I’ve used Drafts for several years. It’s an excellent app, but it has far more features and capabilities than I need. I was looking for something simpler for quick notes, drafting short passages, and temporarily holding text.
My requirements are simple:
Markdown support (rich text would be a bonus, but wasn’t essential).
The ability to increase or decrease text size using ⌘+ and ⌘−.
Preferably accessible from the Mac menu bar.
No subscription.
iCloud synchronization across my Mac and iPhone.
A simple, uncluttered interface.
I like Tot, but its inability to incrementally zoom text size with keyboard shortcuts was a drawback.
After looking at several alternatives, I discovered Smolpad. It meets my needs without the complexity of Drafts.
Markdown: Live formatting for headings, bold, italics, lists, links, quotes, and more.
Adjustable text size: ⌘+ and ⌘− increase or decrease the font size, and ⌘0 resets it.
Menu bar access: Sits in the Mac menu bar and can be opened with a customizable keyboard shortcut.
iCloud sync: Notes synchronize between Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Plain-text files: Notes are saved as standard Markdown (.md) files in iCloud Drive, so they aren’t locked into a proprietary database.
Simple organization: Folders, search, and pinned notes without an elaborate filing system.
Flexible window: The menu bar panel can be detached and used as a separate window.
No subscription required: The free version supports up to ten notes with all editing features. A one-time lifetime purchase removes that limit and unlocks additional features. I don’t need more than 10 because I don’t keep the text–it is intended to be temporary.
Apple Notes does work, and I use it. But, I wanted quick menu bar access. A small but useful feature. I guess I got spoiled by this feature in Drafts and Tots.
I was honored to share thoughts about your app. It fits my needs perfectly and is well designed. I have enjoyed using it. For my purposes, it is the Goldilocks Markdown notes app: Drafts offers more features than I need, while Tots is too basic. I particularly like the table feature–well done!
I bought the lifetime license during the Black Friday deal. I hope my post about your app gets you a few more customers.
I’m currently using Antinote (https://antinote.io/). It’s a macOS app for quick notes, and the iOS companion is in beta. I registered for the beta, and it seems to work just fine.
This feels like a dev who wanted to scratch his/her own itch, wrote an app, and is releasing it cheap. I don’t necessarily expect that to continue, but it’s a cool app for the time being.
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