Simplenote Review

Summary: I’ve spent about eight months of 2019 using SimpleNote for my solely text-based notes. Below is my summary off what I like and what annoys me after this time.

Good:

  • EXPORT: Only in the web app you can export a JSON file containing all notes, creation/mod date and tags. (I guess this also means you could create something to run a cool import to SimpleNote)
  • API: They do allow you access to their API if using for personal use.
  • OPEN SOURCE: They’ve opened source much of this code so I guess you could modify anything that upsets you!
  • SUPPORT: Someone did actually respond to an inquiry I had about the API.

Bad:

  • IMAGE EMBEDDING: You can embed an image using Markdown from external host but this seems like it’s a huge pain / slow and annotating a screenshot is a frequent need of mine.
  • MORE VERSATILE OPTIONS ALSO FAST: Apple Notes and Bear Notes allow you to do much more (images, sketches) without a loss of features from SimpleNote AND are mostly free as well. I originally just wanted the fastest-to-load notes app and though that might be this little app but I am not certain I can tell it loads up much faster than these others.
  • INCONSISTENT OPTIONS: Given they have a desktop app, it’s weird you have to log into the web app to run an export; seems this should be a function on desktop.
  • MINIMAL UPDATES or DEV: Really minimal amount of updates under Automattic ownership. They probably don’t really have ambitions to do much more with it … the whole being to keep it minimal.

Neutral:

  • VERSIONING: I haven’t actually use this feature but kinda cool that you can switch back to previous versions of a note.
  • CHECKBOXES: There is support for checkboxes but I use other tools for “to dos” so this doesn’t get to live in the “Good” section for me.
  • HIGHLY CROSS PLATFORM: Unlike Apple or Bear Notes which are only on Apple, this little guy can be run on almost everything including LINUX and Android. Since I usually just use Apple products, this is staying in this neutral area base don my needs.
  • OFFLINE ON iOS: You can still search your notes even when no internet connection is present.
  • POSSIBLE DATA LOSS?: Not sure I noticed this but I have read some posts that SimpleNote has had some data loss issues which concerns me.