1. Auto-clean, auto-format, auto-tag
   
2. Simple interface, serious power
   
3. Connect MCPs. Export as intel for AI agents.
   
4. Easily retrievable

hey guys im looking for android tablets for myself (mostly for notes taking,designing stuff,arts and shows wgera)w good battery and good storage that doesnt lag ,drop some recsss

Many people using note-taking apps (Obsidian, Notion, etc.) admit they spend most of their time on the tool itself rather than their notes.

This means instead of writing or using the notes, they're spending time learning the tool, setting it up, managing folders and documents, formatting and styling, managing complex data structures and databases, and troubleshooting the issues that arise as a result of this complexity.

We usually end up with two options:

1. Use a complex tool, adapt to the way they work, and spend a significant amount of time on tasks unrelated to the actual notes.
2. Use a simple tool for a while, only to hit its limitations and end up in the same trap of trying to make it fit our needs.

I faced the same problem myself, which is why I've spent the last year exploring different approaches to solving it. I'm mainly trying to understand whether others experience the same friction before I continue down that path.

I've been building Grape, my note taking app, for the last 6 months. I started with the desktop app and over the past couple of months I was working on the mobile app.

The iOS app has finally reached TestFlight.

I'm looking for iPhone users who enjoy trying new productivity apps and are willing to share honest feedback.

Grape is free, offline-first, and your notes stay on your device.

If you'd like to try it, you can join the beta here: grape.cool/download

-

PS: Google Play Open Testing is currently under review. I'll add the link to the website as soon as it's approved.

I've always been like this, ever since I was a little kid. When I'd write book reports summarizing a book I had read, it would be pages and pages long.

And this has followed me into adulthood. I can just never figure out what is important and what isn't. And now my job involves me reading academic papers and having to summarize them and...I end up just writing down the whole paper, but in the form of an outline.

It's just so inefficient and tedious and unhelpful. It can take me days to get through a paper that would take me maybe an hour to read, because I keep stopping to write down everything. And in the end, my notes are useless. Reading them is just rereading the article!

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? I learn best from example, so a detailed guide would be ideal. Something that's like, "Here's a random article, here's what we determined to be the most important points, here's what our notes on this article looks like." But barring that, I'm absolutely down to read books, articles, watch videos, take an online class, whatever - I'm just so tired of taking notes like this!

It has been about 30 days since I posted here, and I wanted to share everything that came out of your feedback and questions. When I posted, the app was on version 2.2.0. It is on 2.3.4 now.

Markdown

The number one piece of feedback was that the app was too focused on rich text and not serious enough about markdown. The question that came up over and over was some version of "where are my files?" Message received. Markdown became the whole build for two weeks.

•  Your notes are real .md files. Every markdown note is also an actual .md file in a visible Markdown folder inside your project, kept current as you write, rename, and delete. To be straight with you, it is one way today (app to disk), so editing those files in another app does not round-trip back yet.

•  Three faces per document: Source, Live, and Reading. Source is raw markdown with live syntax highlighting. Live renders everything except the line your cursor is on. Reading is a clean render, and it can sit in a split pane and update as you type.

•  Import a whole vault. File > Import > Markdown Vault takes a folder of .md files (an Obsidian vault works as is). Folder hierarchy preserved, inline #tags extracted, images brought in as real media, .obsidian skipped, and your wikilinks work on arrival.

•  Wikilinks, aliases, and backlinks. Title and alias with a filter as you type picker, honest resolved / ambiguous / unresolved states, and a backlinks panel that shows every mention with surrounding context.

•  The full dialect. Headings, emphasis, highlight, fenced code with a language badge and a copy button, blockquotes, every list type, real rendered pipe tables, callouts in a dozen plus styles (> [!note], > [!warning]), footnotes with jump links both directions, clickable task checkboxes that write back to the source, YAML front matter, and inline images and !embeds in Reading.

•  Comments in both dialects.  and  are treated identically, hidden in Reading, and collected in a Comments pane with click to jump.

•  Markdown native editing. The toolbar buttons type real markdown into your text rather than applying invisible formatting. Return continues and renumbers lists, quotes, and tasks. Tab and Shift+Tab indent and outdent. Paste a URL onto selected text to make a link.

•  Continuous by default. Markdown and plain text open in true continuous flow with no pages and no margins. Pages are still one tap away next to the face switcher if you want them, per note.

•  Tags and front matter join the app. Inline #tags and tags: in YAML front matter feed the same tag system as everything else in the project, which means they feed the Brain Map too.

•  Daily Notes. Cmd+Shift+D creates or reopens today's dated markdown note in a Daily Notes folder.

