I also just dropped 1.20.0, this is a very big release. MojoPad gets a canvas. Since I pushed out 3 releases before some of you may get around to downloading the latest, you might miss some of the popup what's new message for each release. I suggest you check the what's new section of the webpage: https://mojopad.app/whats-new

I am pushing out all of my backlog as it is getting to be too much to manage. 3 more releases will go out later today. 1.21.0, 1.22.0, and 1.23.0. Many, many, more new goodies coming your way. Once 1.23.0 is pushed, I will consider MojoPad pretty much feature complete. This means I will work on polish, any bug fixes as needed, etc. New features will be further spaced out and not as many. My goal was to get my vision all coded and released, 1.23.0, achieves this.

If you run into any issues or have any comments, drop them here or email me at support@mojopad.app
Thanks for taking this incredible journey with me. It grew faster than even I anticipated.

Mark

My last post for the evening. All releases have gone out. 1.23.0 is the most current release. Sorry to push all these out an once, but there were many reasons to do so on my end. You will feel like you have a new app to play with, but hey, that's why we are in this forum! Seriously, there is a lot here to digest in regards to features. MojoPad has grown from a kid to adulthood, very quickly. Take your time, look at the docs, check the what's new section of the website. Explore the app, with so many new features, you will be busy for a while exploring. Drop a note here or email me at support@mojopad.app and let me know what you think of this latest version. As you will see, I kept the interface intentionally simple, so those that still just want to create some notes and revisit them, you should not feel overwhelmed as many of the new features are tucked behind the scenes, behind a button. You can grow into the app at your own pace, exploring the new features as you need them.

Mark

You are amazing, Mark! I've never seen anything quite like it – MojoPad comes across as an astonishingly mature app, despite the dizzying rate of development.

I shall have to invest (not least because my 14 days have run out!) ;-)

Thanks, that rate of development was many, many, 16 hour days. Glad you like it. That "mature app" comment is exactly what I was striving for.

Mark

MadaboutDana wrote:

You are amazing, Mark! I've never seen anything quite like it – MojoPad comes across as an astonishingly mature app, despite the dizzying rate of development.

I shall have to invest (not least because my 14 days have run out!) ;-)

Hi Mark,

I have just tried MojoPad and I love what you have created. I have been trying to pin down what works for me in note taking apps and so I have been conscious of what I use.

I am an academic, and use note taking apps for:
-field notes (I absolutely love doing research in the field!),
-notes that hash out my thinking on concepts,
-notes that speak to the research of others (ie. literature notes),
-notes of analysis of interviews I have done, and,
-notes on insights I get from research meetings and conferences.

I find that I am very much a visual thinker and I am often creating diagrams that deal with the various concepts I am working with. As such, the app must be able to include the images of diagrams I created. My diagrams are similar to "Rich Pictures" in Soft Systems Methodology. Though I work with plain box and arrow types of diagrams as well. Being visually oriented, I find that the app I use needs to be pleasing on the eye. I have tried many apps, but Bear seems to work for me as it is the app with the most notes. Other apps contain just duplicate of notes I have in Bear. Bear is also able feature images nicely. I don't know what it is, but Bear just works for me.

I also work with lots of PDFs; research papers, interview transcripts (though these are in text form as well), and background information such as newspapers articles and company literature. The app does not necessarily have to manipulate the PDFs, just act as storage in the text of the note related to it for reference and further development of the note. Bear works somewhat for me here too.

Finally, I need to working both the Desktop and iOS versions of the note taking app, and Bear meets this requirement as well.

The features I instantly feel in love with MojoPad are:
-The UI is intuitive and most importantly to me is visually really pleasing. The beauty creates much less friction for what is a "busy" app.
-The extra features compared to Bear is amazing! The graph, the canvas, and many more. :)
-No need for plugins! I just works as is!
-Rich text ... I know that current trend is to work with Markdown, but I find that the Markdown code is too distracting. I can control the urge to tinker with the look of the text in Rich Text unnecessarily.
-You can easily change the order of the pages. (A real weakness of Bear!)

