Oh wow. Just heard the Notesnook is on the front page of HN. I am the co-founder so if you have any questions, feel free to ask.<p>Oh and to clear a few confusions:<p>1. Notesnook is 100% open source. That includes the server, client apps, and everything else. It's not partially open source.<p>2. Zero knowledge does not mean Zero Knowledge Proof but Zero Knowledge as in we, the company and people behind Notesnook, have no knowledge regarding what you have in your notes. I see that this might be more accurately called "no knowledge".
Ctrl-f "zero" shows nothing on the homepage nor the linked pages I checked. Also zero knowledge has a very specific meaning in cryptography and I don't see how it applies here, or where the OP got this for the title.<p>Yes this is nitpicking but I think when it comes to cryptography you have to be precise.
Obsidian has raised the bar so high that any Note-Taking app that flaunts its security, privacy, or encryption must first answer the question - what “x” times is it better?<p>Obsidian works on top of your existing or new notes and knows how to deal with them without chewing them up in an App -- even if they are encrypted. If you are playing on that theme, you are trying to be another Evernote “but better.”<p>Many other Note-Taking apps succeed by focusing on other areas of Note-Taking, such as better team collaboration, 10x better UX than the competitors, database-ish capabilities, etc.<p>One has to be far better than Obsidian (and their counterparts) or focus elsewhere to compete. Also, it is tough to beat FREE, but it is excellent that you want to pay.<p>This is more from a personal angle. For work, I still want to use something the team is happy using, but I will still look for something that I can export out and answer YES to my question, “Can I walk out when I need to?”
I keep an eye on this app from time to time to see if they make their server self-hostable as they promised in 2022 but still no progress as shown in their road map. I understand the reasons that might make it less priority or even something that they wouldn't want. But at least it should be obvious. They rejected a a feature request for sync over webdav because they will make sync server self-hosted soon.
How does it compare to Obsidian? Obsidian is a winner for me because I can run it locally, and if I want to sync, I can use whatever cloud service I already use.<p>Markdown, images, tags, plugins ... etc.
Looks nice, but I’m happy with obsidian + git sync, even if obsidian ceased to exist tomorrow my notes are already backed up in markdown, plus revision history and attachments.<p>Edit: I have to say that I liked the website overall and few things like planned feature “self hosting sync server” and the ability to download apk for android without the need yo use play store, might give it a try.<p>Edit2: After signing up, clicking the confirmation email I get “invalid token”, additionally, downloading the iPhone app and after trying to login and providing the 6digits code sent to the email, I get a “failed login attempt” email, can’t login to the app.
I wish them luck. I use Apple's Notes app for work. I keep simple notes, but the two features I can't live without are folders and pinning notes to the top of folders.
Great to see the zero knowledge security model being adopted more widely across different types of applications.<p>I wonder how the interoperability between E2EE (end-to-end encrypted) apps is going to look like. Zero-knowledge sharing is a solved problem, but it is not easy to implement - and many choose not to implement it. They just use key sharing in URLs, making the actual secure sharing the user's problem.
It's nice to see more and more open-source E2E-encrypted note taking apps. A couple years ago I thought no one really cared about this, and now they seem to be popping up everywhere. This one particularly reminds me of Standard Notes.<p>Personally I've moved on to a privately hosted Git repo of plain Markdown files which I currently modify with Obsidian (although I'd prefer an open-source version, and Logseq doesn't quite scratch the itch like Obsidian does) - because I realised what I needed is like a self-hosted Notion-like alternative which I can trust, and Obsidian with all its plugins does exactly what I need.<p>The only major downside is that taking notes on another device and syncing them without merge conflicts is still a pain.
I've realised that making my note taking process simpler leads to much better productivity.<p>At times I've just stopped taking notes because of the high activation energy required, now I just work with my Tablet or Notepad and worry about organising or integrating into my knowledge graph later.
Nice, but the limitations on (image?) attachments and Markdown export on the free tier feel... cheap?<p>These days I've mostly been using vimwiki, Agenda.app or OneNote for notes short/mid/long-term notes, and either of them works for the contexts I use them in.<p>I feel like the note taking space is completely overcrowded these days, too. Even the iOS notes app does everything I could possibly need (plus syncing), and the cross-platform/private sync space is very well served with SyncThing + whatever Markdown editor you can get your hands on...
I use NotesNook. Just imported from SimpleNote a month ago without issue. If you are like 95% of people and take very few notes, consider using Simplenote since it starts up fast (including on mobile), syncs across place is very quickly, and gets out of your way.
NotesNook is very similar, but has some additional features for organization and rich media. After using Simplenote for over 5 years my notes are starting to need some more organization.
There is no app yet to rival Apple notes in start up time & sync speed & stability. Even if they sadly don't offer an Android version of their app.<p>Seems like most of these apps focus on features instead of getting thes basics right.<p>If I have thought I want to jot it down and continue, not wait a bunch of seconds or more to get going.
Supposing anyone wants to hear, the single most important feature to me is self-hosting sync. Nothing else matters... not a big believer in "the cloud". It would be better if the sync use WebDAV, then the server software is just Nextcloud. But even that last point's not so important.
Text formatting is pretty poor. I could not import Markdown. Export Markdown requires a payed Pro upgrade. It seems to be impossible to enumerate headings. And headings can not be used to create a TOC. Emacs' Org-Mode does more for me.
A quick glance on their repository's issues has worrying signs for data integrity and availability.<p>Zero knowledge is cool but if you can't even keep the data safe, you're not better than me using gedit and a self-hosted file server.
How open source is it? My experience is that there's always a piece missing.<p>If I want to install it on my Android phone and my PC and have that sync "zero knowledge", do I have all the pieces in the open source release?
Not sure about how "zero knowledge" figures into this; is the app merely E2EE? In which case, it's no different from Evernote?<p>And there is no open source server component, so you can't host this yourself. And say what you will about Evernote, I trust them to stick around way more than another random notes startup thing.<p>p.s. not to get too political but it seems like the founder is expressing some problematic views on his twitter account (<a href="https://twitter.com/thecodrr" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://twitter.com/thecodrr</a>). Problematic as in, he's <i>this</i> close to being an outspoken supporter of terrorism and radical Islam.