Standard Notes - Encrypted, Cross-Platform Notes

Standard Notes is an end-to-end encrypted notes app that's cross-platform and open-source (AGPLv3). Join me for a demonstration of its simple and configurable UI, and a look at how it protects its users' privacy and freedom.
Get Standard Notes here: standardnotes.org
Find the source code here: github.com/standardnotes
If you're signing up for Extended, consider using my referral link (gives me a free month): standardnotes.nots.co
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[@SakosTechSpot]

36 minutes of talking about a notes app??? You got my sub guy.

[@christiantello7560]

Lmao I love it too 😂

[@Meow-ds7pr]

The app evolved sooooo much since this video! There's super tabs launched now you can do so much and still maintains its clean and simpleness

[@KieranColfer]

Standard Notes is fantastic. I've been using it for around a year now and pretty much use it daily. The team at Standard Notes are great too

[@TheClembo]

Just watched your video on Standard Notes. This is what |I've been looking for since I took up Linux and junked Windoz. I didn't know about it at all and I want to compliment your very ,very comprehensive and knowledgeable introduction to this software, thank you so much. Downloading NOW! The company could not do any better explaining their product than pointing to this video, very well done. Another subscriber too. ATB cheers.

[@djvelocity]

@NerdOnTheStreet - I just ran across your channel (and now website) for the first time and I wanted to tell you that it is a gem! You cover a ton of interesting content and I *really* love your style of teaching. We are very similar in our mindset and how we approach writing. I just thought you might want to know you have a new fan 😊🙌

[@rvnsglcr7861]

Been using it for years myself. Absolutely essential.

[@duneode]

Really nice, liked the concise walk through; feels like you got rid of all the filler information.

[@andrevanvlaanderen6666]

I love Joplin, but i put this one on my open source list to !! I love the browser integration of Joplin, and the textmode in a Linux terminal. I sync to my private WebDAV server. Thanks for the review.

[@thekingmen3]

This was very well presented, stayed interesting through the whole video. It must have taken a lot of effort to make a long presentation like this. Lots of information and your personal opinion on stuff was kind of similar to mine. You have a new subscriber Mr.Nerd.

[@ryanbrownx1]

My Evernote is up for renewal in October 2021. I'm seriously looking into Standard Notes. Thanks very much for the video.

[@WolvaiThreenaija]

Thank you. I am using Standard Notes because of your video. I am very grateful

[@franciscoantoniofernandesr3060]

Congratulations. You were rich in the details shared in your speech. Be sure, I am sharing your video with friends and students.

[@triingtimes5267]

Jacob, thank you for the review. I've been using Standard Notes for a few months and just wanted to see if there was anything I was missing. Great review.

[@Earthcrosser]

Oh wow! Why just now?!?! I've been looking for a cross-platform note-taking app that focuses on security and privacy and i found your video!! Thanks for your clear and detailed review. And i think I'm gonna get the 5-year plan. :-)

[@DoanHohmeyer]

You sold me! Great presentation.

[@spiderron1463]

All my scripts, code snippets, shopping lists, clip boards... Fantastic, essential and super secure. Thanks for this video. Long time user here.

[@dhruvg530]

Hey! When you get a back up on your cloud storage, do you get the attached files too along with the text notes?

[@ransacked]

Great work bro. Thanks for sharing this.

[@justthebeginning1448]

Excellent video, very comprehensive.✌🏽

[@ronnnnie]

thank you so much for this video. I've been looking for a secure note-taking app to replace Evernote which I've been using for almost 8 years and now it's failing me. all your info is very useful!!

[@vincentlaw1016]

Sweet. Been looking for an Evernote alternative ever since they screwed up their desktop client.

[@sirrobertdowneysenior8080]

Plz give a try to joplin

[@felixgvn]

Hey man thanks for this in depth review. Great work. Anyways is there a way to send emails to standard notes?

[@exceptionalnotary9529]

Jacob, does Standard Notes have an option to share your notes like Evernote does? I like the option to be able to post a URL of the notes that I want to share.

[@HitenderThejaswi]

Thank you for the lovely video and review. I needed a note taking app precisely for the reasons that you mentioned, Privacy, Sync between devices and loads immediately (light weight). The only problem I'm thinking with StandardNotes is that unrecoverable password :( I'm just really scared on building up my notes repository on StandardNotes and then forget my password one day and all my notes are gone. What are your thoughts about this ?

