Note Simple Details

Features List

• Individual and Batch Export
  Note Simple allows for easily exporting multiple notes without using cloud services. You can export a single note, all of your notes, or just the ones that haven’t been exported yet. When exporting in groups, all notes have the same exported date stamp so you can easily group them together.
• Individual and Batch Delete
  Notes can be deleted in bulk easily, any time as well. This is useful when notes have been exported and stored elsewhere.
• Duplicate Notes
  Notes can also be duplicated by swiping to the left from the list view. When a duplicate note is exported you will notice an addition to the file name, it is the parent note’s creation date. This allows for a basic history of notes.
• Location of Notes
  You can also optionally have a current location stamp attached to each note as they are created.
• Easily Share
  With all this talk of data privacy and not being cloud-based, sometimes notes need to be easily shared. In this case, within the same area as individual buttons to Duplicate, Export and Delete, is the ability to share notes to other apps.
• Print
  With a couple taps notes can be printed on your network printer directly from Note Simple.

How to Export Notes

The primary way to export notes is with a wired connnection from your mobile device to your computer

1. Plug in your device
2. Navigate to your device within iTunes
3. There you will will see a few areas under your device like ‘Summary’, ‘Apps’, ‘Music’, etc.
4. Select ‘Apps’
5. Scroll down until you see a section called ‘File Sharing’. This is where you will select Note Simple under the list of apps.
6. Once you have selected Note Simple, you will see a list of exported notes to the right under the heading ‘Note Simple Documents’.
7. There you can select and drag those notes to the location of choice to store your notes.
8. After notes are exported they can be deleted there in iTunes and of course within the Note Simple App itself.

Please note: Tapping Export within Note Simple creates a copy of the note in this Documents area within iTunes. So when a note is deleted here, the note within Note Simple remains there. If you want to delete exported notes you can delete them within Note Simple before of after you have actually copied them from within this iTunes File Sharing area.

Filename Format

Exported File Name Formatting

• You will notice the filenames are fairly lengthy, this is done to include additional metadata/information about each note.
• Notes sort naturally by date, and further information regarding the note can be gleaned directly from the metadata in the filename.
• Here is a sample filename: “c20170516T083919-09 e20170516T083945+09 p20170516_083913 l19.432575_-155.236170 n_miPad.txt”
  • c: created_at date
  • e: exported_at date
  • p: parent note created_at date, if the note is a duplicate
  • n_: the device name, as set in preferences. Defaults to mobile device name
  • l: location stamp (-xx.xxxxx_yy.yyyyy), if the location feature is enabled
  • metadata is space-separated

Privacy Caveats to Remember

Data Privacy in General

• Remember, when using cloud service your data is copied to other locations.
• Any device with network capability is an implicit type of privacy risk.
• If someone else has physical access to your device, assume they have access to all of its data.

Data Privacy within Note Simple

• No information is stored on remote servers. All settings are stored locally within the app.
• The optional Location Stamp feature in Note Simple only stamps a note on creation time with a currently known location.
• When notes are deleted, no information is retained about that note or its location data.

Why does Note Simple Exist?

The long pitch

Call it what you will: a note, words, an entry, a blog post draft, preliminary research, top secret sauce, a random thought, a journal entry, a brainstorm session, a task, an item, a project idea, a passing thought, a therapy session. Whatever your words are, they belong to you.

The creative process, for many, requires privacy in the initial moments of inspiration. Sharing ideas is great but there is a time and place for everything, and in the initial phases of the creative process, a tremendous feeling of creative freedom comes in knowing the words written are not going to be broadcast to the world, either explicitly by being shared to social platforms, or implicitly by being stored in the cloud somewhere else.

A fundamental feature this app provides is a private space to feel safe creatively. You can speak freely. Let ideas flow. Say ANYTHING that you feel. No one is watching, listening or reading, except yourself.

You are justified in craving this kind of private safe creative space. This is where you have the room to let new ideas appear, be bantered around, and developed into something you may or may not have ever known before.

How This is Aided by Note Simple Specifically

There is a lesser-known feature in iOS that allows apps to share their data without using ‘the cloud’ or other external services. It is called iTunes File Sharing. Here the content isn’t transmitted over the air through WIFI (unless you have WIFI-sync enabled). Files are simply copied from within Note Simple’s database to a place available within iTunes, when you physically plug in your device to sync with your computer.

Note Simple has a clear writing space. The clock and other details are cleared away leaving you with a blank page with only the content you create.

When you are done writing, notes can be easily exported individually and en masse, so that you can copy them to your computer for use or storage elsewhere.

The future of Note Simple

As Note Simple improves over time, the fundamental principles of a having a clear personal writing space, and ease of privately exporting those notes will always be core to this app.

Thank you for trying it out!

Your words, on your devices, personally.

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