I haven’t written about UpNote for a while, but it’s worth pointing out that this is one excellent cross-platform note-taking app that’s under steady, thoughtful development and works across macOS, iOS, Windows and Android. It was first launched back in 2018, I believe, and from modest beginnings has become something of a powerhouse.

Some of the features, for reference: It supports notebook hierarchies, cross-linking and back-linking (here it takes a sensible approach – you can call up backlinks if you want to see them); you can also link to headers inside notes. It supports rich text and markdown. It supports multiple windows and (too rare in note-taking apps) always-on-top windows. It imports and displays images. It supports tags. It exports notes in a wide range of formats, ranging from PDF to Word to HTML. It imports Evernote notes. Notebooks can be password-protected. It claims to be fully encrypted. It’s also notably quick, even when displaying notes with big images in them.

Negatives? Well, it’s a subscription app (not very expensive, mind!), and it uses its own synchronisation server (because it’s cross-platform); the underlying system is, I believe, Firebase. Neither of those things are a strong negative, in my view, although I know some forum members have Strong Views on subscriptions ;-)

More details for those interested on https://getupnote.com there’s also a useful blog on https://upnote.medium.com

No, I have no concealed interest in UpNote, I just love the fact that it’s yet another sole developer app that’s really made and continues to make impressive progress. Go indies!

Cheers,
Bill

You've convinced me to give it a go. I really like the Android app. Next step is to import my notes from Evernote.

Looks nice, but aside from the Windows and Android support it resembles a half dozen free and cheap non-subscription apps in the Apple ecosystem, including Apple Notes.

For example I think SnipNotes offers pretty much everything UpNote does, but also offers phone widgets and quick entry bar in macOS, Markdown and is searchable in Spotlight. And pro unlock is a one-time $6, and data is securely stored in your iCloud.

https://www.snipnotes.de/en/

UpNote says it supports 'attachments' but I don't see anything describing what that means. However if it can swallow PDFs that would make it significantly more useful than most of these other apps like SnipNotes, which for some reason are limited to image attachments only.

You can attach PDFs and other files in UpNote but it doesn't search inside them as far as I can tell. They're not embedded or displayed, just attached.

That's good to hear. There's a whole class of Mac/iOS notes apps that don't handle pdfs at all. SnipNotes, good as it is, bizarrely 'accepts' a pdf attachment but merely imports the first page as a jpg; unwary users might think they're importing the pdf but learn they haven't the first time they try opening one. Otherwise it's a very good app, but that is egregious behavior, and I didn't quite believe the app meant to do that until the developer confirmed it to me.I still like and recommend the app but not for people who need to save pdfs. Otherwise I'd have switched to it as a Notes replacement.

UpNote seems fairly capable but the pricing is confusing. Is the $29.99 'lifetime-upgrade' for both macOS and iOS, or per-platform?

Hi everyone,

Thanks for recommending UpNote and for your interest in trying out the app :) I'm Thomas, the developer and co-founder of UpNote.

We initially offered only monthly subscription ($0.99/month). However after learning that many users prefer onetime payment, we offered the lifetime premium option, which users can upgrade once and use it on all platforms (Mac, iOS, Windows and Android) and include all future updates.

We have various promotions from time to time. You will see the price inside the app's Premium screen which might include tax from Apple depending on your country.

UpNote premium allows attachments (PDF, images and all sort of files), which are capped at 20MB for optimal syncing performace; however no limit on the total number of attachments. Embedding PDF view is a common request and in our roadmap.

I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions you have while using UpNote. Thank you!

satis wrote:

UpNote seems fairly capable but the pricing is confusing. Is the $29.99
'lifetime-upgrade' for both macOS and iOS, or per-platform?

I have bought the lifetime upgrade via Android and I can confirm that I have premium features on my phone, my tablet and my Windows PC. So it's cross-platform.

I've found another nice feature: If you add emoji in your notes, you can search for them, so you can use emoji as labels to organise things (or just make them pretty). ColorNote on Android can also search for emoji. Evernote and Notion on Android cannot.

I’ve found UpNote significantly more pleasant to use than SnipNotes, and have in fact removed the latter from my machine(s). Not to say anything against SnipNotes, which has some great features, but I found myself using UpNote significantly more.