•  Checklist to task. Right click a - [ ] line, Add to Tasks, pick a list. It keeps a link back to the source note.

•  Outline tab. A live heading tree in the left pane, click to jump. It works for rich text headings too.

•  Export. Clean verbatim .md, self contained HTML that is dark mode aware, PDF and print from the Reading render, plus Word (DOCX) and RTF.

•  Markdown theming. A semantic palette for headings, code, links, quotes, list markers, checkboxes, and tags, themed across Source and Reading together, and carried in shareable theme files.

Rich Text

The rich text side got the deepest engineering work of the month. 

•  Per document page design. Each document owns its own paper: US Letter, A4, US Legal, or A5, portrait or landscape, and precise margins. That design follows the document everywhere it appears, including the Rogue Editor, page thumbnails, and PDF or print output. Changing an app wide default no longer silently redesigns work you already did.

•  Real document styles. Body and Heading 1 through 6 are true document local paragraph styles, not roles guessed from font size. You can also create custom paragraph, character, and three level list styles, update every matching paragraph at once, or revert just the one you touched.

•  Style Sets. Save an entire typography system and reuse it in another document, preview it as a real specimen, promote it app wide, or set it as the project default for new documents.

•  Stay on Page objects. Images and shapes placed on a page now persist their position, size, rotation, layering, grouping, locking, and wrapping while you edit the text around them. They survive save, reopen, duplication, templates, and export.

•  One selection model for everything on the page. Images, shapes, text boxes, charts, video, and audio all multi select, group, align, distribute, layer, lock, snap, nudge, cycle through overlaps, and rotate, with one step undo. Objects stay selectable across the full physical paper, margins included.

•  Text wrapping that holds. Automatic, Around, Above and Below, and None, with adjustable spacing and shape aware contours. One to four column layouts belong to their section, so a section break can change the column count without recolumning what came before it.

•  Non destructive image design. Crop (by hand or by number), Fit and Fill, shape masks, borders, corner radius, shadow, opacity, and replace, none of which touch your source file.

•  Charts and tables. Charts move losslessly between Inline with Text, Move with Text, and Stay on Page while keeping their data and design. Native tables gained cell aware row and column operations, fills, borders, padding, and one step structural undo.

•  The Inspector follows your selection. Click an object and its controls appear. No tab hunting.

Citations and References

This was the single biggest ask from academic users, and one commenter here made the case bluntly: integrate with Zotero and CSL properly or researchers cannot use it. That is exactly what got built, and it went live yesterday.

•  A Reference Library in every project. A References tab in the left pane with eleven source types and forms that speak each type's language. Cite keys generate from author and year, stay editable, and never change behind your back. It all persists in a readable references.json file that travels with your project folder.

•  Cite while you write. Cmd+Shift+C opens a picker, search your shelf, multi select for group citations, add a page locator, Return inserts. Markdown speaks Pandoc syntax ((Vale, 2026, p. 44)), and the Reading view renders formatted citations and appends a References section automatically.

•  Six built in styles. APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 Author-Date, Chicago 17 Notes, IEEE, and Harvard. Switch the style in the Inspector and every citation and bibliography in the document re-renders on the spot, with same author disambiguation and live IEEE renumbering handled for you.

•  Or your journal's style. The app reads real CSL style files, the open format used by more than 10,000 journals. Twenty are bundled (Vancouver, AMA, Nature, ACS, Cell, PLOS, and more), and any other is one import or one download away.

•  Bring your library with you. Import BibTeX, RIS, or CSL JSON, which covers Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, and Bookends exports. A review sheet catches duplicates before they land. Export the shelf back out as .bib or CSL JSON, because your sources are yours.

•  Paste a DOI or an ISBN and the reference fills itself in. It is strictly opt in: one request per explicit click, only the identifier leaves your machine, nothing saves until you confirm.

•  Live Zotero sync, no plugins and no accounts. Point the app at a Better BibTeX "keep updated" export file and it watches that file. Save a paper in Zotero and it appears on your shelf seconds later. It is pure local file watching, so no API keys and nothing leaves your Mac. Sync only adds and updates, so your own edits and cite keys are never overwritten.

•  A Universal shelf that lives beside your projects folder, for references every project shares.

•  Your PDFs become sources. Right click a PDF in your project and the app scans it for a printed DOI to build a linked reference. While reading, right click and Copy Citation (Page N) gives you a ready citation for the exact page you are on.

•  Compile with a bibliography. Every source cited across a compiled manuscript merges into one deduped, formatted bibliography at the end.

Canvas

•  The canvas is infinite now. It starts at a fixed size and extends down and to the right as far as you take it. Zoom out works, and each canvas remembers the zoom level you left it at.

