Android

Orgzly

Stone

21 May 2022 • 3 min read

Orgzly is a completely free and open-source note taking and to-do app with an incredible amount of customization and multiple synchronization options including Dropbox, WebDAV, or a directory. On the downside the app does not support image or audio attachments, is not extremely attractive, and is not that easy to use.

Some of challenges may be due to the app using Org Mode which was new to me. From orgmode.org:

The fundamental structure of an Org document is a tree, with nested, collapsible sections forming its backbone. You can fold and unfold whole trees with single keystroke — tab. Org's trees make for quick, graceful navigation and powerful information hiding that lets you focus on the task at hand without compromising the ability to get the information you need complete it.

With a little more effort on the UI and some marketing this could become one of the better note-taking apps for Android.

Screenshots

Ugly

The first screen is a dialog about What's New but this was the first time I've used the app so, to me, it's all new!
The second screen shown is the sidebar opened which felt odd
When editing a note the meta data section is expanded by default which I found annoying and its in-between the title of the note and the note text taking up 80% of the screen real estate. Once you collapse this section once, it remembers so thank goodness for that

Bad

Not very user friendly
I didn't understand what a lot of the Settings were for
No image attachments
Tags are in the meta data, would be good if they could also be in the note text
The cursor is very faint and thin, so hard to see that I was editing or where the cursor was
Wish the help was integrated in the app or at least accessible via a link on the sidebar
Check-boxes in view mode still look like markup [x]

Good

Text formatting: bold, italics, underlined, strike-through, code
Bullets
Sub-bullets
Expand and collapse bullets
Tags
Uses Org mode which supports Markup for Rich Contents

A GNU Emacs major mode for keeping notes, authoring documents, computational notebooks, literate programming, maintaining to-do lists, planning projects, and more — in a fast and effective plain text system.

Priority on item: A, B, or C
Hyperlinks
Search by tag, state, scheduled, or deadline time
Save as text file
Search within a note
Light, dark, black mode
3 font sizes: small, default, large
Preface on each note
Sort by title and modified time
Move notes between notebooks
Export a notebook to .org file -- on Windows VS Code, Vim, Atom, Sublime supports this file format
Help page
Link between notes but not trivial, see Help > Links > Note

Great

Checklist
One click to expand or collapse all bullets
Schedule an item with repeat
State on item: TODO, NEXT, DONE
Reminders
Save search queries
Line density setting: Comfortable, Compact, Cozy
Sync to Dropbox
Sync to Directory

Awesome

Open Source
Free!
No ads!
Powerful search although I didn't spend much time with the app
Has a git repo type in development. Enable it under Settings > App > Developer options
Extremely well thought out Android widget
ARCHIVE tag Greys out a note
Custom properties on notes
WebDAV support
Customizable State and Priority names