Hi! I am Abdullah Atta, the co-founder of Notesnook. I am really, really excited to share this news with the dev.to community. We have officially open sourced all of our client apps (sync server to be open sourced soon) on GitHub. We'd love if the community chimes in & support us on this new journey!
A fully open source & end-to-end encrypted note taking alternative to Evernote.
Notesnook
An end-to-end encrypted note taking alternative to Evernote.
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Overview
Notesnook is a free (as in speech) & open-source note-taking app focused on user privacy & ease of use. To ensure zero knowledge principles, Notesnook encrypts everything on your device using XChaCha20-Poly1305 & Argon2.
Notesnook is our proof that privacy does not (always) have to come at the cost of convenience. We aim to provide users peace of mind & 100% confidence that their notes are safe and secure. The decision to go fully open source is one of the most crucial steps towards that.
This repository contains all the code required to build & use the Notesnook web, desktop & mobile clients. If you are looking for a full feature list or screenshots, please check the website.
Developer guide
Technologies & languages
Notesnook is built…
What is Notesnook?
Notesnook started out as a passion project back in 2019 (3 years after Standard Notes) after I got really frustrated by the lack of good, usable & privacy note taking apps in the market. It might not sound like a pain point to you but privacy is a critical issue in today's digital world & my notes contain my most private thoughts. If you don't share this opinion, I don't blame you.
Google has popularized the "100% free" concept in almost all markets. Look at Google Keep, Gmail, Calendar, Maps & the whole GSuite. Most of it is offered free of charge. Why? Are they crazy? It makes no sense until you realize that Google is primarily an Ads company. They thrive on user data.
If it's free, you are paying with your data.
Notesnook is our take on how note taking should be done. It features 100% end-to-end encrypted sync (free & unlimited for all), encrypted attachments (unlimited storage for as low as $0.99/mo) & encrypted publishing of notes (again free for all). It is a fully cross-platform app built using React & React Native with a primary focus on feature parity. In fact, all our clients have 99% feature parity (something no other note taking app can claim).
Why open source? Why now?
The truth is that we are late to the party. Notesnook was our first rodeo & we didn't realize how important open sourcing is for our users to inspire trust & confidence until much, much later. Better late than never though, right?
Our mission is to make Notesnook a quality product in the open source space like Docker, Nginx, PostHog etc. When we started out Notesnook, we asked ourselves 1 question:
Is it possible to create a privacy respecting note taking service without compromising on convenience & usability?
And here is our proof.
What kind of open source?
We are open sourcing Notesnook under (A)GPL-3.0-or-later. We will not tolerate any compromise on our users' freedom, privacy & peace of mind.
We open sourced Notesnook on September 1 and the response has been huge so far. I summarized our overall experienced in this tweet (would love if you give a follow!)
How can you help?
We are a small company based in Pakistan entirely self-funded without any VC backing us. We don't have thousands of dollars for ad revenue or influential patrons who'll push us to the edge. All we have is platforms like these.
We'd love if you can star our GitHub repo, become a contributor, spread the word of privacy & tell others about your experience with Notesnook. If you have a platform (podcast, blog, etc.), we'd love to get featured. If you'd like to collaborate with us, we are listening.
That's all. I hope Notesnook will make a difference.
— May privacy reign
