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Comment by reacharavindh | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently using Apple Notes on my Mac and iPhone. It works just great!

    It synchronises perfectly
    I can drag and drop images to it, no problem.
    Cmd + C, Cmd + V, Cmd + B, Cmd + I all work as expected.
    I can even add to-do lists and cross out "Done"
    I think it even supports tables, But I don't use them.
    Export as PDF, html, airdrop, email whatever, works easily

What doesn't work:

    If I ever get out of Apple ecosystem, it won't work.
    Apple has my data, and I need to trust them.

Give me something with the same ease of use, and make it self-hostable without pain. I'd be happy to pay. I don't need Markdown or anything else. Text + Drag & Drop images support are a must for me.

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Useful tip (that I didn't know until recently) is you can also access your notes via any modern browser at https://www.icloud.com/

I recently moved to a Windows machine as my day-to-day home machine and thought I'd have to abandon Apple Notes (which I use on my phone and my work Macbook) but the web interface is basically identical to the apps.

That's great to know. I found how awesome Notes had become in Sierra, and now have hundreds of notes - this is an app I use every single day multiple times a day. But I don't like the new offering of MBP's and wanted to move off the mac ecosystem, so started work on something just as easy to use and as secure as Notes, coupled with sharing notes. It's just a mobile first web app hooked up to firebase with nothing making it to the server that hasn't been encrypted on the client first. Shared notes will require users to share a password, unless I find a better solution.

But if iCloud Notes is just as good, maybe I'm wasting my time. I trust Apple's security, and Notes really is exactly what I want as a dev (their limited markup is nearly as useful as markdown, and I love that it is limited to a few choices).

The web interface actually lets you do one thing you can't on iOS - create nested folders.

I wish Apple would work more on icloud.com as a fully featured extension of their ecosystem. But they seem to be removing small features that are really useful, and I don't get the impression it has any priority. It used to be a nice way to manage mobile photos. Mass deletion was quicker and easier than on the phone, for example.

You can get a lot of the export features (pdf, html, ePub, LaTeX, docX) with markdown if you just use pandoc [1]. Pandoc’s description from their website is, “If you need to convert files from one markup format into another, pandoc is your swiss-army knife... Pandoc is free software, released under the GPL.” It truly is an amazing program to me. I use it all the time for my school assignments. It’s a command line tool and for the most part you can write ‘pandoc -s <input-file-name> -o <output-file-name>‘ and it will guess how to convert it based on extension. I do my markdown editing with visual studio code, because it has a previewer that also supports LaTeX math mode in the markdown (vs code does the LaTeX math mode through KaTeX.) Pandoc also supports latex math mode in markdown so I can export math related assignments to pdf and such quickly.

[1]: http://pandoc.org

Where does Apple Notes store it’s files? What format are they in?

They're stored in an sqlite file at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/NotesV7.storedata (version number might be different.)

The data stored all over the place in the DB.

For example, you can extract HTML body of a note with the following query: "select ZHTMLSTRING from ZNOTEBODY".

Yep. They probably use Core Data (which is a layer on top of SQLite) internally instead of straight SQLite, but either way it ends up on disk as an SQLite file. A lot of standard Apple apps do this.

Pandoc is crap software. All the bugs makes it unusable for anything complicated.

What bugs? I've been using pandoc for years (admittedly mostly for markdown --> pdf/html/docx, sometimes with bibtex and interesting latex tweaks) and never run into a bug.

put a table in your documents, see what happens.

...unusable for anything complicated.

I thought we were talking about taking notes and then displaying them? How could that be complicated?

Disproof: The recent release of Scrivener use Pandoc for their 847-page manual[0]. It's a complicated something.

[0] https://www.literatureandlatte.com/learn-and-support/user-gu...

> Apple has my data, and I need to trust them.

You don't need to let Apple have your data to use Notes. Notes syncs through a standard IMAP account.

If you have your own domain, you can just create a notes@example.com e-mail account and Apple Notes will happily sync all of its data through that. That's what I do.

Huh, that's a cool tip. I'll try it out.

Boostnote - https://boostnote.io/

I have been using it for a few months and it is working good for me with resilio as my sync tool but it works with dropbox also. So security is up to the way you sync your files.

Works on Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS and Android and is open source. Takes a bit more to setup but I like this app since it reminds me of the old PIM Programs of old and has a good markdown system. It also exports as plain text or markdown.

I just tried Boostnote and I was impressed. One thing I wish it did better was to make creating new notes easier and faster, like Notational Velocity (or nvAlt). I don't like to have to choose between markdown and snippet each time. In fact, I wish I could embed code within markdown (with the power of the code highlighting that it does with snippets), then it would be a perfect note app for me. Vim keybinding also seems to work well, although I wish for customizing all keybindings (hopefully coming in future version)

Me too, and my favourite is the sketches. Add a little doodle, use the ruler for crisp lines - all in your basic little note app.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. Writing with Apple Pencil on iPad into the notes and seeing it appear on Mac and phone is a lot of fun and utility at the same time.

I think it also does handwriting recognition so your handwriting, if legible, is searchable.

Same here (I would pay, that is). I've been using SimpleNote for text notes since I switched to Linux, which seems to sync as well as Notes - but I really miss the simple sketching tools (and that great ruler!) for jotting down ideas on the train, and drag & drop images for "borrowing" ideas from the internet during the day.

Fastmail enables you to use their service to sync your Notes from OSX& iOS. i think with CalDAV.

I just tried it. No CalDAV, just plain IMAP... and only if you don't use the "iCloud upgraded notes", meaning that you cannot format the text.

you're right... IMAP only for Email & Notes[0].

CalDAV for Calendars, Reminders. CardDAV for Contacts.

I am able to use (basic) formatted text, but not the upgraded notes.

I've really enjoyed fastmail for the 1.5 years that I've used it.

For the record, Fastmail supports Mail, Calendar, & Contacts very well. And because Mail is doing the analysis of your messages, Calendar automatically inserts dates from events, flights, and such.

[0] - https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/macmail.html

The biggest con for me is that it's impossible to reliably observe what incremental changes are made by collaborators on a shared note.

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