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Monolog is a note-taking app, and some more. There are plenty of note-taking apps out there. But as a heavy note-taker myself, none of the existing note-taking tools satisfy my demands.
What I want is simple:
1. Data safety and privacy. The risk of data loss or developers stops maintaining the app is unacceptable. So it better stores the data locally.
2. It can’t be a web app, because I need to take notes whenever some ideas pop up.
3. After trying Roam Research, I find backlinks is a must-have.
4. Sometimes you write down something brilliant, only to find that you had the same idea years ago, and you completely forgot about it. I need a mechanism to remind me of revisiting old notes. Also, I would love to see some visual progress of what I’ve written down.
I didn’t find a tool that have all these features, so I decided to make one.
Monolog solves the exact problems I mentioned earlier:
1. All notes are stored locally on the device with iCloud sync option, contrary to the common practice that sends notes back to and stores on developer’s servers. This is completely private and secure, and users won’t need to worry about privacy or app’s continuity because their notes will always be there.
2. It’s native, written completely in SwiftUI. So it’s faster and accessible offline in comparison to other web-based note-taking apps. This means a lot when users try to take something down where there may not be Internet connections.
3. It adopts the bi-directional links concept, which is hot recently in note-taking apps. It also adopts inline hierarchical hashtags. The combination is unique. It allows users to adopt the Zettelkasten style while maintaining a canonical hierarchy for the notes.
4. Monolog is more than a note-taking tool, for its rich support in charts and statistics. It intends to be the tool that enables the users to focus and keep track of their ideas instead of only writing something down.
What’s your take on Monolog? Feel free to try it out!
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– Cary Wang
