Noteplan 3 is in public beta as of now and Eduard, the developer, has also revealed his plan to go subscription with it.
In his defence, he is extremely active and keeps tuning not only his app but also the vision along which it is being developed.
In my personal case I could never quite bring together the duplicity in which calendar-based and project-based notes seem to exist, otherwise it is one fine app.
See for yourself

https://beta.noteplan.co

Prion

The bad kind of subscription. Agenda ( and Tinderbox and others) do subscriptions right. You get updates as long as your subscription is running, and once it runs out, you can still use your software but you won’t get updates.
But hey , if it works, good for him.

This move to renting instead of buying Is the worst and most anti-consumer thing to have happened in the world of Software this last decade.

Subscription is bad news. I use Noteplan a lot and have been a beta tester for a long time. It will be difficult to find a replacement.

What is new in the beta? (Couldn't find this info easily...)

Or, I should say, I don't want to watch a video to find out.

I think the new features are: Markdown based notes, integrates with iCloud Calendar and Reminders

It is actually pretty nice. $60 a year though is a bit much for what it offers compared to Roam, Obsidian, etc. If it offered more Obsidian like features, like backlinks, or at least was inter-operable with Obsidian, I might consider it... right now, however, I'm a bit underwhelmed.

I noticed the pricing goes from $60-$100 per year!

I'm currently have it on Setapp, so it'll be interesting to see what happens there.

Personally, I won't be subscribing. I found it to clunky to use.

I tend to do all my note taking in the Bear app. Yes it's subscription, but reasonably priced and as they're all text files I can easily export if need to.

NotePlan is based on plain text files as well. The latest update allows you to set the extension, to allow better integration with other markdown apps. For instance, you can access the same documents in Obsidian or NotePlan.

Personally I still prefer an outliner (like Roam or Dyanlist) to flat files like Bear or Noteplan, but I did want to make clear that NotePlan does use plain text files. Moreover, I think you have to export your files out of Bear, but Noteplan keeps the files in a folder accessible from other apps?

Can you point to where the $100/year subscription for NotePlan 3 was announced by Eduard?

Simon wrote:

I noticed the pricing goes from $60-$100 per year!

Paul Korm wrote:

Can you point to where the $100/year subscription for NotePlan 3 was
announced by Eduard?

https://beta.noteplan.co/

You have to scroll to the bottom to the "Read to take action?" section where it offers Business Class ($99.99), Personal Monthly ($6.99), and Personal Annual ($59.99)

Got it. Thanks Simon.

Good example of hubris.

Simon wrote:

Paul Korm wrote:
Can you point to where the $100/year subscription for NotePlan 3 was
>announced by Eduard?
>

https://beta.noteplan.co/

You have to scroll to the bottom to the "Read to take action?" section
where it offers Business Class ($99.99), Personal Monthly ($6.99), and
Personal Annual ($59.99)

While I might be able to justify paying $30 a year, $60 is out of my range now that I'm retired. It's probably a good thing. I don't have nearly the planning tasks I had 6 months ago. In fact, I can probably do everything I need to do with Sheetplanner and Tinderbox.

I haven't used NotePlan but I'm on the mailing list and the latest updates are interesting:

1. Now can use the .md extension for files, allowing you to use the same documents in other markdown apps that require this extension. This is especially targeted at Obsidian users

2. It now supports "backlinks" like Roam and Obsidian

On the downside (for me) it is not an outliner app like Roam, so there are no "block" links or embeds, but on the plus side it is the only one of these apps that seems to be a native Mac/iOS app. I still find it frustrating that Roam on iOS is so slow (it is basically a web app), and using 1Writer to access Obsidian on iOS is frustrating because it only supports some of the features of Obsidian. NotePlan also seems to have nice integration with the native reminder and calendar apps. For all these reasons I might give it a serious look.

So I gave it a solid try.

Great: Having a native app that works offline and syncs to my phone.

Better than I thought: The current version of Obsidian has come a long way, and there are starting to be some useful community plugins.

Still not good enough: It is just so much easier for me to use Roam Research to organize my data.

A markdown based solution might eventually work, someday, but it seems to me that how it works will be dependent so much on the design of a particular app that there isn't much benefit to having my stuff in markdown rather than a database....

Dang, I hadn’t realised the latest NotePlan beta supports backlinks – but yes, it does, and does so rather intelligently (in that the backlinks appear at the top of the note rather than the bottom – currently a weak point of quite a few backlink-supporting notetaking apps).

I must congratulate Eduard!