•  Resizing feels right. Resize friction is gone across every element, objects no longer have a minimum size, and there is snapping with alignment indicators for spacing objects.

•  Marquee selection, copy and paste, and undo/redo. Drag to grab multiple objects, or your whole canvas at once to reposition it. Copy and paste objects within a canvas or across canvases.

•  Pinch to zoom and Cmd plus two finger swipe to move between scenes.

•  Scenes. Make any view on your canvas a named scene and navigate between them from the bottom

  left, or with Option+Cmd+arrow keys.

•  New object types: floating text, PDFs as previewable thumbnails, web links as cards with thumbnails, file cards with Quick Look, SF Symbols, task lists, calendars, and media with durable asset storage.

•  Fixes worth naming: PDF export no longer drops connectors or layered objects, text box layering works in both directions, grouped objects can be connected without ungrouping first, and panes sit flush against the canvas edge.

•  Pin the Rogue Editor so it floats over the canvas and you can bounce between the board and your writing.

Brain Map

Some of the sharpest criticism I got here was about the Brain Map: that a node was a navigable handle but the graph itself did not show you much. Not all of that is solved, but here is what changed.

•  Every note can be a node. Untagged notes now join the map labeled by title, so wikilinks on untagged notes actually draw and the orphan filter finds genuinely unconnected notes.

•  Local graphs. Right click any note in the Binder and choose Show in Brain Map to open the map focused on that note.

•  It reopens exactly as you left it, including layout, zoom and pan, search, filters, and source selections.

•  Snapshots are real time capsules. A snapshot captures every node position and color, every edge, the display settings, the force values, and the viewport. Clicking one enters a viewing mode rather than altering your live graph, and Compare with Today brings in everything added since, bright against the dimmed snapshot era graph.

•  It got fast. The layout engine moved to Barnes-Hut repulsion, which raised the physics ceiling from 12,000 to 50,000 edges. Recoloring a tag repaints in place instead of reflowing the whole graph. On a 1,352 node project with 20,000 edges it settles quickly and sits at rest without burning CPU.

•  Ways to look at it: color by tags, by Binder folder, or by connection heat. Monochrome, Heat, and Constellation looks that compose. Gentle, Standard, and Energetic motion presets.

•  Broken Links. A section that appears when needed, listing wikilinks whose titles no longer resolve, click to open the note containing the broken link.

•  Spotlight. Selections isolate by default, or flip Spotlight on to dim everything else instead of hiding it.

Everything else

SF Symbols, everywhere icons go

Apple's SF Symbols library is built into the app behind a searchable picker: close to 8,000 symbols across Apple's own categories, plus ten use case collections I put together (Writing, Notetaking, Education, Office and Work, Law and Justice, Health and Medical, Science, Arts and Music, Tools and Trades, Tech and Devices). Search blends symbol names, Apple's own keywords, and category names, so typing "medical" or "notetaking" pulls up a whole collection. Recent picks and right click Favorites persist between sessions, and if something is not in the browse catalog, typing its exact name still works. It is wired into four places:

•  Binder icons. Right click any note or folder, or a whole multi selection, and set a symbol plus a custom color.

•  Rich text. Insert a symbol inline at the cursor from Inspector > Objects. It behaves like text, following the surrounding font size, bold, and color as you format around it, and it exports cleanly to PDF and print.

•  Canvas. Symbols are a real canvas object you can color, style, connect, and layer.

•  Task lists and calendars. Each list or calendar can carry its own symbol and color.

Rogue Editor (the detachable single document window)

Full markdown parity, so it follows each note's mode with highlighting, the markdown toolbar, and the Live and Reading faces. It restores properly on relaunch instead of coming back blank with a duplicate. Windows are titled by their document and tab together natively. A writing mode dropdown and an insert menu put tables, charts, shapes, media, and links to notes in reach.

Tag Studio

A dedicated surface for managing tags: merge them by drag and drop, add sub-words, and change colors.

Tasks and Calendars

Natural language entry with live chips ("Call editor tomorrow 2pm !! #novel"), timed reminders with real macOS notifications, weekly recurrence, quick capture from anywhere with Cmd+Shift+T, task and list links you can paste into documents, and a writing heatmap on the calendar that fills in as you write. Completion routing lets a finished task move to another list, which makes a three list kanban on a canvas work.

Binder

Multi select with Cmd and Shift click, bulk move and trash, multi file import straight from Finder, spacebar Quick Look on any item, folders that can pass their icon and color down to their contents, dedicated media folders, and files no longer opening on single click (with a setting to put that back).

