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Comment on It's Time to Ditch Evernote for One of These Alternatives

Standard Notes is fantastic, assuming that:

you don’t need to collaborate in real-time with your notes (you can share them after the fact and there is a way to give multiple accounts edit access to the same note, but it looked complicated and I haven’t explored it)
you primarily use a keyboard - mobile counts, even if you’re using speech to text or Scribble on iPad - rather than wanting a canvas to draw on.
you’re not trying to upload documents and annotate them

StandardNotes has the following going for it:

it’s FOSS
it’s easily self-hostable
it’s also offered as SaaS, and if you use that your notes are e2ee
if you self-host you can still use the official mobile apps (but those are open source, too)
it has a web app, mobile apps, desktop apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux
there is a variety of editor plugins created by the community that can be used even if you use the free SaaS offering - check out github.com/jonhadfield/awesome-standard-notes for a list.

I’ve been using StandardNotes for a few years at this point (as a paid user on their 5 year plan, which no longer exists as far as I know) and have also developed an editor plugin for it.

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Dhrystone@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
StandardNotes (I compared it to SimpleNote when I tested it months ago):

Doesn’t support markdown without $ - simplenote does

Doesn’t support checkboxes without $ - simplenote does

Doesn’t even allow rich text without paying

$119/year subscription

Simplenote syncs faster

It calls itself FOSS but really, most of the important functionality is paid-only.
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- hedgehog@ttrpg.network ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  FOSS doesn’t mean free as in beer. Even so, you can get support for all of the things you mentioned, and more, for free. You can find the link from my comment above by searching for “Awesome Standard Notes,” but since you mentioned editors specifically, this will take you directly where you want to go: github.com/jonhadfield/awesome-standard-notes#edi…
  
  There are several Markdown compatible editors in that list, so you’re free to choose the one that works best for you.
  
  The Append Editor supports multiple types of Markdown, including Github Flavored Markdown, as well as LATEX. You can get an inline check mark by prepending a line with - [ ], but when you press enter it doesn’t make the next line a checkmark, nor can you click a checkmark to check/uncheck it, so it’s not a good choice if checklists are your main use-case. Some better options:
  
  Tui Markdown Editor requires you to manually start a checklist the same way, but then a new line in either markdown or wysiwyg mode will also have a checkmark. You can also check/uncheck in wysiwyg mode with a click.
  
  The Rich Markdown Editor is also good for checklists. It only offers a wysiwyg experience where you type in the same view as the final one (rather than having a split view), but there’s no top menu. You can still type the normal Markdown characters with exceptions when it’s something that requires multiple characters. In that case, type / on a new line to get a list of options, then type a couple characters and choose the best option. For example, I can’t just type - [ ] and get a checklist because it escapes the characters so that I get a list that would render the [ ]. But I can type / and then type “checklist” or “todo” (really just 2 characters of either of those words) and choose that option to start an in-line checklist. And if I hit enter, the next line defaults to being another checklist item. You can also click the checkmark to check or uncheck it.
  
  For a dedicated task list, Scratch also works well. It’s not Markdown behind the scenes, though (but it is still readable plain text). You can start a checklist by clicking the checkmark icon in the top menu. Like the Rich Markdown Editor, a new line will create a new checklist item and you can click the checkmark to check/uncheck it.
  
  You also might check out the “Advanced Checklist.” It’s in the “Official Extensions” link but I just tested and was able to install it on a free account. (Note that you can also self-host the “paid” editors other than the Super editor and use them for free, though that does require a bit of extra work.)
  
  There are other editors on that page and also other community written editors in general out there. The Marp Editor lets you create presentation slides. The Mermaid Editor lets you create diagrams. Heck there’s even a Music Editor (for tablature, not for directly generating audio). There are a couple sketch / whiteboard apps. I’m not saying it has everything you could ever dream of, but there’s a lot and it’s easy to extend for anyone with front end web development experience.
  
  Regarding your point about Simplenote syncing faster: I assume this is because Standard Notes is end to end encrypted, but Simplenote is not (Unfortunately generally e2ee adds additional overhead to syncing operations as the server cannot optimize nearly as much). There may be more to it than that, though. I’ve looked at Standard Notes’s code a bit but haven’t looked at the server code for Simplenote - as far as I can tell, Simperium, the backend it uses, is not open source. (The frontend is, though.)
  
  That said, I’ve never noticed Standard Notes taking particularly long to sync. I don’t have thousands of notes but I do have several hundred (pretty close to a thousand). Were you seeing bad performance with Standard Notes or just worse (but still fine) performance? And if the latter, can you share some more details?
  
  For me, not being end to end encrypted is a dealbreaker for my private notes (unless I’m self-hosting the app, that is). I’m not comfortable with someone at the hosting company just being able to access my notes. But that’s not important to everyone, and if it’s not important to you and if Simplenote otherwise does everything you want, then by all means use it - it’s a great choice.
  
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- YarrMatey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I have to agree. I considered Standard Notes but I would have to pay for super notes in order to use images, even if I self-host. Same for code blocks, organizing notes into folders, spreadsheets, web clipper. Have to get the most expensive plan for offline access and being able to have local backups, although it is discounted if you self-host completely but why still pay a sub at that point? I would rather pay once and then be able to self-host using their super notes without paying more every month.
  
  I liked Obsidian but wanted encryption that works on my android so I went with Joplin.
  
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  - Dhrystone@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Obsidian does offer end to end encryption as well, but you need to pay for their Sync offering. They have a good deal on it right now but I don’t need encryption so I just use the basic icloud functionality which works pretty well on iPhone, iPad and Windows. help.obsidian.md/…/Security+and+privacy
    
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wagoner@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They brought back the five year plan for Black Friday, which I bought. They now include in the paid model an all purpose editor that works really well, especially with embedded images.

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Jarmer@slrpnk.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Been using standardnotes for years and absolutely love it. My fav is the quick note-type changer. Can go from base text only to markup to checklist etc so easy.

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