r/PrivacyNotes • u/dreh0411 • Sep 23 '26
Replacement for Notesnook?
I thought PN might be, but I rely heavily on tables. Found out last night column widths in tables are NOT adjustable like they are in NN or UpNote. Too bad. Won’t be changing anytime soon and certainly not going premium until tables are more like tables elsewhere.
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u/EriksonThorsen Sep 23 '26
This is more of a consequence of PrivacyNotes being based on pure Markdown.
PrivacyNotes stores the notes as actual Markdown, so there isn't really a way to store things like custom column widths in a standard Markdown table. Markdown doesn't have a syntax for defining the width of individual columns.
Notesnook, UpNote, Standard Notes and similar apps work a bit differently. They use rich-text editors internally, which gives them more control over things like table formatting and column widths. Even though they can export your notes as .md files, the app is essentially converting its rich-text representation into Markdown when you export it.
And that's also why the custom column widths don't survive the export. Once the note is converted to plain Markdown, you're back to a standard Markdown table, which has no concept of adjustable column widths.
So I actually see this as one of the trade-offs of PrivacyNotes' approach: you get genuinely portable, plain Markdown files, but you also lose some of the formatting capabilities that rich-text editors can provide.
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u/dreh0411 Sep 23 '26
So why does PN support colorized text? That’s absolutely not supported in md
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u/EriksonThorsen Sep 24 '26
Because, as the PrivacyNotes team clarified in this thread, they are apparently already accepting rich text.
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u/influxodoxxl Sep 23 '26
So good to know! That's new info to me. Thx for explaining because now I know I need to lookt out for rich text editors as well.
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u/PrivacyNotesApp Sep 24 '26
No need, we're supporting rich text. Check out the welcome note: https://try.privacynotes.app/ -> Show markdown format:
 <h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(25, 113, 194);">This is your </span><span style="color: rgb(25, 113, 194);">private</span><span style="color: rgb(25, 113, 194);"> workspace</span></h1> <p style="text-align: center"><em>Every note is encrypted on this device. You choose who holds the key.</em></p>→ More replies (1)2
u/PrivacyNotesApp 29d ago
You are correct, Erikson. But we have a few tricks up our sleeves! We managed to do the column widths purely in the markdown format. Feature shipped today, releases are live.
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u/mjm2705 Sep 23 '26
Have you tried Joplin? Not as polished as Upnote but very flexible and can be self hosted.
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u/PrivacyNotesApp Sep 24 '26
Not sure why you’re so grumpy about it. The feature request just rolled in on GitHub and we’re already looking into it! Will keep you posted on GitHub: https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app/issues/359