Cheers,
Bill

Well, this backlink support in NotePlan is a bit of a game-changer. It brings it into direct competition with apps like Roam and Obsidian. And makes much more sense of the relatively high price. What’s more, you can see backlinks from Notes to Daily Notes, Notes to Notes, or Daily Notes to Notes.

Those unfamiliar with NotePlan (macOS/iOS) should know that there are two categories of notes: Daily Notes, which are attached to specific days/dates, so can be used for journaling, daily task management etc., and Notes, which are general pieces of info stored separately from Daily Notes, but are capable of assigning individual tasks within the note to specific days/dates. This ability to assign individual tasks in (often lengthy) general notes to specific days is NotePlan’s unique feature, as is the ability to link from any note to any note. NotePlan also integrates with Apple Calendar and Reminders.

Backlinks refer to the specific section of the note in which the original link was included, incidentally (i.e. to the nearest header within the note), so effectively act as paragraph-specific (assuming you’re using headers for your paragraphs).

Cheers,
Bill

A very clear and concise explanation. Thanks.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Well, this backlink support in NotePlan is a bit of a game-changer. It
brings it into direct competition with apps like Roam and Obsidian. And
makes much more sense of the relatively high price. What’s more,
you can see backlinks from Notes to Daily Notes, Notes to Notes, or
Daily Notes to Notes.

Those unfamiliar with NotePlan (macOS/iOS) should know that there are
two categories of notes: Daily Notes, which are attached to specific
days/dates, so can be used for journaling, daily task management etc.,
and Notes, which are general pieces of info stored separately from Daily
Notes, but are capable of assigning individual tasks within the note to
specific days/dates. This ability to assign individual tasks in (often
lengthy) general notes to specific days is NotePlan’s unique
feature, as is the ability to link from any note to any note. NotePlan
also integrates with Apple Calendar and Reminders.

Backlinks refer to the specific section of the note in which the
original link was included, incidentally (i.e. to the nearest header
within the note), so effectively act as paragraph-specific (assuming
you’re using headers for your paragraphs).

Cheers,
Bill

Folding text added to NotePlan. (Must...resist...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKOrZ554Ag8

Heh heh – I’m afraid I’ve made NotePlan (macOS/iOS) my definitive task management application, even though we use Pagico at business level.

The folding just makes an exceedingly efficient to-do app even better. What is is about NotePlan that’s so good? Someone summed it up very well on the Discord forum last night: there are no constraints. You can start writing anywhere, there’s no need to decide whether you’re creating a task, or writing a comment, or putting together a bullet list. After you’ve written stuff down, that’s when you can decide how to use it. It’s easy to add tasks (or subtasks: NotePlan does now differentiate) to your daily list from anywhere.

Folding (currently based on the simple heading/subheading model, like FoldingText, but folding of tasks/subtasks is on the roadmap) has made the app even more flexible. Now you can run very large projects from a single “note”, adding tasks under whichever heading you like so that they appear on the dates you specify (for those who don’t know: NotePlan has two separate groups of notes – general Notes, which are basically markdown text files, and Daily Notes, which are basically… well, they’re also markdown text files, but attached to a specific date, hence displayed alongside a calendar view which also shows Apple Calendar events; you can add times to your tasks in Daily Notes so they also appear in the calendar view).

The other huge advantage of NotePlan? Everything is text-based; NotePlan data files are simply standard text files with markdown formatting (the latter becoming ever more sophisticated after Eduard the developer opted for a preview-style hybrid display, like Typora’s; markdown code only appears when you move to a particular heading/sentence and start editing it). This means you can open NotePlan files from anywhere, and save them out effortlessly. Even if you’re using Apple’s CloudKit (and Eduard makes that optional – otherwise NotePlan uses the standard iCloud setup), NotePlan allows you to open the parent folders in Finder, so you can easily back them up/copy them or open the files in another editor.

It’s not the cheapest app, subscription-wise, but it replaces so many other apps that it’s well worth the outlay. What have I sacrificed on the NotePlan altar? Ulysses, Bear, MWeb, Typora, Obsidian, all my to-do apps including Things 3, Todoist and others… the list goes on. Even if you never use the Daily Notes, the general Notes function is so flexible it’s ridiculous: you’ve got folders, nested tags, nested mentions, backlinks – all the things info management apps are expected to have nowadays. And now folding!

Cheers,
Bill

satis wrote:

Folding text added to NotePlan. (Must...resist...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKOrZ554Ag8

Eduard is one of the great developers. More proof.