[@EqualToBen]

Bought a five year plan on the new years sale after using the web demo for 3 minutes. So cool I wanna make plugins for it, porting all my other notes here. Standard Notes 4 Lyfe

[@sonyaserrano5839]

Great review. Would this app also work with Obsidian?

[@dhruvg530]

Hello I am so close to buy the paid version. I have a few questions. Do the backup they send on our mail/cloud storage include the attached files or just the text?

[@oaeurio]

how do u get the mid pnite theme?

[@badkharma6255]

Does it have a web clipper browser extension like Evernote? ....Great reveiw.

[@badkharma6255]

....Also, can you email directly into Standard Notes like you can with Evernote? ....Thanks!

[@eclipsenow5431]

Onenote has Notebooks then Sections you can lock with individual passwords. I might share a Section password with one person, but want another Section to myself. Does Standard Notes have that? It just seems to have tags.

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

Not that I'm aware of. Standard Notes (at least the way I use it) is intended for single-person use, not collaboration. (They do have a newer feature for sharing/publishing individual notes that I do not use.) Obsidian or Joplin might be worth looking into if you're looking for something more like OneNote. WizNote looks like it has group sharing functionality, but its website isn't fully localized into English, so I'm not sure how difficult it would be to set up. A Nextcloud server with shared folders might also serve your needs. (I've had great experiences using OneNote for school, but I don't need something that robust for personal note-taking.)

[@faktCheck]

I am unable to import my saved encrypted/decrypted saves in mobile app 😢 it just doesn't wanna.

[@timothybracken1728]

Been using it for 2 years, I pay for the extended as well and it's to support their cause to privacy

[@timothybracken1728]

Is fastmail a good email client for privacy?

[@garolstipock]

Great email service! "normal" with regards privacy as in the service that offers the service doesn't look at your mail and offers 2fa feature and session logs. Not particularly privacy centric in regards encryption focused like tutanota, Protomail, Mailfence, etc.. Privacy? Yes. Security? Yes. Well, kinda maybe. Secure? no. No end to end encryption. Requires some 'true' details to create account (compromise the pure sense of privacy). BUT you can use an add-on like 'Mailvelope' to implement pgp to it.

[@jhnncsk3349]

SN is too slow on my cell phone. Unfortunately, Standard Notes is too slow on my cell phone (it takes almost 30 secs to load my notes). I'm a Standard Notes premium user, but will have to go back to Evernote which is faster (it takes only 4 seconds to open my notes). Any suggestions?

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

I'm assuming this is an Android device? The notes do take a few seconds to load (because they're being decrypted), although as I mentioned in the video, you can create a new note before your others have finished loading. If your Android device doesn't unload the app after you've finished using it, then the notes should still be loaded next time you open it, so the more RAM your device has, the less of a problem this should be. Other than starting the app once when you boot the phone, I wouldn't have any other suggestions, besides maybe looking into an Xposed module or something similar to force the app to stay loaded in the background.

[@madcockney]

@@NerdOnTheStreet Yet Colornote these days has encryption and that only takes about two seconds to be available on an Android device.

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

@@madcockney I don't see source code on ColorNote's website. Am I missing something? If not, and ColorNote is a proprietary program, then what makes you think you can trust their encryption?

[@al-du6lb]

wtf I watched the whole thing. lol.

[@realgowthamkumar]

you are wrong. 5:57 telegram is NOT an electron app.

[@ridwanslife]

Are you still using Standard Notes? Moved onto Obsidian?

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

I'm still using Standard Notes. Part of the value is not having to think about it, so I don't see myself switching away unless they try to raise my pricing in the future or otherwise mess up their business model. Obsidian looks really cool, but it's way too complicated for what I want in a notes app-- all those sidebars and panels are distracting.

[@ridwanslife]

@@NerdOnTheStreet I tried Obsidian and gave up for the same reasons. I purchased Standard Notes before they changed the pricing structure. I like the simplicity of Standard Notes and how fast it loads. Brilliant app.

[@agietha2877]

no folder to organize the notes?

