Quite an interesting update to a steadily evolving app that's turned into a very good one: multi-platform UpNote (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android). Thomas has added "collapsible sections", which is a rather neat concept taken from such perennial (but now, alas, more or less moribund) classics as Quiver.

The collapsible section essentially consists of a header plus a body text section that can be folded into the header. It doesn't look like you can turn an existing paragraph into a collapsible section, and the folding is only single-level (i.e. below a specified header; you can't have multiple layers). But it's a very useful enhancement if you're writing long notes or texts. I think it's a great addition.

Thomas is always very responsive to requests, in any case, so those wanting even more support for single-pane outlining are welcome to hassle him ;-)

Cheers!
Bill

Oops, sorry, I lied: actually, you can turn any paragraph into a collapsible section, or transform it back into a "normal" text section. All text formatting continues to work in collapsible sections. You can also use different sizes of header in collapsible sections. But you can't embed a collapsible section in another one – any attempt to do so simply toggles the existing section on or off.

Impressive!

It's worth noting that a collapsible section can contain any/all kinds of object that you can already embed in a note (links, images, tables, dividing lines, etc.). They're extremely flexible. They also show up as normal in the sidebar "Table of contents", duly hierarchised by header type.

I haven't had the opportunity to test collapsible sections yet but I am finding a lot of nice, useful features in the app. I *really* find useful the built-in right-click options Copy As Markdown and Paste From Markdown, as well as Insert Date (with Time) -- features I've otherwise had to implement myself with 3rd party Popclip extensions.

If UpNote would ever make a real macOS menubar note feature which let you add and save notes without the app being open, I'd seriously consider it over my current daily drivers.

Upnote blog post on its continued updates, including changing background color on collapsible sections, and auto attachment-sync

https://medium.com/upnote/latest-in-upnote-attachment-sync-enhancements-to-collapsible-sections-and-search-in-title-f818dff82c6d

I'm not sure how I missed this app in previous discussions. It is VERY attractive. And it has a lifetime price of $24.99! I like the to do lists, the built in word counts, collapsible sections, and a little more security than Simplenote.

It's my birthday, so I shall buy it!

Thank you for the update!

Have a wonderful birthday, and many happy returns of the day!

jaslar wrote:

I'm not sure how I missed this app in previous discussions. It is VERY
attractive. And it has a lifetime price of $24.99! I like the to do
lists, the built in word counts, collapsible sections, and a little more
security than Simplenote.

It's my birthday, so I shall buy it!

Thank you for the update!

Indeed, many happy returns! ;-)

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Have a wonderful birthday, and many happy returns of the day!

jaslar wrote:
I'm not sure how I missed this app in previous discussions. It is VERY
>attractive. And it has a lifetime price of $24.99! I like the to do
>lists, the built in word counts, collapsible sections, and a little
more
>security than Simplenote.
>
>It's my birthday, so I shall buy it!
>
>Thank you for the update!

Thank you all. There's nothing like a couple hours CRIMPING to celebrate your birthday!

Incidentally, I exported all my Simplenotes to a JSON file, then imported that into UpNote. It took all of the Simplenote tags, and created Notebooks for each of them, but since the notes didn't display (maybe because I still had a search term showing, or I was waiting for UpNote to ingest the roughly 2,000 items), I wound up deleting them. Then I went back to the larger import file to separate them out somewhat differently. My impatience resulted in a lot of tedium and wasted effort.

I learned that my tags, generally, weren't all that useful. A good many of my notes weren't either. Obviously, this is not a problem with the software. It's a problem with me. UpNote's creation of tags was mostly useless, as I'd used a lot of Markdown for headers, so found tags like "#The" and "#A". Ultimately, I found myself wishing it was easier to do batch operations on notebooks and tags. Of course, that's only a problem if you're importing notes from elsewhere.

Nonetheless, UpNote is a good looking app, with a very clean UI. As is often the case when switching up tools, I got a new look at what I collect and why. I still had fun!

@jaslar, do also feel free to contact the developer, Thomas Dao – he's immensely responsive and will seriously consider incorporating new features if requested. I made a whole bunch of suggestions while UpNote was still a young app, and all of them are now in there. So if you needed some simple import filter, I'm sure he'd think seriously about it. SimpleNote might be a very useful one for other users, too.

Cheers!
Bill

For example, the development of the collapsible section to include Cut Copy Delete is a (very fast!) response to one of my requests, because I wanted to be able to move collapsible sections around more easily.

It's worth mentioning, peeps, that UpNote is available for ALL platforms – to quote from the Medium blog:

"UpNote is a feature-rich note-taking app which is beautiful and easy to use on all platforms. Install UpNote on Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows, Android and Linux."

While I was still experimenting with Android, UpNote became the obvious answer to the lack of Apple Notes.

I purchased the Premium unlock recently added a few ozen files to UpNote 15 months ago but never could convince myself to migrate my files to it. I recently copied a few dozen files I was working with to marinate in the app and see how I could work with it, but unfortunately it still seems a little clunky compared to my folders/notes in Apple Notes and Ulysses.

I don't like the last of shading difference between the notes list and notes themselves, the font choice is universal and not per-note, and the font options themselves are oddball. (Apple SD Gothic Neo?)

And perhaps most worrying, a jpeg attachment I'd added a year ago disappeared, with only a 'broken img' icon in its place.

I've only just started using UpNote, after buying a "lifetime" license. So far, I haven't lost anything, and my files sync as promised. It's still early days, but I enjoy using the software and can envision it replacing other apps in my workflow. Equally important, the developer (Thomas) is quick to reply to emails and seems like the type of guy who'll address issues promptly.

Of course there's always room for improvement. One example: I'd like more control over the export process, and I'd really like to see an export option for Word (currently, the options are PDF, HTML, Markdown, and text). I can (and have) exported to PDF and then converted to Word, but saving that additional step would be nice.

To be clear, I purchased the premium lifetime unlock last May, and the jpeg attachment was added at that time, and gave a text description for the img so that I'd be able to search for it, so I distinctly remember what was lost.

Thankfully it wasn't important enough for me to retain a copy in Apple Notes, but it does mean I'm not dismayed by the loss pe se, but it means I am not comfortable using the app with attachments now.

Yesterday I added a few more files that had attachments, and I made notes about their contents, and will check on them in the future.

Overall it seems like a nice alternative to Apple Notes with a few additional features, but it's also missing some features in comparison (document styling, working with hand-drawn notes in iOS), and it doesn't look as good. If my attachment loss was an outlier I could see it as being a good option for people outside the Apple ecosystem.

What UpNote does have, which I wish other apps also had, is an outstandingly well-designed right-hand sidebar, where you can see all key document information (including ToC, backlinks, wordcount/character count, references and so on). This makes full use of the sidebar in a way that other apps with similar features (e.g. Ulysses) still don't (having said that, I notice Ulysses does now have a kind of all-in-one sidebar which does more or less the same thing, albeit without backlinks etc.). I'd love to see Alfons introduced something like this in Notebooks.

satis wrote:

Overall it seems like a nice alternative to Apple Notes with a few
additional features, but it's also missing some features in comparison
(document styling, working with hand-drawn notes in iOS), and it doesn't
look as good. If my attachment loss was an outlier I could see it as
being a good option for people outside the Apple ecosystem.