Show HN: Notesnook – A cross-platform privacy focused zero-knowledge notes app
notesnook.com
notesnook.com
We started out development of Notesnook a year ago with the aim of providing a 100% privacy focused note-taking app. At the time, Standard Notes was getting the spotlight for it's privacy fearures. However, it lacked many essential things that we thought were important: 1. Very bad mobile app experience 2. Hard to navigate and use 3. No community 4. No customer-developer communication
We built Notesnook to address these short comings. In the process, we realized that note-taking is unnecessarily hard nowadays. With platforms like Notion leading the way, private and personal note-taking has been pushed to the far back.
Notesnook brings features like 100% client-side encryption (using Argon2 & xchacha20-ietf-poly1305), an easy to use intuitive user interface (strictly following 2-tap philosophy), sensible organization (through notebooks, topics, tags & colors).
We are currently laying the groundwork for features such as:
1. Note publishing 2. Secure collaborative note sharing 3. Mobile app widgets 4. Extensions (much like VSCode)
There are many more features in the app that you can easily preview on the website: https://notesnook.com
We have also set up a Discord server where you can directly come and chat with us: https://discord.gg/YHkTRDtAuj
Thank you! Hope you like the app. :)
I will take this into account though.
However I must say that I find myself having difficulties adapting to a new note taking environment. I always seem to drift back to simple markdown notes in my preferred editor.
Perhaps this is due to ease of access and how efficiently I am able to write markdown. The only real issue I have with this system is organization. It’s very difficult to track down a specific note in a file that I have not worked on recently.
For more general note taking and journaling I still prefer pen and paper, but that is a whole other topic of discussion :)
I was myself a pen & paper user for notes. That is why I designed Notesnook organization system around the concept of notebooks & topics because they are very easy to get used to:
A notebook has multiple topics that can have multiple notes. (A single note can be under multiple topics - for flexibility).
As for markdown, Notesnook supports most of the markdown spec so you won't have any problem there.
I tried to make the app as simple and easy to use as possible because I am aware of how clunky and un-user-friendly many note-taking apps are. The aim is not to redesign (or reinvent) how to take notes but to improve & simplify it.
So far I think the UX is incredibly sleek from my brief usage of the iOS app. Writing markdown feels really good, this will be a large improvement from the stock iOS app.
Excited to check out the VS Code extension and desktop experience.
> Excited to check out the VS Code extension and desktop experience.
The VS Code extension & the desktop app are in the works. We also have plans for a Chrome extension and a CLI app (that will greatly make Notesnook editor/platform agnostic).
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/dont-worry-these-gangley-armed-...
It's cliche. It is obnoxious. They serve absolutely zero purpose. Get rid of them.
Security & encryption wise, both apps use the same encryption algorithms, afaik.
However, Standard Notes is expensive ($9/m) whereas Notesnook is only $4.49/mo.
Notesnook's organization is more flexible; it has tags, colors, notebooks & topics. In comparison, Standard Notes only offers colors and tags.
Notesnook's mobile app experience is almost the same as the web verison. There's almost 1:1 feature parity. Whereas in Standard Notes, the mobile version lacks many of the main features.
We also have more export options (you can export notes as pdf, html, md or txt). On the mobile app, there's also Quick Share that allows you to share any text or link directly into the app without switching contexts (apps).
https://github.com/standardnotes
There is an empty repo for Notesnook:
https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook
Will Notesnook also become open source, or will it remain proprietary?
I have plans to make certain parts of Notesnook open source. Especially the security related ones so they can be audited and reviewed by the public.
Notesnook as a product will remain proprietary though.
As for one-time subscription, no unfortunately not. I personally don't think it's sustainable because we'll be rolling out releases often. The $4.49 subscription gives us a good breathing room and support to work on more features. In return our users get new features and bug fixes very fast.
Yes! We are currently internally testing MathJax support in Notesnook so it'll be out and about soon.
What crypto algorithm does it utilise for zero knowledge encryption.
We are using Argon2 for password hashing (both on client and server side) and as a KDF. The key is generated client-side on the user's browser/mobile and saved in a secure storage (IndexedDB on the browser & OS Keychain on mobile).
For data encryption we use XChaCha20-IETF-Poly1305 using the well known libsodium library. All the data is encrypted on user's device before being sent to the server.
The main details on how all data with the app is handled is available here: https://notesnook.com/privacy
The only limitation is currently doesn't run on android.
I hope you'll give Notesnook a try too. I am sure it will be a better change
Can I import my bookmarks easily?
A full importer is in the works that will allow importing from all major note-taking apps like Evernote, Standard notes etc (with extensibility for more). I can look into adding bookmark import support if you can tell more a little bit more about it.
Have it able to import the bookmarks from any browser, and keep it on a dedicated "BookMarks" page - allow me to group and tag the bookmarks.
Then allow quick referencing to the bookmarks from other notes, such that if I start typing the tag, or the URL of a URL in the bookmarks, it will quickly link to the URL in the bookmarks for that tag, or URL.
Another use of this would be to be able build a "sources" list easily.
Else, just allow easy bookmark import :-)
So yes this is definitely planned.
When you login from another device your data is fetched and decrypted and shown to you.