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 happy to announce the first version of EteSync Notes! 🎉🎉🎉

IMPORTANT: EteSync Notes requires an EteSync 2.0 account.

EteSync Notes is the first new app to use the EteSync 2.0 protocol. As we mentioned in a previous post, a big part of the motivation behind EteSync 2.0 is what it enables for the future of EteSync. EteSync Notes is the first fruit of that effort.

Getting started

EteSync Notes depends on the EteSync 2.0 protocol, as such, it requires an EteSync 2.0 account. EteSync 2.0 is still in beta, though it has been tested by many users over the last month and it's been working very well.

To get an EteSync 2.0 beta account, please refer to the beta announcement post.

Once you've migrated your account to EteSync 2.0 (or signed up for a new one), you can start using the notes app!

You can get it from:

• Google Play
• iOS App Store
• F-Droid
• Web client
• Source Code

What's next for EteSync Notes

While this is only the first release, it's already quite stable and feature complete (even includes a dark theme!). With that being said, we are aware that some features are missing, and that there may be some issues. So please, report issues as you find them.

There are a few things missing that we are aware of and plan on addressing soon, namely:

• Labels (tags) for organising the notes.
• File and image attachments.
• Improved markdown support (e.g. checkboxes).
• A rich text editor
• Improve the look and feel of the web client
• Show the revision history per note

Please open a ticket if we missed anything important.

A quick tour

EteSync notes uses Markdown for note formatting. Markdown is a rich formatting language that is easy to write by hand (cheatsheet). In the future we will have a nicer rich text editor that lets you editor Markdown files using the GUI, but until then, you can just use Markdown.

Like all EteSync apps, EteSync Notes support securely sharing notes between users. In order to share a note you need to create a new notebook and share that notebook with other users. After you do that, all the notes in that notebook will be encrypted and shared automatically.

The EteSync Notes app uses the same concepts you are already familiar with from EteSync. This includes a full change history for all of your notes! The change history is not currently visible in the app, but it's all kept behind the scenes.

Thank you NLnet and NGI0

EteSync Notes is based on EteSync 2.0, and the work on EteSync 2.0 is made possible with financial support from NLnet Foundation, courtesy of NGI0 Discovery and the European Commission DG CNECT's Next Generation Internet programme.

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.

As usual, we would like to remind you that we rely on your feedback and contributions to make EteSync better. Do you have any suggestions or  are experiencing any issues? Please send patches, report issues or just contact us.

Come chat with us on IRC/Matrix, or follow us on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, reddit or RSS for the latest updates and privacy-related content!