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Show HN: Notesnook – A cross-platform privacy focused zero-knowledge notes app

notesnook.com

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Re: Show HN: Notesnook – A cross-platform privacy focused zero-knowledge notes app

#5

Post by thecodrr »

samstave wrote: post #3

Looks nice - I have been looking for something like this. Currently I have been taking notes in Rstudio. Can I import my bookmarks easily?

Thank you, I am glad you liked it!

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.

Re: Show HN: Notesnook – A cross-platform privacy focused zero-knowledge notes app

#6

Post by thecodrr »

Hello everyone, lead developer of Notesnook here.

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. :)

Re: Show HN: Notesnook – A cross-platform privacy focused zero-knowledge notes app

#7

Post by samstave »

thecodrr wrote: post #5
samstave wrote: post #3

Looks nice - I have been looking for something like this. Currently I have been taking notes in Rstudio. Can I import my bookmarks easily?

Thank you, I am glad you liked it! 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.

I think that NotesNook would be dope if it had the following feature:

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 :-)

Re: Show HN: Notesnook – A cross-platform privacy focused zero-knowledge notes app

#8

Post by k1rcher »

This looks really interesting, will check it out- the privacy aspect is very intriguing.

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 :)

Re: Show HN: Notesnook – A cross-platform privacy focused zero-knowledge notes app

#9

Post by thecodrr »

samstave wrote: post #7
thecodrr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I am glad you liked it! 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.

I think that NotesNook would be dope if it had the following feature: 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…

Oh yes! Just last week we were discussing on adding a "Links" page that'd allow for easy sharing & organization of links and bookmarks in the app.

So yes this is definitely planned.

Re: Show HN: Notesnook – A cross-platform privacy focused zero-knowledge notes app

#10

Post by thecodrr »

k1rcher wrote: post #8

This looks really interesting, will check it out- the privacy aspect is very intriguing. 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…

Hey, thanks for checking Notesnook out.

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.

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