Thoughts on Amplenote?
Started by nathanb
on 7/22/2026
nathanb
7/22/2026 4:26 pm
Amplenote has grown on me lately. I'm curious if anyone here has tried it.
One of the reasons I'm using it is because it has a full-featured web client. I'm not able to install native apps on my work pc, which I'm using 90% of the time. That eliminates some big contenders like Obsidian and Logseq. It's probably for the best, since I spend more time customizing Obsidian than using it. My logical brain says Obsidian SHOULD be my everything app, but my adhd brain keeps blowing it up.
I've always liked Amplenote's dev team and vibe. Amplenote took me several false starts of getting over the hump of feeling comfortable. That reminded me how accustomed I've become to overly simple interfaces that I fully understand right away. Amplenote doesn't have a primary "sense of place" like other classic note apps. There's no folder or page hierarchy to fall back to. That was my biggest big hurdle. Once I fully embraced the fantastic nested tags system, I haven't looked back.
My digital notes origin story is OneNote. That started my love for note apps around 2008, and I'm still using it for like 30% of notes. To this day, OneNote's editor is still what feels most right to me when at a PC. I won't talk about the mobile OneNote apps, that'd turn into a rant. Amplenote isn't an infinite canvas, but it lets me put a lot of mixed content and simple tables in pages, which feels like home. I usually don't use OneNote's infinite canvas AS an infinite canvas. I just liked the freedom to move the content containers around the page, free form. Amplenote's "rich footnotes" gives me a similar experience of dumping random comments, files, links, pics, etc anywhere I want.
I'm still on the fence about Amplenote's tasks. It's good, but clunky compared to TickTick/Todoist. I'm used to quickly breaking down general tasks with subtasks, and Amplenote doesn't do that. The whole reason it doesn't subtask is because the tasks live inside the notes, which is way more contextual, including outlining.
Desktop OneNote handled inline tasks beautifully with Outlook, which felt revolutionary in 2010, and I've been chasing that dream ever since. But nothing came close, so I learned to accept separate task apps as a compromise. Forever feeling angst about task notes living outside my long term notes. Amplenote does this inline tasks the way that I've always wanted. Hopefully that aspect will feel smoother as my todoist habits fade. Then Amplenote would be a true replacement for todoist as well.
The more I use Amplenote's daily jots, the more it feels effortless like Roam did. Which is a neat trick for a "page-based" note app. It's not a full nerdy block-based system, but it's a great hybrid. Once I realized that I should be using some note pages AS metadata, a light bulb went off. Ironically that's the core idea of Roam, Logseq, etc, so it should have been obvious. But Amplenote is page-based, not block-based. I was trying to use it like a classic page-based note app, which wasn't going well. Once I started doing roam-esque gymnastics, it finally felt right.
I also still use RemNote daily, and I've sung its praises here before. IMHO it's still one of the very best backlinking block-based infinite outliners. It's got a metadata tagging system (like tana, etc) that lets me make it as structured as I want. It's my work projects and professional knowledge management system. Amplenote is for my personal projects, tasks and messy general notes. For now, anyway.
One of the reasons I'm using it is because it has a full-featured web client. I'm not able to install native apps on my work pc, which I'm using 90% of the time. That eliminates some big contenders like Obsidian and Logseq. It's probably for the best, since I spend more time customizing Obsidian than using it. My logical brain says Obsidian SHOULD be my everything app, but my adhd brain keeps blowing it up.
I've always liked Amplenote's dev team and vibe. Amplenote took me several false starts of getting over the hump of feeling comfortable. That reminded me how accustomed I've become to overly simple interfaces that I fully understand right away. Amplenote doesn't have a primary "sense of place" like other classic note apps. There's no folder or page hierarchy to fall back to. That was my biggest big hurdle. Once I fully embraced the fantastic nested tags system, I haven't looked back.
My digital notes origin story is OneNote. That started my love for note apps around 2008, and I'm still using it for like 30% of notes. To this day, OneNote's editor is still what feels most right to me when at a PC. I won't talk about the mobile OneNote apps, that'd turn into a rant. Amplenote isn't an infinite canvas, but it lets me put a lot of mixed content and simple tables in pages, which feels like home. I usually don't use OneNote's infinite canvas AS an infinite canvas. I just liked the freedom to move the content containers around the page, free form. Amplenote's "rich footnotes" gives me a similar experience of dumping random comments, files, links, pics, etc anywhere I want.
I'm still on the fence about Amplenote's tasks. It's good, but clunky compared to TickTick/Todoist. I'm used to quickly breaking down general tasks with subtasks, and Amplenote doesn't do that. The whole reason it doesn't subtask is because the tasks live inside the notes, which is way more contextual, including outlining.
Desktop OneNote handled inline tasks beautifully with Outlook, which felt revolutionary in 2010, and I've been chasing that dream ever since. But nothing came close, so I learned to accept separate task apps as a compromise. Forever feeling angst about task notes living outside my long term notes. Amplenote does this inline tasks the way that I've always wanted. Hopefully that aspect will feel smoother as my todoist habits fade. Then Amplenote would be a true replacement for todoist as well.
The more I use Amplenote's daily jots, the more it feels effortless like Roam did. Which is a neat trick for a "page-based" note app. It's not a full nerdy block-based system, but it's a great hybrid. Once I realized that I should be using some note pages AS metadata, a light bulb went off. Ironically that's the core idea of Roam, Logseq, etc, so it should have been obvious. But Amplenote is page-based, not block-based. I was trying to use it like a classic page-based note app, which wasn't going well. Once I started doing roam-esque gymnastics, it finally felt right.
I also still use RemNote daily, and I've sung its praises here before. IMHO it's still one of the very best backlinking block-based infinite outliners. It's got a metadata tagging system (like tana, etc) that lets me make it as structured as I want. It's my work projects and professional knowledge management system. Amplenote is for my personal projects, tasks and messy general notes. For now, anyway.
When I was paid to do what I do, before joining the breadline of retirement, I tried Amplenote for a while. It was interesting -- though it seemed to need a lot of daily focus and curation. Maybe I misremember this, but it was also a one-person universe, and my work required intensive interaction with numerous people. So, keeping my tasks over here by myself, while the work tasks were all over there with those people, wasn't a workable model. I appreciated it was web-based so I could talk to it on my own devices as well as the locked-down Window bricks that my employers gave me to use.
That said, Amplenote is very handsome, seems well case-hardened and bugless, and the staff were generous with their time. That was several years ago, and I assume it's still the same.
That said, Amplenote is very handsome, seems well case-hardened and bugless, and the staff were generous with their time. That was several years ago, and I assume it's still the same.