JotterPad

Stone -

JotterPad is a great note taking app targeted at authors and playwrights although it can be used by anyone. It's fast and has all of the features needed including Markdown, WYSIWYG editing, version history, and publish to Ghost or WordPress! It's relatively expensive at $40/yr although "you get what you pay for" as my Dad always said.

Screenshots

Meta

Ugly

  • Grid view of notes shows markdown, not the formatted text
  • Inline image from Unsplash wasn't included in export to PDF
  • Took me an hour of using it to find settings even when I had clicked on this icon multiple times. Hint: click the "person" icon and scroll down

Bad

  • Expensive relative to other apps: $6.49/mo or $39.99/yr
  • Requires you to login to add an image
  • Cloud uses Google and Apple authentication, I prefer email/password
  • Code editor didn't seem to work for me

Good

  • Fast
  • Text formatting: bold, italic, underline, strike-through
  • Horizontal line / divider
  • Undo and redo
  • Unordered / bullet list
  • Numbered list
  • Sub-bullets
  • Hyperlinks
  • Block quotes
  • Dark mode
  • Insert image from URL
  • Grid ("thumbnail") or list view of notes
  • Sort by date created, modified, or by kind of note
  • Set auto-save interval
  • Print note
  • Folders and sub-folders
  • Cloud support if you want it (Google/Apple authentication)
  • Statistics: word count, character count, reading time, readability score, word length, sentence length
  • Search within and across notes
  • Formatting toolbar

Great

  • Markdown support: can input in Markdown, import Markdown, view Markdown source but cannot edit markdown source (which is fine by me but some folks likely want that ability)
  • Inline check-boxes
  • 15 font / type faces
  • 6 font sizes
  • Insert page break
  • Love the font
  • Export to PDF
  • Share and copy note as HTML
  • Share as Markdown
  • Insert image from Unsplash (free photo service) and includes the attribution underneath
  • Fountain document (paid feature)
  • Publish to JotterPad profile (paid feature)
  • Insert symbols e.g. math symbols
  • Block or inline TeX equations although I wouldn't use this
  • Import Markdown, text files, fountain
  • Import FDX for screenplays although I wouldn't use this
  • Export to Final Draft FDX (paid feature although I wouldn't use this)
  • Research feature to lookup word in dictionary, thesaurus, rhymes
  • Pasting a URL on text makes it a hyperlink

Awesome

  • Version history of notes
  • Apps for Apple MacOS, iOS, Web, and ChromeOS
  • Tons of custom settings: line height, line width, enable ligatures
  • Export to Word (.docx)
  • WYSIWYG editing
  • "Night vision" ŧo reduce blue light
  • Outline tool to go to sections by heading
  • Active blog with ~ 68 posts in ~ 2 years on writing tips and app updates
  • Useful and well designed help pages
  • Publish to Ghost, Tumblr and WordPress
  • Support for addons