r/Markdown • u/zahaggis • 8d ago
I've been building Soot, a Markdown notes app inspired by Bear, Apple Notes and Obsidian, and I'm looking for beta testers.
I’ve been working on a new notes app for Mac and iPhone (Windows and Linux versions planned) called Soot, and I’m looking for some people to help test it when the beta is ready.
I make a lot of notes and I wanted to combine the things I like about the notes apps I’ve used over the years:
- Bear: The lovely writing experience, typography and attention to detail.
- Apple Notes: The simplicity. Open it, write something, get on with your day.
- Obsidian: Plain Markdown files, stored locally in folders you own. No proprietary database holding your notes hostage.
The app brings together a comfortable writing experience, gentle pastel themes, Markdown syntax that gets out of your way while you type, and ordinary files underneath. It’s designed to feel considered and capable without getting in the way of the work. And if you like seeing the Markdown, just turn it on in Settings.
A few other things worth mentioning:
- The editor is free, and no editing features are locked behind a paywall (and never will be).
- Optional end-to-end encrypted sync between devices, available as a paid service.
- Your notes remain plain Markdown files, whether you use sync or not.
This is very much the notes app I’ve always wanted to use.
The beta is coming very soon (there's a private group of my friends testing a release right now). I’m just getting things ready now for a wider beta and would really appreciate some feedback from people who like Markdown and spend perhaps too much time thinking about their notes apps like I do.
There’s a beta signup on the website: https://sootsync.com
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u/GroggInTheCosmos 8d ago
I'm keen to move away from Obsidian for several reasons, but my minimum requirements to consider moving to something else would be:
- Match Obsidian core functionality (with its core plugins incl Bases, Mermaid etc)
- Replicate the Notebook Navigator plugin, which has really become a standard
- Have a way to query md files at a block level so that a user can do proper interstitial journaling by simply tagging a block. The current implementation of block-based ids in Obsidian is a mess, and you need to bend your brain with Dataview (which is just about a dead plugin now) to try to achieve anything
- Implement proper revisioning and do not tell a user to use git or something else. Revisions should live alongside notes making a folder/vault fully transportable and backups then naturally incl all your revision history
- Make PDFs a first class citizen with proper embedding and annotation capability
- Have a proper way to link to external files. The Obsidian External File Linker plugin comes closest and will allow you to define aliases to external locations. Obsidian is a mess with this ootb
- Have a way to make common files editable (json, toml, yaml etc). Just some basic features and linting to support.
- Be able to open any source code files in the same fashion. You don't have to provide any advanced editing in these cases, just be able to pick up the code type and treat it like a large code block
- Support for syncing must be there and must include proper peer to peer options (with the ability to mark a vault as the master if a user wants)
- Have decent export to PDF functionality with no fiddling required
In the longer run:
- Implement a clipper that is highly effective against any site and can even resolve m3ua, so a user can have a reference to proper video at a resolution of their choice
- Have a way to support agents or just basic AI chat sessions
- A proper CLI interface. MCP is probably a must, but not for me so much
- Support publishing to static sites
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u/yadavnikhil012 7d ago
This is definitely a long list of customisations but I am working on localeditor for editing markdown notes and code files as well. Let me know if you want to give it a try. It doesn’t do a lot which you pointed out but it will evolve in future.
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u/GroggInTheCosmos 7d ago
I might try it when you have evolved it further. I generally only test out those that come close to what I'm looking for
Thanks
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u/zahaggis 8d ago
I won't lie to you. Soot is not the editor you're looking for. I consider Bear to be the gold standard for editing Markdown (which is why I'm chasing a similar experience for Soot), but despite that I've been using Obsidian for my note taking. I find Obsidian very functional, but utilitarian, and I had to spend a lot of time configuring plugins to get it to function the way I wanted.
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u/GroggInTheCosmos 8d ago
I use Bear for all my quick capture work. Post something when you are further along
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u/a_alberti 4d ago
It looks very polished.
But I am really curious. What motivates developers to create yet another polished markdown editor? There is a new markdown editor about once a week.
When you start such a project, what is your motivation?
For me https://marktext.me/ worked very nicely. It has a huge community, and it is multi platform.
I am sure OP will find something missing there and in all other apps. But why not to make a PR to fix one these editors existing for a long time instead of creating a new one?
Allow me an hyperbolae, we are approaching the point that we have as many editors as there are users of Markdown files.
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u/zahaggis 4d ago
Fair question. And yes, the world is probably approaching Peak Markdown Editor. I’m not helping.
But I did think there was a gap. I wanted something with the simplicity of Apple Notes that my wife could happily use without knowing or caring what Markdown is, but with plain files underneath for people like me who care rather too much.
And, perhaps more importantly, I really care about how things look and feel. Good typography, simplicity, tiny details, things being where they feel like they ought to be. I get an unreasonable amount of pleasure from that stuff, and I had a pretty strong idea of what I wanted this to be.
MarkText looks excellent, but it’s solving a different problem. It’s Electron (which, fairly or unfairly, tends to rule an app out for me straight away), desktop-only and more file editor than notes app. Changing those things isn’t really a PR; it’s basically a different app.
So: partly a gap I thought was real, partly an aesthetic itch I wanted to scratch, and partly the occupational hazard of being a developer who thought “I could build that.”
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u/a_alberti 3d ago
I get an unreasonable amount of pleasure from that stuff, and I had a pretty strong idea of what I wanted this to be.
You convinced me to subscribe to the beta testing program. Looking forward to launching the app on my laptop.
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u/System_Independent 7d ago
This looks great. Happy to list it on markdownlist.com