to your account without the
| password. BUT Access is not equal to decryption of data.
|
| The key that _you_ have is used to decrypt _your_ data on
| _your_ device. The "service operator" is _never_
| involved in the decryption step; only the access step.
|
| This is the _only_ way to recover account access + data
| for zero knowledge apps. It is similar to the [backup
| data - > delete account -> create new account -> restore
| backup] process but it's automated and much more secure.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > The key that you have is used to decrypt your data on
| your device.
|
| Oh so you need a safely stored key and your own device to
| decrypt data. Lol. Why do you say we need to use that
| service, if all is done on user's device?
|
| but being serious, everything you say just proves my
| point, yet, somehow, you refuse to see it.
| actinium226 wrote:
| How do they achieve it?
| thecodrr wrote:
| Check this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26845877
| FiloSottile wrote:
| Is the cryptography protocol documented anywhere?
|
| The link on your website under the end-to-end heading leads to
| the Privacy Policy, that only mentions "XChaCha20-Poly1305-IETF
| & Argon2" which is far from enough details, especially for a
| closed source app with no audits.
|
| From the names it sounds like you use libsodium, which is good,
| but it doesn't make rolling your own protocol safe.
| thecodrr wrote:
| We are a bit lacking on the documentation side currently.
| However, there is no new protocol. It says
| "XChaCha20-Poly1305-IETF & Argon2" because that's the core
| part. Everything else is standard.
|
| I'll write up a doc on how encryption + syncing works though.
| And I have full plans to open source the security related
| parts of the app.
| ipiz0618 wrote:
| Thanks for posting! It checks most of the boxes for me. I've
| been using Simplenote which is perfect and minimal for note
| taking. But when I start to blog I find the lack of live
| preview and spellcheck inconvenient.
|
| Looking forward to the desktop apps and possibly offline
| support!
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| If you're on a Mac, Simplenote works great in conjunction
| with Nvalt (a fork of Notational Velocity)
| thecodrr wrote:
| > Thanks for posting! It checks most of the boxes for me.
|
| That's awesome. I am glad you liked it!
|
| > Looking forward to the desktop apps and possibly offline
| support!
|
| The desktop apps are coming soon. You can track our roadmap
| on Github: https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook/blob/ma
| in/ROADMAP...
| bartvk wrote:
| What's great about Simplenote, is that it's backed by a nice
| company that seems to be a good steward year in, year out. No
| unnecessary features, just continued stable maintenance.
| sealeck wrote:
| There's also listed.to which is nice for blogging.
| aheckler wrote:
| > But when I start to blog I find the lack of live preview
| and spellcheck inconvenient.
|
| What platform are you using Simplenote on? On macOS at least,
| you can write in Markdown and preview it with Cmd+Shift+P.
| Spellcheck also seems to work for me, but maybe that's a
| macOS thing and not specifically a Simplenote thing.
|
| Disclosure: I work at Automattic, but not on Simplenote.
| ipiz0618 wrote:
| I'm on windows and unfortunately I can't find the
| spellcheck option. I'd like to sometimes write on iPad,
| that's why I want an app with cross platform support.
| yarcob wrote:
| I'm always curious who is behind a company. How many people work
| there, how it is funded, where they are based, type of
| corporation, etc.
|
| These things make a big difference. Eg I typically trust a non
| profit that's been around for a couple of years more than a
| venture funded startup that just launched.
|
| This company doesn't even state where they are based or what the
| name of the company is on the website. They have a statement on
| longevity on their website, but no mention at all who this
| company even is.
|
| This does not inspire trust.
| Aeolun wrote:
| This is normally required to be on the website for some
| countries. Guess they're not in one of those.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I guess this is feedback to them, then. They have a longevity
| statement https://standardnotes.org/longevity but this is talk,
| and you need to see some more foundational information that
| demonstrates that it's worth taking their word about longevity.
| ttiurani wrote:
| Company information can in fact be found on the website, but I
| hate it that they use a .org website when they're clearly just
| yet another startup.
| Sebguer wrote:
| What does this mean?
|
| Their app is open source:
| https://github.com/standardnotes/web
|
| The first release was in 2017? I don't see any sign of them
| having taken any funding?
| ttiurani wrote:
| Being open source does not mean they aren't commercial. IMO
| using a .org as their only domain is flat out misleading:
| the honest way is to have only the source code and
| community in the .org and the commercial offering in a
| .com.