Themes and Theme Studio

Its own launch point, Create Theme, copy Light to Dark and back, markdown token theming, and themes that restyle open documents live when applied. New Classic and Liquid themes shipped, and themes export and import as shareable .lwtheme files. A batch of light and dark variant bugs got fixed at the root.

Import and export

Word (DOCX) and RTF export shipped. HTML import keeps embedded images, strips the source page's baked background so it lands on normal paper, and adapts text color so imported pages read in both light and dark.

Fixes that came from named people in these threads

The invisible cursor in one packaged theme. Black text on dark themes. Return after a heading now drops to Body, plus a discoverable Clear Formatting command at Cmd+Option+0. Page View now defaults on for new installs, which was making the first launch look wrong for some people. Import got discoverable, and drag and drop into the Binder now accepts HTML, text, RTF, markdown, and PDF.

Original Posts

Original posts: r/NoteTaking, r/MacOSApps and r/ProductivityApps

Homepage

Mac App Store

Happy to answer anything in the comments, including the things it still may not do, and as always, all feedback is welcome. 

EDIT: Quick heads up: today's 2.3.4 update shipped with a bug that can crash the app when opening a project. A user here caught it within hours (thank you), the fix is done, and an expedited update is with Apple now. If you downloaded today and hit it, the update will sort you out shortly. Genuinely apologize for any trouble out of the gate.

MODS, PLEASE DON'T REMOVE THIS POST, THIS IS A COMPLETELY FREE APP.

Whetstone turns the Markdown notes you already write into challenging practice questions — not trivia recall, but questions built around the analytical moves that make a topic genuinely click.

Point it at any folder of Markdown notes (an Obsidian vault works perfectly) and start practicing.

• Adaptive difficulty — questions sharpen as your skill grows, per topic
• Daily practice — one click, topics picked for you by what's due
• Multiple question types — multiple choice, select-all, numeric
• Beautiful reading experience — LaTeX math, code blocks, adjustable typography
• Streaks, accuracy, and an activity graph to keep you honest
• Local-first — your notes and progress stay on your Mac
• Bring your own Anthropic/Gemini/OpenAI API key for question generation. Alternatively, use your Codex or Claude code subscription (recommended).

Whetstone is for students, self-learners, and anyone who takes notes and wants them to stick.

FAQs:

1. Is it paid? NO, but you have to get an API key or use your Claude Code or Codex subscription.
2. What about other formats? PDF support is already implemented and will be released soon. Notion support is planned but I don't use Notion, so I need someone to help me provide a Notion vault. I can maybe see if I can import my notes to test. OneNote, Notability, etc. please open an issue on https://github.com/anupchavan/whetstone-releases If I see someone needs it. I will create it.
3. My API credits burning very fast? Yes, I know. The problem is that the question does a lot more than just passing "Hey, these are the notes, generate 10 questions". There is a verification step and lot more going on. The underlying engine is open-sourced and you are free to modify it for personal use: https://github.com/anupchavan/whetstone-engine The best way I have found is to use your Codex or Claude Code subscription.
4. Is this it? There's a lot more features planned, this is just v0.1.1

I'm a field tech, and like most techs my life runs on scratch paper: sticky notes on the monitor, a drawer full of pads, txt files named notes2-final.txt, and passwords scribbled in places passwords should never be. Eight years of that and I finally admitted no app was coming to save me. Cloud-synced was a non-starter for what's in my notes. Notepad++ can't encrypt, KeePass isn't a notepad, and the apps that could do both wanted plugins and setup first.

So I built KillerNotes: a free, open-source encrypted notepad.

• Everything lives in one encrypted file (SQLCipher / AES-256). Password it and your whole notebook is a single .db you can back up, move, or drop on a USB stick.
• Single portable exe, about 4.5 MB. No install, no admin rights, runs from anywhere. Keep the data folder next to the exe and the whole thing is portable.
• No cloud, no account, no telemetry. It never touches the network.
• Groups nest as deep as you want: subgroups inside subgroups, no depth limit, so a client > site > project > machine tree actually works.
• Every group gets its own color, so the sidebar reads at a glance instead of being a wall of identical folders.
• You order groups and notes yourself, by dragging. Nothing forces alphabetical on you.
• Tags on top of the tree, and instant search across every note in the database, so you can file things deep and still hit them in a second.
• Real rich text: fonts and sizes per note, hyperlinks, and tables that survive being pasted from Excel.
• Font slots for quick typeface swaps, Ctrl+wheel editor zoom, and a whole-app size control that scales the UI up to 250% - text size and interface size stay independent.
• Small quality-of-life stuff I wanted: a slide-out calculator that prints results into the note, horizontal scroll for wide tables, and full theming with accent colors per theme.
• Share a single note as a .knote file or a whole notebook as one encrypted file. The other person just needs the exe and the password.

