Themes are fun – and actually, much more practical than one might think. For example, the lightly modified theme I’m using adds highlighting, strikethrough and underlining.

NotePlan itself has recently added horizontal lines – okay, not a huge thing, but invaluable if one is managing an enormous project.

And Eduard is now working on a complete scripting API as well, as you suggested, as a theme editor that will make modifying one’s theme much easier than before.

NotePlan already has a broad range of add-on scripts, although they’re all rather techie, as well as a couple of really useful PopClip extensions.

satis wrote:

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/

NotePlan tweeted out a link for a 'Learn NotePlan By Email' series, writing, "This is in "beta", so feel free to send copywriting tips and reply if something sounds confusing!"

https://noteplan.eo.page/learn

I have moved back to NotePlan after seeing the newest updates, especially folding text. I had been using NotePlan until mid-2020 when I needed some additional capabilities and started with Notion. But over time I mainly used Notion for a daily journal along with the spreadsheet capabilities.

The folding text is what finally sold me. I would like to see it folding on indented bullets and tasks, but I believe that is in the works.

Eduard does a great job listening to users and implementing ideas in a user-friendly fashion. The new design looks great, and has worked well so far.

NotePlan now has a small, vibrant Discord community.

https://discord.gg/D4268MT

Eduard is participating fairly regularly. Recently he discussed how with "about 1.6k project notes and 1.9k calendar notes" startup takes a few seconds for him to show the sidebar, but "I'm making some improvements for the command bar search for the next release to make it faster."

NotePlan 3 is the biggest "outliner" disappointment of the year for me. Maybe there are some workarounds, I just lost my motivation after 15 minutes (and uninstalled the app - tested on my Mac) due to lack of perceived value.

The letdown is on 3 levels -
1. lack of polish on the basics, e.g. * prefix to designate task is overridden by "task" style which removes the asterisk and reverts to non-task; * sequence is treated as characters at the edit level - requiring cursor positioning and 2 delete or backspace keystrokes to remove, ..
2. concern about bugs: I assinged a task to today. It didn't show up in All Tasks or Coming up Soon. Not seeing tasks with a deadline means I would not be able to trust the tool? Recent (April) reports from other users about sync issues (not using Dropbox) - not advertised as fixed in release notes. OK - that means potential data loss and missing deadlines - a deadly combo.
3. lack of conceptual cohesion - tasks and calendar are completely separate, yet conceptually the app seems to suggest that the notion of timeboxing is the reason to show the calendar in a separate pane and allow for manual creation of appointments that are not linked to the tasks ...

Moving on, life is to short ...

Hm, I’m sorry you had a disappointing experience, @moritz. I use NotePlan every day for my personal task management, and the symptoms you’ve described there are definitely unusual. Setting up preferences is a good idea, and will probably obviate the asterisk issue you obviously had (I’ve set dashes/hyphens as my “task indicators”, and use asterisks for bullet lists). I’ve not experienced the “vanishing task” issue you describe, either – tasks given dates/deadlines in notes appear without fail in the “references” section of the relevant daily note.

There are still a few rough edges, yes, but Eduard is working very hard to remove them and does an amazing amount of work in the background. There’s also a very active community testing, advising and enjoying NotePlan. But it’s horses for courses – the paradigm won’t appeal to everyone. The app is 200% more elegant than it was just six months ago, and the addition of themes has made the whole thing more entertaining, too.

It's been a while since I last wrote about NotePlan, but after a brief falling-out, I've returned to the fold and am re-examining my relationship with this extraordinarily powerful piece of software.

It's amazing what you discover when you start looking at an app afresh. In this case, the fact that NotePlan can mimic a kanban app. So apart from opening notes in new windows (something NotePlan has been able to do for quite a while), you can also "split" the main window into multiple columns (up to 4, excluding the sidebar and the calendar sidebar).

And there are other things I hadn't really taken on board – wikilinks, backlinks, folding under headers, and most recently transclusion (or "synced lines", as Eduard has called them, although I prefer the other term he uses, "synced blocks"). It's still a beta feature, but solid enough to be usable, and it means you can embed a block in multiple notes so that it's automatically updated in all of them, regardless of which note you edit the block in.

I nearly succumbed to the temptation to resubscribe to Ulysses, but after comparing NotePlan's most recent changes, I went with the latter instead...

