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Show HN: Joonote – A note-taking app on your lock screen and notification panel
I finally built this app after many years of being sick of unlocking my phone every goddamn time I need to take or view my notes. It particularly sucks when I'm doing my grocery and going down the list.
I started building last year June. This is a native app written in Kotlin. And since I'm a 100% Web dev guy, I gotta say this wouldn't have been possible without this AI to assist me. So this isn't "vibe-coded". I simply used the chat interface in Gemini website, manually copy paste codes to build and integrate every single thing in the app! I used gemini to build it just because I was piggybacking on my last company's enterprise subscription. I personally didn't subscribe to any AI (and still don't cuz the free quota seems enough for me :)
So I certainly have learnt alot about Android development, architecture patterns, Kotlin syntax, and obeying Google's whims. Can't say I love it all, but for the sake of this app, I will :)
Anyway, I finally have the app I wish existed, and I'm using it everyday. It not only does the main thing I needed it to do, but there's also all this stuff:
- Make your notes private if you don't want to show them on lock screen.
- Create check/to-do lists.
- Set one time or recurring reminders.
- Full-text search your notes in the app.
- Speech-to-text.
- Organize your notes with custom or color labels.
- Pin the app as a widget on your home screen.
- You can auto backup and restore your notes on new install or Android device.
- Works offline.
- And no funny business happening in the background https://joonote.com/privacy https://joonote.com/privacy
It's 30-day trial, then a one-time $9.99 to go Pro forever.
I would love you all to check it out, FWIW.
Ok thanks!
- BloodAndCode 7mo ago[dead]
- analognoise 7mo agoFirst they controlled Hollywood. Then they controlled all of Politics. Then they controlled when we went to war. Now you want them to control your notes??? /s but “Joo” is filterspeak for “Jews”. Sounds antisemitic as fuck.
- mireofthedeep 7mo agoJoo is also Finnish for "yes" or "yep", name sounds like "yes-note".
- Vaslo 7mo agoYou are totally right but the name may still be an unfortunate choice for native English speakers
- kilgarenone 7mo agoI'm not a native english speaker. Totally didn't occur to me. My tongue somehow rolled like "zoo-note" to my mind at the time lol
- ifh-hn 7mo agoI am a native English speaker and it has taken me reading all these comments about the name and a Google search to figure out people are equating joo with Jew. I still don't get what the issue is...
- nozzlegear 7mo agoI'm a native English speaker and it's the literal first thing I thought of when I read the name. > I still don't get what the issue is... The word "jew" (as a verb) has roots in stereotypes about Jewish people and money; it's an ethnic slur. The word "jew" (instead of "a Jew" or "Jewish") is a dismissive insult. The word itself isn't inherently offensive, but it's often weaponized in English, which is why it has a lot of historical baggage that makes people very wary when they see it.
- ifh-hn 7mo agoThanks. After searching I thought it might be that but wasn't sure because it seemed so ridiculous. It certainly wasn't my goto when I read it, but the fact it was for some people might suggest the developer should change it, if only for the fact that it might put off potential customers. What a weird world we live in.
- __turbobrew__ 7mo agoThat is a poor choice of naming. Sounds like JewNote.
- --_-- 7mo agoI was going to say that too. Perhaps it came from a non-native English speaker. Please change it. I like the idea, if it's actually safe and you can't use this to get into your phone through some tricky means like a buffer overrun.
- rjtavares 7mo agoAs a non native speaker, it never crossed my mind and I was quite confused at the first comments...
- kilgarenone 7mo agoya...totally didn't occur to me. Probably would've been obvious to me if English was my first language..
- takahitoyoneda 7mo ago[dead]
- ashwinnair99 7mo agoSimple idea, right surface. Lock screen is the most underused real estate on a phone. Curious how you handle the note limit before it gets cluttered.
- kilgarenone 7mo agoYou can turn on the "Combine Notifications" setting in the Settings page. This will have the individual notifications live under a single so-called summary notication.
- politelemon 7mo agoGreat demo video as well, I appreciated that it didn't waste time. I'll echo the comments here though, the name doesn't sit well with some audiences.
- kilgarenone 7mo agoya I'm totally open to change it, but do you think its too late now?
- sam345 7mo agoNot too late. Just change it.
- comrade1234 7mo agoI don't think you should name it that...
