5 ms·
Simplenote is no longer in active development
- yarekt 8mo agoThat’s a shame, though I do see that it is difficult to make any money from what it is. I’m glad they didn’t sell it to someone big for all the user’s data, though it is still early
- 3rodents 8mo agoit is owned by Automattic
- charlangas 8mo agoIt's owned by Automattic, isn't it? I assume they're simply keeping the lights on for whoever wants to use it. For about a year I've noticed that it tends to quit on its own on my Mac. Whenever I need to look for a note I realize the app is inactive and I need to re-launch it. Then it works perfectly well, until somehow, at some point, it quits without me realizing. It's sad that they're not fixing it, and that eventually it probably won't work with newer Mac OS and iOS versions. I should start looking for a way to migrate off of it.
- cosmic_cheese 8mo agoIt makes me miss the shareware era, back before races to the bottom and free corporate giant competition had all but eliminated any kind of profit margin on simple, but thoughtfully designed and well-built software. How many of us have had ideas for little utilities and such that were never followed through on because the chances of even breaking even on them was so low? I know I have several.
- selfhosting_sh 8mo ago[flagged]
- jitl 8mo agoai slop ass comment
- jen729w 8mo agoI still lament the loss of nvALT. The GOAT.
- treetalker 8mo agoMine is still coughing along on Ventura. I'm more upset about the one-decade-in-beta, almost-certain-never-to-be-released, quasi-vaporware nvULTRA.
- deafpolygon 8mo agoYou can just use neovim with fzf and that pretty much replicates nvALT.
- opan 8mo agoI am familiar with nvim and fzf but not nvALT. Could you give me a brief explanation of the workflow here? Is fzf just used to jump between separate note files or what? Personally I have a general notes.txt as well as more specific ones like what I order at a specific restaurant or what I'm working on in a game. I don't use fzf with nvim, moreso with shell scripts.
- deafpolygon 8mo agonvALT is a mac app (developed by brett terpestra) that would store notes in a directory (txt files) and you would type in a few words to search/find the file you wanted to edit, and if the search string didn’t exist, hit enter to create a new one (or cmd+N) it was rather simple, and is reminisce of using fzf with telescope (<leader>fg for file grep, or <leader>ff for file search by filename). type in a few letters, select your match and hit enter to edit.
- Jonovono 8mo agoI used to love nvALT. Want to check out https://hashy.ink https://hashy.ink. It's an open source markdown editor inspired by nvALT. Still rough around the edges, but it's coming together.
- benatkin 8mo agoFrom Simplenote to Simplynot. I liked it, it was like a popular app on Gnome or KDE, but available on mobile devices. It was well designed and privacy respecting. However, the walled gardens are hostile to such apps.
- flakeoil 8mo agoI can recommend Standard Notes as an alternative. https://standardnotes.com/ https://standardnotes.com/ Works well on all paltforms, desktop and mobile. The sync works also great. It also backs up to text files on your computer, so that you can back up your files with your regular backup process and you can also easily move away if you would like to one day.
- ryukoposting 8mo agoThe illustrations on the home page are some of the most hideous slop I've ever seen. Terrible first impression, and it really doesn't inspire trust in the quality of security of the service. Eventually companies will learn. But for now, eww.
- skrebbel 8mo agoWow, I thought you were exaggerating / being the usual AI hater, so I opened the page expecting a some product screenshots with a few too many em dashes or something like that, fully intending to tell you to calm down. But dammmn it's bad! You weren't exaggerating at all!
- throawayonthe 8mo agooh damn what i swear i remember their site being perfectly normal in the past, what happened
- nervysnail 8mo agoAfter Proton acquisition, prices became exorbitant and aesthetics hideous I guess.
- nervysnail 8mo agoI should also add that Proton also has become somewhat tacky aesthetically over the years. Their old Alpine, sober aesthetic was really great.
