Hi HN! I realize there's no shortage of note-taking apps, but I wanted to make one where you don't need an account, don't need to download an app, and your notes won't be sync'ed to the cloud, etc. I used to use Windows Notepad for this, but now I use a Mac and everything from Notes gets pushed into iCloud.
If you just need to write a shopping list or jot something down quickly instead of a note that you'll need to keep for a long time, Temporary Note might be useful for you:
- Accessible from any device with an internet connection & web browser
- Notes are not uploaded to the cloud, but keep in mind that they're in the URL, so they might make it into your browser history
- There's a few features for dictation, speech synthesis, fullscreen
- Am considering adding saving notes as txt files, but won't be adding any cloud sync or accounts; it's not that kind of note-taking app
Would love to hear any feedback on whether it's useful or not, or any feature suggestions.
Why prioritize that instead of saving notes as editable notes (just the way it feels to use temporarynote.com, but from a file on your disk)? Output an HTML file instead of plain text.
Plain text is useful, but getting it in that form is trivial—it's just a textarea (nothing fancy like contenteditable, so it's already in plain text) and every system that you could expect to use this from should have a functioning clipboard.
A note with the look and feel of temporarynote.com calls for coordination from the author to modify their app to be able to output itself as a self-contained file.
On an iPhone, I turned on dictation but there was no indication on how to control (or stop) it. After giving permission, what is expected behavior? How do I cease dictation?
Permission is controlled by the browser. If you go into your browser settings, there will be something for controlling which websites have which permissions.
Having the note text in the URL can be good in some cases. Storing the note as a bookmark becomes possible, as does storing a note in a URL shortening service. Opening a fork of a note from a different device also becomes possible this way. (eg. on Chrome, using "Send to Your Devices")
Localstorage (as far as I know) isn't easy to move across devices or share, and notes being a bit ephemeral is part of the idea of this. I think anyone who wants to save notes indefinitely is probably better off with one of the cloud-based note-taking apps.
One idea is that the url makes it immediately shareable. You can send your note to your phone in a text message without any uploads due to it being encoded in the url.
Worth pointing out that MacOS (all versions) has a built in application called “stickies”, which I have found many proficient Mac users to not be aware of.
It supports translucency, “float on top”, and is generally great for jotting things down without using a dead tree :)
On the new versions there’s something popping up whenever you move your cursor to the bottom right corner of the screen. I’ve so far managed to avoid it
Or Notes.app.. or Reminders.app, both of which are available by default on every Mac, iPad and iPhone. Heck Reminders.app is even on Apple Watch.
I get that not everyone uses a Mac (I'd imagine HN audience is probably more likely to than the average population though), and I haven't used a Windows machine for anything besides browser bug testing since XP was relatively new... is there really not a basic note taking/reminders app built in on Windows.. whatever?
There's something built in somewhere. I accidentally press the wrong keys sometimes and a yellow box pops up where I can take a note. But then I close it and don't know what keys I pressed. I should write it down in my paper notes somewhere.
It does not. I was briefly using MS To Do as a desktop interface for my Alexa todo and shopping lists, before I decided that I prefer Todoist instead. But To Do and OneNote are free-as-in-beer for all. 365 could have some extra integration features with the other Office apps, I'm not sure.
This is really nice to have for ChromeOS. The main selling point of ChromeOS for me is that the environment is secure because I’m not installing anything. I don’t want to install some app in ChromeOS just for simple notepad usage.
I've used zenpen.io for years, it persist just to local storage in your browser so the content is there when you open the page back up. Wouldn't count on it for persistence, but it's my absolute go to for quick ephemeral note taking
Hey really minor request! If you could set the document title to the first few lines of the note, it would make it a lot easier to pick out which notes I'm looking for with multiple tabs.
Not OP, but I've been using a similar HTML file (local at first, now hosted on GitLab) that does the same thing, though I use it with Firefox and Tree Style Tab to organize hundreds of tabs.
The approach I follow is to be able to set the title of the page as well as the contents, and the tab now acts as a labeled container of other tabs. The contents are stored in the URL, same as OP, so the same caveats apply.
It probably can be. I'm using React at the moment, and I'm not sure how easy it would be to bundle everything into a single file.
Also, as mentioned below, there's also one line that you can put into your browser (or bookmark) and have something similar. I used that for years before I decided that I wanted it on a domain so that I can just easily open it anywhere.
It's nice, I like these. But for whatever reason, I just can't break away from using <editor> to save a .txt to a synced folder when I need to persist some note.
I'm thinking about adding a "Save as txt" button, but this is really intended more like a post-it note in your browser tabs. For long-term persistence something synced is probably a better choice.
If you just need to write a shopping list or jot something down quickly instead of a note that you'll need to keep for a long time, Temporary Note might be useful for you:
- Accessible from any device with an internet connection & web browser
- Notes are not uploaded to the cloud, but keep in mind that they're in the URL, so they might make it into your browser history
- There's a few features for dictation, speech synthesis, fullscreen
- Am considering adding saving notes as txt files, but won't be adding any cloud sync or accounts; it's not that kind of note-taking app
Would love to hear any feedback on whether it's useful or not, or any feature suggestions.