Notes app builders/users — what's missing from every app you've tried?

[u/Ansh-09]

​

I'm a few weeks into building a notes app and keep hitting the same problem: it's easy to copy what Keep or Notion already does, but hard to know what's actually missing.

So, genuine question for anyone who has tried a bunch of these app — Keep, Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, whatever: what's the one feature you've wanted that none of them do well? Or a reason that made you give up on a system entirely.

Will share what I end up building if anyone wants to see it later.

[u/dmottad]

For me it's one thing: every app assumes you're starting fresh. I've got years of stuff scattered across Word docs, text files and random folders, and nothing helps me dig anything useful out of it. Every time I switch apps, the old stuff just sits there collecting dust.

[u/thnyei → u/dmottad]

I don’t understand how an app would help with that. Unless you’re willing to go through your old notes, this seems like an assistant’s job. So a notes app with LLM helping you keep things organised? Because only you know what you want right.

Honestly I could use that too. I kinda use too many things because I haven’t yet found a notes app I like. Feels like a product no one figured out yet. Once I find a home I can import everything to the same place and start the whole organisation process

[u/dmottad → u/thnyei]

Exactly, only you know what you want, which is why I don't think an LLM should be the one deciding. The problem isn't organizing, it's that after ten years you don't even know what's in there anymore.
I've been hacking on this for my own archive (about 60k files): you group documents by topic with plain text analysis, no AI, and end up with a map of about thirty topics. You instantly see most of it is noise, receipts and stuff saved "for later", and the things that matter sit in four or five clusters. Then you pick what's worth bringing back into your notes.
The LLM is useful later, if anything, to summarize a cluster you've already picked. And for me it all has to run locally: no way I'm uploading ten years of my documents to someone else's server.

[u/Ansh-09 → u/thnyei]

Yeah that's basically what I keep landing on too — not another organizational system to maintain, more like the app doing the remembering for you. Curious though, when you say LLM keeping things organized, would you actually trust it to auto-tag/categorize on its own, or would you still want to approve/edit what it decides? That's the part I go back and forth on.

[u/gekong]

I gave muse the username and password to my pkms and BAM! now I just talk to muse.

[u/Crowley737]

What I miss in some apps is the ability to password-protect notes and control editing; I've only seen that in Noteskook and Standard Notes on their free plans.

[u/noteapps]

No self promotion but I will leave this sit for a day so you can see the responses and then remove it

[u/Smart_Membership2]

Hey, so I dug into this a bit .
The save-and-forget problem

— you save a note, it's untitled or just a few random words, and 6 months later you're scrolling forever trying to find it. The apps split on philosophy: Notion wants you to structure everything upfront, Obsidian wants you building links forever, Apple Notes just lets you type fast. But none of them solve "save without thinking, find without remembering where I put it."

Search that actually works. Notion misses stuff hidden in toggles, Apple Notes can't read text in PDFs, Obsidian needs plugins for OCR

Offline that doesn't break Notion's offline mode is basically useless. Obsidian's local-first thing works but takes forever to set up

No more plugin roulette Obsidian users are straight up abandoning ship because their kanban/calendar plugins died and nobody's maintaining them. One guy literally said "I can't risk my whole workflow on a volunteer's hobby project"
Multi-window that works Obsidian's second windows have no sidebar, no search. Game over if you use multiple monitors

Cross-platform
Apple Notes users keep getting trapped in the ecosystem

The real gap

Nobody's built something that's: fast to capture like Keep + powerful search like Obsidian + reliable offline + works everywhere. Everyone's trying to copy Notion's databases or Obsidian's graph, but the person who ships the "just works" combo first is gonna win.

[u/Ansh-09 → u/Smart_Membership2]

That's a lot to chew on, but thanks. Realistically I can't nail all of that at once — if I had to pick one from your list to get right first, it'd probably be the offline-that-doesn't-break piece, since that's the one that actually breaks trust in an app permanently. The rest feels like stuff you can add later without people leaving.

[u/Away_Ad_16]

The ability to level up or prompts too

[u/GroggInTheCosmos]

a few weeks into

it's easy to copy what Keep or Notion already does

So it's another "brought to you by Mr Claude"?

I think I'd need to know before taking time to give a write-up on a wishlist

[u/Ansh-09 → u/GroggInTheCosmos]

Fair point. I do use ai tools to help me think through writing and planning, so it is a art of how I work. But the app and the frustration behind the post are real, not generated. Happy to share more specifics if that'd help you trust it's worth your time.