passthejoe by Steven Rosenberg - QOwnNotes

Is Standard Notes worth $90 to $120 a year?

2026-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Right now I'm in working on this post in Standard Notes</a>, one of the free-to-paid cross-platform notetaking apps.

You can export a text file and give it any suffix you want — even .md</code>, but this is a free/paid app, and you can only "see" Markdown rendered if you go to the first paid tier, called Productivity, which is $90. The Professional tier at $120 — a 33% increase over Productivity.

I like the app. Without a paid membership, it's pretty basic. And despite the pay-to-play nature of most of the features that take it beyond the basic "it's a text editor with autosave," the app</a> is open source under the AGPL 3.0 license. On the project's home page</a>, under "Standard Notes," it says, "Powered by Proton," which I think refers to the Proton Native framework</a> to create desktop applications using the same syntax as React Native, and not carrying a whole browser along with it like an Electron app.

Not only is the desktop app open-source, but so is the server, which is billed as "fully self-hostable."

So on the surface, this seems like a better way to get a cross-platform, "native" desktop app. Better than Electron, I guess, though I'm not an expert. There's still a bit of a delay when starting the app on my 9-year-old HP laptop. It takes about 12 seconds to launch on this hardware. It could be better for you. Could be worse. But the app is very responsive once loaded.

In addition to the desktop app, there's also a web app at https://app.standardnotes.com/, as well as apps for Android and iOS.

In April I signed up for a free account to see what I could do with Standard Notes? And now that it's May, I got an email from Standard Notes reminding me about what the app includes for free accounts:

Your free account comes with standard features like end-to-end encryption, multiple-device sync, and two-factor authentication. </blockquote> Then it reminded me about what I'm missing by not subscribing for $90-$120/year. Right now I'm in this note and wanted to search for a word. I couldn't figure it out. Ctrl-F doesn't do it. It turns out that search isn't available in text notes, the only kind you can create with the Free plan. You need to use Super Notes in order to make them searchable</a>, and that's a paid feature. With most of the desktop notetaking apps I'm using, including Iotas and QOwnNotes, I can search for something in all the notes. At least I was able to switch to dark mode. I can also give a note any name I want, and it will export with that name as the file name. All I have to do is replace .txt</code> with .md</code>. So for static-site blogging with Zola and Hugo, this is a solid choice. The Standard Notes app also has a Command Palette. Is it related to the last app with this feature that I tried? This must be a feature from Obsidian, or one of the other paid notetaking apps because I've seen it a few times now. You can type Markdown in Standard Notes, but it doesn't render. Markdown rendering is available, but it costs. At the risk of repeating myself, here are Standard Notes' three available plans: Free</li> Productivity: $90 per year</li> Professional: $120 per year</li> </ul> If you commit to 5 years, you get a "break": Productivity: $299 for 5 years</li> Professional: $349 for 5 years</li> </ul> If I loves this tool above all others, I'd pay. But I'm not sure. In addition to Markdown rendering, things like the ability to create checklists, spreadsheets, keep a daily journal, create folders and use a "Web Clipper" to save web pages as notes are all part of the $90 package. It's not a bad price, but it's hard to justify, especially if I can't test out all the features beforehand. Refunds are available within 14 days for the $90 Productivity plan and 90 days for the $120 Professional plan. Mimiri Notes</a> is at least somewhat comparable and only charges $12 per year. Standard Notes is objectively a better product, but is it $72 per year better? The problem is that in that time, I've been exploring using a hosted Nextcloud account for notes and note sync. I have a free account with TheGood.Cloud</a> for the next six months, and after that it's only $28 a year. It doesn't have the "advanced" notetaking features of Standard Notes, but it's also a lot cheaper and allows me to use other apps on Android and desktop for notetaking, calendar and general file sync. I'm not ready yet to boot Standard Notes out of the running as my notetaking solution, but I don't know if I need what it's offering, and $90 is above what I'm willing to spend as an individual for this service.



Why is it so hard (or impossible) to get a clean Markdown export out of Obsidian and Standard Notes?
2026-04-30T00:00:00+00:00
What's the deal with exporting Markdown files out of two of the most popular notetaking apps, Obsidian and Standard Notes?</p>
Obsidian</a> can't (or more accurately won't) export an .md</code> file from the base system, and none of the plugins I've tried can do it right, which for me means without added escapes preceding the brackets that's are in my blog posts' TOML front matter.</p>
Standard Notes</a> doesn't even allow an export with the free plan.</p>
Meanwhile Nextcloud</a> offers file exports (in the form of downloads</em> via the Files app) just like the Linux desktop apps I've been using: Iotas</a>, QOwnNotes</a> and Folio</a>. And the files are ready to go into a static site generator, which in my case is Zola</a>.</p>


