Originally published at: https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-notes-brought-to-you-for-your-nextcloud-server-android-and-ios-devices-by-the-heroes-of-our-community/
Are you looking for an open-source, self-hosted note-keeping app? Or a dedicated space in your cloud to manage your notes? Nextcloud Hub is a safe home for all your data, hence, perfect for your notes too!
Note that if you are a Google Keep fan, now that Google announced to end support for the Google Keep Chrome app in February 2021, you probably need a more reliable and privacy-wise tool!
In which devices can I use Nextcloud Notes?
Nextcloud Notes is an app you can enable on your Nextcloud server to store and manage your notes. And since keeping random notes is more like a spontaneous thing, there are mobile clients available for Android and iOS that come handy to help you sync your notes and get you covered anywhere, anytime, any device!
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The Notes app is a distraction-free note-taking app for Nextcloud. It provides categories for better organization and supports formatting using Markdown syntax. Notes are saved as files in your Nextcloud, so you can view and edit them with every Nextcloud client, even if you don’t have the Notes client installed. Further features include marking notes as favourites.
👷 Developed by Kristof Hamann
My main motivation for working on the Notes app is that I’m using it intensively for myself and there is always room for improvement. Besides that, I like to give something back to the open-source community, since I’m using much open-source software. From time to time, I contribute to other open-source projects, too. – Kristof
🚀 Features:
📝 Create, edit, share, search and delete notes
⭐ Mark notes as favourite
🏷️ Group in categories
✨ Markdown formatting
📁 Choose a folder to store your notes on your Nextcloud
🧮 Word count
“Deciding what features to develop for the next release is driven by several technical demands, personal priorities and the community’s most-wanted features. Everybody who contributes by fixing issues or implementing new features is very welcome! Important goals for the Notes app are switching to the Nextcloud Text editor in order to allow collaborative writing, UX redesign for category handling and an improved search.” -Kristof
Nextcloud Notes for Android device
Nextcloud Notes for Android devices is an app that provides you with the needed features to access, sync and manage your Nextcloud notes on Android devices too!
👷 Developed by Stefan Niedermann
🚀 Features:
👥 Multiple accounts
🔌 Works offline
📝 Create, edit, share, search and delete notes
📩 Share text and links as a new note into the app
✅ Toggling checkboxes in view mode
⭐ Mark notes as favourite
🔀 Bulk moving between accounts
🗑️ Bulk delete
🔍 In-note search
✨ Render MarkDown (no tables and images yet)
🧰 Context-based formatting
🌙 Dark mode
📊 Single note widget and note list widget
🌎 Translated in many languages
Check it out!
“The feedback I get can be negative from time to time, like getting a 1-star rating from users with an edge case server setup with “Doesn’t work.” without the possibility to help them, because no one ever responds to a help offer.
Though I love Play Store reviews like “I use the F-Droid flavour but I think you deserved to earn some money, therefore I bought it here”. They prove, that the often so-called “free culture” is a lie. People honour free software.” – Stefan
“Many thousands of users are my main motivation for developing this app further! Knowing that my work is useful to people, maybe even an integral part of their self-organization is the highest praise a developer can earn I think. Also, returning something to the community I have taken so much from. One can learn much from those interactions with different people spread around this world.” -Stefan
I plan to support the new server API version 1.0 in the near future. In the long term, I would like to get a new Markdown editor in, modernize the legacy codebase and add the possibility to use the app without a Nextcloud account. – Stefan
iOS Device
Nextcloud Notes for Android devices is an app that provides you with the needed features to access, sync and manage your Nextcloud notes on your iOS devices too!
👷 Developed by Peter Hedlund
Features:
📝 Create, edit, share, search and delete notes
🏷️ Group notes in categories
✨ Markdown formatting
📤 Copy and share notes with other apps in other formats
How to install Nextcloud Notes?
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If you have a Nextcloud instance set up, all good! If you are new to Nextcloud, read here all you need to know and specifically, the paragraph “ways to set up your Nextcloud”.
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Enable the Notes app on your Nextcloud instance, in one click! Use the app as you wish ☺️
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Download the mobile client (Android or iOS; find the links in the sections above) and connect the app to your Nextcloud server. That was it, your notes will be synced. Enjoy!
Contribute 🙏
Help the developers make the apps even more awesome by translating, reporting issues or solving these issues if you have the technical knowledge!
Feedback is mostly error focused, since the main platform for interaction is GitHub, to report issues. Therefore, positive feedback is very welcome as well, as every kind of contribution to the Notes app.
Its focus on the community is the thing I love the most about Nextcloud! – Stefan
Stefan is also the developer of Nextcloud Deck for Android and needs your feedback!
Deck is a kanban style organization tool aimed at personal planning and project organization for teams, integrated with Nextcloud.
If you are already using it, help us prioritize time to fix the issues you care most about by taking this survey!
🐞For bug reports and feature requests create issues with a filled out template on GitHub
How to contribute?
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For the server app, you can report issues and/or fix them, request features and/or develop them here.
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For the Android app, all you need to know on how to join the team is here.
- For the iOS app, here’s where you should head to.
If you would like to develop your Nextcloud app and looking for a way to get started, here’s how to get involved. And feel free to ask Nextcloud or other community members for help.
An interesting, short interview with Kristoff and Stefan
- How did you find out about Nextcloud and how did you come up with the idea of your app?
Kristof: “In the beginnings of using a smartphone, I was searching for a backup solution for contacts and calendars. I decided to use ownCloud and discovered the notes app. In the beginning, there were small things I liked to see improved, so I started to contribute to the Android Notes app as well as to the web app. At this time, Nextcloud was founded so I switched to Nextcloud since there was more activity in the app ecosystem and a nice community spirit!
My contributions increased over time while the maintainer of the Notes web app was low in time. Therefore, I became the maintainer of the Notes (web) app.”
Stefan: “It all started when I needed a simple solution to synchronize my contacts and calendar entries.
The Nextcloud ecosystem provided all of that under one hood with an open-source solution and so I decided to start using it.
When time passed, I learned more and more about the huge ecosystem and found more third-party-apps (as well as core features) that are useful for me.
I started developing my app for learning purposes. I am mainly a web developer and was interested in expanding my knowledge. That’s why I started with the most simple Android app one could imagine – a notes app. Soon after developing it, I found out that it was quite useful for myself and I started using it on a regular base – it soon became one of the most important apps on my device.”
- Do you have any hobbies besides programming or does it take most of
your time?
Kristof: “Programming is my hobby now. It used to be my profession, but now it is what I like to do in my free time.”
Stefan: “Yep, I am a firefighter and teach young people.”
- Add anything you would like to ☺️
Stefan: “Thanks to every contributor that over time helps with making the app better. Also greetings to all people and Nextcloud team members who supported me whenever I needed help :)”
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