net.daringfireball.markdown, conforming to public.utf8-plain-text.
(It's @gruber's own UTI, now official.)
That's the whole premise of SteelNote: your notes are real Markdown files you own, not rows in a database. Nice to see the platform make it official.
SteelNote, a notes app that feels like Apple Notes, but every note is a plain Markdown file is available for iOS, iPad, and macOS
with Fix :
Folders and tags in the sidebar now open their notes, previously clicking them did nothing and showed "Select a Folder".
Please test opening several folders and tags.
I am working on the translations for SteelNote: EN, FR, ES, IT, PT.
I am working on the translations for SteelNote: EN, FR, ES, IT, PT.
What to Test — SteelNote 0.17.0
This build replaces 0.16.0 and brings the whole big update plus a fresh round of polish. If you tried an earlier build, start with what's NEW; otherwise test it all.
NEW IN 0.17.0
• Daily notes a "Daily Note" button in the sidebar always opens today's dated journal entry (one file per day). The new "Journal" view lists every day for later triage: swipe / long-press to Move a day into a folder, Delete it, or leave it. Daily notes stay out of "All Notes", Rediscover and the widgets (no clutter). Via Siri / Shortcuts, "Add to Today" appends a quick line to today's note, and you can open today by voice.
• Appearance (iPhone/iPad) Settings ▸ Appearance: System / Light / Dark, plus a new "SteelNote" steel theme. Switch it live and check the list, sidebar, editor and search bar.
• Big libraries feel smoother open and scroll a folder with thousands of notes; sidebar, counts and opening a note should stay fluid. ← please test if you have a large library.
• Honest search a search with no match now shows a clean "No Results" (no more brief "Syncing…" flash), and each result shows its folder when it lives outside the folder you're in.
• Hex codes aren't tags anymore a color like #4682B4 is no longer turned into a tag. A setting lets you switch that back if you actually want hex tags.
• Bear backup drop a Bear ".bear2bk" file straight in (no renaming to .zip). Optional "folders from tags" rebuilds a folder tree from your Bear tags.
• Editor opening a web-clipped note no longer flashes white before the text.
IMPORT FROM OTHER APPS
Settings ▸ Import (file / folder / .zip), or "Open With → SteelNote". Everything lands in an "Imports/…" folder.
• Evernote (.enex), Notion (.zip "Markdown & CSV"), Obsidian (a vault/folder of .md), RTF / RTFD, DOCX, Bear, plain Markdown.
• PDF → imported as an attachment (thumbnail + tap to preview), NOT text.
• Notion: page-id clutter stripped, internal links → [[wikilinks]], databases → tables. Obsidian: sub-folders, [[wikilinks]], ![[image]] embeds, frontmatter tags. → Please try a REAL export of your own (Notion + Obsidian especially) and check links, images, folder structure and titles. → Re-import is safe: the same article twice now SKIPS the duplicate.
SAVE FROM ANYWHERE (Share sheet)
• Share a web page / text / image from any app → SteelNote → becomes a note (source URL kept). Sharing the same page twice is de-duplicated.
WIDGETS (iPhone / iPad)
• "Folder Notes" add it, long-press → Edit Widget → pick a folder; tap a note to open. "Rediscover" resurfaces notes you haven't opened in a while.
SEARCH & KNOWLEDGE
• Full-text search (searches inside note bodies). Backlinks, "Mentions" and "Related notes" when a note is open.
SIRI / SPOTLIGHT / SHORTCUTS
• "Create a note in SteelNote", search/open by voice; SteelNote actions in the Shortcuts app; notes appear in Spotlight.
A French Apple account posted something that stuck with me: since getting the new Siri, they’ve stopped filing documents and just ask Siri to find them. Faster than digging through folders.
They called it the start of a new way to organize personal data. I think they’re right and it has a consequence most note apps aren’t ready for.
Once retrieval replaces filing, the question stops being “how do I organize?” and becomes “who can reach my data, and for how long?” That’s where storage architecture quietly decides everything.
Two honest models. Database apps (notes in the app’s own store) great sync, collaboration, no file-conflict headaches; genuinely liberating cross-device.
Open-file apps (plain .md in a folder) your notes sit on disk as readable text. Both are fine day to day.
The split shows up at retrieval. A database app can expose content to Siri/Spotlight if the vendor builds and maintains that bridge. An open folder is natively readable by Spotlight, Siri, Claude, ripgrep, git, and whatever comes next no bridge, no permission, no dependency on the app still existing.
Which is why “you can export to Markdown” isn’t the same as portability. Export is a frozen copy at a moment in time, often lossy. Open files are the live thing, continuously, in every tool at once. In the agent era especially: an agent reads a .md folder natively; a database has to be exported first a dead snapshot, not a living context.
Neither model is “right.” If you want magical sync and collaboration, the database bet buys you that, at the cost of depending on a vendor. If you want your data reachable by everything, forever, open files buy you that, at the cost of solving sync yourself. Pick your trade-off knowingly.
(Disclosure: I build an open-file notes app, so I’ve clearly picked a side but this distinction holds regardless of my app, and I’d say the same to someone happy in a database tool.)
Everyone’s talking about “second brains,” PKM, the next app that’ll finally fix everything.
But I realized I’d been asking the wrong question the whole time. The problem was never the app it was the proprietary format locking me in every single time.
So I built everything around one simple idea: plain Markdown files, on my own device. The app is just one door among many. If it disappears, my notes stay readable in Obsidian, the Finder, any editor.
