Standard Notes, a minimalist, cross-platform and open source notes app focused on privacy

Applications to take and manage notes is not something that is currently lacking. In fact, there are so many that the hard part is choosing one and staying with it. Depending on the type of user you are and what you are looking for in this type of apps, it is likely that you have tried a lot and still are not entirely pleased.

As it never hurts to mention a new alternative, perhaps Standard Notes managed to draw your attention with its focus on privacy, simplicity and longevity. In an open project and in this way they want to guarantee that it does not depend only on its creators but that it can exist indefinitely.

Standard Notes is compatible with Wnidows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android and the web. That’s why we started well, not depending on or being limited to a single platform is one of the main barriers that usually make us discard an app, especially if we are users of various types of devices and systems.

By taking privacy quite seriously, they offer end-to-end encryption in your notes. By default you own all your data and these are stored through Standard File, either using a free hosting or those responsible for the application, through a community server, or using your own private server. Standard Notes offers encrypted hosting that will be free forever when you register with them.

The program itself is quite simple, but it has enough functions to take and manage your notes quickly and easily. You can add labels without limits to organize the notes, and also have a built-in search engine.

By default the editor works only with plain text, but you can install several types of plugins to use rich text or MarkDown, for example. You could easily use this notes app as your preferred text editor.

You can also change the appearance theme by downloading CSS files from the extensions page or creating them yourself. Accounts with simple and more advanced extensions, including a code editor or synchronization with Dropbox.

If you are an Evernote user, you have a tool to import your notes from that service. Although there is also another one to convert plain text or MarkDown files into Standard Notes notes. If you want to try the application without having to install it, you can access the demo of the web app and take a look.