Last month I wrote about Notational Velocity, my favorite writing app for OS X. Notational Velocity's counterpart on iOS is the lovely SimpleNote. Completely and fully functional as a standalone app, SimpleNote is a very, well, simple, writing app for iOS. I use it daily on my iPhone 4.

To use SimpleNote, you'll need to create a free account. You can do this from the iOS app or on the SimpleNote website. It takes about 4 seconds - there's no possible way it could be easier. Set your email address, pick a password, and you're done. My kind of setup.

Once your account is set up, you can get started. Since it's your first time, all you'll see is a search field, plus sign, and a big blank white area. Once you start creating notes, they'll go in that space. When you want to create a note, press the plus sign and start typing. Your first line is the title, so no need to worry about that. When you're finished up, just press back. No saving - that's all automatic. Remember, this app is all about simplicity.

  • No thinking of titles.
  • No text formatting.
  • No remembering to save.
  • No organizing.

SimpleNote is as much about what isn't there, as what is there. There are no fancy organization schemes. There are no extra buttons. There is no clutter. There are no distractions. In fact, the latest version of SimpleNote added an excellent full-screen mode.

Search

When you want to find a note, whether for reference or to edit it, simply type a word or two into the search bar. All notes that contain those words will appear below in real time.

Sync with Notational Velocity

All your notes live on SimpleNote's servers. If your iOS device dies, you don't lose your notes - simply install SN on your new device and you're up and running very quickly.

Maybe the killer feature of SN is the ability to sync with Notational Velocity. Any notes that you create on your iOS device can be edited on your Mac using NV, and vice versa. If you use the NV DropBox storage trick, then all your notes live in three separate places: your hard drive, SimpleNote's servers, and DropBox's servers. That's one heck of a backup system - and it's all completely automated.

Versioning

Down on the toolbar of SN is a little clock icon. Press it, and you can choose between several older versions of your note to roll back to. Take a minute to think about how useful this could be.

Say you edit a note, and accidentally edit out a large portion by mistake. Unfortunately you don't realize for a few days. No problem with SN - just roll back to the older version - your hard work is back. If you have a tendency to edit a little too ruthlessly, this is a killer feature.

Sharing and Collaboration

Let's say you have a note written up, but you need some help with it. Rather than hand over your iPhone, SN has a much, much better solution. Press the icon in the bottom left to bring up your Sharing menu. Switch "Publish Web Page" to on, and an email appears. This email contains a link to your note in web page form - and this web-note syncs with your SN note. Send it to whoever, and get your collaboration on.

Final Thoughts

Simple Note is the best note-taking and text document storing application on iOS. Period. It is amazingly simple to use. The syncing options with Notational Velocity and DropBox mean your data is as safe as it could possibly be. None of this requires any technical ability - it's all dead simple. That's exactly why I love SimpleNote.

Instead of sitting around thinking "What pile of flashy new, semi-useful features can we add today?" , they instead seem to ask "What's the bare minimum amount of incredibly useful features needed to store notes?" The difference in philosophy is clear. SimpleNote makes writing on my iPhone a joy. It's simple. It's seamless. It works. And it works amazingly well. All the features I covered today are included with the free version of SimpleNote. If you have an iOS device, you have to try it.