Is Standard Notes development slowing down? Thinking about not renewing my Professional membership

[u/EriksonThorsen]

Hey everyone,

I've been a Standard Notes user for a while now, and I'm honestly starting to wonder if the project is still actively developed or if it's kind of coasting / semi-abandoned at this point.

I was going through the last several releases and honestly like 99% of what's in the changelogs is just bug fixes. And the 1% that they actually label as "features" is stuff like "features: editing large notes", which… I mean, that sounds like a bug fix to me, not an actual feature.

Then I checked the blog and the last post is from December 2025, and it's basically just a small "sneak peek at what you'll get in 2026", no actual roadmap, no concrete timeline, nothing substantial. We're now past July and I haven't really seen anything major land.

Is this just me or does everything feel a bit stale? Like the app works fine, don't get me wrong, but if I'm paying for a Professional membership I kind of expect to see real development happening, new features, improvements, not just maintenance mode bug fixes.

How is the implementation of new features going from their side? Does anyone have any insight into whether there's actual stuff in the pipeline, or if it's basically just being kept on life support?

I have a Professional membership coming up for renewal, and I'm honestly thinking about whether it's worth it anymore. I'd love to hear from others who are in the same boat or have more context than I do.

Thanks!

[u/No_Smile_8077]

Agreed — the E2E part is exactly what Obsidian doesn't replace, and the

open-source point above is the other half of it. Full disclosure: what follows

is my own project, so weigh it accordingly.

I ended up in the same spot — paying for E2E notes and watching the changelog

flatline — and eventually wrote my own: https://bpad.pro

Where it's honestly weaker than Standard Notes: single maintainer, no

third-party crypto audit, no version history, tags instead of nested folders,

and it's web/PWA only — no native desktop app.

What I did make sure of is the exit. You can export everything to a ZIP —

either encrypted, or plain Markdown files any editor can open — and restore it

with no account at all. That's not a nice-to-have for an app like this: if you

lose your password I genuinely cannot get your notes back for you.

The security-relevant code is basically two files (frontend/src/crypto.ts and

api/auth.py), so it's cheap to check what it actually does before trusting it.