I built a new notes app which lets you organize notes into an outline shape.

The core idea is that after you've written a note, you can add "subnotes" to it. Those subnotes can have subnotes, etc., so it often ends up in a tree shape. However, one twist is that you can place a note into multiple subnote lists. This ends up making them like "transclusions" which you can use as a sort of portal to jump to different outlines that use the note.

Even though it's an outline shape, you're not required to treat the relationships as hierarchical, of course. The main reason I went with this model is I wanted to be able to collect similar ideas together and reorder them as needed. The parent notes become sort of like folders for other notes, but having a model that just uses notes makes it much easier to work with since every note could become a parent (i.e. one big reason we all like outliners).

Notes also don't need to be titled, which I always found annoying in another notes apps. Just create a new note and start typing the text you want in it. Notes get assigned unique identifiers, which you can use for traditional hypertext links within the note itself.

After you use it a while, you end up with lots of "neighborhoods" of trees with different notes in them, which you can jump between using shared notes. This is another nice thing about the model: a notebook can have multiple trees in it and they don't all have to be part of a larger uber-tree.

Learn more: https://understory.ussherpress.com/
And a short video showing how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDzV6OrcP4s

Thank you @Allen. Perhaps a reasonable-priced alternative to Ulysses.

The name "Understory" is clever... the ground cover beneath a tree!

Thanks! Yes, I wanted something evocative about the nature of small notes adding up to create larger structures. Also, the idea of the subnote in the app is a sort of a note "behind" or "beneath" a note, like the ground covering in a forest.

The app is different enough from other notes apps and outliners that I hope people get it. Treating each note as an atomic unit that can be placed anywhere and joined together with other notes in a sequence is a little weird at first. I kept the app minimalist as well so you have freedom to use the subnotes as a building block for however you like to organize the notes.

This looks really cool. I will give it a try. The UI reminds me of Horse Browser which I'd love to try too.

I downloaded Understory and found it interesting. One minor request though. Would you allow changing the font size and the background color?

Thanks for the suggestions!

In the next update coming in the next day or two, I've added the option to change the font size with cmd+ and cmd-.

Regarding the background color, do you mean of the window itself or the note? Are you in dark mode and want a light background for instance or do you want to have notes with different colors like yellow, pink, etc.?

Hi Allen,
Thanks for the reply! I meant the note background color. It would also be great to select light or dark mode and not follow OS system settings.

I love the approach to this app and just picked up a license. Congratulations on coming up with something new in a crowded space!

From the website I read "Your Personal Notebook, stored in your own iCloud account, ...". So I'm forced to use iCloud?

There's an option for project notebooks that are stored wherever.

Ok, I found it. Thanks!

Hello @Allen, I'm trying out Understory. I also find it very interesting. But I want to make some observations that I consider important:

1.) From my point of view, there should be a keyboard shortcut to switch between viewing and editing notes. I see that they always open in view mode by default, and when you want to edit it's really cumbersome to have to go find the “edit” button at the bottom every time. With a shortcut like Cmd+E everything would go much more smoothly.

2.) I also agree with Deb that we should have (soft) colors for the background of notes to identify their types (it would be very useful to be able to choose the color using the system color picker).

3.) And finally (for now): could the color of the notes be reflected as the background for each title in the outline on the left sidebar? (This would greatly help to immediately identify note types by color).

I've also noticed that when exporting or printing, the app forgets some notes. I believe this is a bug that needs to be looked into.

Again, I'll say it: interesting app.

Regards.

Hi @tberni, thanks for trying out the app!

To edit a note, when it's selected in the note browser on the left, hit Return. Once you're done editing, you can hit Esc to go back to the viewer mode and the note browser focus.

Regarding the colors, I'll look into it. I'll also look into the export and printing issue. Can you tell me what you did and what notes were missing? Did you export use Export Backup or Publish? For printing, it will only print the selected notes. If a note isn't selected and visible in the note browser, it won't be printed. This lets you collapse the subnotes if you don't want them included. (You might have expected the subnotes which were collapsed to be printed too but it's not designed to do that.)

Dang, I've just exported your tutorial as a website, and it's even got a search function! That's pretty darn powerful all on its own, frankly. I shall continue to play...

It reminds me a little bit of nvUltra, but it's actually a lot more powerful. I'm strongly attracted! ;o)

Oh dear, this is ridiculous – much too late in the evening to be playing with Understory, but it's fun! And to my delight, uses smart punctuation! Would that all markdown editors did so (yes, you even use it in headings, which is exceptional!)

The only things I'm missing at the moment are:
- some way of viewing notes side by side
- clarity on top-level notes (I finally worked out, partly by reference to Reference!) that you have to create subnotes if you want to turn a note on the home page (which only gets turned into a Home note if you drag and drop it onto the Home portion of the page from the Recents list) into a proper top-level note – otherwise it continues to show as a stray. As soon as you create a subnote, it acquires a dinky little signboard icon. Nice, but not exactly intuitive. I'd suggest that needs a slightly user-friendlier approach, maybe?

But very enjoyable to use, and the keyboard-focused approach is much appreciated, as is the excellent search function (with highlights! Hurrah!).

... also the fact that the app's footprint is just 12 MB. Now that's impressive!

@MadaboutDana - I'm so glad you're enjoying the app! When I was thinking through the UX of it and "discovering" better ways to structure things, I was getting excited myself, so I'm glad you're finding it fun to use.

Notational Velocity/nvUltra was definitely one source of inspiration for the quick search and keyboard navigation. I definitely shamelessly borrowed good ideas elsewhere if they worked in the app.

Your comments about how "trailheads" and pinning work are noted. The distinction between trailheads, thread heads, and strays is mentioned in the reference, but I don't go into too much depth in the Tutorial. It was one of those things I decided to improve later once I got some feedback on the general usability of the app. I might still change the terminology around the concepts, too.

Heh, I've been experimenting with transcluding a note inside itself when it's already been copied to multiple subnotes. I haven't managed to crash Understory yet, but I can confirm that infinitely nested transclusion is possible ;o)

I was reminded today that Understory allows you to select any number of non-contiguous notes, and their text will appear in a contiguous stream (even if they're in the Recents section rather than the actual outline section). This is very impressive. Even more impressive is the fact that if you edit one of the selected notes, you're returned to the selection as soon as you finish editing – neat. And even more impressive than that is being able to publish the selection, again regardless of where the notes actually are. This gives Understory a quite exceptional level of flexibility.