| Sebguer wrote:
| That's entirely fair! I don't think they're a 'typical
| startup' though, at least from a cursory look. Generally,
| it doesn't feel like there's much adherence to TLD norms
| these days at all.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| I don't think they're a startup. They are a software
| company selling a saas though.
|
| .com for commercial, .org for non commercial organisations
| is the historic breakdown.
|
| Sure, people use all sorts of domain extensions these days.
| That said I don't think Twitch is trying to trick people in
| to thinking they're based in Tuvalu whereas I can't say the
| same with this company and being a non commercial
| organisation.
|
| Don't see what open source has to do with anything. Tons of
| very much profit seeking companies have open source code.
| ttiurani wrote:
| Clearly a VC-funded startup is worse than a bootstrapped
| one, but IMO whether or not a company is a startup or not
| comes down to if they want exponential growth or not. It
| doesn't say that they do on the website but I nowadays
| assume that if they didn't, they'd proudly proclaim it.
|
| But I could be wrong about the startup part and they in
| fact just want to be a profitable small business.
| windthrown wrote:
| Not to belabor the "startup" debate but they actually do
| discuss growth goals on the blog:
|
| "We don't want to speak for you, but we're sure you've
| felt it: Ever notice how your favorite applications seem
| to get slower over time? That's no coincidence. They call
| that "growth". It happens because panicked teams were
| frantically trying to throw more functions at what was a
| good idea for some stupid business goal. And a good idea
| turns into something that isn't, real quick. That thing
| you loved metastasized into something you hate.
|
| If simplicity keeps us from adding features, so be it.
| Standard Notes is officially an anti-growth company. We
| don't mind. We set out to do one thing well: Allow you to
| write your notes and thoughts privately without friction,
| on every device you own..."
|
| https://blog.standardnotes.org/why-simplicity-is-the-
| only-wa...
| ttiurani wrote:
| Hmm, I don't interpret that to be a statement about the
| growth of the user base or revenue, but about not adding
| new features to the product?
| Sebguer wrote:
| Their twitter is from 2016.
|
| Their linked blog has posts going back to 2017.
|
| Their FAQ covers their core dependencies:
| https://standardnotes.org/help/52/what-services-does-standar...
|
| What your options are if they go out of business:
| https://standardnotes.org/help/4/what-happens-to-my-data-if-...
|
| Where they are based, where their servers are, and why they've
| made the choices they have:
| https://standardnotes.org/help/39/what-country-is-standard-n...
|
| They also list an office address, a slack you can join, and
| several email addresses for outreach at the bottom of their
| FAQ: https://standardnotes.org/help
|
| I don't think it's their transparency that's the problem.
| eps wrote:
| "Office address" is that of their lawyers, which is not
| uncommon, but it also means that they aren't necessarily US-
| based.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=350+N+Orleans+St.+STE+9000N+Chicag.
| ..
|
| GP's concern is a very valid one. The identity of developers
| and their location makes an absolutely crucial difference for
| a project that roots itself in the crypto tech. Being wishy-
| washy with this info is exceptionally unhelpful as it is
| damaging.
|
| In this case, the actual company can be from an origin (or a
| country) that would make you think twice before even
| installing it, leave alone letting it touch any of your data.
| Them being vague here adds more questions than it answers.
| austincheney wrote:
| From the comments it seems there is a dedicated following to a
| variety of note taking apps. Is that following almost exclusively
| limited to smartphones? Do people use note taking apps on their
| desktops/laptops?
| legerdemain wrote:
| After clicking around in growing confusion, I finally found a
| single screenshot of the application in action in the GitHub
| README file. Spoiler: it looks like any other note-taking
| application.
| thatswrong0 wrote:
| Yeah if there's anything that will prevent me from downloading
| a free application like this.. it would be the complete lack of
| a preview of what the thing is. Strange decision not to include
| a screenshot or gif of the application in action ANYWHERE on
| the marketing site.
| actinium226 wrote:
| You can also use the web version. To me that's what I like
| about SN. Joplin/Obsidian seem cool, but I'd rather
| everything be in the cloud, so that if change computers I
| don't have to go through endless setup.
| 13rac1 wrote:
| I was confused too without a screenshot in the readme, but
| realized I could just run it: https://app.standardnotes.org/
| SCLeo wrote:
| Just making sure, Standard Notes is text only (i.e. No support
| for hand-draw lines), right?
|
| If that is correct, I assume then it will be very difficult for
| people like me whose note taking habits heavily revolves around
| drawing diagrams/annotating pictures to use.