The one thing that prevents me from diving whole-heartedly into NotePlan is that I spend my work days on a Windows computer. But Eduard has said that developing a web interface for NotePlan is on his road map.

Steve

@MadaboutDana I agree that the app is becoming very compelling for text notes and many types of planning. It has the possibility to replace a lot of apps, but for it to replace a text editor like MWeb/BBEdit/Typora, it needs to step up its game and offer theming, and a user-contributable theme gallery.

And it could not take me away from a writing-oriented app like Ulysses, which offers near-unlimited font, color and size customization of the writing space. Noteplan's single light or dark-mode, and no choice of font or user themes, makes it painful for me to use for anything longer than a page.

That's a shame, because I'm researching alternatives to Day One before my subscription expires in June, and saving $35 by dropping the Day One subscription app would have made migrating to NotePlan's $60/yr palatable.

As I've mentioned previously I'd love to be able to coalesce around one app, or fewer apps, but task managers offer some unique properties I've become accustomed to, like 2-way sync with my calendar (which is color-coded by personal, work, hobby, etc) and sophisticated recurring entry options, like "every first and third Thursday at 10am".

I think NotePlan's introduction of folding was pretty smart and will hearten those who like the feature and lamented the flameout of Folding Text (and the slow, sideways development of TaskPaper). I wish the folding symbols weren't hidden (or at least that there was a Prefs option for persistence), and that a gray ellipsis tp show that something was folded wasn't so subtle. I write a lot in OmniOutliner and the basic black disclosure triangle is a comforting and clear sign of folding that I don't want hidden from me.

Hi Bill,

MadaboutDana wrote:

folding of tasks/subtasks is on the roadmap

The ability to also support folding in bullet lists would be awesome, and would make NotePlan an even more attractive proposition to people who like to think and organize their content in outliners. Looking forward to that!

-Alex

Ah, well, I have good news there: themes are on the roadmap, and there has been quite a lot of related discussion on the Discord forum – Eduard himself is very much in favour.

But – as other developers here will appreciate – the poor lamb is flying solo, and there are lots of requests and ideas flying around!

However, I believe themes is a fairly high priority, as well as further optimisation of the markdown interpreter. He’s also discussing a plugin interface with various programmers on the forum, which could make NotePlan even more flexible (so for example, capable of supporting the kind of calendar/reminder syncing you mention). The current plan is to make it script-agnostic, so scripts in various systems (AppleScript, Alfred, etc.) could be used to trigger various NotePlan behaviours. But IANAP, so I can’t speak to the details there.

It’s all quite exciting ;-)

satis wrote:

@MadaboutDana I agree that the app is becoming very compelling for text
notes and many types of planning. It has the possibility to replace a
lot of apps, but for it to replace a text editor like
MWeb/BBEdit/Typora, it needs to step up its game and offer theming, and
a user-contributable theme gallery.

And it could not take me away from a writing-oriented app like Ulysses,
which offers near-unlimited font, color and size customization of the
writing space. Noteplan's single light or dark-mode, and no choice of
font or user themes, makes it painful for me to use for anything longer
than a page.

That's a shame, because I'm researching alternatives to Day One before
my subscription expires in June, and saving $35 by dropping the Day One
subscription app would have made migrating to NotePlan's $60/yr
palatable.

As I've mentioned previously I'd love to be able to coalesce around one
app, or fewer apps, but task managers offer some unique properties I've
become accustomed to, like 2-way sync with my calendar (which is
color-coded by personal, work, hobby, etc) and sophisticated recurring
entry options, like "every first and third Thursday at 10am".

I think NotePlan's introduction of folding was pretty smart and will
hearten those who like the feature and lamented the flameout of Folding
Text (and the slow, sideways development of TaskPaper). I wish the
folding symbols weren't hidden (or at least that there was a Prefs
option for persistence), and that a gray ellipsis tp show that something
was folded wasn't so subtle. I write a lot in OmniOutliner and the basic
black disclosure triangle is a comforting and clear sign of folding that
I don't want hidden from me.

The latest version NotePlan has added theming. Creating/editing themes is sadly too geeky for most users (editing a JSON file in a text editor, really?) but the preset options aren't bad and hopefully a simple in-app module for building a theme (or an easy-to-use site, like Highland 2 offers) will eventually be forthcoming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE3YQ-Y2Ya0

And geeks will geek-out... I see people are sharing themes now on Reddit, including this neat one made to look like Things.

https://www.reddit.com/r/noteplanapp/comments/lybg55/things_inspired_noteplan_theme/