Standard Notes

• Free to download
• In-app purchases

Last verified 31 Jul 2026

4.7 3678 ratings · App Store

1. 3/5Good and Bad, mostly good

   The Good: I love that my notes sync across devices. That’s really handy. It’s not on Google Docs. If my google account gets compromised — this happened to my dear Dad — I’ll still have these notes. The notes are encrypted. It’s fairly easy to use on any device. Tags instead of folders: good. And best of all, excellent customer service. Special shout out to Effie. She’s the reason I decided to pay for premium instead of sticking with the free version. The Bad: as with protonmail, I find this app to be secure but clunky. Sometimes the rich text notes don’t even load (although if they don’t load on one device, they usually load on the other). So always back up. It wouldn’t hurt to copy your most precious notes to a native editor on your computer like TextEdit or Notepad. Simply moving from your search results back to all notes is not always intuitive or fast. You cannot search within a note. You choose a color theme and it doesn’t always stick. The bad points are minor inconveniences, and are outweighed by the good. I plan to stick with this app while the good developers work out the kinks.

   bacon sandwich · 31 Jul 2026

2. 5/5Great Notes App

   I recently switched over to Standard Notes after using Evernote for 10 years. I had a lot of requirements for a notes app, which included a web app along with native apps for iOS, macOS, and Windows. I also wanted a robust syncing mechanism to the cloud, end-to-end encryption, support for text formatting, and a way to organize notes by folders or tags/subtags. Standard Notes supports all of this and even has a feature to import notes exported from Evernote. I really appreciate the ability to self-host the server side components - this makes me feel secure knowing that no matter what happens to the company, my data will always be fully under my control. My only complaints would be the fact that I can’t open multiple notes in separate windows at the same time - I used this feature quite a lot with Evernote - now it is pretty cumbersome to need to switch back and forth between notes when I am trying to compare things or working on multiple notes at a time. I also wish Standard Notes supported printing out a note natively. Currently I need to export to a PDF, print the PDF from a PDF viewer, and then delete the PDF just to quickly print something. One other thing is that while the importing from Evernote files worked pretty well, the text formatting did not import properly - it would be nice if some extra time was put into making this better to preserver the formatting and the way notes looked before exporting from Evernote. Overall, I think this is a great app and I am very happy with it.

   extest · 31 Jul 2026

3. 1/5Sad Sync and Support

   I loved it until I fell for the trap and imported all my notes from another app to consolidate them all here and it just broke the sync, and support was unhelpful leaving me to figure it out on my own when I am paying for a premium subscription. They asked me to make a whole new account to move everything over instead of helping fix my existing account. Haven’t had the time to figure out an alternative yet, but how can I trust this app for important information anymore. I used to use this everyday for everything until this issue and this made me averse to it. Premium price for poor bandwidth and very limited capabilities. Many features to like but refusing to fix one simple issue breaks it all. They don’t even make it clear on their website that you should import notes in only tiny batches at a time over time, no mention in the instructions when I did it, and I looked before going ahead with the import. Only after it’s broken did they tell me that’s how it should be done. Again, what’s the point. Multi-device sync is what I am paying for and I can’t get it anymore. Need to figure out a way to back up all my notes and slowly get my data out of this. The point of using a notes app is to make life easier but if I have to spend hours on my weekends to fix an issue caused by the app and am unable to access my notes or have to delete my data, that too only one file at a time, to make it usable again or move my whole account to a new one instead of a simpler fix by tech what is the point of paying for it. If I can figure out a way to backup and sync using an open source platform that would be a better use of my time and effort. Sad. lol.

   skishan · 31 Jul 2026

4. 2/5Can't type/edit long notes / Inadvertent logouts

   UPDATE: Removing another star. Keyboard still blocks editing. Since last updates, I'm now also logged out , inadvertently, way too often -- in the midst of trying to edit notes. This is becoming untenable. Update: The last update, again, broke the ability to scroll when composing/editing a note, making it impossible to see the part of the note covered by the keyboard. I’m now removing 2 stars, as this bug severely impacts functionality. PREVIOUSLY: Love this app! I recently subscribed in order to easily share end-to-end encrypted data between devices. Sharing works great, but until recently, it was difficult to compose/edit because the keyboard covered the bottom of the note on Apple devices and scrolling to bring it into view wasn't possible. (This limited utility, although it was still worth it to me for the amazing security in synching short notes.) Now, the problem has been FIXED, with a recent update!! I had also been unable to log in with my iPhone and had been limping along, only able to sync with my iPad and laptop. (That has been corrected now, too!!) THANK YOU, devs!

   hereforthedigits · 31 Jul 2026

5. 4/5Almost perfect

   This is a really great app. Very simple and straight forward. The only reason I am giving 4/5 stars is because there is no way to toggle dark mode on/off. I understand that extra themes come with the premium subscription, however not everyone can afford to keep up with a monthly subscription or an upfront payment of $50 or $150 (which is kind of an outrageous amount to pay if you just want the dark theme). If the delevopers read these reviews, I would just ask that a simple toggle be added to switch between light and dark mode... You don't even have to take one of your premium themes and add it to the free mode, I am just asking that in addition to your blue and red theme there be a toggle to switch the background color from white to black (the same amoled black you have in your focus theme). Please please please, this app will be absolutely PERFECT if you would be so generous as to add such a toggle to the free version of the app. Or at the very least make this option an in app purchase of say $5 or $10. I would be willing to pay for this feature, and I'm sure others would too.

   Starchief0481 · 31 Jul 2026

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