Alternote the Note-taking App App Reviews

if only we could get it on ios.

I’ve been using Alternote since the beta and am very please with the development. The product is stable and it provides a great front end for Evernote. I use it to write my first drafts in and have written as much as 2,300 words in a document with no problems at all. I like the distraction free mode and the real time word count. I’d like to see it add writing session capabilities like the old WriteRoom did. Basically allow me to start and stop a session and tell me how many words and how much time I’ve spent in that session. Not a deal breaker but would be nice to have. Otherwise, the product is progressing well and it is what the evernote desktop Mac client should have been all along.

This app is nice, works well, stable and supports Markdown (which is why I purchased it in the first place.) However, after syncing for the first time I found out that none of the Evernote Business notebooks are synchronizing. This is a bummer because I wanted to use Alternote for my work notebooks, so I edit the notes in my personal notebooks and move them to the business ones through the regular app.

First — Alternote’s interface is just about 100% what Evernote’s should be, especially on Mac (and probably even with newer versions of Windows at this point). Its clean, and its generally nice to use. I can’t give props enough the the developer on this point and Im really looking forward to the future of this product. That said, here are some lists: Good: • Performance is good (when it’s not crashing), though I have a library thats less than 1000 notes and with a fair amount of images. • Alternote makes the interface a bit more like Notes.app for Mac but with added functionality, including more useful shortcuts than either Evernote or Notes. • Importantly, it omits or hides the many "features" Evernote has added to their desktop application over the years. • Particularly useful is Alternotes version of "Jump to…," where it matches for all types of data instead of just Notebooks (and does so quickly in my case). Not Good: • It crashes somewhat frequently. It hasn’t crashed for me in the middle of typing or modifying a note, but it’s still disconcerting. As a *guess,* I think it has to do with synchronization after inserting a series of images. Nit-Picks: • Images cant be pasted into Alternote from the clipboard, where they can in Evernote. • I cant seem to drag in more than one image at a time, where I could in Evernote. • Alternote doesnt fit previously imported images to window width without some finagling (e.g. place insertion point before image, press delete, then return — it snaps to fit window afte that). It does scale images that were imported using Alternote according to window size, so there’s that. • It doesnt have a standard help menu. As in, I cant use the help menu to search for menu items. I have a workaround using an Alfred Workflow, but using the help search as a sort of Spotlight for menu items is pretty much ingrained in me on Mac. • H1-3 sizes are too big, and (seemingly?) non-adjustable. • Unless I’m missing something, The number of default fonts is limited and there is no advanced setting for more options.

All good for the most part. Everything works fine and is a pleasure to use. Lack of Table support is a major flaw.

My biggest complaint with Evernote has always been the crappy viewing experience, which AlterNote fixes nicely. My only wish is that I could have shortcuts to notebooks. I am a student and want to have my current classes at the top somehow, and my fix currently is writing “_Engl 101” etc., which isn’t the end of the world, but it’s a bit inconvenient. Other than that though I like the app a lot! I’m looking forward to the iOS app!

Just what I needed as a front end to EverNote, save only that the app has no iPhone/iPad version. Much of the time…make that *most* of the time that I use EverNote I’m on my iOS devices. Yes, EV has interfaces for those platforms, but none so easy and quick to use as AlterNote. I’d gladly pay for Alternote for iOS.

…it’s missing the ability to have offline notebooks and this is a dealbreaker for me. I don’t want EVERYTHING in the cloud. Some things are too personal or important to have floating around on the internet. Evernote has this ability but the interface is terrible, this program has a nice interface but lacks offline notebooks. A classic trade-off which keeps me using the program Outline instead. BTW, OneNote, nice as it is also doesn’t have offline notebooks. ;-(

Between a slew of bugs and the fact that I just lost half a days work (of incredibly important writing), I cannot recommend this app. The idea is so good - Evernote could really use a better UI, but the fact is that either this product isn’t fully baked, or Evernote’s API is too limiting - but too many things break. I’m absolutely heart-broken at the amount of work I just lost, which just shouldn’t happen in 2015. Avoid this for now.