|
| Nothing wrong with Standard Notes. I am just trying to confirm it
| is indeed not the tool for me.
| aryehof wrote:
| Does Standard Notes require a network connection to store data,
| or is data stored locally and synced when a network connection is
| available?
|
| I wonder how important (offline) local first storage of data is
| these days to users of these types of apps?
| windthrown wrote:
| It is stored locally (encrypted) and then synced when a
| connection is available.
|
| Personally, I write enough notes on my phone in situations
| without an internet connection (airplane travel, subway
| commuting etc) that losing local storage would be a deal-
| breaker for me.
| aryehof wrote:
| Many thanks!
| misterremote wrote:
| I just came across Standard Notes when I did a research for
| companies who work 4 days a week:
| https://remotehunt.com/standardnotes
|
| Very cool!
| CoryAlexMartin wrote:
| I really wish this weren't a clunky 200MB Electron app.
| cube00 wrote:
| From their homepage: "It's faster and lighter than most notes
| apps"
|
| VSCode is 69 MB, this is 101 MB
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I use the web version and it's great, no install or anything
| (obviously need internet access).
| trinix912 wrote:
| > obviously need internet access
|
| Yea because no one ever needs to access their notes anywhere
| with bad/no connection.
| spamtarget wrote:
| this doesn't need to be an internet service, your computer is
| absolutely capable of do something like this and you can choose
| any of your favorite backup service. 10 bucks a month , its a
| joke
| kushan2020 wrote:
| Me including lot of people hate the following about todays note
| apps which have one or more of the following:
|
| - Forces you to split screen of writing markdown on one side and
| rendered version on another.
|
| - Is a bloated electron app.
|
| - Data is not portable i.e. there is proprietary format or saved
| in the servers.
|
| It is a shameless pug but I am working on creating a WYSIWYG note
| taking app [1] that is web based, portable and fast. I would love
| to offer that as an alternative if anyone is interested.
|
| [1] https://bangle.io
| mickeyd290 wrote:
| Bangle.io looks interesting, thanks. I can edit my local
| Markdown files in a web browser. How does it connect to GitHub?
| I tried the "Workspace: Import workspace from a Github URL" but
| it didn't appear to do anything. It would be great if Bangle.io
| could use GitHub as a backend store as an alternative to local
| hard drive storage.
| gustavorg wrote:
| 100 mb download? No, thanks. Long time ago I implemented a small
| application to store my passwords and personal notes, using
| Imgui, and it has encription and everything I need: < 5mb. I
| should publish it.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The use of the name "Standard" annoys me, it's presumptuous. You
| have to earn "standard" status, you can't just claim it
|
| Also, Electron makes this a no-go for me.
| fastball wrote:
| What's the problem with Electron?
| sodality2 wrote:
| The usual arguments include performance waste of an entire
| browser for a single tab, especially while running
| concurrently with a web browser, and that is an "easy way
| out" of doing cross platform.
|
| Side note: this is why I run Trilium Notes, another notes
| app, in the web browser instead of as a desktop app; I am
| already good at managing tabs, and not being able to merge
| the electron tab into my browser makes it harder to deal with
| (and less performant)
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| I don't mean to be snarky, but what's the purpose of apps like
| this? Notepad.exe is 227 KB, runs instantly and flawlessly on
| even ancient environments, and gives all the basics. If you need
| something more "Power User," Notepad++ gives some language-
| sensitive formatting, tabs for easy switching between files, and
| plugins for custom use cases.
|
| If you need something more specific to a given language, that's
| an IDE, not a note taking program. If you need to write something
| with a bunch of rich formatting, that's a word processor, not a
| note taking program.
|
| The point of a note taking program is to be as blindingly simple,
| fast, and reliable as possible. It's the software equivalent of
| grabbing a scrap of paper (or maybe a little flip notebook) and
| scratching something down before you forget it. All this
| complexity defeats the purpose. A 200MB Electron app with _web
| integration_ definitely defeats the purpose.
|
| For the curious and lazy, this is what it looks like:
| https://files.catbox.moe/kcelmg.PNG. Note that this was after I
| clicked off a large, complex dialog nagging me to create an
| account and sign in. Already this looks way too complex for my
| taste.
|
| Why are people so endlessly fascinated with forcing everything on
| the cloud? I have txt and rtf documents from decades ago that
| have survived through backup after backup. Meanwhile, if this
| program's servers go down tomorrow, tough luck.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| I see comments like this from time to time and can't help but
| wonder if they're serious or just satire at this point. People
| have mobile devices. People have windows and Mac (and Linux!)