My wish list:
-In the "+" bar in the editor window, the hover over menu mentions "footnotes" but no footnote option is in the list of options. I would love to see the footnote option as well.
-Does MojoPad have offer inline/thumbnails for PDFs in the text of the a note. I could not find a way to do this.
-Have a handle so you can resize images to what ever size you like.
-An iOS version.
-A toggle button to make the side panels disappear and appear. I know that I can sort of use the focus mode, but I am often mistakenly clicking the X button and closing MojoPad when I just wanted to get out focus mode.

I will probably come up with a longer wish list as I use the trial version. (Unfortunately, I have to extremely selective in the apps I purchase because of the hit the Japanese has taken in exchange rates with the $US dollar).

Thanks again for creating MojoPad. I look forward to its future development.

We have had some flagship releases in the past week. A full blown outliner, a learning playground, exploring a topic in a rabbit hole fashion on the canvas, text to speech everywhere, have your PDF, EBUP, Notes, etc read to you in lifelike human voices, Book AI, summaries, key claims, unpacking, ask the book, and a unified left tree. The latest version is 1.40.0. I am generally curious to hear what people think of the latest releases, and now that MojoPad is generally feature complete, and has incorporated what most PKM/Second Brain, Outliner apps on the market do today, and then some. What do you like, not like, is there friction or it it easy to pick up run with it?

I was heavily focused on a frictionless solution to address many things we all do in the PKM, Second Brain, Outliner, Book Ingestion and highlighting space. MojoPad now does what I used to do with 5 tools. The app does a lot, yet does not feel bloated from a UI perspective, and is something that you can pick up and start to use. The flagship releases are now pretty much done, remaining releases will focus on bug fixes and continued polish. My intent shifted from a VooDooPad app replacement to a knowledge platform as I was nearing completion the the 1.0 build. Would love to hear if the app resonates with people along these lines. If you really enjoy using MojoPad, I would love for people to leave a review just below the download button at https://mojopad.app it helps people to see how others are using the app and what they like about it, which helps to keep MojoPad going.

You can view all the releases at: https://mojopad.app/whats-new

Mark

Hi Mark,
Well, it's been a bit overwhelming digesting all that change. I don't know what I think, yet. Frankly. I do know the app won't be a major PKM hub for me. I can see building out projects there now and then. I am heavily invested (years to decades) in other software for all my PKM stuff, and what I've learned (especially from the Evernote disasters of the past) is "don't lock-in / don't migrate". Which is why I prefer Obsidian for PKM still because it's all out there in front of me in a folder markdown files and attachments. I can't get the same warm and fuzzy assurance from a folder of JSON files because of the work needed to use them somewhere else.

I appreciate MojoPad's local-only AI philosophy, but that's not where most apps are. BYOK or MCP or CLI are the stories everywhere -- and we've seen in designs like DEVONthink 4 that that doesn't mean opening up the whole shebang to the LLMs. Constraint is configurable. I hope MojoPad can be more flexible about this in the future because others might not be sold on the local-only proposition.

Paul Korm wrote:

Hi Mark,
Well, it's been a bit overwhelming digesting all that change. I don't know what I think, yet. Frankly. I do know the app won't be a major PKM hub for me. I can see building out projects there now and then. I am heavily invested (years to decades) in other software for all my PKM stuff, and what I've learned (especially from the Evernote disasters of the past) is "don't lock-in / don't migrate". Which is why I prefer Obsidian for PKM still because it's all out there in front of me in a folder markdown files and attachments. I can't get the same warm and fuzzy assurance from a folder of JSON files because of the work needed to use them somewhere else.

I appreciate MojoPad's local-only AI philosophy, but that's not where most apps are. BYOK or MCP or CLI are the stories everywhere -- and we've seen in designs like DEVONthink 4 that that doesn't mean opening up the whole shebang to the LLMs. Constraint is configurable. I hope MojoPad can be more flexible about this in the future because others might not be sold on the local-only proposition.

Fully agree

Claude Cowork + Devonthink maintain privacy reasonably well

A terrific interaction would be a VooDooPad MCP so then we could say "Take my documents in x-devonthink-ABCDE and create a VooDooPad Wiki. Save the wiki in the same Devonthink Group."