- kilgarenone 7mo agoyeah damn it. I don't want to say it, but I know it sounds like that lol
- lucasay 7mo ago[flagged]
- arikrahman 7mo agoMythical Show HN pull
- catlover76 7mo ago[dead]
- anonym29 7mo agoI believe the politically correct phrasing would be Jooishnote.
- written-beyond 7mo agoMy god it's the perfect app. I've never said YES BUY immediately after reading a title before but this is it. My phone frequently gets cluttered with tens of different note taking, calendar, Todo type apps because I am literally trying to solve this exact problem. When I need to make a note I need something instant and now, but which lets me set an alarm/reminder with it too. I am a forgetful person, I find it extremely difficult to remember which notes app I am using because I usually drop them because they're never really solving my problem. Thank you for this. I am going to install it and try it out over the week, if it's experience lives up to your description/screenshots then you have an immediate customer.
- kilgarenone 7mo agoI just woke up, and this made my day! Thanks! Feel free to reach out to me about whatever :)
- dmd 7mo agoFunny, it doesn’t look jooish
- kilgarenone 7mo agouh no idea what jooish would look like..
- dmd 7mo agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=funny+you+don%27t+look+jewish https://www.google.com/search?q=funny+you+don%27t+look+jewis...
- kilgarenone 7mo agoah TIL...
- graypegg 7mo agoI was reading it as "joon note" originally! I only realized I was misreading it when coming back to the comments. If you wanted to change up the name, maybe "June Note"? It has a nice ring to it IMO, and doesn't stray too far from your original name. Nature-y too, which seems to be a bit of a theme. Really nice job on the app though! I think written-beyond's comment says more than enough: you've made what should be a default feature, that no one had thought to make.
- kilgarenone 7mo agolol, yeah...about the name..I think it's too late to change it now? Didn't realize it sounded a certain way until much later.. I wanted it to be "Zuunote"(like zoo-note but domain taken) but it was already taken by my other project, so "Joonote" sounded closest to it to my mind at the time...yeah crap haha
- bryanhogan 7mo agoAny plans on possibly making the notes be local markdown files similar to how Obsidian does it?
- kilgarenone 7mo agoYeah I will add Markdown support. Added to the roadmap :)
- ifh-hn 7mo agoAs a native English speaker who had to Google joonish to see what people were talking about, what is the big issue with the name?
- hermanzegerman 7mo agoThey think it sounds too similar to jew. But I don't know why that would be offensive in that context
- ifh-hn 7mo agoI actually despair sometimes.
- anotherpaulg 7mo agoI appreciate the ability to rapidly capture a note/thought/todo without friction and context switching. I solved this problem with a twilio sms number. When I send a text to it, the content gets prepended to my obsidian todo.md file. This was easy to arrange with a few lines of Python glue. iOS makes it easy to text or share to sms from almost any context.
- vincentabolarin 7mo agoThis is a very useful feature as an app. It will definitely come in handy when it is much needed. The video walk-through is solid. It seems like a genuinely good app which does what it says it does. Great job!
- kilgarenone 7mo agoAlright everyone, I have updated the website to show the phonetic notation below the app name in the header to roughly convey what I intended it to sound like: /ˈzhooːnoʊt/ Didn't mean to be insensitive or anything here. I apologize if I offended anyone here.
- SachitRafa 7mo agoThe name could have been better
- amadeuspagel 7mo agoCool idea. I've been looking for a notes widget for the KDE panel, so I don't forget what I was doing when I open a different program. Maybe even showing the content of the clipboard would be enough.
- skeledrew 7mo agoHmm I've never thought of having notes available on my lockscreen. Hardly even ever see it because face+fingerprint unlock combo. I've been using Orgzly[0] as my note taker (and a lot more) and ButtonMaster[1] for rapid access. Unlock phone, swipe the floating BM button left, type my note (and maybe add properties, keywords and more) and hit save. Just now realizing too that it also supports creating notes via its notification. Never thought of using STT, but I have FUTO Keyboard[2] so that's also handled. And Syncthing[3] keeps it all synced with my laptop. All working together seamlessly for years. [0] https://orgzlyrevived.com/ https://orgzlyrevived.com/ [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mozapps.buttonmaster.free https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mozapps.bu... [2] https://keyboard.futo.org/ https://keyboard.futo.org/ [3] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingandroid/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncth...
- FileForge 7mo agoSuper cool. Anything that saves time is valuable and this does that simply and effectively!