A new note-taking app appeared on the Mac App Store last month. It only costs $6, so I tried it. SpringNotes has a collection of features that distinguish it. Particularly:

- You can fold content in your notes.
- Embedded tasks can have a due date and priority set for them.
- Versioning
- iOS editions

I have corresponded with the developer and he seems extremely responsive to suggestions and eager to improve the app.

There are other nice features as well. I wrote blog article about it, if you're interested in learning more:

https://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2021/02/07/springnotes-a-newcomer-to-the-note-taking-field/

Steve

Thanks for bringing this app to our attention. It ticks a lot of boxes for me, and offers a couple of things that OmniOutliner doesn't - like due dates.

Ideally it would also be a superset of Apple Notes, into which I save jpegs and pdfs, but it seems it doesn't currently handle attachments. I'd also need to be able to specify my font choice, but it's not clear that this is possible either.

How are file search and document search?

The search feature is very weak at this time. I've sent an inquiry to the developer asking about his plans to make the search more useful. I'll let you know what I hear back.

Steve

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

The search feature is very weak at this time. I've sent an inquiry to
the developer asking about his plans to make the search more useful.
I'll let you know what I hear back.

Steve

I’ve noticed that too. I thought I was doing something wrong on my iPad. Thanks for the. tip.

I did hear back from the developer. He admits the search is very weak and plans on improving it. He will first improve the search in a single note, then will turn his attention to searching through all documents/notes.

I hadn't noticed this weakness when I first wrote the review.

The developer does impress me as someone who is eager to make his app very good, so I have no doubt this will be addressed, I just don't know how long it will take.

Steve Z.

FYI a year ago Markdown creator John Gruber asked on Twitter for recommendations for a Mac/iOS outliner with folding and a simple UI. He's a years- (decade-?) long user of OmniOutliner but complained using the analogy that it’s like a word processor and he wants a simpler, snappier text editor.

He also has a conservative view of how Markdown should be implemented. (For example he hates apps like Ulysses which hide URLs inside linked text.)

I mentioned Springnotes to him last month, and after looking into it replied that it was interesting but he hates the app's Markdown implementation, saying that people using Markdown like this should really just be using WYSIWYG-styled text. He's entitled to his proprietary interest but that complaint doesn't bother me; besides, the portability of Markdown means styling would survive better should one migrate to another app.

Heh, John has a real thing about “hybrid” markdown displays – ironically, SpringNotes doesn’t have one, it shows all the code as entered, but other very popular apps like NotePlan (and a whole bunch of highly thought-of markdown editors like Typora) do.

I can see no good reason for this attitude, to be honest. The primary advantage of markdown is that it works with basic text files, so doesn’t tie you into a proprietary format. Insisting that you be able to see the code all the time is on a par, IMHO, with insisting that you be able to permanently view the HTML code of a web page. Most hybrid editors change to a “code” view when you click in the heading/line/table you want to edit, which seems perfectly acceptable and pragmatic.

I believe John is also irritated by markdown apps (like SpringNotes) that don’t use monospaced fonts – this despite the fact that one of the old markdown faithfuls, iA Writer, now produces its own not-exactly-monospaced – and hugely popular – fonts to give people a more natural (= easier) reading experience. But after all, there are a whole bunch of people on this forum who still swear by text editors as the ideal working environment. And if it works for you, I have nothing against it! I do have to say, though, that it doesn’t work for me… but does that matter?

Cheers!
Bill

Yes, recently he wrote about his use of IA Writer, and his choice of the (ugly, in my opinion) Duospace font. (I have the app and when I use it I use the monospace variant).

I've come to switch to using Lucida Sans - a variant of Lucida Grande included with macOS, but which comes with an italics version - for most of my longform writing. And I even use it to re-font websites, courtesy of the free Dark Reader extension for Chrome and Chromium apps. (Sadly, changing fonts isn't in the pay-version of Dark Reader for Safari, which I also use.)

I still don't quite get Gruber's complaint, but he's a little taciturn on Twitter and I've learned better than trying to tease out more info from him.

I like the concept of Springnotes and I'm watching its development for search and other features. I do a lot of prep work for longform writing in OmniOutliner, and it's a solid app. But it's not ideal, it's often quite clunks, it's not being improved upon with new or revised features, and something cross-platform that's lighter and faster would be appealing.

FYI Springnotes appears to be dead. Website down, app removed from Mac App Store.