A New Platform

It's always exciting learning about a new platform. Especially when it's something that Proton recommends. I remember first looking around for a non-Google email and researching Proton. That was back when it was just an Email and VPN company. Oh how far they've come. The concept of private emails, on a much more useful interface to me that doesn't keep getting updated with features quickly caught my attention. And their expansion since has been impressive. It's always a great day when I get to share with others what Proton is and why it's better than FreEmail. Then being able to share all the other features they get with the platform. VPN, Cloud drive (with photo backups), Password Manager (With email aliasing, that's always a fun one to explain), and now a note taking app.

What's so Special About a Note Taking App?

Yeah that's what I was asking too. It was always a nice idea but I couldn't find one that worked and I liked reliably. In their times I had tried Evernote and Keep, but privacy moved me off of those. Self hosted features worked, but I never explored them enough to use them fully and with life didn't know when I could. I eventually just went back to pen & paper, occasionally sending myself messages or using group chats. Not my favorite ideas. But they got me by.

The day Proton announced their partnership (acquisition, but seeing how the Simple Login acquisition went, I think partnership is a better term) with Standard Notes I started reading up on it. That's when I realized I had been missing out, and not just on Standard Notes, but others too (that's a write up for another time though, look for a post about Obsidian at a later date.) Note taking systems that were privacy focused, feature lean but rich, and met ideas and thoughts I'd had for years but never found. The icing on the cake? Spreadsheets

Not just any spreadsheets mind you, spreadsheets that can be edited on a mobile device and computers. Something I didn't think anyone but Google had figured out from my research. At least not without some finicky sync tool setup or some other niche piece of software. While I enjoy those projects. They're not realistic for me on the regular.

Test Drive

With the features of Standard Notes, and the news that Proton would be integrating it for their subscribers later on I wanted to take it for a spin. Not unlike Simple Login when I found out about it. First, how's the app interface and syncing on the free plan?

• Clean interface.
• Dark Mode!
• Fast syncing.
• Straightforward tagging and reference system.

While testing the app out initially, and realizing how small and customized the project is I have to compliment the developer(s) for all of the features and the interface. I wanted to try out the paid features, and I wanted to support the developers beyond the acquisition. Finding the professional plan that I could share the subscription with other users I was sold. After taking time to confirm the finances of the professional plan I upgraded the account.

• Spreadsheets.
• Super (Markdown-ish) Notes.
• Sub-tagging.
• Daily notebooks (this is a fascinating and flexible feature, especially when a top level tag is the daily notebook and sub-tags aren't.)
• More themes.

Yeah the upgrade was worth it and I'm able to share it. I wish I would have heard about Standard Notes closer to launch. Thanks to Proton for introducing me to it even before it's part of their ecosystem.

What's next?

That's a question I'm excited to see the answer to. For now I'm excited to use Standard Notes day to day and start posting about ideas and tech projects I'm working on through Listed. What I'm really curious to see is where Proton can take the project. Only time will tell.

This has been a fun first start. I don't normally like to write but I think my mind is changing on that. Let's see what's next...