Some of you may already have seen the preview of Collate through Lifehacker, if not some other source. But if you haven't this notes app may be worth taking a look at. It runs on Windows, Mac or Linux... no mobile app.

Collate reputedly stores your notes in plain text locally. There is no cloud service, though they encourage you to store your notes in Dropbox or Google Drive to access them across computers.

You can create four types of notes:
- Markdown
- Rich Text
- Outline
- Web Clipper

These aren't exactly clean plain text. Collate has a file format that they say is "optimized for human readability." You can read more about the file format here:

https://github.com/Collateapp/CollateFileFormat/blob/master/README.md

What interests me most about Collate is the Outline note format. You can focus on sub-nodes and there is a breadcrumb trail at the top of the note. It is like creating a Workflowy style outline within your notebook.

The app costs $20 for unlimited personal use, but there is a two-week free trial.

https://collatenotes.com/

Anyway, this seems like a genuinely useful app that might appeal to folks here.

Steve Z.

BTW, Collate wants to take advantage of dissatisfaction with Evernote. It has an Evernote importer and a built in tutorial about how to do it. I haven't tried this, myself.

Trying it. Many thanks for the flag, Steve.

Collate still has a bunch of rough edges. The Mac version has some definite bugs -- the open note in editor function does not work properly, for example. But it is intriguing for an app that still has a sub-1.0 version number.

Interesting. Thanks for the tip. Reminds me of Quiver with its compositing of several document types.

Had tried it out. If it has an Evernote importer, the feature must be well hidden. I don't see it in the app. The blog mentions 'Evernote-style rich text".

Looks like it has promise. Outlines have folding (actually, it's a breadcrumb trail in the menu). Doesn't "collate" in the way I would have expected: cannot select multiple notes and see their collated content. The documents it saves all have a markdown extension (.md), but several of the formats are not really markdown. "Rich Text" is HTML (technically, HTML and RTF are two very different formats). "Outline" is an idiosyncratic JSON-like data structure. "Web Clipper" is actually just a kind of bookmark -- it's not a WebArchive, which is what web clipping on macOS is normally is, nor is it a .webloc, which is the macOS plist structure for bookmarks. So, yes, the data are portable and not locked-in -- sort of.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

BTW, Collate wants to take advantage of dissatisfaction with Evernote.
It has an Evernote importer and a built in tutorial about how to do it.
I haven't tried this, myself.

Click on the first menu item on the left, "Collate." Under there is an option called "Import." You have options to import from Evernote Archive, Text Files or Markdown Files. Developer calls it a tutorial, but it really is more of an import Wizard. I haven't tried this.

Steve Z.

Paul Korm wrote:

Had tried it out. If it has an Evernote importer, the feature must be
well hidden. I don't see it in the app. The blog mentions
'Evernote-style rich text".

I imported ~1500 Evernote notes. I ended up doing it Evernote Notebook by Evernote Notebook and sticking each Evernote Notebook's attachments into folders prior to import, but it worked well.

Tricky. Normal Apple UI guidelines would put the feature be in the File menu.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Click on the first menu item on the left, "Collate." Under there is an
option called "Import." You have options to import from Evernote
Archive, Text Files or Markdown Files. Developer calls it a tutorial,
but it really is more of an import Wizard. I haven't tried this.

Steve Z.

Paul Korm wrote:
Had tried it out. If it has an Evernote importer, the feature must be
>well hidden. I don't see it in the app. The blog mentions
>'Evernote-style rich text".

exatty95 wrote:

I imported ~1500 Evernote notes. I ended up doing it Evernote Notebook
by Evernote Notebook and sticking each Evernote Notebook's attachments
into folders prior to import, but it worked well.

How is it running with that many notes? What's the search performance like?

I haven't used it much, but has been fine. The search functions and other capabilities are pretty limited so far, but the developer is eager to learn what features people want.

Interesting. The developer sounds interested in good feedback and a willingness to truly listen. Looking on the blog, I found this refreshing (even listing pros and cons of each technology): https://collatenotes.com/technology-behind-collate/

A new version is out (0.30) with several additions and improvements

https://collatenotes.com/collate-0-3-0-updates/