SideNotes 1.5

Since SideNotes 1.4, we’ve released 19 minor updates. We didn’t want to publish any new major update until the thing we’ve been working on is ready.

And now it is. Meet the new text editor. It still uses Markdown for formatting, but
you won’t see the markup anymore (all those extra characters like **, ::, or #).

A few months ago, we shared a preview video and invited our newsletter subscribers to test it.

Since then, we’ve made some improvements, and we're really grateful for all the feedback we’ve received. And today, we’re releasing it to everyone.

The New Editor

Building a new text editor for SideNotes wasn’t easy. We received lots of emails
asking us to hide the Markdown markup. Many people thought it would be simple —
probably just a matter of flipping a setting.

But it wasn’t that easy. It took much more time than we expected, with lots of thinking, planning, implementation, and testing.

And here it is. We hope you'll enjoy it.

New Editor

How does it Work?

The new editor still uses Markdown under the hood, but it's invisible. So you can type text like:

# Header
here is **bold text** and here is ::highlighted **and bold**::
[a link](https://www.apptorium.com/sidenotes)

And it will be nicely formatted as you type, so you will see:

Example

Of course, you don't need to know Markdown at all. It's all available, when you click the Aa button:

Aa menu

To remove specific formatting from selected text, choose an option in that menu. You can also select Clear Formatting or simply press:
backspace

By the way, if you can’t live without seeing the Markdown markup, there’s still an
option for you. You’ll find it under SettingsAppearanceMarkdown Markup.

Links

Almost forgot to mention this! You can now press K to add a link to selected text or edit an existing one.

Other Improvements

We also took the opportunity to refine the user interface with updated icons
throughout. Menus now include icons too, in line with what will become standard in
the upcoming macOS release.

We’ve also updated the app icon — now it matches SideNotes Mobile.

The Icon

New System Requirements

Until now, SideNotes required macOS 10.15 or newer (and macOS 12 for features like
iCloud sync and Shortcuts). With SideNotes 1.5, the minimum system requirement is now macOS 13.

What About SideNotes Mobile?

SideNotes Mobile doesn’t have the new editor yet. It still needs some work.
They’re two separate apps, but as soon as it’s ready (hopefully soon), we’ll release an update.

What About FiveNotes?

Once the mobile version of SideNotes is updated, we’ll turn our attention to
FiveNotes. They use the same editor, so migrating it shouldn’t take too much work.
Stay tuned!

Get SideNotes

If you already own SideNotes, you should receive this update for free. If you don’t
have SideNotes yet, you can get it here.
There’s a 30-day trial available if you download it from our website.