Hello Paul,

Thanks for the feedback. I understand the updates have been fast, some like it, some don't. When I was nearing the completion of 1.0, I pivoted from being a very niche VooDooPad replacement, to another option in the PKM, Second Brain arena. I did not want to just create a clone of what existed in PKM. I knew I had to build in the same basic features and functionality, but I also knew I had to be different enough for people to want to use the platform. I have done this through what I feel is a good UI/UX, and some creative features that others do not have. In all my travels I hear quite a bit of noise about being local, currently it seems that what some want, and the "some" seems to be growing. It is hard to ideate on new features that are cool, yet stay local. Cross platform is another big one I see and get all the time. Once I release MCP, I will work on a Windows/Linux version as those markets are less crowded, and the demand is there for Windows and on a smaller scale Linux. MCP is in the works and will release next, then it becomes bug fixes, and polish, now that I feel I have caught up in the space.

I understand some people do not like change, others want new features, and some like options in the market. App development is not easy, trying to figure out what people want is the tough nut to crack. This is why you see developers all pivoting and implementing the next new thing, and watching what the competition is doing. We are just trying to figure out what people want. It is clear that AI is what people want, and it is coming fast. AI for me has opened up a new door to understanding connections in my thoughts and expanding my knowledge and understanding of new areas I may not have considered nor heard of prior.

I am curious to hear more on the hope MojoPad can be more flexible, I interpreted it as not being so local? I am always open to listening to people that use the app. I love hearing what works and what does not work, and what people expect out of a PKM/Second Brain app. I follow a lot of groups, app forums, etc. trying to understand what people are looking for. And to be honest, I am not sure people understand what they want. This forum is a perfect example. And I am right there with you all, wondering what else is out there to play with to see if it will be the next new app I move to. It is an interesting space for sure, and it will be interesting where it goes in the near future, I have no doubt the landscape will change rapidly in the next 1-3 years. Again, I would love to hear from people, what is it you would like to see in an app? Features? Good UI? Good UX? Local? More Open? More AI?, Less AI? It really helps when you get a fair amount of vocal people to help shape the direction of an app, which is where I am at the moment.

Mark

Paul Korm wrote:

Hi Mark,
Well, it's been a bit overwhelming digesting all that change. I don't know what I think, yet. Frankly. I do know the app won't be a major PKM hub for me. I can see building out projects there now and then. I am heavily invested (years to decades) in other software for all my PKM stuff, and what I've learned (especially from the Evernote disasters of the past) is "don't lock-in / don't migrate". Which is why I prefer Obsidian for PKM still because it's all out there in front of me in a folder markdown files and attachments. I can't get the same warm and fuzzy assurance from a folder of JSON files because of the work needed to use them somewhere else.

I appreciate MojoPad's local-only AI philosophy, but that's not where most apps are. BYOK or MCP or CLI are the stories everywhere -- and we've seen in designs like DEVONthink 4 that that doesn't mean opening up the whole shebang to the LLMs. Constraint is configurable. I hope MojoPad can be more flexible about this in the future because others might not be sold on the local-only proposition.

Sorry about my delayed response re: the spaced repetition/flash card feature. I really like the implementation. Thank you!

Mark wrote:

1.19.0 was just released. It has your requested feature in it. Please let me know what you think.

For your questions in the post above...

Features? Good UI? Good UX? Local? More Open? More AI?, Less AI?

Here are my thoughts. I don't have any feature requests or UI suggestions. The current feature set is more than enough for me, and I'm just happy to have a local wiki with some extras. Regarding AI, I do like the way Mozilla has a universal off switch for all the AI features. While I like the Ollama AI features, I also tend to be a person who tries AI features out to basically see what's possible and then I turn them off, mainly because I feel uncomfortable with the level of automation and find value in doing things more manually. I do recommend keeping everything local and open. I think you mentioned somewhere the data is in json format, which seems good to me, or something like sqlite.

I wrote a little write-up on MojoPad.

MojoPad is a Wicked Wiki
https://bicycleforyourmind.com/mojopad-is-a-wicked-wiki
#macOS

macosxguru

Very nice! And the shoutout to @Mark is well-deserved.

macosxguru wrote:

I wrote a little write-up on MojoPad.

Hi Mark.

Congratulations. Finally, an app that gives me Mac-envy (again).

Any chance you create a Windows version of Mojopad this year?

Best wishes
Franz