Notepad by Braden Farmer

Stone -

Welcome to episode #72 of this weird hobby and obsession to find the best Android (no Apple yet but maybe soon) note-taking app.

If you need a really fast, free, open-source text/Markdown note-taking app, then Braden Farmer's open-source app is a good one to consider. It does precisely what it promises:

A simple, bare-bones, no-frills note taking app

There's no WYSIWYG editing but when you save a Markdown file, it renders it nicely. I was able to crash the app a couple of times and opened issues in GitHub for them.

Read on for the ugly, bad, good, great, and awesome features of Notepad.

Screenshots

Meta

Ugly

  • Crashes when clicking an invalid Markdown hyperlink [test]([www.google.ca](http://www.google.ca))
  • Crashes when you try an image link ![](https://https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/03/fall-trees-road-1.jpg)
  • Pasting in the current cursor position pastes the text somewhere else

Bad

  • No image attachments
  • No toolbar
  • No checkbox
  • No undo or redo
  • Can't double tap to select text (long press instead)
  • Not WYSIWYG
  • No trash

Good

  • The first line is the title
  • Text formatting: bold, italics, strikethrough
  • code
  • code block
  • 3 fonts
  • 5 font sizes
  • 5 heading levels
  • Dark mode
  • Horizontal line ---
  • Quotes
  • Hyperlinks
  • Sort by date or filename
  • Prompt before exiting
  • Quick menu to create a new note
  • Share via SMS or email or another app
  • Export to a text file
  • Preview mode renders the Markdown

Great

  • Markdown support
  • Fast
  • Double-tap to edit a note

Awesome

  • Free
  • Open Source
  • Local first
  • Works offline
  • Keyboard shortcuts