| devices. People want seamless sync and sharing, simple
| formatting, for it to work across platforms, and for it to be
| exportable into some portable format.
|
| Sure, you can spend a lot of time forcing notepad and word into
| some sad version of a real app. Or you can pony up $5-10 a
| month, save your time for something valuable, and actually have
| a note taking app that'll serve you well.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing, but instead of notepad, emacs
| with org-mode. Keeping files in sync is a separate problem that
| your note taking app should not have to solve, there's already
| many good solutions out there.
| 13rac1 wrote:
| > I don't mean to be snarky, but what's the purpose of apps
| like this?
|
| 1. Note organization via tags with a searchable database 2.
| Secure off-site backup 3. Device-to-device syncing
|
| I'm sure there are more. I wish it wasn't written in Electron,
| but it wouldn't exist otherwise.
|
| As a web application: https://app.standardnotes.org/
|
| > Meanwhile, if this program's servers go down tomorrow, tough
| luck.
|
| It is open source, you can run the server yourself:
| https://github.com/standardnotes/syncing-server
| thecodrr wrote:
| You are forgetting that a huge category of people need all
| their notes in one place, organized and separate from
| everything else. Sure you can do this with Notepad and manage
| everything in folders etc. but that takes significant effort.
| Effort that many people don't want to put in. That is why most
| note apps, even something like Notion, exist. To simplify the
| organising process. You aren't paying for the editing
| experience but everything else.
|
| Of course, for very simple note taking you don't need this but
| it again comes back to my original point that by using a
| dedicated app, everything, including the rough 1 minute notes,
| are in one easy-to-find place.
|
| I myself take a lot of txt notes but easily lose them as well.
| Fortunately for me, they aren't important and I rarely need to
| access them again but it's always nice if I have them all in
| once place so I can go over them and see what I wrote/did.
|
| Disclaimer: I am a developer of a note-taking application
| called Notesnook[1]. Some might say it is a (hopefully better)
| alternative to Standard Notes.
|
| [1] https://notesnook.com/
| hildebrand_rare wrote:
| I think for this app, the purpose is a convenient and secure
| writing space that's available across devices. I've been a
| Standard Notes customer for several years now, and I went with
| it because I was looking for a secure solution for my
| journaling. I wanted a secure place to write my deepest
| thoughts at home and on the go, and also a way to quickly and
| easily access, edit, and review those thoughts across all of my
| devices. That's a tall order.
|
| This conflict of desires lead me to the age old trade-off of
| security versus convenience. If I want security / privacy, I
| should use only local text editing tools and keep everything on
| an encrypted volume, preferably on an airgapped machine. If I
| want pure convenience, I should use any of the million great
| cloud-based note and document options that are available on any
| device. If I want to fall anywhere between those extremes on
| the spectrum, I'll need to decide the most convenient option I
| can bear that provides the most security. And for me, I landed
| on Standard Notes when exploring this question for myself.
|
| It's a lightweight and easy text editing program that is
| encrypted and secure anytime my writing leaves my sphere of
| control. It allows for search of my notes, filtering by title
| and date created/modified, and it has great sync between all of
| my devices to the point that I can pick it up any device and
| write a thought as it comes and not worry about sync conflicts
| if multiple instances of my note are open across devices. There
| are easy options to automate encrypted local backups and even
| daily cloud-based ones if you're a paying customer. I can
| export everything to plain text quite easily - which is my
| preferred format - so I'm in no way dependent on their
| continuing to exist.
|
| If you want to read/write notes seamlessly across all of your
| devices and you also want to stay private and secure, your
| options grow limited right away. Standard Notes is the best
| compromise of these competing interests that I've found so far
| for my own situation. So even though I have the ability to use
| other tools as you've described - and many of them are better
| writing tools than Standard Notes - I still choose to pay SN as
| a customer.
| Veen wrote:
| For some people, notepad.exe is sufficient, but not for
| everyone. I'm a professional researcher and writer. My notes
| are much more than "the software equivalent of grabbing a scrap
| of paper." They're an essential information management and
| organization tool without which I couldn't do my job.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I don't mind paying, but I've never cared for this product's
| pricing. If you want to pay monthly, it's $10 a month, which no
| sane person would pay for a plain notes editor and nothing else.
