Quiver - take better notes App Reviews

I’m new to this app, but I have to say that so far, I am really impressed. It was easy to learn, and I find most things intuitive. There are a number of little touches (like being able to choose a default cell type, being able to choose whether or not the page scrolls past the last line) that make the program very nice to use. I’m not giving it five stars only because I’ve only used it for a day, but so far, it does exactly what I need it to do. Kudos to the developer! Update: I’m loving this app, and so I’ve upgraded it to five stars. When I’m taking notes, the ability to quickly switch from a markdown-type cell to a code cell and back again, or to a text cell (to insert an illustration) is just so nice. A very well thought-out, useful hunk o’ code.

For a long time now, my group of developers has been sharing code snippets using Evernote, which works, but is painful, because that’s not what Evernote was designed for, and it does (code wise) stupid things like smart quote autosubstitions that break things. Quiver to the rescue! It’s just so much better for storing/sharing code, and now it even imports all that stuff we had stored in Evernote. As some rock star at Woodstock said, “I’m in heaven, man!"

The 3.0 release has taken quiver to a whole new level. This app is absolutely essential to me, and one of the best resources at my disposal as a developer.

**Updated Review for Version 3.x** Just downloaded and started using version 3.0. It’s excellent. I haven’t hit all the new features yet, but the look n’ feel, performace and the overall navigation of the application are excellent. I love the smaller icons in the sidebar and the dark theme. Once again the developer has outdone himself and made an impressive application that much better. Top notch work. Hands down, arguably one of the best note taking applications out there. ** Version 2.x Excellent application. I have been using Notebook by Circus Ponies for awhile, but Quiver may very well replace that in my toolbox. I find the UI very intuitive, the simplicity is not ‘simple’ but elegant, removing all unnecessary adornments and bells and whistles. The programmer slant of the app is very nice providing Code Cells for just about any programming language under the sun. I really think this fits a need in productivity apps that hasn’t been addressed yet. The ‘sync’ feature is a bit limited in that all your really doing is keeping a copy of the notebook on one of the popular cloud storage facilities. Still it works just fine and does what it’s supposed to do. Notebook doesn’t even do this and Yojimbo’s syncing ‘features’ are non-existent or really poorly designed.

Easily the best way to take notes on the Mac and a real bonus for people like me who mix prose, math and code

Really appreciate the recent updates to Quiver. It addressed many of the feature requests users have had and it’s good to know the developer is still invested in improving the app. For the it does, Quiver is one of the best. Perfect for note-taking as a developer or designer.

I use this App everyday. It works well. I wish there was an IOS App so I can access my notes on iPad.

Like other reviewers have shared their experiences, I have tried OneNote, Evernote, Sublime Text, Atom, Mou, MacDown, etc. Nothing compares to Quiver because it gives me the freedom to write using whichever format and even mix them together. I can write rich text, Markdown, LaTeX, plain text, and now even diagrams (without having to awkwardly jump between different apps and converting diagrams). The new 3.0 update also lets me show/hide whichever parts of the UI I want and I can customize how every single part of the app looks via CSS (it does include a few dark/light built-in themes though) and even how exported HTML/PDF/Prints look like. tl;dr: it saves time, it performs well, it looks great, and lets me write something up however I want.

I usually don’t take the time to write reviews for apps, but after this last update I just had to. You guys took an already amazing app, and made it even better. I’m a computer science student so this app is really helpful for taking notes in and out of class, but there was always some limitations with not being able to draw out particular methods and diagrams like you could on paper. But after the newest additions of flowcharts and sequence diagrams I no longer have to worry about those limitiations. This app just organizes everything beautifully and there are just a ton of great features that I could go on about with this app(such as the presentation mode, which is great for reviewing notes)...but this is just an all around solid notetaking app, and I HIGHLY recomend it to anyone!

I could never get the hang of other notebook apps. Within 15 minutes of using Quiver it was clear that this was the app I had been searching for all my life. Very intuitive and good looking, this is the quality that deserves to be on the app store. Looking forward to the iOS version!

Does a perfect job of saving all the Apple iOS Developer Library API information that I copied from the Web in HTML format. The app retains all the color and layout formatting. The app has an editor mode with a pencil icon and a preview mode with an eye icon that are very useful.

Overall, I like this app a lot. I never really had any interest in Markdown, but lately I’ve been wanting to move away from proprietary systems like Evernote and OneNote for storing information, and markdown fits the bill nicely. Quiver is good looking, clean, responsive. The concept of having different cells (really text blocks) within a document, each being able to be a different “type” of data (text, markdown, code, LaTex, diagram) is both clever and useful in practice, allowing you to produce some pretty complex documents. Combine that with attachments, and you have a very flexible system that can easily grow beyond being just a “programmer’s” notebook. Developer is responsive; I found a small bug early on, opened an issue on the Git page, and received a response in less than an hour. Cons: * No iOS version, although the developer did mention he is working on one, so currently no easy way to be mobile * Storing the notes as JSON files, and in an OS X package, means there is no chance of cross-platfrom work. If like me you are stuck on a Windows PC for a lot of your work, you can’t open your Quiver library, not even to simply read data out of it. You’ll need to export the library in HTML or PDF, and of course you can’t add notes to the library until you’re at your Mac. Whether the extra flexibility offered by Quiver’s method is worth the lack of cross-platform access depends a lot on your situation of course. If you don’t need mobile (yet) or PC access to your notes, this is no-brainer: Quiver is definitely the most overall powerful markdown editor I’ve used or even seen, so far.