I own Noteplan 2, and in considering trying out v.3 I was shocked to see that the subscription price doubled to $120/yr for the personal Pro plan. I did a quick check on Reddit and saw that Eduard raised the price at the beginning of the summer, although current users are grandfathered in at the old price.

https://www.reddit.com/r/noteplanapp/comments/w5gmi1/annual_subscription_price_has_doubled/

If there was notice about the price increase I obviously missed it.

I still might try the app for the 2-week free trial (and maybe even splurge an extra $12 for one month after that) but I doubt I'll spend $120/yr for Noteplan. It seems overpriced, and makes competitors comparatively more appealing. For example, at $70/year AmpleNote has the potential to offer similar or additional functionality while also obviating the need for an app like Todoist.

Completely agree. I used the summer break to re-evaluate my note taking and project planning workflow. After trying out a few new apps and approaches (some I learned about here, so thanks) I decided to resubscribe to Noteplan 3.0 as I cam to realize the combined note and task approach really resonates with the way I work. However, I was surprised and put off by the dramatic price hike between the time my subscription lapsed and last week. IMO, Eduard is doing himself a disservice by perhaps overestimating how much people are willing to pay for subscription software in this category.

Amplenote looks like a very promising alternative.

satis wrote:

I own Noteplan 2, and in considering trying out v.3 I was shocked to see
that the subscription price doubled to $120/yr for the personal Pro
plan. I did a quick check on Reddit and saw that Eduard raised the price
at the beginning of the summer, although current users are grandfathered
in at the old price.

https://www.reddit.com/r/noteplanapp/comments/w5gmi1/annual_subscription_price_has_doubled/

If there was notice about the price increase I obviously missed it.

I still might try the app for the 2-week free trial (and maybe even
splurge an extra $12 for one month after that) but I doubt I'll spend
$120/yr for Noteplan. It seems overpriced, and makes competitors
comparatively more appealing. For example, at $70/year AmpleNote has the
potential to offer similar or additional functionality while also
obviating the need for an app like Todoist.

Another option is a new app called Routine, which combines task tracking and notes. It is free (for now)

https://www.routine.co/

It obviously doesn't have the track record of Amplenote, so there is a measure of risk involved, but I get the feeling Routine is here to stay.

Mind you, this isn't an endorsement, as I have only dabbled with it. But I remain intrigued.

Steve Z.

steve-rogers wrote:

Completely agree. I used the summer break to re-evaluate my note taking
and project planning workflow. After trying out a few new apps and
approaches (some I learned about here, so thanks) I decided to
resubscribe to Noteplan 3.0 as I cam to realize the combined note and
task approach really resonates with the way I work. However, I was
surprised and put off by the dramatic price hike between the time my
subscription lapsed and last week. IMO, Eduard is doing himself a
disservice by perhaps overestimating how much people are willing to pay
for subscription software in this category.

Amplenote looks like a very promising alternative.

satis wrote:
I own Noteplan 2, and in considering trying out v.3 I was shocked to see
>that the subscription price doubled to $120/yr for the personal Pro
>plan. I did a quick check on Reddit and saw that Eduard raised the
price
>at the beginning of the summer, although current users are
grandfathered
>in at the old price.
>
>https://www.reddit.com/r/noteplanapp/comments/w5gmi1/annual_subscription_price_has_doubled/
>
>If there was notice about the price increase I obviously missed it.
>
>I still might try the app for the 2-week free trial (and maybe even
>splurge an extra $12 for one month after that) but I doubt I'll spend
>$120/yr for Noteplan. It seems overpriced, and makes competitors
>comparatively more appealing. For example, at $70/year AmpleNote has
the
>potential to offer similar or additional functionality while also
>obviating the need for an app like Todoist.

This change to Noteplan's pricing has actually increased my interest in Amplenote. Shu Omi on YouTube has created several videos on his productivity channel about swithcing to Amplenote and how he uses the app. His videos about the app have intrigued me, like this one from 6 months ago:

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

I'm not interested in the app's standaout feature 'task score algorithm' which sorts your todo list based on task time + the Eisenhower Matrix based on Priority because I apply neither to my tasks but it seems I could ignore it - as I similarly turned off and ignore Todoist's 'Karma' gamification tool.