[@catpetterchampion]

No, it's using tags to organize it

[@Milan-iy3pd]

there is an extension.

[@Urine666Deity]

Lol damn... I usually just write on google keep in the most cryptic way I can come up with, reading back shit i wrote a year ago i do notice a few references that go over my head but surprisingly i understand the vast majority of the nonsense. What you're showing is interesting to me for sure but it's fun to write like a schizophrenic for the sake of "privacy"

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

There's a romanticism to working around a lack of privacy, but doing that shouldn't be necessary, in my opinion. I can totally picture what you're talking about, though.

[@Urine666Deity]

@@NerdOnTheStreet yeah I agree 100%

[@ray495903314]

This app is shit, i tried logging in after a reinstall and my password is stored with a password manager, i could not log in, i don't know why, my email and password were correct, but after a while it refused to log me in do not get you will lose your notes.

[@concentriccircles1899]

OneNote 2007 alternative

[@zer0r00t]

I LOVE standard notes. My only issue is pricing. The extended plan gives around 30 extensions. Personally I need only 2 of them so it's unfair to me to pay for the whole package. I wish they introduce a more modular plan so I can choose the 2 I need and pay less

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

That's an interesting idea, but I wouldn't call their business model "unfair." Remember that your payment isn't just for extensions, it's also funding their syncing servers and development of the main application, which is published under a freedom-respecting license. I doubt they'll want to complicate their payment plans by trying to quantify how much each individual extension is worth, and I wouldn't want to deal with an interface where I have to subscribe to and pay for each extension separately. Imagine if you tried to tell Adobe that you only use one or two features in Photoshop, so you want to only pay a few dollars instead of the full price. They're not going to consider that business model because they ultimately need to fund their entire product, not just the small portion of it that you use day-to-day. It would also prevent you from trying out a new feature to see how it might improve your workflow. I guess some video games are going in that direction with microtransactions, but people don't tend to like that very much, even when the base games are free as a result.

[@zer0r00t]

@@NerdOnTheStreet I do agree. It's not unfair as a whole. But you have to take into account that the core functionality is free anyway (responding to your adobe example), with no limits to the number of notes or number of devices. Which is very generous (too generous actually). So going from $0 directly to $9.99 per month with no other options in the middle is a bit weird to me. I'll just be subsidizing for the free users (more) as opposed to paying something for myself or supporting the dev(s). If it was a paid-only product, OR if the free tier was crippled in terms of number of notes and/or number of devices, in that case $9.99 would feel fair to me personally, because the ROI would be higher and justified. Options are never a bad thing. They could keep the current model and add a custom make-your-own-plan thingy and it won't confuse people who are already on the current model. If they don't, it's cool too, I'll use the free plan anyway and will keep an eye out for sales on the 5 year plan

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

The core functionality is free and unable to be "crippled" because this software is freedom-respecting. Not wanting to support freedom-respecting software because you're "subsidizing" the people choosing not to support it is a selfish mindset that will not help free software grow. If you don't want to pay, fine, but saying you'd rather it be proprietary so others don't receive any value from your money isn't really a logical argument-- it's either providing _you_ value or it's not.

[@zer0r00t]

@@NerdOnTheStreet me being selfish, not wanting to pay and not wanting to support open source projects are all incorrect claims. I tried to donate because the free tier is valuable to me but they (still) don't accept donations. You're not seeing it from the company's perspective. Let's take bitwarden (disclaimer: paid user) for example, another freedom-respecting project, also audited, also self-hostable. Their free tier is very decent but not too good. There's immediate incentive to anyone who decides to pay hence they made it affordable and accessible to everyone. Standard notes on the other hand made the free version too good and hence need to recoup the cost somehow so the paid tier is higher than it needs to be (you said it yourself in your video). Hence less paid users. Which doesn't matter to them because the few users paying the high cost does recoup their cost of service provided to the free users. They as a company don't have an incentive to introduce a cheaper tier. Yes sure, developers and professionals who use more than 5 extensions will totally justify the cost. But for the average user of standard notes, if they're getting too good of a product for free, what's the incentive to upgrade? Not much. Bitwarden also sell business plans. So in a nutshell, standard notes is too cheap for businesses and professionals but pricey for the average user. Standard notes really does have a too-good free tier which is rare in the FOSS community, for good reasons, I might add. I actually had to check if there's a catch on the free tier when I first started using it years ago, it's that good

