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Posted by u/alex-titarenko a year ago
Show HN: NotesHub: cross-platform, Markdown-based note-taking appabout.noteshub.app...
Thank you for your comments, just some context:

- The app is available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Apple Vision Pro, and the Web.

- The Web version is implemented as a Progressive Web Application that is very responsive, local first, offline first, can be installed, and is entirely free to use.

- Native (hybrid) versions do not require subscription fees and have small one-time payment.

- You can store your notes in Git using any Git provider such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. However, it has the best built-in integration with GitHub. Self-hosted scenarios like Gitea are also supported. In addition to Git, you can store your notes in a file system and iCloud Drive on Apple Devices.

- It has a rich Markdown syntax support with added extensions like Mermaid, ABC music notation, callouts, etc.

In addition to regular Markdown notes, you can create Kanban boards for easy task management (under the hood, it is still stored in Markdown). If that is not enough, you can create whiteboards based on Excalidraw and embed them back into your notes.

proee · a year ago
Nice product and website. Your homepage uses a lot of passive voice. Personally I think changing it to active voice makes the product sound more appealing.

"your notes will always be" -> "your notes are always" "content will be synced" -> "content is synced"

"note will be periodically synced" -> "notes are periodically synced" "You can use it for managing personal tasks..." -> "Manage your personal tasks..."

"You can choose between light and dark" -> "Choose between light and dark"

teraflop · a year ago
Nitpick: that's not what "active voice" means.

The active voice equivalent of "content will be synced" would be "NotesHub will sync your content".

cscheid · a year ago
Dropping passive voice helps most writing, but

> "content will be synced" -> "content is synced"

FYI that's still passive voice.

j_bum · a year ago
To quickly determine passive vs. active voice, you can add the phrase, “by zombies” to the end of the sentence.

If it’s clear the zombies are doing the action (subject), then the content is passive voice. Otherwise, if the zombies are an adverbial phrase, the sentence is in active voice.

Passive voice: “Content is synced by zombies”

Active voice: “NotesHub syncs the content by zombies”

reacharavindh · a year ago
Oh I like the web version! I just hooked up the web app to my _public_ blog repo, and started editing the markdown files. Hit save and it automatically performs a git commit on my behalf. Perfect. Next time I'm working on the files locally, all I need is a git pull and I am good to go. I like it.

Although I didnt quite like that it asked for a permission to pretty much _everything_ in Githuhb - public and private repos, deploykeys?!, everything. I wish that were customisable. It was okay for me because I dont keep any non public code in Github, but others might have..

kseistrup · a year ago
The FAQ has the following instructions for more fine-grained access control:

> To accomplish this scenario select generic Git notebook provider (instead of GitHub) and for the password field put fine-grained personal access token which can be generated to have access only to certain repositories.

amimetic · a year ago
I tried this and doesn't seem to work; though unclear what permissions I should be granting it, so possibly that is the issue.
alex-titarenko · a year ago
Unfortunately, GitHub does not provide that granularity for developers. That is way you have an alternative option as general Git provider where you can use fine-grained access token.
bbor · a year ago
A) Wow this is just incredibly impressive for a solo dev - well done! The feature list just keeps going and going, by the time I got to kanban boards I was in disbelief. I was incredibly dubious based on the title that any “Show HN” could rival Obsidian, but i think I stand corrected!

I sadly use my own hand-rolled markdown system way too often to really switch, but I’ll definitely have to check this out for an on-the-go replacement for Google Keep.

B) “offline first” is a great feature, but I’m curious why you didn’t go with the terms hear more often, “local first”? Just wanted something more accessible to laypeople?

C) “offline first” seems hard to match up with “progressive web app” — not from any sort of user perspective (sounds ideal, even!), just in terms of technical implementation. Am I correct in assuming that the iOS and android versions are PWAs, and that they still durably store files on device? If so, how hard was that?

D) “all major platforms: iOS/macOS/Android/Windows” made me shed a brief tear. It’s ~~infrastructure~~ Linux Week, time to add a platform!!

Best of luck and thanks for sharing your work. I look forward to meeting you on top of the world one day ;)

jdthedisciple · a year ago
It seems the creator has been a senior SWE at Microsoft for 7 years now.

It genuinely astounds me that as a solo dev he can make such a featureful app yet Microsoft the company has been failing hard in this realm for the last decade.

Also it makes you wonder how many UI-design teams, product owners, and middle managers are entirely obsolete next to a single competent SWE with a bit of talent for UI/UX.

dewey · a year ago
It's not that surprising, it's just different priorities. If a company would prioritize "Let's build a featureful note-taking app", they'll also get it done. But there's usually a lot of different priorities that are higher than building yet another app for the platform.
slightwinder · a year ago
> It genuinely astounds me that as a solo dev he can make such a featureful app

It's a very generic webstack-app, build on 3rd-party-components. It's quite easy doing something on this level these days for an experienced developer.

> yet Microsoft the company has been failing hard in this realm for the last decade.

