Noteship for Mac

From notes to knowledge

2 followers

From notes to knowledge

2 followers

Noteship combines notes, todos, and reminders and is based on simple files and folders. It takes a local-first approach, no servers or cloud is involved. Build your own personal knowledge base, journal, or Zettelkasten (incl. backlinks).

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Launch tags:Mac•Productivity•Task Management

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Noteship for Mac

Maker

Makers, hunters, notetakers, Your favorite notes app, if it were to disappear tomorrow, would you know where it kept your notes? In the cloud, in some database, the bottom left drawer of your desk? I spent the last 2 years building a notes app that focuses on data-longevity. What does that mean? I, as the user, want to know exactly where my notes are stored (offline, as simple files and folders that I can see and control in Finder). In 20 years from now, I still want to be able to access my knowledge base no matter if apps are still a thing by then (notes can be opened with a browser; those have been around for more than 25 years so let’s hope we’re covered on that front). BUT I do not want to have to miss features that I’ve come to rely on: links between notes, rich text editing with images, tags, and full text search. Since everything is based on simple files and folders, I added a way to include other files/documents/PDFs right inside a notebook. If you are planning a trip, you can keep hotel and car reservation PDFs right along with your notes. This started out as a side project, but it turns out that being able to see a preview of other documents inside the app is pretty handy! Taking notes is one thing, but making sense of them another. Two features I added to extract knowledge from your notes are “one page summaries” and a spreadsheet view. A one page summary combines sections from multiple notes on a single page. For example, let’s say you keep monthly project review notes, each with a section “Lessons Learned”. A one page summary for “Lessons Learned” would show all these sections from multiple notes on a single page. I’m also a fan of life-long learning so expect to see more features in that area in the future. As every maker knows, getting a product ready and out the door takes a huge effort. The last 5% never seem to come to an end. I am so very happy to finally have everything lined up and ready! I’m looking forward to hear what you think! Greetings from Germany, Rico

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5yr ago

Focus Dude

@rico_g Hey Rico, really love your product !!! You say that it takes you two years to build this software, salute you man. Don't mind if you share your two years journey on one blog post :P

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5yr ago

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@asyr0f Will do! I just checked the logs. The first commit was Tuesday, December 11, 2018. That makes it 3 years. Wow, time flies. A few mores stats, if you're interested: 59.824 lines of Swift code (it's a native Mac app), 667 unit tests. Work in progress, but coming this year is a block based editor written in Typescript: 7.997 lines of Typescript, 9.722 lines HTML, and 1.884 lines of CSS.

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5yr ago

@rico_g Wow I love the idea of exposing data as files in standardized formats! I could easily imagine it being used as a CMS frontend for static sites. It would be interesting to have a Gatsby/Next.js plugin that parses these files and builds them into a website. Have you thought about marketing such use case too?

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5yr ago

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@billykwokhk The thought has crossed my mind, but while this would certainly possible, I'd like to focus more on the knowledge management/learning aspect of keeping notes. What I do want to add is turning the "note index file" that is kept in each folder into an HTML file with a list of links to each note file in that folder. Currently if you were to open a note with a browser (Firefox works without having to rename the notes to .html), links to other notes work, i.e. Firefox will open the linked note. The note index file contains the list of notes in the order that the user decided. If that were a static HTML file with links, you'd have a fully standalone notebook of static HTML files that you could navigate with a browser locally. Perfect for peace of mind when it comes to data longevity.

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5yr ago

Love the idea of the product functionality I have been look for for years. However, to be useful to me, I'd need it to translate to mobile I suppose using the local file systems makes that impossible??

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5yr ago

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@noel_burkman An iOS app is in planning. Syncing will work via iCloud, no problem there. From the app's perspective, iCloud is just a folder only that files there appear and disappear "magically". However, I have a few more things that I'd like to add to the Mac app (larger calendar view, favorites bar, …) before I get started on an iOS app, so I can't promise anything anytime soon.

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5yr ago

@rico_g I'll be standing by!! thanks.

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5yr ago

I was able to test Noteship beta (or Life Notes as it was called previously). I am delighted by the idea and the maker's approach to Data Longeivity This app is good... - .. for people who like to save files locally and who are not keen to give their precious notes into the hand of an external providers - ... for people who think notion.so or evernote are cool apps, but prefer not to pay life-long subscription fees for simple note taking - ... for people who think that HTML is the future of content I can recommend all the other apps from Rico, such as Kartenheld! He produces tools for life-long learners and the next generation of knowledge workers. Only drawback in my opinion is the custom file format. All in all, a valuable app which I will use in future. Thanks Rico

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5yr ago

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@martin_gajdos Thanks for your review! Over the coming months I will add options to export notes in other formats for even more data longevity. The advantage of saving as HTML is that technically you would not even need to export your data, since you can view it in a browser. If you have app that you would like to import from, let me know too!

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5yr ago

fax2nft

I have been using the beta, very nice note taking app! I especially like: * your notes are kept in the file system (and in a folder hierarchy), no lock-in * custom meta data and spreadsheet view is pretty unique

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5yr ago

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@tafkaf Awesome, thanks for your feedback! Do you work with attachments/external files PDFs at all?

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5yr ago

RemNote

Pretty cool! I like how templates are integrated in the right sidebar. Haven't seen this before. In general, really clean product 👍🏼

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5yr ago

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@moritzwallawitsch Thanks! The idea is to use tags to indicate that a note is "of a certain kind" like "contact" or "meeting minute". Based on that you can quickly add new notes with the same structure simply by tagging it as "#meetingminute".

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5yr ago

The product looks amazing and will try it soon. I wonder about the differences in style (and focus) relative to other solutions (like obsidian, roam and notion). I ask this because I'm looking for something to improve my productivity and manage my knowledge (or lack of thereof) and those solutions have proven to have a high starting cost. Thanks!

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5yr ago

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@rcampusa Hi Rolando, thanks for your feedback! Let me know how the app works out for you. From the platform side, Roam and Notion are web apps, Obsidian is a standalone app that is available on many platforms, Noteship is currently Mac-only with an iOS app in planning. It really depends on your personal workflow and preferences. There is no one perfect notes app that fits all. The idea behind Noteship is to keep notes "along the way" and turn them into knowledge so that you can learn from the past. The app itself does not force a specific workflow. You can arrange notes and folders as you like.

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5yr ago

Would be good to be able to import markdown, like from Typora

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5yr ago

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@stowe_boyd Basic Markdown import is available via the menu File > Import > Markdown File or Folder. If you run into any problems with importing from Typora, let me know (I have not tested their Markdown flavor, but will take a look).

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5yr ago

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