As an avid note-taker, I need to keep my notes organized and accessible from multiple devices in order to be in touch with all my research, experiments and other projects.

As a long time user of Typora (I started using it in early beta version and promptly bought the app when it was released), my requisites are high regarding Markdown usability. Unfortunately, they do not have a webapp/syncing feature available.

In the beginning, I used GoogleDrive to have my notes and access them between my devices where I would install the drive and Typora. This worked fine until I starting working.

As a cyber security professional, I know the dangers of having personal cloud drives installed on your corporate computer, so I was left using GoogleDrive’s webapp, which is horrible to edit/view Markdown files.

As such, I had to start looking for the perfect note-taking syncing experience, where the must-have requisites are:

  • Webapp (preferably, to avoid restrictive app-locker scenarios) or app with syncing feature

  • Free or Lifetime license

  • In-line live Preview/Rendering of Markdown (no split editor please)

  • Notes must have an outline (table of content) quickly accessible (no infinite scrolls up and down trying to find information)

  • File manager (folders or notes hierarchy)

  • Dark Theme

  • Copy/paste as Markdown

A quick tip: look into https://www.markdownguide.org/tools/ to see applications that support Markdown.

Disclaimer: some of these apps I did not install and fully interact with. If the apps’ landing page and a quick YouTube video showed me that one or more of my must-have features were not available, then I did not installed the app.

1. Gitbook

Gitbook was the first one to try. In the first few minutes looked fine, but in the end was not the right fit for me.

Pros:

+ Webapp (no installation needed)

+ Simple and clean UI

+ “Quick Find” search works great

Cons:

- Note-taking is not fluid, it is a constant series of content blocks (paragraphs, lists, tables) (like Notion)

- No shortcuts for common content blocks (e.g, table)

- No outline for Pages

- Page hierarchy follows a weird fixed order: Collection > Section > Pages. If you want to have something like “Folder > Notes”, you cannot.

- Too collaboration-oriented: comment boxes appear on every content block; you have to lock a page to see it clean (similar to “publish”) and unlock it if you want to edit it; the statement “Page Description (optional)” is always there which is annoying.

- Table edit is a nightmare

2. Obsidian

Next, looking for GitBook alternatives I looked at Obsidian, since I read that already have Live Preview for markdown.

Everything looked perfectly fine, except for the syncing feature:

$10 per month or $96 per year

Noped out really quickly.

3. SimpleNote

I then considered Simplenote. I already use it for other type of notes and projects. However it does not render Markdown in-line.

Pros:

+ Free

+ Webapp

+ Runs for all the typical OSes (Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, …)

+ Tags

Cons

- No in-line live preview of Markdown

4. HackMD

Pros:

+ Free unlimited notes

+ Nice note outline on the left

Cons:

- No in-line live preview of Markdown (with split editor instead)

5. Notable

Notable looked to be a good contestant, but:

Pros:

+ Dark theme

+ No vendor lock-in: notes are stored in disk

Cons:

- No in-line live preview of Markdown (with split editor instead)

6. Docusaurus

Docusaurus was one of the last that I looked at.

It looked to have everything I was looking for, until I realized it was self hosted.

7. UpNote

Feeling a bit hopeless, thinking maybe I need to mount my own server to have something that I like (a bit too much work for note-taking), I heard about UpNote on a comment section on a review for another tool. But finally, I believe I found a winner!

Pros:

+ One-time purchase (currently at $24.99) or Free up to 50 notes with basic features

+ Quick Access section

+ Tags

+ It offers rich text (text colors, subscript, etc). I like to keep my notes clean and consistent so I don’t think I’ll use it but is a nice-to-have

+ Pin notes

Cons:

- No webapp, installation required. However, it does run in all OSes that I need

- Tables are only available on Premium so I will not know how well they do until I buy the app

So I will be using UpNote for the next week and update this post if any other pro  or con arise, and if I am going to buy the app.

Update

I bough the app hours after using it, it is that good!

Pros:

+ Templates (I was not expecting how useful this feature would be)

+ Many customization options (theme, line spacing, paragraph spacing, default image size, default code language, and many others)

+ No need to escape certain characters (like ‘+’ or ‘-’. You use ctrl+z to remove bullet point)

+ Back/forward commands work to move between notes

Cons:

- Table actions are limited (no reorder of rows/collumns) and no shortcuts are available (add/remove row/collumns). Table manipulation is indeed the most significant fault of the app. So if you work a lot with tables, I do not recommend

- It is not possible to check current heading level (only when creating it)

- No markdown shortcuts for certain formats (like using [mylink](https[.]somelink.com) )

- Internal links on templates don’t work (they link to original template and not the note created from the template)

- No live preview of code syntax

- PDF export doesn’t work well with in-note links

All in all, it is clearly a good choice and will be a good complement to Typora.