is iCloud.com really that bad?

Bear is the app you need.

It’s paid, your notes are in a database (easily exportable as .txt), but I’ve used it for years and years and it’s one of those rare apps that ‘just works’.

And it’s something like $25 a year. Utterly reasonable.

I'm building a note-taking app, so I hope you don't mind, but I was wondering if you might describe how you "search" your notes while using a device's file system search? For desktop, I might use a tool like grep to do that, but that's pretty developer-y, so if you're doing something more user-friendly, that's interesting to me. What is more interesting to me, though, is what you're using on mobile to do this? I've never, personally, used my mobile's file system search to discover text in notes. But I'm on Android, so there's not really only one 'file system' with a search interface.

My thought here is it that the app is going to be saving simple text files either plaintext or richtext (markdown/html), so it should be able to provide this for you, but I haven't even considered that as a feature so I would want to test it to see if there were any rough edges to polish. Any suggestions you have would be appreciated!

I use Logseq which writes to markdown files, and then sync/diff against a Logseq folder in iCloud. It generally works. I can write changes on my phone using the app, and it’ll pull it back to my computer once the phone goes online. If there’s pending changes on both sides, rare given Logseq’s daily file structure, I have it prompt on my computer to fix.

The dual folder structure helps identify the collisions and manage them appropriately, versus whatever handling iCloud would do.

It’s probably still awkward on a non-Apple device as I’m sure iCloud web access is not great, but it works.

I went through the same process a few years ago. Your requirements are very similar to mine. Amplenote is what I settled on. Cross platform, quick UI, and very good in no-network and (even more commonly) poor-network conditions. Even the web app uses local storage and works offline.

I made a comment about zettel notes on the parent, have a look. It fixes some of the problems you talk about. Not sure if theres an apple version.

Android is why I use Google Keep. There's lots of features I wish it has, but ultimately the important one for me is that I can take a note any time with no delay or waiting for apps to load

Clibu Notes is a note-taking and Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) app that works on desktop, tablet, and smartphone. Local first, fast with first class editing, backlinks etc. Simple, effective note taking, always accessible everywhere. See Clibu.com