UpNote does offer a Menu Bar shortcut plus search function, but the other things it does that SnipNotes doesn’t do (at least as far as I’m aware) are always-on-top windows and back-links. UpNote is also genuinely cross-platform, not unlike Evernote. In fact, it imports Evernote .enex files.

Thomas is also very responsive (although I’ve seen the same thing said about the SnipNotes developer!). When UpNote first emerged, he was implementing new features almost as fast as I was suggesting them ;-)

Speaking of which: Thomas, folding is the next thing to introduce. Just sayin’!

Cheers!
Bill

long time lurker here.

I just logged here to support this great tool, thanks for the heads up.

My CRIMPing has no limits. Thanks for the lifetime option too, it's very affordable.

The only negative point for me was the use of the microsoft store. Just not my preference. I hope in the future we can get a downloadable installer outside the store.

Other than that, 100% recommended note taking app.

And thanks for listening users, there are super users here.

I just purchased a lifetime subscription to UpNotes, its not the most fully-featured but is cross-platform and very smooth to use. It has replaced Apple Notes for me, this was a big one for me as Apple Notes has always been the easiest and most frictionless for day to day usage, but UpNotes also has some deeper features of a 3-panel PIM app.

The developer has said that outlining or section collapsing is on the roadmap after web clipper and hashtags are added, when this happens UpNotes can hopefully replace 3-4 apps for me (Apple Notes, The Hit List, Workflowy). I don't need the deepest functionality of each app category, so to be able to use 1 app for everything is a big plus.

As it's cross-platform with Windows, what type of sync does it employ? Does it require maintaining copies locally on all platforms, or does it have some sort of cloud repository?

satis wrote:

As it's cross-platform with Windows, what type of sync does it employ?
Does it require maintaining copies locally on all platforms, or does it
have some sort of cloud repository?

I *think* it's a cloud repository, but I'm not sure. There are no local files that I can access via the file explorer as far as I can tell. It syncs via its own server, so no OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive sync.

Cyganet wrote:

I *think* it's a cloud repository, but I'm not sure. There are no local
files that I can access via the file explorer as far as I can tell. It
syncs via its own server, so no OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive sync.

I searched the website a little more diligently and found this:

**UpNote is storing data on Firebase (which is part of
Google) server. Firebase platform has been certified
under major privacy and security standards, and fully
supports EU General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Firebase encrypts your data in transit using HTTPS
and encrypts your data at rest. You could find out
more in depth at
https://firebase.google.com/support/privacy
We also take great care to make sure your data is
safe and only you can access it.**

Makes me wonder a bit about any future upload/download limits or additional charges. On Reddit the dev wrote, "There's no data storage cap on the server" but frankly that's unsustainable for a company, especially since some people are using it as an Evernote replacement and are discussing moving hundreds or notes at a time into UpNote.

Re-downloaded the app and played with it for a few hours. It seems interesting and certainly worth it for the price (one-time charge just $5 more than Bear's annual charge?!), I'm not dazzled by it.

On the positive side, the dev recently stated, "Outlining abilities/section collapsing is in our roadmap. We hope to work on that later after web clipper and hashtags"

(Hashtags are an interesting semi-omission, as notebooks are *actually* hashtags, and you can have notes live in multiple notebooks.)

On Mac there's no drag-and-drop of notes - you have to select each one, right-click and choose Add To Notebooks, then select/deselect the Notebooks you want to put it in.

And it's a little odd that the app has a specific filter category/preset-tag for 'uncategorized note' instead of just having an Inbox.

The menubar dropdown access is very primitive compared to apps like SnipNotes (which lets you create notes from the menubar and put them into folders without accessing the app. Not to mention that SnipNotes has widgets and even Apple Watch app.)

There are a couple of design decisions I'd worry might bite me in the butt later on. For example, you can remove a notebook from the sidebar; not sure why I'd want to, but unless there was a way to rediscover notebooks removed from it, notebooks would have the potential to get lost after I've built up a large enough UpNote database. Also right now there's no ability to search within a note - it only searches *all* notes.

