Justnotes is an elegant notes app that syncs across devices

24.05.2012
Unlike iOS's Notes, OS X's built-in app for quick notes, Stickies, goes beyond simple text. Still, it feels dated these days, and perhaps its biggest flaw is that it doesn't sync across Macs or with your iOS devices. If you're looking for something a bit more modern that lets you create and manage text notes, and access those notes anywhere you've got an Internet connection, () may be the solution.

Justnotes's main window uses the now-familiar two-paned interface: a list of your notes on the left, with the content of the selected note on the right. (You can choose to show a preview in the list for each note's contents--one, two, three, or four lines.) The first line of each note is displayed in bold as the note title, and next to each note's title is the date the note was last modified; for items modified today, you see the time of the last change. A search field lets you quickly find all notes containing your search string; instances of that string are highlighted within each note. You can sort the notes list alphabetically or by creation or modification date.

Select a note and you can immediately edit it in the right-hand pane; double-click a note to open it in a separate window for editing. To create a new note, you simply click the pen-on-paper button, press Command+N, or choose File: New Note. Justnotes also offers a handy, systemwide keyboard shortcut that brings Justnotes forward and creates a new note, making it easy to enter some quick text regardless of which app you're currently using.

Justnotes stores notes as plain text, which means that note formatting is limited--font and size, alignment, and a few other basic tweaks--and those choices apply to notes.

What makes Justnotes so useful is that it syncs your notes across devices, and it offers two sync options. The first is to sync your notes database using , a free text-note-syncing service. (A premium Simplenote account, which costs $2 per month or $20 for a year, offers .) In addition to keeping your notes in sync between multiple Macs, Simplenote also provides Web access to all your notes, and it makes your notes accessible using the and .

Alternatively, if you're running OS X 10.7.3 or later, you can choose to store your notes as plain-text files in a folder on your hard drive. If you use , and you choose a folder inside your Dropbox folder, this means your Justnotes notes are automatically synced across all your Dropbox-enabled devices, and they're also accessible from any Dropbox-enabled text editor or notes app--for example, an iOS text editor. With folder syncing enabled, Justnotes automatically includes in your notes list any .txt files in your synced folder, although you can configure other plain-text file extensions (such as .md and .markdown) that you also want the program to recognize.