I discovered a few days ago this application
https://www.get-notes.com/
from what I see it is relatively young and has a lot of space for improvement and additions. However, it looks very clean and minimal, and the design team is very nice and helpful, reaching them on GitHub.
Then I think it's worth being mentioned here :D

Looks nice – like a slightly more sophisticated (with folders/subfolders) version of Simplenote, which remains the benchmark for ultra-simple cross-platform syncing note apps. Although I have high hopes for nvUltra...

The Ulysses-like ability to view multiple notes in a single screen is very neat, I must say. Would that more note-taking apps had that feature.

luc0x61 wrote:

I discovered a few days ago this application

I've given up on considering apps that don't have a revenue source of some kind, but this app looks nice. Seems very much like UpNote (although I prefer this app's UI) with the multi-select "gluing" of notes (and Markdown implementation) seen in Ulysses

from what I see it is relatively young

Looking at their blog version 1.0 came out in 2017 so it's not that young.

Thanks for the heads up! Looks nice and interesting; it's been a while since I saw this kind of 3-pane outliner setup.

I downloaded and installed but was unable to run it without it crashing. After some investigation it turned out that my antivirus was shutting it off because it didn't like it's behaviour. After some more investigation I found that Notes connects to a port at raw.githubusercontent.com by its own initiative.

The site is a legitimate part of github and there may be a good reason for such a connection, e.g., checking for updates. Nevertheless, call me conservative, but I dislike initiative in tools; I would have expected some option during Notes' installation for allowing such activity, but I recall none.

I may continue testing Notes, but will be keeping it nicely firewalled for the time being...

Hm, that is concerning. MalwareBytes hasn't complained about it on macOS, but that isn't necessarily reassuring... I hate undisclosed online activity!

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

The site is a legitimate part of github and there may be a good reason
for such a connection, e.g., checking for updates. Nevertheless, call me
conservative, but I dislike initiative in tools; I would have expected
some option during Notes' installation for allowing such activity, but I
recall none.

I may continue testing Notes, but will be keeping it nicely firewalled
for the time being...

Now, that is rather *unpleasant*, to say the least. I asked on the GitHub repository about that behavior. To me, an application that connects behind your back is definitively a no-no

Hello, I'm the founder of Notes.There's nothing strange about this, that's just part of the auto-update feature, which runs when you open the program.

What it does is to check on this page https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nuttyartist/notes/master/UPDATES.json if there's any new version. That's it.

You can disable this feature in two ways:

1. Open Notes
2. Click on the 'three dots' menu
3. Click on 'Check For Updates'
4. Tick 'Don't notify me automatically every time there's a new update'

And the other way would be compiling Notes from source and specifying the -DUPDATE_CHECKER=OFF option, which will completely disable any update checking features.

It's very nice to hear some kind words from you hear, and I want to say we learn from each and every criticism, so thanks!

I'm here if you have anything else to ask.

luc0x61 wrote:

Now, that is rather *unpleasant*, to say the least. I asked on the
GitHub repository about that behavior. To me, an application that
connects behind your back is definitively a no-no

Hi,

I'm one of the maintainers of Notes. We provided an answer to this here: https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/discussions/530

Basically, the reason for the external connection is to check for new versions. This can be disabled inside the app itself, or by building from source with a specific CMake option.

We will definitely take your feedback into account, and make sure we don't unnecessarily contact external servers without the user's knowledge. However, I personally feel like checking for updates is an exception to this: an application which has the ability to check for updates, will of course contact external servers.

If you have further questions or feedback, feel free to post it in the GitHub discussion above.

Thanks,
zjeffer

Thanks very much for the explanation – it's very reassuring ;-)

However, it might be an idea to do what so many other apps (e.g. Obsidian) do, namely give users the choice between manually prodding a "Check for updates" button and setting updates to "Automatic"?

I suspect that would solve the upset!

I like Notes, but do wish it had elegant punctuation (e.g. "smart" apostrophes) and a more consistent treatment of fonts (emboldening something changes both the size and type of font, for example). But it's still early days!

Keep up the good work!

zjeffer wrote:

Hi,

I'm one of the maintainers of Notes. We provided an answer to this here:
https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/discussions/530

Basically, the reason for the external connection is to check for new
versions. This can be disabled inside the app itself, or by building
from source with a specific CMake option.

We will definitely take your feedback into account, and make sure we
don't unnecessarily contact external servers without the user's
knowledge. However, I personally feel like checking for updates is an
exception to this: an application which has the ability to check for
updates, will of course contact external servers.

If you have further questions or feedback, feel free to post it in the
GitHub discussion above.

Thanks,
zjeffer

Thanks rubymamis and zjeffer for providing this information.

As Madaboutdana noted, opt-in to update checks would be the preferred setup rather than opt-out.

Please also consider the kind of exchange that takes place during this check. I don't recall my antivirus killing an application just for update checking before. Is it possible that you use some port that isn't often used, or otherwise raising suspicion through this communication?


rubymamis wrote:

Hello, I'm the founder of Notes.There's nothing strange about this,
that's just part of the auto-update feature, which runs when you open
the program.