NotePlan for iPhone and iPad Is Coming…
Today I’m really excited to tell you that NotePlan for iPhone and iPad is finally ready to launch. It has been in Beta on TestFlight for many months and I have received tons of constructive feedback. Big thanks to the beta community! Always happy to chat with you guys! It helped me a lot and many people have contributed to shaping the product to what it is now.
NotePlan was created out of the need for a productivity app, which is not just pushing around todos or collecting them in buckets. But which resembles the way many people plan in the “real world”: Using calendars, notebooks and bullet points. If you love Bullet Journal, GTD or TaskPaper, you will love NotePlan.
See the short demo video below:
The iOS version is designed to work with the macOS version, so you have your notes and planning always with you. Both apps also work individually. Your notes are synced with iCloud Drive automatically across your devices. The only thing you have to do is to sign in and enable iCloud (and iCloud Drive). This happens usually by default when you first sign up on your iPhone, iPad or Mac (read here more for troubleshooting).
Never Again Forget Anything With NotePlan
My goal with NotePlan was to create a tool that will help you plan and decide what to do on a given day and capture random information quickly.
The core idea is that you have a note for every day in your calendar. This way you can not only manage your events and appointments but also capture random ideas, important bits of information, action lists, reference material and so on. Anything coming your way and demanding your attention. With NotePlan you can save it and continue focussing on your work without worrying to lose the info.
Personally I over-plan my days (like so many), so that some tasks are still left at the end of the day. Instead of pushing them from day to day, I fix that at the end of the week — usually on a Sunday — I take a review session and clean up all the open points of the last 6 days. This works great with NotePlan, because it shows you which days have open points. This way nothing slips through the cracks. Even your random ideas.
With the iOS version all this goes mobile, so you have your notes alway with you!
Here is an early glimpse at some of the App Store screenshots for iPhone:
List of main features:
- One dedicated note for every day in your calendar
- Calendar gives overview of all your notes
- General notes decoupled from the calendar for backlogs, checklists, etc.
- Saved and edited as plain text — no magic. You can open, read and change your files also without NotePlan
- Everything saved in your iCloud Drive and automatically synced across all your devices
- Markdown support with custom flavor for marking tasks as done, scheduled and deleted
- Schedule one or more todos from one day to another (excluding what’s already done)
- Quick Action: Schedule all open points to the next day
- Quick Action: Archive processed points (will auto-sort your note and filter out processed points)
- Pull events from your Apple Calendar and Reminder app (will also sync Google and other calendars, if added to iCalendar)
- Optimized for iPhone and iPad
- Portrait and Landscape (perfect for iPad) supported
- Optional summary view for your calendar for quick lookup
- Link notes with each other (
[[Title]]and[[YYYY-MM-DD]]) - Tag general notes to sort them (using
#tag) - Search calendar notes and general notes
* [ ] GFM Stylesupported (preferences). Then* itemwill behave like ordinary lists
And since it’s also supported on iPad, here are more screenshots:
Calendar
The calendar loads all your notes and converts the markdown todos to colored points, so you get a sense of how much is (or was) planned and how many open points are still there.
- Orange = open,
- Green = done,
- Blue = scheduled,
- Purple = synced event (from another calendar),
- Red = synced reminder (from Apple’s Reminder app)
If there are still open points in the past, the day will be marked red as a kind of reminder that you still have to process tasks. A formatted summary view is also there allowing you to take a glimpse at the contents of the day.
Markdown / Daily Notes
Every day is edited inside its own dedicated note with markdown support. This is especially useful because you can create titles and use formatting. Use a structure such as
## Work
-
-
-## Home
-
-
-## Sport
-
-
-
which keep things organized. Additionally todos can be marked as “done”, “scheduled” or “redundant” (“deleted”). They will be grayed out, so you know it’s handled. That’s the power of using markdown and simple text notes.
General Notes
Besides the calendar, there is also a place to store normal notes. Such as backlogs, checklists, etc. From here you can also schedule todos into the calendar. To organize your notes you can link them together using the [[title]] and [[YYYY-MM-DD]] markdown.
Schedule Tasks
Most people over-plan or add additional points to a day as notes. At the end of the day, you might still have points left. With this feature, you can schedule open points to any other day. The selected todos are basically copied to the selected date and marked as scheduled in the current note.
Extra iOS Gestures
I know text editing on a mobile device is hard. NotePlan makes it easier. If you want to move a block of text up or down in the note: 1. close the keyboard, 2. then tap & hold the text-block until it turns blue. Now: Keep your finger pressed while sliding up or down to drop it where you want to have it.
If you want to mark multiple todos (as done for example), there is a similar gesture. Press & Hold the first text block until it turns blue, then release and press the last one. It will expand the selection and you can choose from the toolbar what you want to do with them.
To switch between months or days, just swipe horizontally.
(all shown in the video above)
Availability & Pricing
NotePlan for iPhone and iPad will launch on Wednesday, June 14th with a price of $11.99, that’s a 20% discount from the normal price of $14.99. The discount is valid for 48 hours and ends Thursday night, June 16th.
Bonus Discount
Since the iPhone, iPad and Mac versions run best together, I have decided to give a 15% discount on the Mac version too for the same timeframe.
That’s $16,99 instead of $19,99 for 48 hours!
Originally published at www.noteplan.co on May 24, 2017.