Did they? They are a company, so they have a different aim than a solo dev doing some hobby-project, or whatever this is. But quality-wise, their other apps build on webstack are not worse than this. It's more that they are old, with old apps, and they seem to have some internal struggles finding their way. Which is probably why they went back and forth with OneNote, and why it sucks so hard at certain parts.

tinkrr · a year ago
OneNote is a pretty decent note taking app.
alternatex · a year ago
Although I agree with your observation wholeheartedly, it should be obvious that shipping something at Microsoft is way more involved than shipping a hobby project. Just security and privacy compliance is half the work.

That Microsoft is just not good at building consumer-facing software in general is hard to deny though.

HiPHInch · a year ago
People seem interested in this. But I still wonder what is the advantage over Obsidian.
marcuskaz · a year ago
NotesHub is one-time payment of $4 and Obsidian is $50/yr
hanifc · a year ago
What does the $50 get you with Obsidian? I don’t pay, and I’m able to access my notes from my desktop and mobile apps.
dtkav · a year ago
Obsidian is free for individual use. The $50/yr is a commercial license. They also have a $4/month sync product (sync across devices with e2e encryption), but you can use icloud, google drive, etc too.
accra4rx · a year ago
In Obsidian , you can even sync to github or dropbox with community plugins . so price wise it is free Also Obsidian has much better search (using community plugin) which is lacking in noteshub
dtkav · a year ago
The plugin ecosystem is amazing.

I wrote a plugin called Relay that makes obsidian multiplayer with live collaboration (using CRDTs), and there are a few others in the space too.

Obsidian sync is also great for e2e encrypted sync for your own devices if you don't want to rely on third parties like GitHub.

alex-titarenko · a year ago
Obsidian's git sync has many issues, at least, this is what I hear from my customers who used both products. Search in NotesHub is also robust, please read here: https://about.noteshub.app/blog/archive/2024/7/noteshub-34
vunderba · a year ago
+1 on the third party search. Quick Switcher plugin lets you bring up a hotkeyed modal to search across all note titles/headings/subheadings/tags all in a single fast search interface.

https://github.com/tadashi-aikawa/obsidian-another-quick-swi...

wodenokoto · a year ago
Without having tried both side by side, pricing is an advantage.
0x142857 · a year ago
obsidian is free
WillAdams · a year ago
Pay once pricing?

A really interesting feature would be the ability to post to your own host --- the publishing aspect is the one thing which has me seriously contemplating Obsidian, but I'm so deep into gitbook and github I haven't been able to justify a cost-benefit calculation.

superbforme · a year ago
The app being the in store for mac and ios, I stopped using obsidian when they removed the app from the mac store and only allowed it for ios.

I need the sandbox, for bussiness is a no brainer, allow some apps from the store, give the right permissions, done and for me personally, I don't use anything that doesn't come from the store, even if I can download the app freely from the project page, a few bucks for the sandbox and peace of mind is worth it to me.

I donated to Obsidian because I liked the project in general, I dislike the way they distribute the app in all platforms outside of ios, ex, snap with --classic rendering the attempt to sandbox it useless.

Edit ---

Reading some comments, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people even install third party plugins, on an app that is about taking personal notes, it's refreshing to see how much people care about cybersecurity and their personal, business notes.

4k93n2 · a year ago
less decision fatigue
aanet · a year ago
Fantastic app, good, clean design, and a very useful use-case. I can see myself using it.

However, a few questions:

1. Can I self-host it? If so, how? 2. Can I connect to a "private" Github repo? (I dont want my personal notes publicly viewable, unless I choose so) 3. What's the pricing model? Wasn't entirely clear.

Thanks!!

alex-titarenko · a year ago
You can't self-host it. Yes, you can connect to "private" GitHub repo. Pricing model is one time payment for native apps and free web app.
ukuina · a year ago
Can you provide more detail on connecting to a "private" GitHub repo?

The FAQ says "To accomplish this scenario select generic Git notebook provider (instead of GitHub) and for the password field put fine-grained personal access token which can be generated to have access only to certain repositories."

I created a PAT with EVERY permission within a selected repo, to the fullest-extent allowed by the fine-grained PAT, but still see "An unhandled error occured, please try again" when setting it up within NotesHub.

ttul · a year ago
I have grown to love markdown in the past year. It is just expressive enough without being burdensomely complex. I appreciate the ability to switch between WYSIWYG and plain text editing modes to achieve precision. In contrast to pure-WYSIWYG editors like Google Docs, the formatting can’t get totally hosed in markdown because you can always dip under the hood and fix stuff.

I just wish every rich text editor had accessible markdown…

WillAdams · a year ago
Microsoft Word having a Markdown mode would be _huge_.

If I were still using it regularly I'd put one together using WordBASIC/VBAscript.

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emmanueloga_ · a year ago
Can you share a bit about the tech behind this? Are the desktop apps electron apps or something else?

Thx!

alex-titarenko · a year ago
Windows version is Electon-based, but not really hungry for resources. MacOS is not Electron-based.

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awill · a year ago
that's always my first thought. Do I need 64GB of RAM to run this note app? :)
cloverich · a year ago
Try checking the memory usage of Apple notes, if you use it. I was shocked how high it was.