Ask HN: If I build another note taking app, would you use it, if not why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: If I build another note taking app, would you use it, if not why?

2 pointsmusfk13 comments

If it's open source, extremely reliable, cross platform including Android, opens in less than 2 seconds(like Google Keep does), and is packaged for Linux in a maintenance free way(AppImage/Flatpak/single binary), then probably.

Sync has to never lose data due to conflicts, the desktop version needs to not be entirely keyboard shortcut driven and not take a week to learn.

I've tried pretty much all the notes apps, none are 100% perfect, but Google Keep is hard to compete with.

I suspect it would not be too hard to make a great one, because you could use SyncThing and plain text as the backend, and I've thought about doing one myself, but the effort of maintaining a cross platform app by myself is more stress than I want to add.

Only if you combine all features spanned/scattered over existing apps into one then only,

There are currently 3 kind of note taking apps as per me

1) Simple Basic (Just fulfills note creation) Nothing Advance features (Like keep)

2) Advance Extremely feature rich (But lacks the basic features the ui rapid note taking)

3)Extendable Apps

4) Apps with ingenious features like networked note taking tagging, graphical trees, backlinking (Like roam, reflect, capacities) Full featured apps exist for desktop while their android counterparts are limited, all features reside in their desktop app and on android app you can only view no create no sync etc

If you combine all (Next to impossible)

I am better with notepad on windows and vim on linux and keep on android

Sure. I want an app that is:

- cross-platform (Linux, Windows, Android)

- can take notes and To Do lists

- stores data in a "local" area, whose location I have some control over (e.g. webdav, SMB/CIFS, NextCloud, etc.)

- the reason for the above is so we can SYNCHRONIZE our data between devices, but in a self-hosted manner

That's it! I'm even willing to pay for it! ;-). Thanks!

p.s. If anyone already knows of such an animal, I'm all ears! The closest I've got going is Joplin right now, but it's limited in some areas for me.

Obsidian fits the bill

No one can answer “yes” with the information you’ve given. Who are you? What would your app do differently that is worth switching to? How much would it cost? For all we know, you’re going to use an LLM to build a slow app which consumes a ton of RAM before crashing, is an expensive subscription, sells user data, and isn’t even available on our OS of choice.

We’re not in your head, you have to communicate your plans.

Thank you, this is awesome. I will communicate my plans properly. Basically, It's a markdown-based collaborative note-taking app where anyone can access, edit, and contribute to notes, making knowledge open and community-driven.

Thank you for clarifying. To answer the original question: No, I wouldn’t use it. To me notes are something personal. Occasionally collaborative but only on a small individual level. What you’re describing seems more like a knowledge base or documentation, and I wouldn’t use a notes approach for that.

What if you have the option to keep your notes locally or in a platform like GitHub (if the repo is public, the notes are public, and if the repo is private, the notes are private)?

No, I would not use your note taking app. Because I host my own notes, I don't need yet another AI trained on my notes.

What type of note taking app? Who would be your main competitor?

It's a markdown-based collaborative note-taking app where anyone can access, edit, and contribute to notes, making knowledge open and community-driven.

My personal notes are valuable. I want them to last a decade. There’s already Markdown, text editors, and Git.

A new note-taking app could sell my notes, lock me out via Cloudflare, use robot detection that doesn’t work, leave critical bugs unfixed, pull some kind of business-source-license bait-and-switch, enshittify in some other creative way, or just go away overnight without notice.

Thank you. I will take care of that. Basically, it's a markdown-based collaborative note-taking app where anyone can access, edit, and contribute to notes, making knowledge open and community-driven.

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