GNotes

Stone -

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

Meta

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

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