The mobile apps are native but the Mac app is Electron, which I'm not fond of having on my hardware. Aside from it tending to bog down with large / large numbers of files (though the Mac app is speedy with my handful of test docs), it's also to have had serious security problems. (Just a few months ago, Microsoft rush-patched an interaction-free bug in the Electron-based desktop version of its Teams app: any party in a Teams chat could abuse a relatively simple stored XSS bug to steal the access credentials of other participants simply by addressing them in a message, and using those credentials an attacker could take over a victim’s Office 365, OneNote, Teams and other Microsoft app accounts.)

https://github.com/oskarsve/ms-teams-rce

And security has been an issue with Electron apps for many years.

https://twitter.com/riskybusiness/status/1299689943711662080

And as of now in order to delete all your files from their server their FAQ says you need to email Support. There should be an easier, more elegant option.

Finally, I'll reiterate that I strongly doubt the business case for being able to afford continued development and support of the app as a going concern with a cheap one-time license with unlimited data storage.

satis wrote:

Re-downloaded the app and played with it for a few hours. It seems
interesting and certainly worth it for the price (one-time charge just
$5 more than Bear's annual charge?!), I'm not dazzled by it.

I think what ended up compelling me to move to it was that despite having more fully-featured apps, I always found myself using Apple Notes on my Mac and my iPhone for note-taking, information repository, writing up quick daily task lists, etc. But now I find UpNote as easy to use while adding some features that I appreciate (even if relatively basic.) Task management in particular is very light, although maybe with hashtags and perhaps more filter types (and nested filters) the app can become more versatile overall.

On the positive side, the dev recently stated, "Outlining
abilities/section collapsing is in our roadmap. We hope to work on that
later after web clipper and hashtags"

(Hashtags are an interesting semi-omission, as notebooks are *actually*
hashtags, and you can have notes live in multiple notebooks.)

I doubt that outlining and hashtag management will be nearly as deep as some other apps, but similarly will probably be good enough for me to stop using Workflowy. Did I am not a power user? But for reference the main PIM/Outliner/task apps I have been currently using are Apple Notes, The Hit List, and Workflowy.

On Mac there's no drag-and-drop of notes - you have to select each one,
right-click and choose Add To Notebooks, then select/deselect the
Notebooks you want to put it in.

There are a couple of clunky aspects here and there in the app, hopefully those can be smoothed out over time. I think being on 4 different platforms makes these more improvements slower, but I appreciate having Mac, iOS, and Android/Chromebook platforms as I use all 3. I think if I was Mac/iOS only I'd have a lot more choices.

And it's a little odd that the app has a specific filter
category/preset-tag for 'uncategorized note' instead of just having an
Inbox.

You are right, although I guess it's the same thing in the end regardless of the name?

There are a couple of design decisions I'd worry might bite me in the
butt later on. For example, you can remove a notebook from the sidebar;
not sure why I'd want to, but unless there was a way to rediscover
notebooks removed from it, notebooks would have the potential to get
lost after I've built up a large enough UpNote database. Also right now
there's no ability to search within a note - it only searches *all*
notes.

As long as you know you can click on 'Notebooks' to view them all, I 'think' its better to have the option to hide than not.

Currently you can search within a note on Mac, but don't think on other platforms.

And as of now in order to delete all your files from their server their
FAQ says you need to email Support. There should be an easier, more
elegant option.

I agree, an online form with a couple of 'Are you extra extra sure?' confirmations would be better. Or within the app, but requiring you to re-enter login info to prevent accidental wipes.

Finally, I'll reiterate that I strongly doubt the business case for
being able to afford continued development and support of the app as a
going concern with a cheap one-time license with unlimited data storage.

I wonder if a storage limit could be implemented down the road. I think a large repository of notes is not a big deal bandwidth-wise, but a lot of attachments could be. Although I don't know why one would use an app like this for general file storage (as opposed to just attaching relevant files here and there within your notes database.)

On the Mac I cannot search within a note. If I'm in one note and I do a search, and the result is in another note, I'm popped into the main window with the search term in that other note highlighted in the note window (and I have to then manually navigate back to the note I'd been in).

As for a future price increase I think it's inevitable. I paid the $20 upgrade, and I'm still playing with the app, but even though it has backlinks I'm not sure it offers too much right more beyond Apple Notes.

satis wrote:

On the Mac I cannot search within a note. If I'm in one note and I do a
search, and the result is in another note, I'm popped into the main
window with the search term in that other note highlighted in the note
window (and I have to then manually navigate back to the note I'd been
in).