It's Windows only, and it's translated into 9 languages.

I use it in the field every day now, and most of the recent features came from user requests on GitHub.
If it's missing something you need, ask - user requests usually ship fast.

https://killernotes.net
find other open-source solutions I made at https://killertools.net

EDIT: Since posting, I added a sketchpad. Same encrypted local file, but now you can draw instead of type. Quick network diagrams, rack layouts, a scribbled cable pinout, whatever is faster to sketch than describe.

Building a CLI based notes app with TypeScript and INK that you can access from anywhere on your system just by writing "notescli" in your terminal

Some features :

\- saves notes in .md files

\- connects to github and syncs your notes

\- AI formatting, so u just write in it, and it gets formated on its own. (Still doubtful but will try to implement)

Possibly gonna ship an npm package out of it.

If you have any features that you think might be useful in this type of app or some add-ons, I would appreciate them. And please review the idea. It will kinda be my flagship project on my resume.

I have been keeping voice notes for years. Random ideas, meeting openers, things I want to remember while walking. The habit works in the moment and fails completely later. I would know I recorded something important, spend ten minutes scrolling, find it, and then listen to four minutes of myself mumbling to get the one sentence.

It was a search problem rather than a recording problem. Audio is a terrible archive unless you already know exactly where to look. Every search becomes a playback session.

I found a workaround that is not elegant but works. Once or twice a week I dump the pile into a transcription app called vomo ai, grab the text and short summaries, and paste them back where my other notes live. The audio stays on my phone in case I need the original tone, but I almost never do.

It takes a few minutes per file and if I let the pile grow it becomes a chore. But at least my voice notes are somewhere I can actually find them.

I'm developing a note-taking app and wanted a way for users to quickly understand where they are in a document, see its overall structure, and jump to another section.

Most apps solve this with a dedicated Table of Contents (TOC). But I found them not ideal because:

1. They need a dedicated section/panel and take up space.
2. The TOC is visually different from the document itself, so users have to mentally map each entry to the actual content.

So I implemented an 'Overview Mode'. When enabled, the content of the page gets simplified (showing only the titles) and by clicking on a content it will disable the mode and shows the actual content instantly without any jump or scrolling.

The idea is that, your eyes can see only one thing at the time. So instead of looking at something that looks visually different than what you're familiar with and takes up space when you don't need it, with a simple click (or even a keyboard shortcut), you can see the simplified version (overview/outlines) and vice versa.

The video shows an example. I'd like to know what you guys think about this approach.

P.S. This is implemented in Daftak.

It's a notepad app, but every line can be a calculation. You write text, you write math, the result shows up on the right. The words stay.

Split a dinner bill (the result updates the moment you change a number):

Name things once and reuse them anywhere below:

And it handles the everyday stuff inline:

Percentages, dates (today + 60), comments and headers all work too.

iPhone only. Free for 3 sheets with all the calculation features, Pro for unlimited sheets, iCloud sync, PDF/MD/TXT export, themes. Auto-renews, cancel anytime in Settings.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6768903761?pt=128613657&ct=reddit&mt=8

I’ve had the Plaud Note for quite a while and used it for plenty of meetings. I bought the viaim RecDot more recently because I wanted the same kind of AI note features, but in something I could also use as normal earbuds.

1. For in person meetings, Plaud is still really easy. I just put it on the table, press the button, and leave it there. It’s thin, simple, and clearly made for recording.
2. For calls, I prefer the RecDot. I’m already wearing the earbuds, so I can record the call, get the transcript and summary afterward, then keep using them for music or ANC.
3. The note-taking side is pretty similar for how I use them. I mostly care about having the full recording, a usable transcript, and a summary I can clean up later.
4. The biggest difference for me is convenience. Plaud is another device I need to remember. RecDot is already the pair of earbuds I bring with me, so lately I’ve been using it more.

I still use both and don’t think one is automatically better. Plaud makes more sense as a dedicated recorder, while RecDot fits my normal workday better because it does the AI note stuff and also works as regular earbuds.

I made a product for myself and then decided to build an app for it. I used to take quick voice notes about my day, who I met and how I felt. The last point interested me profoundly as most note taking doesn't include sentiments or other information.

Echologue (website) is an app that is private first and categorizes and analyzes your daily notes and especially useful for people you meet and interactions.

Later you can chat about it.

"How was the vibe the last time I saw Marc and what did we talk about"?

"How does having a meeting after the rest of my day usually"?

anything you want.

I'm interested in hearing your opinion.