My Wishes for NotePlan

I like and use NotePlan (via Setapp 🖇️), and feel good recommending it to people. But there are a couple of reasons why I don’t love it. So while I keep all my notes and tasks in Markdown files in the NotePlan folder, I prefer editing those in other apps – like Paper. Below are the changes and improvements I would need for me to love it.

The basics needs to be improved

The NotePlan developer is very active, seems like a great guy, and is pumping out updates. Some of these are really ambitious (like more collaboration and a web editor). But the app is, at its core, a Markdown editor – and I think this core requires some improvements, and that getting this right is foundational for the rest.

I get that I can’t expect it to be as good here as the dedicated Paper, and some of the more advanced features, like the Typewriter Mode:

But NotePlan should be better…

Bold and italics

Let’s say I have a bold sentence, and I then want the middle word to also be in italics. I should be able to select that word and hit Cmd+I. But NotePlan completely messes this up.

I also wish I could say that I want hitting Cmd+I to give me _underscores_ instead of *asterisks*.

Ordered lists

Another thing it can’t handle, is manipulating ordered lists. Neither adding something in the middle of a list, nor moving items around, works as it should. (I’ve shown what I mean here.)

Selection

A couple of updates ago, the NotePlan dev improved how selection works when you’re editing a task or checklist item. Let’s say I’ve written a task, and the caret is at the end of the line. I now want to select the text (to rewrite it, make it bold, or whatever), so I hit Shift+Cmd+Left:

I like that it doesn’t select the task list element here! And if I do want to select it, I just hit the hotkey again:

I really like this behaviour – but the improvement needs to make its way to regular lists and headings as well.

Links

Links look quite nice in NotePlan:

And you can create them easily by selecting the text you want to become a link, and hitting Cmd+K. Then it will paste the link from your clipboard. But there are two problems:

1. I don’t think you can edit a link, or see which link is actually there.
2. I use the clipboard manager Paste a lot – and occasionally, I don’t want to use the last thing I copied, but something previous instead. This is clunky in NotePlan.

I prefer the way Paper (and several other apps) works here:

If you select some text and paste a link, it will create the hyperlink. This is sort of like how NotePlan works with Cmd+K – but you can also paste something from earlier (with a clipboard manager).¹ Hitting Cmd+K in Paper works like this:

If you’re in Preview Mode (which acts more like a rich text editor), you’ll get a regular link dialog box – and if you have a link in your clipboard, it will pre-fill the link section. If you’re in Markdown Mode, it works like NotePlan. However, there you can always see the link content. And in Preview Mode, you can hit Cmd+K or left click to see/edit the content.

I wish NotePlan copied the paste behaviour, and that Cmd+K opened a dialog box. And, the compact Markdown link appearance is neat, but I wish it would expand on focus – even though I, in general, really don’t like it when Markdown syntax does that. I’ve made my own NotePlan theme (you can download the light mode here, and the dark mode here). And the only syntax I have auto-hide on for is for headings – but that’s only because I can’t place the # symbols in the margin, which I wish I could.

More advanced stuff

I honestly think the stuff I have mentioned until now is table stakes and should be prioritised. However, when it comes to the things I’m getting to now, I get that priorities differ. But the following are my main wishes.

Synced blocks/sections

This feature is currently planned, and is discussed a bit here. But I wanted to add some nuances – and I’m not sure what’s the best solution would be.

Sync vs. transclusion

Let’s say you have a “master note” on a subject, and you want to add info to it from several other notes. For this, Obsidian supports transclusion, which is quite cool. The way it works, is that if you write [[Name of a note#Heading]] you’ll create a link to that note (and heading), but if you instead write ![[Name of a note#Heading]] the app will display the content under that heading directly in the current note.

However, here’s an important detail (that can both be a positive and a negative): The actual content of the master note file will only be the shortcodes (![[Name of a note#Heading]]), and not all the things that will be displayed in the app. The preview of the content will also usually be read-only, and you have to go into the original note to edit it.

NotePlan currently has a Synced Line feature, which works a bit differently:

This allows you to sync a line (like a task) between two notes. The difference here is that the line actually is in both notes. NotePlan will add a little code at the end (which it then hides), to tell the app to sync all instances of that line/code. So a task could look like this:

- [ ] A synced task #Tag ^8r1x8v

A benefit of this, is that the line is equally there in all instances, and you can edit it everywhere. You could also share a file with a collection of those, and the content would be included (without you having to also share the other files).

However, the duplication can create problems with things like search and tagging. For instance, if I check for tasks with #Tag, I would see all the synced lines individually.

My question is, when NotePlan wants to expand in this area, should it go for syncing or transclusion? I guess an answer would be to work towards both. And being compatible with things like Obsidian is an important argument for at least supporting transclusion. But I would’ve loved it if synced blocks/sections could be a thing, and that the duplication issue could be addressed somehow.²

Smart folders and lists, and a more flexible sidebar

I love the way NotePlan has two separate systems for #Tags and @Mentions,³ and that you can give them to both notes and tasks. But I think it’s underutilised – and an improvement here is one of the largest wishes I have.

Currently, you can create Filters, which have a cool rules system. However, the problem I have with this, is that in only works on tasks, and that the layout takes up a lot of space because it uses a lot of it on margins and showing where every note is placed:

I get that this might be preferred for some⁴ – but I wish I could create a Smart Section or Smart List that would just display it as compact as a regular list:

If you went for the Smart Section option, it would be a part of a regular note. And in the example above, it would fetch (and create synced lines) with all tasks matching the criteria. (In this example, having the tag @Hjemme.)

Here’s what a regular folder looks like in the sidebar:

I really wish I could create a smart folder (maybe with the same rules system), and have the notes that fit the criteria just show up as a similar list. I think the only thing I can do now, is to go all the way to the bottom of the sidebar, select a single tag, click it, and then see a clunky list of the instances of the tag.

A more flexible sidebar would also be needed.

The developer recently released an update with a cool Notes Tables feature, that I’m sure many will love. But it’s not for me…

Personal collaboration

Something like this is also planned, I think – and I won’t go into it too much. But currently I only use Apple Notes and Reminders.app for things I share with my wife, and it would be neat if I could move that stuff over to NotePlan. It does have a team feature – however, that’s more of a professional tool. But I get that that’s where the money is…

A bright future

In general, I’m excited about NotePlan’s future! Especially because the developer is so active. And it feels better investing in it when I know that everything is just a folder of Markdown files. However, I really wished I loved being in the app… But I might someday!