UpNote - notes, diary, journal

I have a folder of different note applications, and I tried about 12 different ones, and UpNote is my favorite. Here is why. Features Add image covers to your notebooks, or upload your own Organize notebooks in notebooks Create templates that you can later apply to new created notes Organize content into accordions, even image content Resize imported images to make space on your note Apply up to six different heading styles or normal text⁠⁠ The pro version only costs $2.00 per month. I also like Zoho Notebook, and Gorillized Outline. UpNote and Notebook are the only two I know that allow you add image covers to notebooks, and I like how Outline allows tag options for different checklist icons such as “Important” or “Critical.” But in the end, UpNote did it for me, because of the features I mentioned. I would personally like more design options to the UI. I like the layout, but it needs more color and contrast in my opinion. Maybe a light gray sidebar, and a colored header that matches the theme that you have applied. And as a suggestion, maybe add an option for line spacing. For numbered lists, for example, I like to have more spacing in between each listing. These are not criticisms, just personal preferences. I would say that my only criticism is that that the Undo and Redo options, after backspacing, undos and redos each character, rather than the entire action. But that’s it. I love this application, and I am now syncing it on all my devices.

One of the most annoying things with notation app is you often find yourself fighting with them for formatting and it ruins really good apps. I stopped using Craft docs for this reason and I’m now running into it with Upnote. An example is if I have a list and I’ve switched from number bullet to symbol sub-bullet - this part is fine. When pasting text in (because there’s no copy and paste and match style on iPad) sometimes this will throw formatting off so instead of continuing with the nested bullet format, Upnote strips all bullet point symbols (even though the toolbar shows bullet point enabled there’s none on the screen). When you try to backspace to get the non-bulleted item back on the line with the previous point (which IS bulleted) and return to create what should be a new bulleted point, it does not retain the formatting and again you have the nested item just floating with no bullet point. This seems isolated to the iPad app, as I don’t run into it as much on the Mac. Update: this is also happening when mixing bullets and numberings. I can’t use numbers for major headers and bullets for sub insets because when you try to go back to the numbering system it starts back over at 1 instead of having that continuity and again you spend so much time fighting the formatting - it’s very reminiscent of Microsoft products where Word tries to “predict” what you want to do but in doing that it’s actually making so much more work because it’s often not what you’re trying to do and to go back and try to undo the predictive formatting is so tough and time consuming.

After years of being a faithful and paying user of a major competitor product, I finally had to look for a replacement due to regular large price increases and some (to me anyway) unnecessary bloat in that app and service. Having tried nearly every notetaking app at some point over the last few years, I couldn’t find a good replacement. being in the Google ecosystem, I tried keep as my primary notetaking app for quite a while, but I just couldn’t make it work. I had seen UpNote on a few lists of worthy products to try, and I gave it a shot. I immediately felt like this was going to be a good solution and potentially even a better solution than what I had been using for years. Having now used it for a couple of months now, being a paid premium user for most of that time, I can absolutely say this is a nearly perfect solution for me. It can work simply as a place to jot some quick thought, or it can easily organize the thousands of notes that I currently have. The folder and notebook structure makes sense to me, and the ability to use tags is incredibly convenient. Importing from other major services is extremely simple. I would encourage anyone to at least give this a try. Once you see how much more affordable it is on top of everything else, I would imagine it could be hard to go back to another premium note taking app.