Simplenote - Notes and Memos App Reviews

It’s a great App I used vor several years. It stores notes and let you focus on the text. Its quite fast and has working search options. When I came to more notes I used nvalt to backup my notes offline. And there’s the problem. I fould no way to sync my notes automatically for offline use. The main reason why I am using textfiles/markdown is to be independent from properitary software. With simplenote I cannot access my content without simplenote or an app which supports simplenote. All I want are simple text files. The combination of nvalt (for backup) and simplenote (for wirting) was not appropriate for my usecase. Thus I switched to Ulysses. It stores my Textfiles on Dropbox, iCloud, GoogleDrive, whatever and let me accass the files with a plain, simple Textedit if I need to. If you don’t care about accessibility this program is your choice. It’s one of the best, give it a try :-)

Important: notes are stored unencrypted in their servers. Really?? In 2016?? There is no valid excuse for this (they claim there is, but not really). The minor issues is the lack of support for rtf (fonts, tables,...) and small attachments (images, etc). So a nice and fast app but only 10% as useful as it could be and a very unsafe app to store things that matter.

Simplenote works cross-platform on every device I own. The bells & whistles are minimal: It will look the way I want it to, period. For me, this is the primary note-taking app. When I need to refresh my imperfect memory, this is where I go. When I know I wrote notes on a procedure but can’t retrieve them, this is the first, and almost always the last stop.

This should serve as a survey of users as well as a review of an excellent app. Can’t give it 5 stars for one simple reason: search on the Mac doesn’t work anywhere near as well as on an IOS device. This is why: On IOS, user enters a a search term and is presented with a listing of the text entries that include the search term. By clicking on a text entry, this marvelous app takes the user to the first instance of the search term and highlights it. Beautiful! Subsequent returns scroll to any additional finds in that entry. This is the way search of many entries should work. But on the Mac version, no such experience exists. Enter a search term and the user is presented with a list of entries, same as on IOS. But that’s it: click on and entry and user is left to scroll through it - looking for the search match. Sad, inadequate, and impossible, in long entries. Being a long-time user of SimpleNote, I’ve brought this to the developers on two occasions. I’m not sure why they find this so difficult, or why they don’t feel this is important. You decide. As a result of this parity omission, I simply don’t do searches on my Mac. I’m curious though - make your own review, and if you feel this omission is worth a look, include it in your review. Maybe the developer with pony up with a fix.

I have used both the iOS and Mac versions for a few years now. The app (Mac and OS X) are great, however they still stumble over each other syncing. For example, I made some changes to a note on my iPhone last night. Today, I launched SimpleNote on my Mac to add to the list, but instead, it overwrote whatever was in the cloud with what was cached locally on my computer. Therefore, the additions I made last night were overwritten wtih stale data from the last time I ran the app on the Mac. Sure, it’s simple enough to go to history and retrieve a previous copy, but I shouldn’t have to. It should be easy enough for the app, on launch, to determine if the version in the cloud is newer or older, and take action accordingly. Unfortunately, this happens A LOT. I’ve submitted bug reports, but the problem still hasn’t been solved. If this syncing issue was resolved, I’d easily give this app 5 stars.

This app and syncing across platforms is peerless. Fantastic app, used daily. Ten out of ten.

Simplenote for iOS and the Simplenote web version have very good note search. On those apps a search for “jack jill” will find “jack and jill”. That won’t work with the Mac version (this app). It only does what’s called “phrase” or “substring search”. It doesn’t do the kind of word search we’re used to in any modern application. It makes the app almost useless. I use nvAlt when I need to find things, or I use the web version. This bug is a frustrating limitation for people who use Simplenote the way it’s intended to be used — as a memory extender.

Simplenote has replaced Notational Velocity which was brilliant but was not longer updated. Simplenote follows a similar approach, making it as simple as possible to create notes; perfectly synchronizes across devices and now adds tags which make my life much easier. Highly recommended for anybody who values simplicity.

Evernote est beaucoup trop lourd, et je n’ai pas besoin de gerer des images dans mes notes. Simple note est une app intelligente et légère. the right tool for the right job.

Loving it. Would be great though to find a way to automatically order the tags alphabetically.

Much better than the Notes app from Apple, even if it does essencially the same thing. It does in a cleaner and more efficient way.

Já sou um grande fã do Simplenote para iOS e estava esperando anciosamente por um app de Mac. Finalmente chegou e está fenomenal! Do jeito que precisa ser: limpo, simples e rápido. Excelente! -- I’m a huge fan of Simplenote on the iOS and was waiting for a long time for a Simplenote app on the Mac. Now it’s here and it’s gorgeous! Just the way it needs to be: clean, simple and fast. Awesome!

The best app, much better than Notes app from Apple. Its also beautiful!

+1 Great stuff! As a long-time simplenote user I have been waiting for this for quite some time. Nicely designed, focused to the absolute minimum and yet very powerful! Great integration over all platforms. I (will) use it daily!

Pros: -Clean, uncluttered interface -Fast and simple note-taking, in OS X and iOS -Fast syncing to the Simplenote server and between devices -Fast search -Tagging works well -the list view in iOS is a nice feature - wiping from the left deactivates items without deleting them, retapping reactivates them, list view shows up in OS X as - list, deactivated as -X Cons: -Direct Dropbox syncing from the Simplenote server does not work. First sync takes several hours to start, then - nothing for weeks. Manual sync works, but not when repeated at a short interval. (Sync in OS X with nVAlt - and from there to Dropbox - did not prove reliable, but maybe it is fixed now. Why sync to Dropbox on top of the Simplenote server? I just want a second backup, I also sync my iCloud documents to Dropbox as well. Direct syncing without nVAlt, or another Mac app, would - could! - have made for instantaneous syncing to both, without having to open my laptop for that) These problems are aggravated by the absence of support: -Support - for premium users! - is nonexistent. Out of three support request mails, about various issues, sent six weeks, three weeks and one week ago respectively, only the second one has been answered up to now; the delay was ten days. Lack of support is the most annoying thing about Simplenote.

Please add a dark theme with black/greyish colors. not those dark blue ones. My text is sometimes invisible and the tags are sometimes gone too. Please fix those bugs.

Thats a good application. I like minimalism and synchronization, but I do not use them because there is no possibillity text fromating (color, size, list). When this function, I would like to move from apple notes on SimpleNote.

I love the simplicity and dark theme. The tag system is much more powerful to organize notes than folders. I’m only missing proper markdown support - it’s available on the web, Windows and Linux, so why not Mac?

I’ve used Simplenote for ages on iOS and used Notational Velocity on my Mac to keep things in sync. But I now prefer the official app - the sync between it and my iOS version is pretty much instant.

Im kind of a nerd when it comes to keeping notes. Simplenote combines a really sleek and simple interface with just great functionality. It does just what I need it to do and nothing more, and best of all it doesnt get in the way!