Hello, I'm Kévin (@zecakeh), and I'm here to tell you about some of my recent contributions to EteSync Notes.

Here I was, back in December, still trying to find a good notes app. Those were my criteria:

• Open source
• Available on Android and Linux (or be compatible with other apps)
• Sync easily between my devices
• Nice look
• Have simple styling of notes
• Support simple to-do lists

And the extras:

• Self-hostable
• Encrypted
• A WYSIWYG editor
• Adapt to the screen size

I stumbled upon the brand new EteSync Notes app. After playing with it for a few minutes, I realized it didn't check all the boxes, but had a lot of potential: it was already fully functional and needed just a bit of polish. Since I was also looking into contributing to a community project at the time, I took a look at the repository and found out it was using React Native, which I was already familiar with, and I agreed with most of the feature requests in the issues. It was time to start my journey with the EteSync Notes project!

My first contribution

Since projects are not always very active, I decided to start with a small problem to see if help was welcome. It was something that was annoying me and was already mentioned in one of the issues: the FAB on the notes list would go over the dialog to create a new note when the keyboard was up. Working on an UI problem would allow me to do it quickly because I was already familiar with the framework and to familiarize myself with the code without having to dig too deeply. And here's the result:

I created a Pull Request and was amazed when it was reviewed and accepted one hour later! This motivated me even more!

Keeping it coming

Since then, I have kept going through the issues in the repository, or the ones I have encountered. That allowed me to have a better understanding of how the app worked little by little and to work on more complicated tasks. And when I had questions, I just needed to go to the IRC/Matrix Chat and ask.
Here are some notable improvements I have worked on:

What's coming next

A few things I might be working on next:

• Adaptive view on large screen with a split view
• Make the app feel more native on web with a pointer on links and visual change on hover
• Import/export notes
• Search notes
• Desktop versions?
• Improve integration with GNOME: GOA, GNOME Notes…
• Whatever you want…

I really want to thank Tom for being so approachable, available, helpful and patient with his reviews.

We are very happy to announce that we have recently been awarded a grant by the NLnet Foundation to support our efforts building the EteSync iOS client!

Adding iOS support has been EteSync's most requested feature for quite a while. Whether it is for your own personal use, or for sharing calendars with friends and colleagues, an iOS client opens a lot of new possibilities and will enable many more people use EteSync and protect their private information.

NLnet foundation and NGI0

We are very proud to have been selected by NLnet Foundation for their NGI Zero Privacy-Enhancing-Technologies grant! It is a great honour to be recognised by such a distinguished organisation, and be listed side by side so many other amazing projects such as Tor, Nitrokey, and WireGuard.

The NLnet foundation in general and the NGI0-PET in particular is funding projects to protect everyone's digital privacy, especially in the context of the "next generation" of the internet. It's an extremely important cause which we at EteSync are very much aligned with. Please help by spreading the word about them.

If you are working on such a project and think you can make a big difference with some financial help, I suggest you apply here. The next deadline is August 1st.

More specifically, if you have any cool project ideas related to EteSync please apply, or reach out to discuss it. We will be happy to help you with the application, and do our best to help with your actual project.

iOS client

It is no longer just a TODO item! We already started working it, but we did not want to announce anything until we are sure we are able to deliver. Thanks to NLNet we are now able to!

We plan on pushing an initial version to Github in the next few weeks, so watch our social media accounts or this blog for updates!

Please remember that Etesync iOS is made possible thanks to financial support from NLnet Foundation, courtesy of NGI0 Discovery and the European Commission DG CNECT's Next Generation Internet programme. So big thank you to them!

New blog and community contributors

So far we have limited our blogging to updates about EteSync and our development efforts. Though we fell like given what's going on in the world in respect to privacy and eroding digital rights, this is not enough. We have a lot of important things we would like to write about, and we know that many from the community have too.

This is why we are going to migrate our existing bare-bone blogging solution to a more robust one (such as ghost) and open it to community contributors!

Think you may be interested in contributing some content and increase your reach? Please let us know!

Opening - remote junior growth/content manager

In continuation to the previous point, we are also looking for someone to join us and help us with managing the community and content, and help us further increase our reach.

The role is a junior one, and no previous experience is required. All we are looking for is a good level of English and a willingness to learn improve and ability to work autonomously. No technical ability required!

For more information, please take a look at the role description.

Mastodon

We would also like to remind you that we have recently joined Mastodon so follow us there if you aren't already: @EteSync@mastodon.social.

Feedback, suggestions and contributions

As usual, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that we would like to hear your thoughts. Do you have some suggestions? Noticed an issue? Please send patches, report issues, or contact us.

In addition, your contributions are always welcome! Be it testing, design, code, reporting issues or helping us spread the word! Every bit helps in making EteSync better for everyone. If you are interested in contributing and don't know where to start, please, just contact us!

Until next time…