I switched to an open-source notes app for 2 weeks, and I wish I had done it sooner

I spend a huge chunk of my time every day jotting down information, ideas, and thoughts. As such, I’m selective about the note-taking apps I use on my devices.

For a long time, my note-taking system used two apps: Simplenote for quick notes and Obsidian for structured notes. However, a while back, I set out to find a replacement for Simplenote since its simplicity, which I once found its biggest strength, started to feel limiting in everyday use.

I tested a few popular note-taking apps and found Notesnook to be the most fitting for my needs. I’ve since switched to Notesnook as my go-to notes app, and I wish I had done it sooner.

What is Notesnook?

Notesnook is a relatively new app in the note-taking space. What sets it apart from many popular note-taking apps is end-to-end encryption and a generous free plan.

End-to-end encryption enables Notesnook to offer a private note-taking experience. It ensures your notes remain private, whether they’re on your device or on Notesnook’s servers. As for the free plan, it’s the most feature-rich free plan I’ve used in a note-taking app in a while, packing all the essential features you’d typically use. The free plan keeps your notes synced across all your devices, too, eliminating the need for manual workarounds — like with Obsidian. What’s also nice is that, unlike apps like Notion, Notesnook has a fully functional offline mode, so you can view, edit, search, and organize notes even when you aren’t connected to the internet.

Notesnook is available on all major mobile and desktop platforms. You also get a free web clipper for Firefox and Chromium-based web browsers that lets you quickly save webpages and articles you find interesting on the internet to Notesnook. The best part is that it supports text selection, so you can select the exact paragraphs you want to save on a webpage.

Why Notesnook won me over

Notesnook strongly emphasizes privacy. Unlike most note-taking apps, it keeps your notes encrypted at all times, meaning they’re encrypted not just when they’re present on your device but also on Notesnook’s servers and in transit, which isn’t the case with Simplenote. The company says this ensures no one, including its team, can read your notes. This feature alone is Notesnook’s biggest pull for me. Since I prefer jotting down frequently-needed personal and work-related information in notes for easy access, knowing my notes can’t be viewed by anyone is a huge relief.

Then there’s support for rich-media attachments. Unlike Simplenote, which is designed around text, Notesnook lets you insert images and attach files (PDFs, scanner receipts, audio clips, and more) directly into your notes. I find this really useful for researching, planning tips, maintaining records of things like vehicle services, or noting down instructions.

Note organization also feels better on Notesnook. In Simplenote, the only way to group similar notes is to give them the same tag name. With Notesnook, you get notebooks, which are essentially folders where you can put similar notes together, so they’re easier to find later. I also like that each notebook can contain multiple sub-notebooks, as this allows me to create hierarchical notes within my notebooks.

Another area where Notesnook outdoes Simplenote is text formatting. While Simplenote supports Markdown, which is great for formatting text on the go, it lacks basic text-formatting options. I realized how big a pain point this was once I switched to Notesnook. Unlike Simplenote, Notesnook offers all essential text styling options, such as bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, subscript, superscript, code, and Math, as well as multiple options for headings and lists, and more. I also find the tables feature really useful, as it simplifies comparisons, helps me better track my projects’ status, and makes data more comprehensive. All of these text formatting options are well laid out in the editor interface on Notesnook’s mobile and desktop apps.

Notesnook isn’t perfect

It’s only been a couple of weeks since I switched to Notesnook, but I’m already missing a few things about Simplenote. First up, there’s speed. Simplenote, with its lightweight interface and minimalist approach to note-taking, is fast and really easy to use. The app launches quickly, and since all the notes are displayed in a vertical list, you can tap or click a note to jump in and start working on it.

The other thing I miss on Notesnook is full-fledged support for Markdown-based note-taking. Unlike Simplenote, Notesnook doesn’t let you jot down notes in raw Markdown. Instead, when you type Markdown tags (called shortcuts in Notesnook), they get rendered to rich text. It’s worth noting that Markdown shortcuts aren’t available on the free plan, so you’ll need to upgrade to a paid Notesnook plan to use them. Of all Simplenote features, raw Markdown support is the one I miss the most since switching to Notesnook.

Another watered-down feature on Notesnook is cross-platform note history syncing. Although Notesnook lets you view a note’s revision history since its inception, it is local, which means the app doesn’t sync changes across all your devices. As a result, if you make changes to a note on your phone, you can’t view or restore them on the Notesnook desktop app. This isn’t the case with Simplenote, which syncs revision history across all devices.

Last but not least, I miss Simplenote’s collaboration feature. I find it incredibly useful for collaborating on vacation planning, maintaining a shopping list, and more. All you need to do is add the person’s email address to the note you want to collaborate on. The note then appears in their note list, and they can jump in to view and make changes. All changes appear to the other person in real time. Collaboration is one of the most requested features in Notesnook’s community.

I might not completely switch to Notesnook yet

While I miss some aspects of Simplenote after switching to Notesnook, the benefits Notesnook offers make it a more capable note-taking app for my needs than Simplenote. As such, I’ve replaced Simplenote with it. In fact, I’ve started using it for permanent notes, too, and have moved some notes over from Obsidian.

That said, I’m not replacing Obsidian with Notesnook anytime soon; I think Obsidian is still one of the best apps for managing databases, wikis, and knowledge bases, thanks to its plugin support. I also can’t live without the Obsidian knowledge graph, which helps me visualize my vault and identify related and orphaned notes. Automation workflows, support for Markdown, and no vendor lock-in are other aspects of Obsidian that keep me from completely switching to Notesnook — at least for now.