I tried really hard to love other note-taking applications before Quiver and it never worked. Either they messed up formatting, became too clutter in an attempt to do too much, were too simple by not doing enough, or just didn’t do well on some other key aspect like syncing, data ownership, etc. After just the first few minutes of using Quiver I was in love. This app does exactly what I had wanted from all those other apps before it… yet somehow better than I could imagine. The UI is mindblowingly clean, it’s insanely powerful and gives me all the power I need for any type of note-taking. It’s not an archive like Evernote so if you are the person that just likes to “clip” a lot of things for later reading then this is not the app. This is for maintaining those notes that you care about and that you actually use. For this I have found no better application than Quiver. The only downside of this app is that it’s not cross platform. As others I would love an iOS app and something for my non-Mac machines. This being said, for Quiver I am willing to chugg my Mac along wherever I go. Thank you to the developer(s) for producing an absolutely fantastic application!

Update: Oh wow… in a few weeks this app I see myself using this as a replacement of Evernote. A nice functionality to add would be to generate clean text for markdown tables. Loving it. Great for individuals who are coding in multiple languages. It’s like my personal StackOverflow, works great with my Python and Julia snippets.

I’ve experimented with different apps like Evernote, OneNote and even Sublime for simple note-taking when I’m working on fixing bugs or planning a new feature, and Quiver has never let me down. It has all the basics like syntax highlighting for a wide variety of languages (yay ObjC and Swift!) and the sync with Dropbox is seamless. The new version 3.0 added a truckload of new features while at the same time kept the app lightweight and snappy, I really appreciate that because a dev certainly doesn’t need one more heavy app bogging the system down. If you’re a developer or even a student programmer, this app works wonders and keep everything organized, and YES you should get it. Update: Dropping a star, because after the most recent update, there will be times when the app opens up and show that it’s empty (no notes whatsoever), and after I Cmd+Q to kill and restart the app, my notes will then show up. I’m using Dropbox for the sync, please fix this!

I got this on sale, but now that Ive used it I think its totally worth $10. Its not perfect, but its the best notebook app Ive used, in my opinion. One of the main features that won me over is that the format can be easily exported to plain text or markdown, either from the app itself or from your own hand-rolled scripts—this is because it uses a simple human-readable JSON format, so you can safely keep all your important plans/ideas/journals in here knowing that youll be able to get access to them in 10 years if this app dies in the meantime. I would have (in some ways) preferred that it used something like Markdown as its native format, but the idea of multiple different types of "cells" that you can use in your documents/notes is really useful, and convinced me that the JSON-based format is a good compromise between human-readability and support for the feature of multiple kinds of cells. Play with the app to see what I mean about "cells", but I think youll find it a brilliant solution to weighing the pros and cons of different types of formats—say "yes" to all the formats, just choose whichever is best for your current needs. In addition to rich text, markdown, and code, there are also two types of diagrams, which you can create from text. Very nice. Im hoping they add new types of diagrams, although I havent actually run into any need yet for anything beyond what they offer, but (off the top of my head) mind-maps sound like they might be useful. Also, it would be EXTREMELY useful to be able to export to Word format—Marked 2 was previously my go-to app for writing in Markdown and generating Word docs for all the clueless biz-types who want cant deal with anything other than the HORRIBLE Word format, but Marked 2 actually has TERRIBLE support for Word format, and can give lousy output if you do anything remotely complex.

Good - Customizable, Markdown, Latex support Bad - No Indent/dedent keyboard shortcuts (⌘[ and ⌘]), no brace autocompletion

I purchased this app not thinking it would become my go-to note-taking app, but that is what it has become. Im really impressed with it and want to hightlight how awesome and customizable the export options are. You can export single notes or entire notebooks as JSON (the native file format for Quiver), PDF, Markdown, plain text, and HTML. The HTML export for complete notebooks is particularly nice and by default is exported to a folder with an index.html file linking to all individual notes, which get their own beautifully formatted HTML files. For me, this makes tasks like writing user docs for the web ridiculously easy.

I love this app— I was suggested by a friend to use it for code snippets, but now I’ve started using it for all kinds of notes. I love the way you can mix code with regular types of notes all in the same note file. It literally always stays open on my computer so I can refer to it constantly. Love it!

I’m using the dark theme. In a text cell, how to use “highlight”? Does it work? When do you plan to update?