![]() No extra taps to compose and send an email. No account is required for the recipient. By adding an email address as a note tag, the Simplenote service automatically sends an email with a link to a nicely formatted Simplenote webpage. But Simplenote provides another nice option. Most text editors also provide options for emailing notes as plaintext or html. Share with emailĭropbox makes it pretty easy to share documents with other Dropbox users. What’s more, using an email as a tag will automatically share the note with that address. Cross app and cross platform tags is a killer feature. NVAlt and ResophNotes also support Simplenote tags. Tapping a single tag provides a list view of just notes with that tag. In addition, the main Simplenote screen provides a list of all tags. This makes searching quick and provides specific results. For example, I regularly search notes tagged with “work” or “personal”. Tags can also be combined with searching to provide valuable combinations. Simplenote’s built in tagging system helps overcome one barrier that keeps me from uses tags in general: adding tags is generally a pain and time consuming. A note can have any combination of tags as well. Each note prominently displays a tag bar at the top. There is tag autocompletion and tag browsing built into the apps. Simplenote tags are a fundamental part of organizing notes. Why? Because they provide context for a large flat collection of documents. That also means that searching is almost instantaneous for my list. Simplenote performs all searching right within the app. The only problem with searching in Simplenote is that there is no way to limit searching within a single note. Not only is there content searching but the search hits are highlighted in the note view. Simplenote continues to best the competition with their search features. Simplenote has always provided a fast and accurate search of note content. Most Dropbox based note apps provide search, but only by note titles. While sorting is crucial for easily accessing recent and high priority notes, I have more than I can easily browse. ![]() In addition I pin some generic notes to the top of the list: Those project notes are pinned to the top. For work, I manage a few very large (by scope and timeframe) projects. Once pinned a note always show at the top of a list, no matter how the list is sorted or how old the note is. The pin function can be applied to any note. This is a feature that I use so regularly, that I don’t think I could use a note app without it. Pin to TopĪnd then there’s the “Pin to top” option in Simplenote. However, Simplenote has had this option for as long as I have used the app. Newer versions of Dropbox text editors include an option to sort by date so this is point has become moot. Chronological ordering, combined with global search, means I can get to any specific note within a few seconds. In the early days of Dropbox text editors, about 9 months ago, they all presented a list of notes in the same way: alphabetical order. Sorting is another pet peeve but it’s getting better. Again, Nebulous and Elements both support global search. As soon as I open a new app and can not find a global search, it gets deleted. ![]() Many of the text editors lack the ability to search across all notes. ![]() They sync happens periodically while editing and also whenever the keyboard is hidden. I know apps like Nebulous Notes and Elements can do automatic syncing now, but Simplenote still feels faster. The text is constantly syncing back to the servers. While Dropbox sync isn’t what I would call slow, it does not approach the performance of Simplenote. For me, Simplenote is still way ahead of anything available through Dropbox. Finally, it needs to provide a way to quickly add a new note. It needs to provide a quick way to locate a specific note. SpeedĪ note-taking app needs to be fast for three functions: Sync, search and entry. I’ll walk through some of the best features of Simplenote and show why I still prefer it to any other text editor on iOS. But what it does for notes makes me happy. Like Dropbox it provides continuous and automatic note syncing. There are a never-ending progression of Dropbox based note editors and these two stand out as the best.Įven with these great options, I consistently return to Simplenote for the majority of my needs. Not only are these apps powerhouses as text editors, but they were built to integrate with Dropbox. One of the advantages of this golden age is that there are terrific apps like Elements and Nebulous Notes for editing plain text on iOS. While Microsoft Word is bloated like a victim in a scene from Se7en, the geekier writers are moving to plain text en masse. It’s the golden age of plain text editors. ![]()
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