Android

GNotes

Stone

Aug 27, 2022 • 3 min read

GNotes is great for quick capture, it has so much functionality for free, plus a nice subset of features to entice you to upgrade. If it supported Markdown and rich text editing it would be a 9/10. That said, the Web UI has issues. It's super fast but none of my photos are rendering on the Web.

Some context

I initially titled this review "GNotes: a pearl in the sea of note apps" but then I changed the title after trying to find out who and what is behind the app.

I spent way too much time on this. If you know more about them, please send along additional insights.

We are a diversified team mainly based in the United States - [2]

30 team members from Silicon Valley in the US and also Engineering team in China - [4]

In as early as 2010, the founding team began the endeavor with an Android app called GTasks, which syncs with Google Tasks. At that time, the app was listed as "one of the best todo list apps" at Google Play Store. - [2]

Screenshots

People

Zhimin Chen - Co-Founder, California
Jun Yuan - Co-Founder, NYC
Yalan Qin - "Elaine Q." Growth - SF Bay Area, 2019-08 to present
Rohit Srivastava - "safari" - Washington, DC
Huijie SHI - Growth Hacker - Lille, France, 2020-06 to present
卢相龙 - UI Designer, Changsha, Hunan, China, 2019-05 to present

Ugly

Has it been abandoned? No updates for 2.5 years, lowering the score edit: figured this out after posting the review
Has an option to sync with Gmail but when you click the button it says it's not available due to limitations by Google. Why show it?
Help page just loads the main page
Contacts feature is buggy: I see the contact name and then part of the person's name and their phone number is repeated multiple times. Each time I edit the note it adds another
Web interface doesn't show the images

Bad

No text formatting (but I didn't really miss it)
1 font style
When you copy and paste text that has a Contact in it, the contact link is lost and get weird <@3> text in its place
No Markdown support
Tags are not shown when editing the note so there's no indication if there are tags on the note
No numbered list but you can do that manually
Can't make Hyperlink with text replacing the URL in the note, only the fully expanded URL
Bullet adds a space before the dash " - " which I then had to remove for each bullet because my brain couldn't handle having that space :)
No export to PDF
No export to HTML
No export to Markdown
No import

Good

Insert a contact from Contacts, creates a tag which displays the contact info
Checklist (all or nothing)
Simple hand drawing and shows the drawing at the bottom of the page
Tags on note (not within)
Filter by tags
Search in a note
Word count
See date created and last edited
Hide toolbar to get an extra line on the screen

Great

Fast
Attach inline image/photo
Quick add from Android notifications: I would use this often
Shows image in the note list
Export and import from SD card: FINALLY someone does this in a smart way
Nicely done import and export UX with ability to see a list of your exports
Protect a notebook with a pattern or a password
Make another notebook the default one
Lock the app with a pattern or a password (upgrade)
5 widgets
Love how Hyperlink works, click it and gives you a globe to click on and visit the link or you can edit right away

Awesome

Free for most functions even cloud sync!
Cheap at $9.99/yr.
Local first with cloud option
Android and iOS app
Drawing is shown in the note list
Great job of card view in the note list with subtle visual indicators showing if a note has an attachment, audio recording
Attach files such as PDF
Attach handwriting (rare feature, a nice surprise)
Export to image includes all drawings and photos
Nice configurable widgets
Mention a contact within a note and simple access to their contact info: brings up the contacts app

References

ticktick.com - Web site
about - their about page
r/ticktick - their subreddit
TickTick's Future Features & 2020 Goals - video interview with Zhimin Chen
Tick Tick - China - comment on a reddit post
appest - company profile on Crunchbase
opencorporates.com - corporation info
Why subscription plan? - page explaining why they charge