Author here, it's nice to see Notable linked to on HN by somebody else! I was planning on posting about it myself after v1.9 gets released though, as pretty much everything changed since the last version available in that repo.
If you want to try a not-yet final version of v1.9 you can find it here: https://github.com/notable/notable-experimental/releases It's quite stable at this point and I would trust it more with my data over v1.8, but I haven't written the new tutorial notes and built-in documentation for it yet, and I need to rewrite the search engine before releasing v1.9 final.
If you want to get a quick sneak peek about v1.9 I had recorded a video about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8ERHvuhFH8 It's about 2 months old now, and it only goes over a bunch of new features I had implemented at that point in time.
We also have a chat by the way, if you'd like to keep track of the progress more closely: https://chat.notable.app
Hopefully I'll see you back soon once v1.9 gets released, that will be a lot more exiting than the current v1.8.4.
My biggest problem with these note-taking apps is that there is no way to have a manual order in the file list.
I could name everything as `001-scene1.md`, `002-scene2.md`. But if I want to change the order, it's an O(n) operation by hand, which is painful.
Another thing is that I really want a good pen support. Many notes I take are not texts.
The reason we have so many "Yet-another-note-taking-app" is probably that everyone has a few personal quirks when taking notes, thus the requirement differs from person to person.
Personally I have been a fan of Joplin https://joplinapp.org for note taking. It is also markdown-based with all kinds of features and is MIT licensed.
Yet another electron-based notetaking app.. There's already so many of those. And it's not even open source (anymore, since version 1.5.1). Why go to closed-source for something like this?
I really miss the old Tomboy. It was lightning fast and you could hotlink to another note just by typing its name. It had keyboard shortcuts for everything and searches were pretty much instant. But it's not maintained anymore, and the "NG" version lost the speediness of it (it was a complete rewrite)
The only thing I didn't like about it was that it was based on mono/.net and that it didn't have a CLI version. But despite using mono it was still really fast, it was just a bit of an installation hassle. I'd still use it today if it was still viable, but the lack of HiDPI support in particular makes it really difficult to use today.
One thing about Tomboy that I was a bit divided about was the lack of images. Today I use OneNote because it's basically the only thing my work supports. But I took much better notes with Tomboy as I always had to type content in my own words, whereas with OneNote I got lazy and just screenshot presentation sheets (which aren't searchable and make the database huge and slow).
Now that Notable is closed-source, it feels like a feature-incomplete version of Inkdrop: https://www.inkdrop.app/
Also suspicious that Ink is the only markdown editor not listed in your comparisons, despite being the one most similar to your project
I spent a lot of time recently looking for a good note taking app. Notable (electron), QOwnNotes (Qt), and Joplin (electron) are very similar, with a markdown format with the ability to switch to the rendered view or have them split side-by-side. Joplin has an experimental combined rendered markdown editor view but it's still a bit rough around the edges.
Ultimately I settled on Zettlr. It can be used as a normal notebook, and most importantly it's killer feature to me is that it allows you to paste images from your clipboard into a note, and then view that image inline in the markdown editor instead of having to switch to the rendered view to see the image. All of the other applications show a markdown ![image-filename]() link inside the note editor, requiring you to switch to the rendered view to see the actual image. The only other applications I found which can do this are: Joplin with the experimental editor, OneNote (no linux support, proprietary format), Bear Note (Apple devices only), and a few desktop note taking applications with a non-markdown format and no mobile application. With any of the markdown ones you can sync to Syncthing, NextCloud, Dropbox, etc. and then access them on your phone with the Joplin mobile application. But Zettlr just feels better than Joplin on the desktop, has some nice themes, and the editor is more refined than Joplin's experimental one.
Given this, I don't really see any reason to use Notable over Joplin and Zettlr. QOwnNotes is also good if you really don't want electron and can live without inline images. I used all four of these for quite a while before forming this opinion.
I really like the comparison chart. I wish every project had that. The first thing I think when I see a project like this and there are a ton of options is "why?". This helps with answering that.
I usually assume these projects exist because the creator looked for a solution to their problems but couldn't find one. So it's nice to have their research presented like this instead of having to try to figure it out myself.
Looks like a clone of Bear, which is an awesome mark-down based note app: https://bear.app/
Edit: This is nice, it's also out on linux and windows, unlike Bear which was one of the big negatives for me (day job is on Windows 10 where a note app like this is lacking). Def giving it a try.
I recently set up Syncthing on my laptops and my phone. I have always edited my notes in plain text in Vim and dumbly I would email these to myself (and reply to the email) on my phone so I could access my notes when afk. But now that I have Syncthing and Markor (a markdown/text editor) on my phone, I feel like I am in note-taking bliss.
Maybe someone here is interested in Noteless, an open-source Android note-taking app which aims to be compatible with Notable. https://github.com/redsolver/noteless
I've been on Quiver for quite a few years now — https://happenapps.com – and I am pretty satisfied. I can't say if it's been updated at all for most of that time. I just don't pay attention to it.
I'd probably switch if something great came along. I liked a lot of things about Bear but the pricing model drove me away.
I tried to just use iA Writer for plain markdown but the structure/search isn't usable.
A part of me just wants something simple as http://notational.net/
There seems to be a markdown note-taking app trend... I just want to throw out there that I have been using jupyter lab as a daily journaling markdown editor for nearly a year now and am very much happy with my setup.
For me, ability to quickly expand/collapse headings/sub-headings is essential when I am working with markdown. After some effort got it working in Sublime Text.
Notable looks good, but not sure if it can be made to do this.
Been using it myself for a few years now. Mostly at work for code snippits, scripts, or commands as it has decent syntax highlighting. Synced to dropbox. Love its minimalist UI and feature set.
Would love to simply see this as a website. Why doesn't chrome make it easier to create desktop apps with a web shell? 63MB download again :(. That's like 0.1% app, 99.9% chromium + nodejs. That's why I don't install the desktop slack app. It's not an efficient user of my computer's resources. VSCode is the only electron app I have.
Soz for the rant. Great app though. Well done.
I've been using notable for a few months now. Its really good for a basic note taking up but clearly theres a lot more in the pipeline that excites me :)
If curious see also
It's really striking that there are so many markdown-based note-taking apps out there. It seems like there's a new one on show HN every week.
Anyone have any idea why this is? I assume the ones that show up here are mostly people scratching their own itch, but are note-taking needs all that diverse?
I use simplenote but I still feel like the added features to this are enough to convince me to switch
I just tried Notable the other day, realized how slow and jittery the app and animations were and quickly moved on. I really wish electron would die already, it’s ruining good apps imo.
QOwnNotes is the best thing to come along in this space in a long time, IMO.
I tried using Notable for a while. I ended up sticking with Mark Text. I enjoy the more Bear-like WYSIWYG editor I can switch to for normal note taking.
Big fan of Notable, thought I'd share it!
I use standard-notes for its focus on zero knowledge design and simple markdown plus potential economic viability.
Zettlr, RemNote, Roam, Obsidian - these are some of the titles a modern note-taking app should be compared to.
Except the import from evernote feature, other features are already supported by modern editor/IDE
No Android app?
Zettlr is so much better than this, how can you possibly omit it from your marketing comparison matrix? oh nevermind
The comparison matrix made me close the tab immediately.
There was an interesting point during Notable's development when the project went from an open source one to closed source [1]. While I get open source developers should be paid for the work, I am not sure how I feel about OSS projects getting some attention and then closing source
[1] https://github.com/notable/notable/issues/432