- 8mo ago
- eviks 8mo agoWhat a coincidence, was just looking for a replacement of Simplenote! With hundreds of note taking apps coming and going, is there any single performant cross-platform non-Electron app with great conflict resolution for simple notes? Just to be more useful than an overpowered code editor + a file cloud? Checked just 2 of these conditions here (native Windows and macOS and some iOS startup benchmarks) and there is literally not a single app!!! (to be fair, not every app is likely tested, but even without those it's 6 apps) https://noteapps.info/features?group=performance https://noteapps.info/features?group=performance
- clickety_clack 8mo agoYou could probably vibe code the perfect one for yourself at this point.
- aitchnyu 8mo agoI use Ticktick for my Markdown notes and todos. I can add tasks from my lockscreen. I have a single view of notes and tasks. Costs me 5 biriyanis per year, yes its localized pricing. Been meaning to switch to an open source app out of principle, one which can handle rich notes too.
- coldtrait 8mo agoI should measure my expenses in biriyanis more.
- bryanhogan 8mo agoObsidian is great and highly performant, even though it's using Electron. Electron is a huge advantage, faster development and the option to customise it easily with plugins.
- jauntywundrkind 8mo agoObsidian just launched Obsidian CLI too, if that helps. And sync. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46961430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46961430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47197267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47197267
- mjhagen 8mo agoIt's been my go-to since 2009! That's longer than I had thought. It just did what it said on the sticker and has always been unobtrusive and respectful of the user when adding a few features every now and then. Thankful to have been able to use it for so long and without it getting enshitified like almost everything else.
- msisk6 8mo agoJust use plain text files. Anything backed by a service is going to hurt over a long enough time frame. And it seems that time frame gets shorter every year. I still use email drafts for a lot of notes. Looking at my email draft folder the oldest one I have is from 2002 and I can still access it just fine, even on mobile.
- huflungdung 8mo ago[dead]
- Jonovono 8mo agoI'm working on a open source markdown editor inspired by nvALT. Would love feedback! https://hashy.ink https://hashy.ink
- BaudouinVH 8mo agowhy no linux version ?
- coldtrait 8mo agoDoesn't open for me.
- esskay 8mo agoIsn't Simplenote partially (or maybe entirely?) opensource? Would've been nice if they'd linking to the repos if so, and perhaps put out a call for new maintainers rather than just archiving.
- rdschouw 8mo agoThe clients are open source but the server is not.
- zingerlio 8mo agoWow thanks for posting this, this was how I found out about it being on life support. I've been using it since ages ago and have no complaints. It's lightweight, fast, accessible anywhere, no frills and functional. It's the notepad.exe on web for me. None of the current line up of alternatives are lightweight enough, it seems.
- bhaak 8mo agoI‘m pretty happy with a self hosted Joplin. Markdown, cross platform and good support for todo lists.
- Yodel0914 8mo agoJoplin is quite good; I still keep it around for longer form writing. For everyday note taking I switched to logseq about a year ago. They're in a weird phase technically (in tye midst of a huge rewrite id the persistence layer) but it’s the first PKM app I’ve used that I’ve really gelled with.
- haddr 8mo agoThat's sad! Simplenote is a really useful and quick note taking app that's minimal but not missing anything for this kind of app. It's like notational velocity but done in a clean way, and synchronizing across devices. For me it was really enough for many years. PS. And there is this surprise when you discover that all notes are versioned.
- vivekv 8mo agoThats sad! For those looking to migrate out, I wrote this backup tool that pulls your note out of simplenote and uploads it to sqlite database. Hope this helps https://github.com/vivekhub/simplenote-backup https://github.com/vivekhub/simplenote-backup
- spudlyo 8mo agoGNU Emacs, which has been in active development for over 40 years, has a thriving note taking ecosystem based on Org-mode, a plaintext system for notes, documents, computational notebooks, literate programming, maintaining to-do lists, planning projects, and lots more. Ask your doctor if GNU Emacs is right for you. Side effects may include: excessive online evangelism, endless configuration tinkering, pain and numbness in the pinkies, and smugness.
- AceyMan 8mo agoConsidering they only shipped about every two years—I'm not kidding—so long as they keep the lights on, that's good enough for me. (I'll still look for a replacement, but I won't feel super rushed to switch away.)
- bartvk 8mo agoExactly. Let's see if it chugs along in 2026.