Here’s how I think about it: (picture)
(Full disclosure: I’m the dev the app’s called SteelNote, currently in TestFlight ahead of launch. But the diagram holds regardless of my app. It’s just how I think notes should work.)
Indie dev here. My tasks lived in one app and my events in another, and I was constantly switching to figure out what my day actually looked like.
So Soothy puts both in a single view your tasks and your calendar events, side by side. You can read and create events right from the app.
A couple more things: you type tasks in plain language ("Dentist tomorrow 3pm",
in 6 languages), there's no account or tracking (everything stays in your
private iCloud).
Would love your honest feedback especially on whether the tasks+calendar mix actually works for how you plan your day.
App Store Link :
SteelNote, a notes app that feels like Apple Notes, but every note is a plain Markdown file is available for iOS, iPad, and macOS (TestFlight beta)
I'm a solo developer, and I just brought Soothy to all three of my devices t's now native on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Soothy started from a simple frustration: most planners are built for power users, and the people around me who aren't "app people" found them exhausting. So I built the opposite a planner you open and immediately see what matters today, with nothing to set up and no method to learn.
What it does:
Your tasks and your calendar in one calm view events and to-dos together, or filtered apart when you want to focus. Tasks sort themselves (overdue / today / upcoming).
Two-way calendar sync it reads and writes your real calendars.
Natural-language entry: type "dentist tomorrow 9am" and it becomes a dated task. As of this week, it works in 6 languages.
No account, no tracking, no analytics, your data lives in your own iCloud.
One-time purchase. No subscription, ever.
Built with accessibility in mind (VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, Reduce Motion).
It's native on each platform the Mac version adds a menu-bar quick-capture and keyboard shortcuts; iPad gets a split layout for the bigger screen.
(Honest note: the iPhone/iPad app is one purchase; the Mac app is a separate one, both one-time, no subscription.)
IPhone / iPad 5.99$
Mac 9.99$
iOS App Store : https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/soothy/id6760940274
Mac App Store : https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/soothy-t%C3%A2ches-agenda/id6760940643?mt=12
I'd genuinely love feedback, what works, what's missing, what you'd want from a calm planner. Happy to answer anything.
I’m opening an early TestFlight for SteelNote.
The idea is simple:
Apple Notes-like interface.
Real Markdown files.
Inline images.
Local folders.
No proprietary notes database.
Early onboarding + TestFlight:
[TestFlight Beta]
I built SteelNote because I wanted the speed of Apple Notes without the lock-in.
Every note is a real .md file stored on your device, readable outside the app, forever.
• No database, no proprietary format
• No subscription, one-time purchase
• Folders, fast capture, Markdown editor
• Tables, code blocks, highlights all in 0.11.0
If you've ever been frustrated by Apple Notes lock-in or found Obsidian too complex for quick capture, this might be for you.
🔗 Beta access: https://steelnoteapp.com
Happy to answer any questions!
Early TestFlight: SteelNote. Apple Notes-like, but with real Markdown files
Hi everyone,
I’m opening an early TestFlight for SteelNote, a notes app built around a very simple idea:
Apple Notes-like. Markdown files. Nothing else.
The goal is not to create another Obsidian/Notion/PKM system. SteelNote is intentionally narrower: a calm, native-feeling notes app where your content is stored as real .md files, with folders and local image assets that remain accessible outside the app.
Current early build:
- Real Markdown files
- Real folders
- Inline images
- Checklists
- Basic Markdown styling
- Clean previews
- Local-first storage through the Files app
Still missing / early:
- No iCloud sync yet
- No external folder picker yet
- Limited Markdown support
- No backlinks, graph, plugins, canvas, or advanced PKM features
- UI polish still in progress
I’m mainly looking for feedback on the core direction:
Does this approach make sense — a simple Apple Notes-like interface, but backed by open Markdown files?
I’ll include the onboarding link and screenshots.
Hi! I’m an indie developer and Catchyt, my minimalist daily journal app, just hit #1 Paid Productivity on the Czech App Store.
I had no idea Czech users would pick it up so fast, genuinely surprised and grateful 🇨🇿
Thinking about adding a Czech localization. Would that matter to you?
• Batch processing up to 3× faster — photos are now compressed in parallel
• Optimised memory usage: files are no longer all held in memory at once
• Stability fixes and internal cleanup
Soothy your minimal daily planner designed for people who want to focus on doing, not managing.
Gets a fresh look!
• New header card with a time-based greeting
• Color-coded sections for an instant visual overview — Today, Upcoming, Overdue
• Improved contrast for a more comfortable reading experience
• Smoother drag & drop with better haptic feedback
• Display fixes in light mode
Catchit just hit #1 Productivity on the Czech App Store 🇨🇿, and recently #5 Productivity in Greece 🇬🇷
More countries soon.
Mac version incoming.
Most task apps became too complex for me, so I built a simpler one: Scopit.
Scopit is built around time instead of endless organization systems.
The app focuses on 3 main views:
– Inbox → capture quickly
– Today → focus on what matters now
– Upcoming → see what’s next clearly
One thing I wanted to improve compared to traditional task apps is the bridge between events and notes.
Notes are not isolated documents.
They can stay connected to planning and daily actions instead of living in a separate app or folder.
I also recently simplified the interface a lot:
– removed unnecessary clutter
– faster navigation
– calmer UI
– iCloud sync included
No subscription, no in-app paywall, no locked features.
Just a complete app with a one-time purchase.
If you like minimal productivity apps or feel overwhelmed by complex systems, I’d genuinely love feedback.
5.99$ one Time purchase