I really wanted to love this app. I’m a huge fan of minimalist apps, and I’ve grown tired of Evernote’s native clutter. At first, everything looked great. But after some use, I found this app to be nothing but problems. Sync was repeatedly a problem… I found myself with tons of duplicate notes. New notes wouldn’t appear here. I couldn’t manage tags or notebooks here. In short, I really couldn’t do anything but - occassionally - view notes without a cluttered UI. I still love the UI of Alternote, and if the problem with sync and missing features can be addressed, I’d love to give it another shot. For now, at least, I’ve deleted it, and reverted to the Evernote web app (which is at least considerably cleaner than their native OSX app).

I was really happy to see an alternative, clean UI to the clunky bohemoth that is Evernote. Very happy with the interface. I didnt really miss some of the more advanced syncing features since I use Evernote pretty simply. I had to stop using this though, because I found that Alternote would sometimes lose my notes. For whatever reason, new notes or changes sometimes wouldnt sync to Evernote. Considering this is an Evernote client, this was a dealbreaker for me. Ill circle back around when they roll out fully baked Markdown support, but for now, the data integrity issues leave me with low confidence in being able to use this daily.

Last update said this is coming in June, now it says October, but it is almost November and still not ready.

I very much like the idea of Evernote, but Evernote’s interface is way to crufty and difficult to use. Alternote makes Evernote work in the sensible way you’d expect: notebooks on the left, the notebook’s contents in the middle, and the note itself on the right. It’s easy to navigate and understand. I haven’t had any issues with notes failing to sync, but I’m not a heavy user and I only use Alternote to access Evernote.

I’ve used Alternote since beta. Since then, I’ve seen massive improvements not only to UI but also performance as well. The ability to sync across all computers by using Evernote as a point of access is great! Now if they implemented Workflowy’s tree structure….that would be really awesome.

It’s unbelievable that a group of outsiders could make an Evernote app that is so much better than the Evernote app. Alternote makes sense. It’s a beautiful, stable app that hasn’t let me down. I wouldn’t change a thing.

I love this as an alternative to the native Evernote application. It is far more “El Capitan” and Apple design-esque overall. Great UI, however, there still seems to be many bugs that need worked out before I can transition 100% to it. After a given amount of time being open, the app simply freezes up and is not usable until quit and opened again. This is a tedious thing to have to deal with, and I have to defer use of the app until it can be reliable. Evernote is my primary project management process, and cannot be delayed.

Resolved my problems with downloading this from App Store by totally uninstalling my trial copy of Alternote and then using App Store to re-install. Once I got that working, I was in note-taking heavin. Five features of Alternote that blow my mind, as someone who takes a lot of notes in Evernote: 1. Can choose to sync all of your Evernote notebooks or only some. I’ve been waiting yeaaaaaars for the Evernote desktop app to get that feature. It still doesn’t have it, as far as I know. 2. Change the view size for fonts without changing the actual size of the fonts. In other words, if you print the note or go view it in the Evernote app, the actual font size has remained the same, even though you’re viewing it at a larger size. AMAZING for those of us who are nearsighted or use small screens. 3. Dark Mode toggles the app’s colors to a dark grey background and white font. Hallelujah, no more eyestrain from taking notes on Evernote’s stark white background. 4. Icon to show/hide the “All Notes” interface. If you’ve taken notes in the Evernote desktop app, you know why this is a game changer: you don’t have to choose between double-clicking your note to edit in a separate window or being distracted by the Evernote sidebar all the time. 5. Running word count for your note in the bottom right-hand corner. 6. “Click to add tags” is at the bottom of the note window, where it’s available but unobtrusive.

Alternate is a simple interface for Evernote that looks classy and is great to use. I almost never need to open Evernote now, but I still have access to all my Evernote stuff. Has subtle animation that makes it kinda fun to use. It did freeze on me once and I had to restart the app, but it’s generally very stable.

I can’t click into any notes and type anything. If I click on a checkbox nothing happens, but if I go to another note and come back, the checkbox is checked. Please fix this.

Please fix the bold function. I use command+b to quickly bold and unbold the text. It works for boldening the text, but will not un-bolden it for some reason. I keep getting the apple error ding when I try. If you could fix that I would be grateful. Thank you for the beautiful app.