Recommend First-Party Notes Apps

I think it is best to recommend first party notes apps for third party notes apps as they being developed and maintained by the company that controls the operating system, which can provide better security and privacy controls. It also helps with the idea that “less is more”.

Keep Notes enforces a Google login and cloud syncing, unless you turn off the network for it, which is an option only available in GrapheneOS and DivestOS. Anyone using stock would be stuck either manually turning off their internet when using the notes app or having their notes sync to their Google account.

Also Keep Notes isn’t nearly as feature rich as Apple Notes and most other note-taking applications are. For example, you can’t mix regular text with checklists on Keep Notes.

This really only works on Apple tbh.

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We appreciate your activeness on this forum, but I don’t see why you need to create another thread with a pool over a subject that already has a discussion started by the MODs, it creates a lot of repetition on a forum that doesn’t have many users to begin with.

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If you are referring to the topic about Local knowledge base note taking apps, I think the op is referring to local knowledge base note-taking it apps which seems to differ from traditional note-taking apps. (I am still confused about the difference tho).

This topic focus on introducing first party note apps to the notebooks section in PG.

When I was writing this I assume each OS comes with a local notes apps which doesn’t seem to be the case (excluding iOS and macOS).

I think it is still worth mentioning for that people’s as they tend to ignore the first party apps and go for third party apps (even though the first party app can have similar features to the alternatives).

I might consider that if the app is open source. But I don’t think Samsung, Google and Apple have open souced their notes apps. I don’t like giving my personal data to Megatech.

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I think the argument here, which I normally hear for utility types of apps like launchers for Android, is to minimize your attack surface by using the first party apps since you’re already trusting that party for the OS itself. It’s mostly a security argument because if you know the first party OS provider is not privacy conscious, your notes may be as secure as your OS, but privacy doesn’t come into the picture.

From a privacy perspective, my advice would be to not move to another note-taking app unless you trust them and believe they are reasonably private and secure. If you’re not sure how they handle your notes and data, it’s better to minimize the amount of parties who have access. Better just Google having access to your notes because they already have access to your OS rather than Google and another company having access (unless you trust that other company for x/y/z reasons).

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Sorry for necroposting but I’m wondering why I’ve not seen much about just regular text/markdown files+Syncthing. If you’re using Syncthing already, I don’t see an advantage to having a different program to sync just your notes, especially with the issue of having to trust another party.

Org mode with Orgzly is cool if you’re into that, but imo it’s easiest to use something like Markor and then whatever desktop editor you like best. I like the platform agnostic approach of text files and the todo.txt format.

Is there anything I’m missing out on here? I tried Joplin and some others and this way doesn’t seem any more clunky.

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If you are using operating system, then don’t add another party and use the first part app. This is deeply flawed when the third party apps being important features to the table. Otherwise, suggesting apps will be pointless in this website as all vendors have messaging note taking, cloud apps.

So, if your vendor provides the same features, you are right.

Comparing something like Obsidian or Logseq to the notes apps I’ve worked with, I think the difference would be the addition of very advanced structuring or organization capabilities. Maps and charts would be a good example of this – they’re built for large amounts of data. Someone else may be able to elaborate though, since I don’t have much experience with those.


(Source: https://www.slant.co/topics/4962/~knowledge-base-systems-for-personal-use)

I found those knowledge-base-type notes apps to be too complicated for me, though. I really only would use folders or tags, and I’ve switched around between Bear, Ulysses, Craft, and Apple Notes. Though I didn’t have any privacy criteria in picking that, aside from avoiding Evernote, Notion, and the Google products. I’m using Bear at the moment but I think I’ll probably give Apple Notes a try… I didn’t give it much consideration since it’s the “default” notes app on iOS.

I tried Notesnook, Standard Notes and Obsidian but none of them felt great on iOS – but that’s a priorities thing since I’d rather use a smooth, native UI and store the notes in iCloud. On that note (pun not intended), is iCloud a private place to store notes? Are they encrypted there?

Edit: just realized this thread is way old, woops

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Apple Notes are end-to-end encrypted if Advanced Data Protection is activated.

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