I think a note app should be designed around the idea that the first action you take by default is always taking a note, and that actions should be made available where appropriate as a reaction. Shockingly, not many apps do this that I am aware of. Taking notes in an expeditious manner isn't always a design priority, and I don't think that's a needed sacrifice to make in a note taking app. That's why I never used evernote, anyways.

I find myself using the plain old "Notes" on Mac for nearly all of my note taking. It's just so much simpler than dealing with sections and pages and organization.

Most of my notes are relatively ephemeral, perhaps lasting for a task or project. Rarely to I need to reference things that aren't in relatively recent history. When I do, I'll just scroll back or do a universal search.

I feel like Bear[0] comes pretty close. I’ve been using it for the last few months and it’s one of the few apps I’ve found that actually allows me to just go in and take a note/jot down a quick blurb as needed.

I tried to use Evernote and it just never stuck with me. It felt like it was too much overhead just for capturing quick ideas.

[0]https://bear.app/

+1 for Bear. I used Evernote for years but it finally became too slow and bloated with several thousand notes and tons of features I never use. I need a lightweight note app, if it takes more than a second or two to fire up the app and jot down a note then that’s a fail.

Bear is working well for me. The only thing I don’t like is no audio notes and weird formatting which makes copy pasting bulleted notes into other editors somewhat painful. Still my default note app and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future (or until I have thousands of notes again causing performance to degrade...)

I liked and used bear when it just came out, but it is moving at a glacial pace when it comes to adding certain important features, such as adding support for tables and equations.

Bear has a very good story when it comes to sync with the iPhone. But if you need cross-platform support, tables, equations, and such features org-mode, Typora, etc. are much better options.

>such as adding support for tables and equations.

If tables and equations are "crucial" it's not just about a notes app anymore...

why can't a note have tables and equations? Both seem quite useful (equations especially as that's just a compressed sentence in a way)

We can, but they introduce tons of challenges in rendering and display, change the serialization format (whereas basic stuff can just be edited and viewed as plain text) etc.

Besides where does one stop in a note taking app? One could also ask for footnotes, bibliography management, graphs and plots, handwriting recognition, PDF management, and so on...

Bear supports Latex. You can try writing your equations and tables in a Latex code block.

I like bear, it’s my current note app besides .git. I wish they’d improve their code formatting.

This is why I switched to keep.

Not a fan of its looks but the functionality is just the right mix of usefulness and function over form.

Notational Velocity (and clones) always seemed to do well with that. Very light, very plaintext, but great as a sort of reactionary "Open and start typing and ask questions later" platform.

Drafts[1] for iOS is the note app of your dreams.

It does exactly what you mention.

It is expected that it will be released in Beta for macOS in the next few months.

[1] - https://getdrafts.com/

You have to pay a subscription for dark mode (“don’t hurt my eyes” mode)? No thank you

You should really choose a license for the source code. You get bonus points if it is copyleft.

License content needs to be included - a "this is GPL licensed" in the README probably won't cut it.

Ah, I was looking in the actual source code (e.g. for a 'license' file)

Which GPL license?

I might pick a more liberal license in the future but for now we're not a library and I think GPL is good. I'm actually more concerned about app bundlers stealing it and putting it on the App store or something and not contributing any changes back.

The GPL doesn’t really stop bundlers from stealing it. It just requires them to provide the (potentially modified) source code to their customers upon request.

Yeah, it's also really important to understand that they only have to give source code to their customers. They don't have to provide source code upstream. So it's completely legitimate to take a GPL piece of software, make modifications, sell it anywhere you want, put a conspicuous note that you will supply source code on demand to your customers, and then never, ever supply source code because none of the users are technical enough to want the source code.

This is part of software freedom. Your end users do not have to distribute binaries or code to anyone that they don't want to. It's just that if they distribute a binary or code to someone, they have to grant the same freedoms they received.

Sometimes it's a bit hard to grasp these nuances (especially the, "Hey they can sell my software" bit). It's important to understand that before you choose a license.

You can still buy the software, request the source and upstream it yourself though, no?

You can, but they don't have to sell it to you. It would be a weird situation, though.

Code isn't protected from becoming proprietary SaaS with the GPL though, AGPLv3 is the only way to ensure those that take your code, modify it and offer it as SaaS publish the altered code.

Yes, and that's also an increasingly important point, given e.g. AWS's use of Redis.

A door lock doesn't actually stop a determined burglar either, but you'd still be a fool not to install a lock in your front door.

Is it GPL v2 or v3?

Looks awesome! I rarely use PDFs and even more rarely create or edit them, but I hope you do well.

I’ve long thought that dealing effectively with PDF or other complex, crufty formats is a good candidate for a “shlep blindness”[1] style startup, and I hope it works out for you.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

It supports web content too.. you can capture web documents and the viewer works with them just like books.

I need to update the screenshots though. One day at a time.

The most important feature of Evernote for me by far is OCR which I did not see listed at Polarized. Is it there or planned?

I've fought with/used a whole shitton of note tools, including Evernote and OneNote, and what I've finally settled back on is plaintext synced via Dropbox.

I don't even use Notational Velo anymore, since OrgMode converted me to an emacs zealot. Turns out, there's a workalike mode called deft that gets me all the same awesome search behavior.

On iOS, I use a mix of Drafts and Editorial (well, and BeOrg, for the orgmode files).

By going this way, I'm no longer dependent on someone else's product map for my notes. Sure, I guess Dropbox could become problematic or something, but there are other options there -- in this context, it's just plumbing.

Looks interesting! My use case revolves a lot around PDF and trying to remember the best bits, I'll be trying this out.

For the general public to catch on to whatever the next Evernote is, I think it will have to have; inviting visual elements like Notion, collapsible text like workflowy, better reminder/project management. So many of the top feature requests of Evernote that have been neglected, some since nearly the beginning.

Oh.. also, give us some more github stars so other people find us :)

https://github.com/burtonator/polar-bookshelf

and if you have a blog or a twitter account please give us a shout out. Polar is a brand new baby , only 60 days old, so not many people know about it yet.

The quicker we grow the more contributors we get which means the quicker we grow :)

Why do you want to grow?

Reasons I can think of:

- More contributors.

- Help more people.

To get more contributors

This looks great! Is it possible to integrate with hypothes.is (e.g. import all hypothes.is annotations)?

I have been looking for something exactly like this. I've tried some other apps as a place to collate and organize PDFs but haven't found anything. This looks really promising.

Thanks.. please jump on the Discord or join the reddit group. We're making FAST progress so if it's not 100% there yet just give us a few more weeks. Or even better send a PR or submit a feature request.

The guys on the Discord list were really really wanting tags in the repo view so I just banged them out on Monday.

Does it support writing notes in markdown with live preview?

Is there a web endpoint?

I’m looking for something exactly like polar. IPad support is a must for me though. Browser based access could work. Meanwhile stuck with mendeley...

It's a good alternative to Mendeley I think. No iPad support but maybe in the future when we get a web version working.

No Electron on iPad... :-/

Hey, you are missing an title for your website.

it looks really promising to me, specially when all of the other knowledge maps are going for the SaaS model.

There might be some SaaSy model here but I also want to keep the local model too and also possibly support IPFS and other systems.

Living in PDFs? You just described my life. Also have been looking for Evernote replacement for years.

I will actively keep an eye on this. Thank you

That looks fantastic for my needs. Really. If it does what I hope, I look forward to donating towards future development.

This looks like an ideal product. I was asking the other day “why can’t we write in the margins of PDF’s we read?” Cool to see this pop up. Good luck!