One surprising thing in that video is a chart showing that Amplenote and Apple Notes are fastest among the top 15 notes apps in being able to launch and start writing, at a little over 4 seconds, while some apps take *much* longer - Obsidian/NoteJoy/Notion taking 7-8 seconds, with Logseq and Roam are listed as the slowest, taking around 50 seconds. (I know that Todoist is lightning-fast, and obviously Shu Omi does too, because it's not one of the apps being compared in the chart.)

I like Amplenote's Noteplan-like delineation between the daily note Jots, and Notes, and the way Jots can be migrated into Notes, and how both can be easily be made into Tasks (and if desired put into the calendar using 2-way sync with Google Calendar). Makes sense and is congruent with the way I work. The easy ability to create a repeating task/habit from a Note which can also go right into the calendar is an improvement on Todoist.

And the iOS widget looks great.

Note that a year ago Amplenote hired him to create eight short walkthrough videos for their own channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/Amplenote/videos

so one should probably view his opinions with at least a bit of skepticism.

Hi Satis, I enjoy Shu Nomi`s videos.

Though I am trying to figure out whether to go with Obsidian or Logseq, I am leaning toward Obsidian. But perhaps I should take another look at Amplenote.

Daly

satis wrote:

This change to Noteplan's pricing has actually increased my interest in
Amplenote. Shu Omi on YouTube has created several videos on his
productivity channel about swithcing to Amplenote and how he uses the
app. His videos about the app have intrigued me, like this one from 6
months ago:

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

I'm not interested in the app's standaout feature 'task score algorithm'
which sorts your todo list based on task time + the Eisenhower Matrix
based on Priority because I apply neither to my tasks but it seems I
could ignore it - as I similarly turned off and ignore Todoist's 'Karma'
gamification tool.

One surprising thing in that video is a chart showing that Amplenote and
Apple Notes are fastest among the top 15 notes apps in being able to
launch and start writing, at a little over 4 seconds, while some apps
take *much* longer - Obsidian/NoteJoy/Notion taking 7-8 seconds, with
Logseq and Roam are listed as the slowest, taking around 50 seconds. (I
know that Todoist is lightning-fast, and obviously Shu Omi does too,
because it's not one of the apps being compared in the chart.)

I like Amplenote's Noteplan-like delineation between the daily note
Jots, and Notes, and the way Jots can be migrated into Notes, and how
both can be easily be made into Tasks (and if desired put into the
calendar using 2-way sync with Google Calendar). Makes sense and is
congruent with the way I work. The easy ability to create a repeating
task/habit from a Note which can also go right into the calendar is an
improvement on Todoist.

And the iOS widget looks great.

Note that a year ago Amplenote hired him to create eight short
walkthrough videos for their own channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/Amplenote/videos

so one should probably view his opinions with at least a bit of
skepticism.

For what it's worth I'm considering Logseq over Obsidian for two reasons: first and mainly, I think and prefer noting and writing in list and outline form (and Logseq is built on outlining while Obsidian is more document-centric); second, Logseq seems to have features I want built in and I'd rather just start working than having to fiddle with researching, comparing, and trialling plugins (and then committing to updating them - or start the search again if the plugin stops being updated or supported).

I'm turned off by Notion's open-endedness - leading to forum posts filled with people sharing their unique database designs and tips/tricks to get things done in the app - and that extends to apps in general. While extensibility is usually a good thing, I think that a larger, more comprehensive feature-set should be supported by the developer upfront, and Obsidian's open endedness, while different from Notion's, similarly annoys me.

When published Top 10 lists of Obsidian plugins include a calendar, daily notes, an outliner (including indentation guide plugin, zoom plugin), style/theming, rollover daily todos, and even a plugin to collapse sidebars, it suggests that the developer has mistakenly abdicated some essential responsibility as a designer.

When considering whether to adopt an app I ask myself how easily I would be able to reacquaint myself with it after being away from it for a couple of weeks. That ability becomes more difficult with every (needed) 3rd-party plugin an app makes me install.

Eduard recently tweeted that he's working on the web version of NotePlan as well as shared 'teamspaces' that can accommodate shared calendar notes.

https://x.com/metzgereduard/status/1716466419234157034

Seeing as the Mac app is at 3.9.8 I imagine that v.4 might introduce this additional functionality.