Supposedly because nvUltra, a modern version of nvAlt has been promised since the early Roosevelt administration (the first Roosevelt), but has never been close to public release, the developer decided to upgrade nvAlt itself. Meaning, make it run on Silicon but not much else.

You can read all about it here:

https://brettterpstra.com/2026/10/24/nvalt-back-from-the-dead/#dl

Trigger warning -- it crashes when it tries to open my ancient nvAlt vault.

Good ole' Brett has been promising the all-singing, all-dancing nvUltra for years.

I fear the market may have passed him by...

If only someone could bring Notational Velocity back to life...
Brett writes "The original Notational Velocity is also seeing updates for the first time in years right now," so there might be hope!
I found a Version 2.5.1 dated 2026/10/14 on notational.net (https://notational.net/releasenotes/release2/#v2.5.2
Am I dreaming?

And yes, it is indeed alive! Check out the GitHub repository at https://github.com/scrod/nv/releases/tag/v2.5.2 (it's open-source, as it always has been)

Having done a very quick compare of the two (Brett's nvAlt and Notational Velocity), I have to say I prefer Brett's version. Having said that, they're almost indistinguishable, although I'm sure Brett's made some modifications. As ever, they both have tiny footprints.

Terpstra's latest newsletter was where I found a link to join a somewhat public beta test of nvUltra.

By the way, many thanks for the clarification. My first thought was that you're completely wrong about the Roosevelt administration. nvUltra had to be dusty and spider-webby by the time of the New Deal. My bad. I should have been thinking about the Square Deal, not the New Deal.

Wrong historical context, totally my fault.

Paul Korm wrote:

Supposedly because nvUltra, a modern version of nvAlt has been promised since the early Roosevelt administration (the first Roosevelt), but has never been close to public release, the developer decided to upgrade nvAlt itself. Meaning, make it run on Silicon but not much else.

You can read all about it here:

https://brettterpstra.com/2026/10/24/nvalt-back-from-the-dead/#dl

Trigger warning -- it crashes when it tries to open my ancient nvAlt vault.

nvalt brings me lots of good memories.

used a lot, synced with simplenote on my iPhone 4

it iwas super fast to open, to make a note, to go out of the way...

good times

I actually brought it back to life. Here is the release:
https://github.com/and/nv4/releases

Yes, the new release is live :)

MacSE wrote:

If only someone could bring Notational Velocity back to life...
Brett writes "The original Notational Velocity is also seeing updates for the first time in years right now," so there might be hope!
I found a Version 2.5.1 dated 2026/10/14 on notational.net (https://notational.net/releasenotes/release2/#v2.5.2
Am I dreaming?

Yes; unfortunately the latest version is no longer simplenote-compatible (and simplenote is no longer being actively developed by Automattic, which is a real shame). But there are alterrnatives! For general note management, I've opted for UpNote, which runs on everything and is extremely reliable. However, we're now looking seriously at unhooking ourselves from Cloud services generally (and Techbros in particular!), and are contemplating a local system based on Synology NAS with remote access. Does anyone else run such a system? I've had good experiences with Synology, but they're clearly proprietary...

rafael costacurta wrote:

nvalt brings me lots of good memories.
used a lot, synced with simplenote on my iPhone 4
it iwas super fast to open, to make a note, to go out of the way...
good times

I had a Synology-based remote-accessible note system for a while. After trouble shooting failures a dozen or more times, I went back to an off-the-shelf solution.

Hm, yes – I've had a Synology NAS sitting in a cupboard quietly backing up our company files for a while now, and to my surprise it continues to do this quite well. But only recently did I decide to give it another go, and the QuickConnect service seems to have improved out of all recognition. So it appears I can access the server, edit files on it (via Synology Office) and even keep notes on it (as you did). But the server is a very basic one, with just 512 KB of RAM and an old Marvell ARM processor, so I've come up against its limits fairly quickly! I'm now deciding whether to invest in something a little more sophisticated... it's doing a perfectly good job as a backup device.

Paul Korm wrote:

I had a Synology-based remote-accessible note system for a while. After trouble shooting failures a dozen or more times, I went back to an off-the-shelf solution.

Just to be clear, nvALT is also open source, https://github.com/ttscoff/nv Anyone could have updated it at any point in the last 5 years, but nobody did... but it's alive again now, and SimpleNote is working for the time being.

I don't know why it would crash on an old vault, nothing in the underlying database handling has changed. Unless there was a significant difference between plain text storage and what was in the database (e.g. you've been editing the same vault with other apps for years), but even then I didn't have any problems loading up a 4000 note vault from years ago.