| The reasonable price is $30/year but you have to pay for _five
| years in advance_. Sure, we all have to eat, but it 's not a sign
| of confidence if you're trying to push me to pay for five years
| in advance. If you believe in what you're selling, charge me
| $2.50 a month and give me a reason to stay.
| thecodrr wrote:
| For this, you might find Notesnook (https://notesnook.com/) a
| better alternative. I mean its still $4.49 but I suppose that's
| still a lot cheaper. (Disclaimer: I am the developer so this
| may be a shameless plug, idk).
| system_32 wrote:
| Is there a limit of how many times you can try to self
| promote in one post?
| tekchip wrote:
| They take security very seriously...if you pay. Two factor being
| behind the paywall is absurd.
|
| I called this concern out with the creators and was summarily
| dismissed with no good explanation why security, a key feature,
| takes a back seat to money.
| beders wrote:
| I find those discussions around how secure this app is or not is
| pretty funny.
|
| The answer is: It's not. Not for any kind of end device attack.
| You are literally typing a note into a text field provided by the
| OS. You are reading it in an app through the OS rendering system.
|
| It is in clear-text in memory several times.
|
| There's no privacy on the internet. There's only hurdles of maybe
| increasing difficulty, but the decision to use a cloud-based
| note-taking app should be around the actual important features.
|
| Yes, I still want apps I'm using to follow best practices with
| encryption for data in transfer and at rest, but can't be the
| main trick.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| UX is very lacking. You can't have local text files (that you can
| backup on your own). The entire thing is, and feels just like, a
| web app in a poorly designed wrapper app.
|
| There were few more glaring issues the last time I was comparing
| note apps to replace notion + nv (+ Dyrii) setup. I've decided to
| give FSNotes a try. Hope I like it and it doesn't go Electron or
| subscription later.
| astaza123 wrote:
| what's the point of "end-to-end encrypted" if the keys are still
| on the server?
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| Where does it say that?
|
| I see here - https://standardnotes.org/knowledge/2/what-is-end-
| to-end-enc... the claim is: "Whenever we move your encrypted
| data over a network, in order to deliver services to you, it is
| sent over a strictly secure connection to only our private
| servers. Because this data is encrypted, we can't read it, and
| we can't sell it."
|
| (I use Standard Notes, and if there's some element of the
| security model that I'm misunderstanding, I'd like to know :) )
| astaza123 wrote:
| it doesn't say that anywhere indeed, but this is my
| understanding: if you reload the page your login is being
| preserved without re-entering your password. there's no way
| to maintain this without storing a key on the server (i.e.
| either the master key (MK), or a key that encrypts the MK, if
| the MK is stored locally
| sealeck wrote:
| Can't you store it in LocalStorage or IndexedDB
| astaza123 wrote:
| you can. however, i hope they don't store it unencrypted
| - it's a very bad security practice for many reasons.
| assuming they store it encrypted with a temporary session
| key, the session key will necessarily be on the server.
| honestly, storing it on the server in a session storage
| is not a big deal. my original points are that a) web
| security is hard b) web e2ee is sort of hype on practice
| sealeck wrote:
| From what I understand they store it unencrypted on the
| web, but in the device's keychain when using the Desktop
| application.
| mastazi wrote:
| is there an issue with my browser, or there are zero screenshots
| on that page? Anyone has a screenshot? I'm a bit of a visual
| person and I need to see stuff, just reading features lists won't
| do it for me...
|
| Edit: under the "extensions" page, if you scroll down a bit, you
| will eventually find some screenshots.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| elias94 wrote:
| I looked everywhere on the website and not a single screenshot.
| Has a CLI?
| sealeck wrote:
| It's a GUI application.
| marchides wrote:
| Online privacy. Lol.
| YuukiRey wrote:
| I have a 5 year subscription but I'm not sure if I would
| recommend SN to others. They're vision is secure, encrypted
| notes. User interface and editing experience is unfortunately not
| part of that vision.
|
| Rather than giving users over a dozen editors, some maintained by
| the SN folks, some merely integrated, I'd prefer a single,
| opinionated and robust editor.
|
| You often can't easily go from one editor to another. Some of
| them have bugs or are just a bit annoying to use.
|
| All my SN notes are therefore plaintext.
|
| I honestly think all note taking solutions out there kinda suck.
| You always end up sacrificing something. Often that's seamless
| cross device sync and security. Sometimes it's editor features.
| Google Keep for example is great for what it tries to achieve but
| it's just too limited for serious note taking in my opinion.
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