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

I'm seeing it from the "company's perspective" more than you are. I do not accept "donations" for Nerd on the Street, I offer a service (Nerd Club membership) because this is a for-profit company and for-profit companies typically don't want to take money without showing something for it in return. The fact that you're sitting here typing essays complaining about how the free tier is "too good" to try and justify your lack of compensation is absurd. I'm absolutely not trying to guilt you into anything, if you don't want to pay, that's fine, but when you keep going on about how good the service you've been using for free is, it just doesn't make any sense. Here's an idea: the Standard Notes 1-month plan is $9.99. If you truly want to "donate" like you're claiming (and don't need any of the extended features), you could just join for one month, or however many months you want to to make the "donation" you're wanting to make. What's the problem with that? Or are you wanting them to put time and money into setting up a donation system so you can give them less than $10?

[@emulord6248]

I prefer joplin

[@rizwanatta7845]

aren't apple notes more secure ones if you use apple echo system?

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

I've been out of the Apple ecosystem for a while now, so I'm not entirely familiar with it. I wouldn't say that Apple Notes are "more" secure unless you can point out a flaw in Standard Notes's security. The question is whether Apple Notes are just as secure or not. Apple lists a feature in their security documentation called "Secure Notes," which is a _manual_ action you can take to lock individual notes. When using that feature, a note-specific password is used to create a 16-byte key, and the note is encrypted using AES-GCM: support.apple.com/guide/security/secure-features-in-notes-app-sec1782bcab1/1/web/1 Realistically, I wouldn't expect anyone to individually lock every note that they take. By default, all notes are encrypted using CloudKit encryption. This uses a "CloudKit Service Key", which does claim to be only stored on user devices and not Apple's servers (no way to verify since it's closed-source.) As long as you don't have iCloud Backup enabled (which creates backups only encrypted using Apple's own server-side keys), then your notes should be private, if you trust Apple's word on this: support.apple.com/guide/security/cloudkit-end-to-end-encryption-sec3cac31735/1/web/1 Of course, since your Apple ID is used for more than just your notes, I would expect you to send your password or a hash of it to Apple fairly regularly if you're using their wider ecosystem, so there may be more opportunities for a potential compromise. Standard Notes uses your password to create a root key, only half of which is ever sent to the server for authentication (and is not stored locally after that); the other half is used to encrypt/decrypt ItemsKeys that encrypt/decrypt per-note item_keys, which encrypt/decrypt the notes (and we know it actually works this way since the implementations are open-source): github.com/standardnotes/snjs/blob/cb0363a66233662cb459820d0817dba3de218302/packages/snjs/specification.md

[@Earthcrosser]

I've been using Apple Notes for years and it's "secure" notes feature just recently. It's cumbersome and I don't think it's really secure. Jacob already explained it well.

[@MrMotion54]

Apppe Notes is not secure, because it’s weakest link is iCloud. hence why all of these celebrity naked pictures have been hacked.

[@sirrobertdowneysenior8080]

Agree to disagree Joplin is the best note taking app hands down. No matter if u programmer or some random guy. Research again. 🤗

[@piratedragon703]

Nice Video mate. Been trying to get away from a lot of apps I been using Notes on my iPhone being one of them. While I don't use it all the time, i do use more frequently than I remember. I put this app right next to it, to remind myself to continue to use it. love that it syncs right up to my computer so i continue going on. before I was copy and whatsapping myself notes which well was another extra step, worried about losing my phone as i have done it before. Just an over all nice app to have, and the security in place. I run KeePassXC as my password manager and just saved it there from the web log in so i have that secured. I was using simplenote for a week till I heard about this and here I am. I really wish there was a Calendar App like Standard Notes. Where I can have my calendar with me and kept private and not really in a cloud somewhere. I started Tinkering with Evolution today, and got it mostly configured, but still not nearly as simplistic as this is. Not sure if you know anything that you might recommend. Great video though really enjoyed listening to it. Added this app earlier today on my Droid and my iPhone and downloaded the app image to put on my usb of app images lol.

[@randizious1852]

Standard notes does not work well. I use the FOSS project Notesnook. And it works great! Much better than former.