A new Simplenote for iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Posted byTomPosted inUncategorizedTags:, , ,

simplenote-featured-ios

Major new versions of Simplenote are now available for iOS 7, Mac, and Android.

All new design

When we first used iOS 7, we knew it would set new expectations for great apps — not just on iPhone and iPad, but across all platforms, including desktop and the web. We’ve redesigned Simplenote based on the principles we think are most important:

Focus on content. We wanted your thoughts and ideas to be front and center. The user interface has only what it needs, and otherwise stays out of your way.

Sense of place. Going from here to there inside an app should always leave you with a feeling of whereness. Where did I come from? Where am I going? Where did I end up? We paid careful attention to structure, placement, and animations to help maintain a sense of where you are at all times.

Harmony. The redesign is borderline stark, but there’s a lot going on to bring it all together: thoughtful typography, careful attention to spacing and grids, consistency where it matters, and a balance of subtlety and emphasis to help direct your attention.

Coming up next

In the coming weeks we’ll release minor updates and go into more detail about our design and development process. We hope you enjoy these new versions in the meantime.

50 thoughts on “A new Simplenote for iPhone, iPad, and Mac”

  1. What about loyal users not running iOS 7? Buying a new device instead of a significant bug fix release for the previous version?

    2. Also you don’t necessarily need to buy a new device, iOS7 is free and compatible with most Apple devices made in the past few years

  2. Lo que debia ser una aplicación sencilla necesita la última versión del sistema operativo en Mac y en Android. Mal comienzo. Dejan fuera a muchos usuarios que buscaremos otras alternativas a Simplenote.

    1. I would love to see Markdown support in the iOS version as well. I have not been abel to find an alternative. However, on the Mac side there is a great alternative – Metanota. It’s available on the Mac App Store in a free and paid version. It works great, syncs great and allows for Markdown formatting WHILE YOU TYPE. I have been enjoying it so much that bringing up Simplenote on iOS is always a let down.

      Hopefully someday the Simplenote iOS app (or some other app, like Metanota, that works with it) will show up that at least allows you to preview your notes in Markdown formatting, even if it doesn’t allow you to edit/view at the same time (like Metanota).

  5. Thanks for the update, it feels awesome. It’s a pity the new font doesn’t have Cyrillic characters. Will there be a way to change the font in future versions?

  10. I rather love the new interface. Very clean and functional. I also appreciate the efforts to increase stability. My only request? Bring back alphabetical sorting! Thanks for all the hard work.

  11. Pingback: Simplenote en iOS 7 y Mac

  12. There’s a problem with the font you’re using for users writing with a Greek alphabet. The sizes are different than notes written in English, or notes mixing two languages. There should be a way to change the font, or you should be using a system font for both iOS and Mac versions.

  13. This has just about everything I need. It is fast, simple and effective. Add Markdown support and call her done.

  14. is there any way to reduce the font size on my phone? when i’m typing, i need to see more than six lines of text. love the new look but loved being able to see more text on the older version 🙂

  15. Besides reducing font size, there is way too much white space in the list of notes in iOS 7- on my 4S with preview turned off, only 8 note titles fit onscreen. I like the new app but the functionality is compromised when you aren’t getting as much information onscreen as the previous version. Thanks for all the updates though, and the Mac version!

    1. yep. agreed. reducing the font size would fix this. but for my purposes, its not really usable this way. is it possible for me to go back to the old version with ios7?

      1. If you sync your iphone with iTunes, you probably can find a copy of the older version in your iTunes media folder. If so, delete the app off your phone, then connect your phone to your computer and install the older version.

  16. What is the compelling reason for excluding OSX 10.7? This isn’t exactly a monumental backwards compatibility effort like iOS6/7.

  18. Any plans on a Windows app? At the least, I really hope to see a Windows 8 Metro app for SimpleNote; I’m upgrading to Windows 8 soon, and a Metro app for this would be compelling for me to go back to using SimpleNote.

  19. Wow. What a downgrade. Sort is missing, Textexpander does not work, so much white unusable space cause why would I actually want to see the data I keep. Touching the near the end of a sentence no longer puts the cursor at the end of sentence.

    Guess I’ll see if I can go back to the old ver till this gets fixed. If it does not… Then I’ll start looking elsewhere.

  20. Single most important thing to fix: tapping at the end of a sentence to put the cursor at the end. It’s a total annoyance not to be able to do that and I can’t see what is the benefit of taking it out.

    1. Totally agree. I presumed that this was a bug and not a design decision? Also, tap-hold to bring up the magnifying glass to allow precise cursor placement appears to not be working properly. I spent several minutes trying to place the cursor at the end of a word in a sentence. After trying repeatedly and having the magnifying glass skip around like it had too much coffee, I eventually gave up, deleted the sentence and retyped it – that, amazingly, was faster and easier.

