Show HN: Octarine: Private Markdown stored notes on macOS
octarine.appHey folks! Been working on this for a year now, and shipped a bunch of features over the last few months, since the app has come off the closed beta to available for all on Mac!
Comparisons with Obsidian are unavoidable, but the app has few distinctions like:
- A pure WYSIWYG editor that doesn't jerk when writing rich text.
- Stored completely in markdown
- Does not weigh in at 300mb, but rather just 7mb (Thanks Rust and Tauri)
- Opinionated in some workflows, and makes things easier for day-to-day workflows.
- Keyboard shortcuts for almost everything, and a super powerful Cmd + K bar.
Still loads to do to catch up, and reach where it needs to go, but would be happy if you give it a try!
Download - https://octarine.app/releases
Changelog - https://octarine.app/changelog
Windows/Linux versions are on the way, and are currently being tested and fixed for some issues.
There's also a discord if you want to hop in for discussion. I really love the app so far. Very much reminds me of Obsidian, which I've never really been able to get into, beyond just a basic markdown editor. Octarine makes it much easier to 'get going' with the whole network linking, daily notes, productivity aspect. A couple of requests: - It would be great to have some kind of documentation on the website. It took me a while to realise how to use a template (I'd assumed it would be a page/note-level thing, not a block-level one) and exactly how the daily note worked. - Well, I was going to ask about a non-dark theme here (the default really hurt my eyes) but I've managed to find the setting. Again, this was quite hidden — a settings dialog via the app menu would be better. Heyo! Appreciate the kind words! - I'm really behind user education at the moment. Have a few docs (similar to git sync) that I want to put on the site, since there's a few automations already in place (like one click move unfinished tasks from yesterday over to today) that aren't really visible unless you scavenge through the changelog. - Did you try the command bar (Cmd + K) should bring it up, that should give you access to almost all settings/navigation/actions in the app. The setting button was actually outside below Attachments, but I moved it under the workspace button (which I feel now is a poor choice, since there's no place to immediately find it) But great feedback! I'll try to address them in the next release, along with some cool stuff! Feel free to email me, or drop a message in the discord if you have more requests/issues/anything! Maker here! Feel free to ask questions about roadmap, pricing, feature requests or anything in general!