QOwnNotes and Iotas sync with Nextcloud in two different ways
2026-04-30T00:00:00+00:00
I just found out that QOwnNotes</a> doesn't handle file sync with Nextcloud</a> in the same way as Iotas</a>.</p>
Instead, QOwnNotes relies on the Nextcloud desktop app</a> to sync the Markdown files generated by QOwnNotes with those on the Nextcloud server.</p>
I've already been thinking of testing the Nextcloud app, even though it's not needed for Iotas, which does the sync on its own with flat files on the Nextcloud side and an SQLite database for Iotas.</p>
I'd still like to see how well Nextcloud sync works. A reliable, Dropbox-like sync system would be pretty nice. Until recently, I had no idea that sync — or a separate app that does it — was even part of Nextcloud.</p>
Even if I get sync working for QOwnNotes and Nextcloud, I don't think that Nextcloud will recognize the tags that QOwnNotes can give to notes, though that would be nice.</p>
Despite the hurdle of syncing with Nextcloud, some of the things I appreciate about QOwnNotes are:</p>

Notes are stored in plain text files instead of a database</li>
Notes can be stored in nested folders</li>
Notes can be further categorized with multiple tags</li>
</ul>
In contrast, this is the situation for Iotas:</p>

Notes are stored in a SQLite database. They only "become" actual files if you export them.</li>
Notes can have a single category</em>. They can't have multiple categories, and there are no tags or folders, though a Category in Iotas mirrors a folder in Nextcloud.</li>
</ul>


More about QOwnNotes
2026-04-05T00:00:00+00:00
I'm not saying that QOwnNotes</a> is going to be my choice of notetaking apps both for regular notes and posts for my Zola blog, but it's definitely the front-runner.</p>
It's a true open-source app made in a real desktop framework, and so far it is working very well.</p>
Aside from Gnote and Sticky Notes, I had never used a notetaking app before, so the whole concept was new to me.</p>
To get a feel for QOwnNotes, start with the overview</a>.</p>


The Duplicate Note script in QOwnNotes copies Zola's TOML front matter into a new post
2026-04-04T00:00:00+00:00
I got a little deeper into QOwnNotes today. My goal was to script a way to easily start a new post with Zola front matter already in the note. For now I found an existing script in QOwnNotes called Duplicate Note.</p>
I created a note with the "raw" Zola post TOML front matter, and now I can select the note, right-click and duplicate it to begin the new post.</p>
I still have to name the note, though I don't have to type in a file name when exporting to the blog folder. And it's a time-saver because I don't have to leave QOwnNotes to find the front matter and copy/paste it into the new post.</p>
Go to Scripting -> Find scripts in script repository</code>, or click alt-shift-I</code> to get to the pre-made scripts and then search for Duplicate note</code>. Then select and install the script.</p>
There is documentation for making your own scripts</a>, and that's something I will leave for later. I think the move is adding a button or menu entry to automatically generate a "blank" note with all the TOML front matter in it. But for now, Duplicate note</code> should do the job.</p>


QOwnNotes has Vim mode
2026-04-03T00:00:00+00:00
There's a warning that says, some QOwnNotes shortcuts will not work</em>if you invoke Vim mode (Note -> Settings -> Editor -> Editor Options -> Enable Vim mode</code>).</p>
Still, Vim mode does work.</p>
The last app in which I used Vim mode (other than Vim) was the Kate text editor.</p>
Vim mode in QOwnNotes could be very helpful, though I'm not sure it's all that necessary</em> for my use of the app to write. I kind of wish it was a toggleable feature from the menu or toolbar and not something in the settings.</p>


Custom note names in QOwnNotes
2026-04-02T00:00:00+00:00
Since QOwnNotes</a> takes its note name from the first line of every post, and the first line of every Zola</a> blog post is +++</code> due to the TOML frontmatter</a>, I'm going to have to deal with this on the notetaking end of things.</p>
Naming the note by the Zola filename I want to use for the post would be the best outcome, and it turns out that is possible.</p>
When you try to rename a note, you get this dialog:</p>

If you want to rename your note you have to enable the option to allow the note filename to be different from the headline.</p>
</blockquote>
The dialog leads you right there, but you can get there any time in QOwnNotes under Note -> Settings -> Note Folders</code>. I only have one note folder at this point, and it's called default</code>, so right there I click the box next to Allow note file name to be different from headline</code>, and that lets me rename my notes. It's a nice feature that it's allowed by note folder (and that multiple note folders are possible).</p>
To veer off-topic only slightly, one of the things I like about QOwnNotes is that it is a native application coded in C++ with the QT toolkit</a>. It's not an Electron app yet is still available for Linux, Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.</p>
Another point in QOwnNotes' favor for the purpose of creating posts for static sites is that when exporting, the program remembers the directory and file name you last used, which saves considerably on clicking and typing. It makes the export a fairly seamless part of my blogging workflow.</p>


This is a Zola post that started in QOwnNotes
2026-03-29T00:00:00+00:00
Can I create a Zola blog post in a notetaking app and have it successfully move from the app to the live site?</p>
If you're seeing this, the answer is yes.</p>