      Definitely feels like a but that just needs to get worked out. Simplenote is a great app/service, I can be patient for a bug fix release.

  23. Please put back SORT BY NAME (alphabetically)! I have over 270 notes, and sorting them by date only isn’t very functional. Thanks for all the hard work guys! Great app!

  24. Only 2 issues with iOS upgrade a) tapping to right of a line does not move cursor to end of line, have to place exactly at end of line. b) be good to be able to opt to show last save date. Also be good if can opt for spell check in Web App. Otherwise the greatest note app/ service in the World continues!

  25. I have rolled back to the old version until sorting by AZ back. Have 2 many notes to search for them in random order.

  26. Well, I used SimpleNote daily to manage specific data in text format. I love this app! However, like Hagadol, I rely on the alpha sort to manage my notes. Can you bring back the option to get my notes into proper order? Please?

    1. Check out Metanota on the Mac App Store. It works awesomely for Simplenote and there is both a paid and free version available. No, I have no affiliation with Metanota – just a happy and satisfied user.

  29. I really appreciate the goal of making Simplenote even leaner and cleaner… but please bring back alpha sort! Letting the user select font type and size would be awesome. And as others have noted, the inability to place the cursor a the end of a line has to be fixed ASAP.

  30. I really love the new design, it unifies simplicity, beauty, functionality all in one. So far it works just seamlessly across my mobile devices, and even the web interface is great on my Linux work computer. The problem with other note taking software is that on at least one of the different platforms the user experience is just not that great (e.g., Evernote would only work well when you are using the native Desktop application, web interfaces and mobile apps are just suboptimal).

    I love the new Simplenote so much that I came up with a great GTD implementation for Simplenote, if you are interested, I have written a simple guide about how to utilize Simplenote’s great search and tagging features for GTD: http://bit.ly/1aVkVsZ

  31. The iPad version loses quite a lot of usability with this update, the information density is so low, with super large fonts and too much white space. The focus seems to have shifted away from the content and is now focussed on white space.

  33. Simplenote iPhone App has many bugs:
    1. Hard to click the right position for entering the text
    2. Double click for copy&paste hardly work
    3. The curser will jump to the bottom and the screen becomes blank and stuck there. Scroll up won’t work. The whole screen is blank. Need to kill the app a few times before being able to use it again. But the bug will happen again after a few seconds of use.

    Please fix them. I could not use Simpenote iPhone App at all ….

  34. deleted a note that was open before I updated my iOS. program was shutdown when I updated my phone and when I went to open up the app it got all glitchy and erased my note. can’t find it in the trash or anywhere else including my iPad or my online account. Help please

  35. Longtime premium user here. First, thank you for finally offering an Android Simplenote app. Now, what’s with the new iOS Simplenote? The new font looks washed out and hard to read. I know you want to keep Simplenote clean and streamlined, but at least let us use the old font if we choose to. And as a previous poster said, “Single most important thing to fix: tapping at the end of a sentence to put the cursor at the end. It’s a total annoyance not to be able to do that and I can’t see what is the benefit of taking it out.” Thanks for keeping Simplenote alive.

  36. I used it for five years and now i’m going to stop. I think i’ll never get used to plain text iOS version without even separator lines like it was before.
    R.I.P. iPhone and every program i loved and used to, now dies one after another.

  37. thanks for all the work that must have gone into the new ios 7 version. i want to reiterate a few points above as they will make the difference in my continuing to use this device or not as a premium user. please address the constraints and legibility issues of the new grey condnesed font and allow there to be a resizing option as before to work at a larger size and the option of using the previous typeface, which was far more accessible in lower light. i do appreciate the clean look you have created but in terms of usability, some minor modifications would increae usability and give users more choice to make it suit their needs.

    many thanks

  38. You guys should check what people complain about in the large number of negative reviews that are accumulating the iTunes store and, maybe, reconsider some design decisions. Just sayin’

  39. Yes please reconsider some of the design decisions, particularly legibility & Information density. Old Simplenote was great, easy to read notes, easy to browse notes (especially on iPad). The list of notes on the side replaced with white space may look “cleaner”, but its much harder now to flip between individual notes. Remember what Jobs said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”.

  40. This used to be a great app ! No more.  I used this app for over three years on my ipad, iphone, mac, and laptop.

    The four main features that made it indispensable for me were:

    1. You could sort notes.  I would make major category  like “1.0 home” or “2.0 car” and then add sub-categories like “1.2 Maintenance”.  My scratchpad was 0.1.  This made it easy to organize notes and find them.  No more.

    2. You could synch notes, and it would happen quickly. You had one data base instead of three.  If I left for the store, my wife could add items to “1.1 Groceries”, and they would show up on my phone app right away.  No more.

    3. You could see the notes on the left sidebar and scroll through them.

    4. It was simple to use.

Comments are closed.