Alt-Command-F allows you to search within your current note. Or click on "..." next to the star icon and you can find the command there.

Hi Satis, search within a note is available on Mac and Windows app. You may see more here: https://medium.com/upnote/search-within-a-note-e7b3f699da68

Thank you for your concerns about pricing, it's something we have to actively monitor given the server and development cost involved. But we will do our best to make it affordable for our users.

satis wrote:

On the Mac I cannot search within a note. If I'm in one note and I do a
search, and the result is in another note, I'm popped into the main
window with the search term in that other note highlighted in the note
window (and I have to then manually navigate back to the note I'd been
in).

As for a future price increase I think it's inevitable. I paid the $20
upgrade, and I'm still playing with the app, but even though it has
backlinks I'm not sure it offers too much right more beyond Apple Notes.

There are a couple of ux areas we hope to smoothen out in the future (like dragging and dropping notes into notebooks, providing an automatic way for users to delete their accounts...). Though that may take some time; as our current priority is to make sure the app runs smoothly on all platforms, and to make it available on Linux and create a stand-alone Windows app; so users will have more choices to install the app.

Good to hear. I emailed Support over the weekend about some rough edges I found. I've been using it daily for some types of notes and I like the app, and I look forward to the discussed web clipper and folding that are on the to-do list.

satis wrote:

Good to hear. I emailed Support over the weekend about some rough edges
I found. I've been using it daily for some types of notes and I like the
app, and I look forward to the discussed web clipper and folding that
are on the to-do list.

Thanks for your support, if you see any issues please let us know (support@getupnote.com) . We will try to reproduce that on our end and fix it.

Btw we have released the web clipper; please check out the install links here: https://twitter.com/upnote_app/status/1392681410691960838

Thanks for the link. I got the clipper to work on the Mac in Safari immediately, and Firefox the 2nd or 3rd time I tried. Brave took 4 attempts but now it works, but only by opening a new blank tab after clipping, whereupon a dropdown menu asks 'Open UpNpte app? A website wants to open this application" - I click "Open UpNote.app" button, and it then pops me over to the UpNote app.

In fact popping me over to the app after each clipping occurs with *all* the browsers. I hope that isn't the intended behavior, it's annoying. On iOS I just activate the share-sheet and save to UpNote and then go right back to the webpage without needing to visit UpNote.

Anyway, given the focus of this forum I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do in terms of folding/outlining. I'd be blissfully happy if you could replicate the UI of OmniOutliner/Dynalist/CloudOutliner and offer OPML import/export.

Thanks for letting us know about the web clipper; we will make improvements on that. Will update here again when we have more progress on the folding/outlining features :)

satis wrote:

Thanks for the link. I got the clipper to work on the Mac in Safari
immediately, and Firefox the 2nd or 3rd time I tried. Brave took 4
attempts but now it works, but only by opening a new blank tab after
clipping, whereupon a dropdown menu asks 'Open UpNpte app? A website
wants to open this application" - I click "Open UpNote.app" button, and
it then pops me over to the UpNote app.

In fact popping me over to the app after each clipping occurs with *all*
the browsers. I hope that isn't the intended behavior, it's annoying. On
iOS I just activate the share-sheet and save to UpNote and then go right
back to the webpage without needing to visit UpNote.

Anyway, given the focus of this forum I'm looking forward to seeing what
you can do in terms of folding/outlining. I'd be blissfully happy if you
could replicate the UI of OmniOutliner/Dynalist/CloudOutliner and offer
OPML import/export.

Bravo, Thomas! Another great step forward for UpNote.

Thank you! I am really looking forward to that.

I am also giving Craft a try right now and really love how it’s ‘pages within pages’ works. But I already have paid for lifetime subscription to UpNote and hope it will really do it all for me (folding/outlining is the only major feature lacking for me.)

The interesting thing is that of course you can already link to other notes in UpNote, but something about the UI in Craft with regards to blocks and pages is done really well.

Cheers
Steve

Thomas wrote:

Thanks for letting us know about the web clipper; we will make
improvements on that. Will update here again when we have more progress
on the folding/outlining features :)