Google Keep has always been one of those apps I never thought about twice, mainly because it’s just there if you have a Google account. So I never really chose it, but also didn’t mind it because it’s frictionless and gets the job done. In fact, after trying tons of open-source note-takers, I usually end up going back to Keep again. No matter your stance on Google, you’ve got to admit their products are seamlessly integrated and usually offer a good user experience.

But, as usual, I still dabble with a bunch of note-takers on the side. Simplenote is one I stumbled across a while ago, and I kind of expected it to fall by the wayside like most of the others. But there was something about its minimalist vibe that kept pulling me back in, and the more I used it, the more I noticed small things that Keep can’t do. At some point, that adds up enough that going back feels like a downgrade.

What is Simplenote?

Free, open, and kind of refreshing

Simplenote has been around since 2008, which makes it older than most of the apps people are currently switching away from. It was built by a startup called Simperium, picked up by Automattic (the company behind WordPress) in 2013, and has been completely free ever since. There are no storage limits or premium tier with the features you actually want locked behind it. All the client apps are open-source under GPLv2, so the code is public and anyone can contribute to or audit it.

Your notes aren't stored locally, they live on Automattic's own sync infrastructure, which is what makes everything show up across your devices without any setup. You create an account and that's genuinely it. It runs on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, and the web, so it's not tied to any ecosystem. And at its core it's a plain text and Markdown app, and that's more or less intentional; the simplicity is the thing, not a limitation of it.

A purpose-built sync layer without the Google glue

Sync that doesn’t ask much of you

Simplenote's sync is handled by something called Simperium, which Automattic also owns and runs on their own servers. It's not just a cloud storage folder with a Simplenote label on it though, it's a sync layer that was purpose-built for notes specifically, and has been running since before Automattic even acquired the app. The practical difference is that instead of re-uploading an entire note every time you make a change, it pushes just the delta (the specific change you made). That's also why the version history works the way it does, which I'll dive into later.

From a user perspective, you just sign in and your notes are there across every device, including Linux, which Keep doesn't have a native app for at all. There's no sync button or folder to point at, and nothing to configure after the initial account setup. If you've spent any time wrestling with self-hosted sync solutions like me, the fact that this just works out of the box without touching anything is genuinely appreciated.

The version history slider is kind of genius

Google Keep’s version history is clunky in comparison

Google Keep got version history a few years ago, but the way it works is quite awkward. You can’t roll back a note to a previous version with a click, you have to download the HTML file and copy the text back into the note manually. It’s also web-only, so you can’t access it on any of the mobile or desktop apps.

Simplenote handles it completely differently. Every change is tracked incrementally, and you access the history through a slider at the bottom of the screen. You scrub backwards through every version the same way you'd rewind a video, and hit restore when you get to the point you wanted. It's super fast, it's in the app on every platform, and it actually feels like a feature someone designed rather than a checkbox that got ticked. You will find that sometimes version history is unavailable, but that's likely just because the note hasn't synced yet (this doesn't happen most of the time and seems to be just an occasional error I run into).

It renders Markdown

Keep doesn’t

Coming from Obsidian and Joplin, Markdown support in a notes app is basically a baseline requirement for me at this point, so it’s nice to see that Simplenote has it. You have to toggle it on per note, write in the syntax, and hit the eye icon to switch to a rendered preview without the syntax. It's not a big feature, I just like that it's implemented cleanly. Keep has no Markdown support at all, so if that's part of how you write notes, it's a hard gap to work around.

There’s a focus mode

Keep’s card grid doesn’t have an equivalent

Focus mode in Simplenote is pretty much what it sounds like: the note list panel on the left disappears and the note you're in takes up the whole screen. That's all there is to focus mode. Keep doesn't really have an equivalent because the whole interface is a card grid, so there's no single-note view to collapse into. However, this is not the biggest win Simplenote has over Keep because I do still think Keep has a pretty easy and minimalistic layout. Simplenote just takes it to the next level if that's your thing.

Keep is good, but Simplenote is a little better

Simplenote fills a specific gap - quick, lightweight notes that sync everywhere, it renders Markdown, and it doesn't ask much of you. It's nothing flashy, which is the whole point, yet it still offers more than Keep in ways that matter.