Notes apps: one of the most saturated markets for productivity apps. Nowadays, you can find an app for pretty much any workflow. Want a free, infinitely customizable, open-source behemoth of an app? Obsidian’s your guy. Pay for Microsoft 365 and want to stay in Microsoft land? One note exists for people just like you! Want a great native experience tailored to Apple devices with markdown? Bear is a phenomenal option. At the end of the day, it comes down to finding what works best for you and what you’ll actually use.

My Note-taking Journey

Growing up, I used Google Docs for most of my notes. It was provided to me by my schools, and it was the easiest option. Once I became more serious about note-taking and needed more than what Google could provide I landed on Bear. I had already learned markdown (thanks, Discord), and moving over to Bear felt natural. Plus, it was designed expertly, and even now, not using it as my primary note-taking app, I can confidently say I never saw a bug or something out of place. But why did I leave?

Dissatisfaction with Bear

Bear’s pacing of updates seemed nonexistent. I had been using Bear for 5 years, and in that time I never noticed a feature added that had any direct impact on my workflow. When all hope seemed to be lost, Bear finally released Bear 2, bringing a ton of improvements. We could now use tables, hide markdown, footnotes, and more. This was awesome! However, after the initial hype died down, I couldn’t find a use for any of these new features in my day-to-day life. I was using Bear as a general-purpose notes app. Most of my notes didn’t go over a paragraph, with the exception of my college essays. Also, at this time, I built my first PC and was really feeling the pain of not being able to access my notes, as Bear is on Apple devices only. Just recently, I got access to the Bear beta web app, and while this solves this issue, the online editor is lacking severely lacking in polish.

Moving to Supernotes

On Christmas Day 2024, I was testing this quick capture app called Funnel. It allowed you to capture something and then send it to a variety of different services. It was working for Bear and Things, my task manager of choice. (Also wrote a review for that as well. Check it out.) While perusing the available sources, I stumbled upon this app called Supernotes. And well, my brain exploded.

Why Supernotes

From the moment I laid eyes on the website, I knew that this app was something special. Firstly, the website’s (and entire Supernotes brand) design is a masterclass on how to create a great website and is a joy to use. I’ll go over design more in the design section, but the note card idea really clicked for me. My first reaction when I saw it was, “Wait, this makes so much sense. Why isn’t every notes app like this?” I’ll remind you, most of my Bear notes were 1–2 sentences and not easily searchable. Supernotes fixes this issue. Safe to say, I almost immediately created an account and downloaded the app.

Pricing Justification

Now’s a good time to call out pricing. Supernotes is a subscription-based app. I know I wrote a whole manifesto against subscriptions in the Things 3 review, and most of those points still hold true. However, Supernotes does the subscription model right in my eyes. A quick look at the community forum shows you how they listen to customer feedback and are constantly implementing features that the community actually wants. They also have a track record of releasing monthly updates, something that is a breath of fresh air coming from Bear (who, in their defense, also has a community forum, but a much slower update cycle)

Pricing

Justification over. Supernotes Starter Plan is free for 100 cards. This is quite a lot of cards and lasted me 3 months before I had to upgrade. If you need more than 100 cards, you’ll have to get Unlimited. Supernotes Unlimited is £72 yearly, or £8 monthly. (Side note: While I am in the USA, Supernotes is based out of London and charges in British Bucks™. With exchange rates, I feel it is better to list the prices in British Bucks™ instead of freedom dollars.) There is also a pretty unique 4-year option for £192. This is billed once, and you retain access for 4 years. One nice thing to see is the policy for after your subscription expires. You can still edit, export, and share all your existing cards. The only thing you can’t do is make new cards. Unlimited hosting for life is not too bad of a deal.

Design

Supernotes is gorgeous. The UI/UX design is some of the best I’ve seen in my lifetime. I actually was going to school for UI/UX design and showed Supernotes to my professor. She signed up that evening. Everything from the icons, to the rounded corners, to the custom typeface comes together in a immaculate dance. My notes have never looked so good.

Functionality

I could probably write an entire article on how this app works. The high-level overview is that Supernotes is fast and performant. The app does a great job of not overloading you at the start. The best way I can explain it is you’re given a blank canvas, so you start messing around. Slowly, you ask yourself, “Whoa, it would be really nice if I could do X,” and what do you know, you can. You learn over time how this system works and all the cool stuff you can do with it. Backlinks? Tags? Parents? All of these are possible but not presented until you, the user, go searching for them. You can make new cards by typing anywhere in the window, and the Command + K search is the fastest search I’ve seen in an app. Supernotes organizes your cards in a parent-child relationship. You can assign a child card a parent card, and then the card lives under the parent. Sounds normal and reasonable, right? Wait until you start having child cards that have multiple parents. Mind-blowing. Supernotes also has a great editor (I wrote this entire review in it) that doesn’t complicate your thought process. All of this is in an Electron app which is shocking to me. The fact that they got Electron, of all things, working this performant is nothing short of a miracle.

Collaboration and sharing

Supernotes makes it trivially easy to collaborate and share notes. All notes can be shared to the web, generating a link you can share with anyone — even those who do not use Supernotes. You can try it with this card here. Additionally, if your friends do have Supernotes, you can share directly with them. The card will show on their end, and if given the permissions, you can edit in real-time. This is super cool! I use the share-to-web feature all the time.

Day to Day use

Day to day, I use Supernotes to jot down fleeting thoughts when I’m out and about. At work, I use it to track code snippets and weekly tasks. It’s also great for 1:1 notes and short, quick ideas. Basically, anything that’s not a task will first live in Supernotes, then will either be expanded upon, removed, or merged.

What I wish was added

Supernotes does many things right. Most of the stuff I’m about to list is in the process of being worked on, but I would still like it now. A web clipper would be awesome. As a stopgap, there’s a Raycast extension that’s really good, but something more concrete would be nice. Additionally, a quick capture window similar to Things 3 would be super nice. On the mobile side, I’d like an Apple Watch app, more app icons, and mobile widgets. None of these are dealbreakers, but would be nice to have.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, this is a great app for a certain type of person. If you have small notes, primarily use search to access your notes, and like backlinks/parent-child cards, you cannot go wrong with Supernotes. However, if you’re more of a long-form writer who likes using folders, I would not go with Supernotes. Stick to something like Obsidian or Bear.

If you’ve read this and think you want to give Supernotes a whirl, you can use my referral to get an extra 25 cards (so you’ll start with 125 instead of 100). Signup for Supernotes here!