FairNote

Welcome to Episode #91 as I inch toward my 100th review of Android note-taking apps. The adventure has gone longer than I thought it would, but meeting some of you virtually and sharing has been a ton of fun!

This week's app is called FairNote and it was recommended a couple of weeks ago by generous Asen from Bulgaria! I just looked back at his email and I rated it precisely as he did, 7/10! Asen is a de-Googler like me but more advanced, even looking at LineageOS to be Google-free. He provided such amazing personal reviews and his preferred tech stack of Android note apps including Notepad.Lite, Markor, and Simplenote. Thank you Asen!

I couldn't find any information about the Developer of the app. The domain tied to the app in Google Play is rgiskard.com which is registered to an address in Reykjavik, Iceland but the Developer info section lists them as being based in Saskatchewan, Canada. Possibly the Developer moved or registered somewhere else?

FairNote is fast, local first, supports Markdown, encryption, 13 languages, note colours, tags, and backup and restores to Google Drive, Yandex, Dropbox, WebDAV, or local device storage. Yeay, WebDAV!

The app is missing some functions that I need like attaching images and audio recording and the editing is not What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) so you have to switch to preview mode to see the end result. The export options are limited to text-only and should include Markdown at least, PDF would be bonus points.

Overall, a great app if you're looking for fast text note-taking and don't need to include images or audio. I'm excited to keep an eye on this one, if only because the Developer is based in Canada... well, I think so!

Read on for the ugly, the bad, the good, the great, and the awesome aspects of FairNote.

Screenshot

Meta

• Score: 7/10
• Device: Samsung Galaxy S20 5G
• Google Play rating: 4.4*
• Last updated: 2023-03-05
• Google Play
• Policy
• Developer: Tarique
• Location: Saskatchewan, Canada

Ugly

• No image attachments
• No audio recording

Bad

• After you save you also have to click the back arrow to go back to the note list
• No WYSIWYG editing
• No export to Markdown
• The bullets are a bit "heavy" in preview mode

Good

• Text formatting: bold, italics, strike-through
• 6 Heading levels
• code and code block

quote and quote block

• Checklists
• Labels
• Material design
• 20 background colours
• Read-only mode
• Undo and redo
• Search within notes
• Export to a text file
• Copy note body
• Archive note
• Sort by date created, modified, or alphabetically
• Trash
• Share notes to apps
• Checklists but separate from notes
• 15 languages
• 4 fonts
• Grid view and list view of notes
• Dark mode (Pro)
• Created and modified dates and subtly shown

Great

• Fast
• Fast search
• No ads
• 3 nice Android widgets
• Reminders
• Password on notes with encryption (Pro)
• Search and replace
• Insert date or time
• Go to start, middle, and end
• Add to the home screen with custom name
• Backup and restore to Google Drive, Yandex, Dropbox, WebDAV, or local device storage
• Compact note list
• Single-line note list
• Shows tags in the note list
• Sort by colour
• Export a collection of notes to text files in a batch
• Import a text file or set of text files
• 13 languages supported: Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish

Awesome

• Free
• Cheap
• WebDAV
• AES256 Encryption
• Encryption at rest
• Markdown support
• Pin note to the status bar
• Default filter when app loads
• Automatic daily backup

That's it, thanks for reading and have a great note-taking week ahead!