Alternatives to Notes.app that will sync WITHOUT a cloud service

After what seemed like endless searching I have only found one solution that works.

MacJournal.

Not ideal and certainly not cheap but it does work and syncs directly between the iPad and Mac over WiFi.

Robin

NOT CHEAP!

Really?....

Uh, you own an iPad!...

$1.99 for a Notes app that works both over WiFi AND Cloud services is expensve for you?

Really?....

I missed the rest of your post.

Your job doesn't let you use a Cloud/offsite server storage service!

Got it!

Yes indeed.

The iPad version is a no brainer and I purchased it for the trial and have downloaded a free trial of the Mac version of MacJournal, it is the Mac version that is not cheap but so far does seem to work!

It is very frustrating not being allowed to use any Cloud services, for my own personal use I have iCloud, Dropbox and OneDrive which I use but my work Mac has all access to these systems blocked! 😠

If you can think of any other Notes App that can sync peer to peer without Cloud I would love to hear about it, before I spend money on MacJournal?

Just for completeness, I did check out Chronos Notes and Notelife on iPad.

It appears Chrono Notes is no longer sold and Notelife, while on the App Store has not been updated in 3-4 years.

Also they don't respond to presages/tech support questions, so does not sound like a possibility!

For use with document/notes/text/PDF apps and images.

Local wireless Network transfer app.

Take look at Dukto for both iOS and Mac OS

Dukto Pro by Tidal ArtWorks

https://appsto.re/us/lhJfJ.i

Also look at this wireless local network/Bluetooth transfer app for both iOS and Mac OS

Flick. by ydangle

https://appsto.re/us/-yRzM.i

This is not going to be helpful. A week ago, I would have recommended NoteLife and SOHO Notes; they do not sync via the cloud. I've been using the pair for years. Unfortunately, iOS 11 made my version of NoteLife obsolete. The new version of NoteLife makes SOHO Notes obsolete. The new version of NoteLife syncs via the cloud and unlike the old version it has a monthly fee. So I am looking for an alternative to NoteLife and SOHO Notes. My requirements are similar to yours. I'm wondering if you found a solution.

There are no 3rd party applications that sync via USB cable. Cable sync is not public API.

Closest would be something like VoodooPad which can do WiFi sync on the LAN. VoodooPad is a great product, and I think with 5.1 you can do this, but you should experiment a bit.

THIS is the thread I've been looking for! I second KB's request, and all other points made in the first post.

I've looked into the apps above (VoodooPad and SOHO Notes) and both cost around $50. That's more than I'm willing to pay for a notes app. I don't need a lot of extra features. Just the ability to sync notes between my computer and phone through a cable, or through a local (non internet) wireless connection.

Please post more apps or workarounds if you know if any.

Ok, I thought of something. Haven't done it yet, but will when I "re upgrade" to mountain lion (I downgraded back to Lion when I noticed the issues with notes. It really is a dealbreaker for me.)

This isn't ideal, but it's what I'm going to do.

Contacts (so far) can still be synced locally. Each contact has a "Notes" field. What I'm going to do is create a group in my contacts called "Notes", and when I have a note, I'll just create a new contact for it. I'll put the title for the note in the "Company" field, write the note in the "Note" field, leave the rest blank probably, assign it to my "Notes" group in contacts, and that will be my new "non-cloud notes app"

Again, its not ideal, but I think it'll do.

Apple, please dont *^%! around with the rest of the syncing apps. A cloud OPTION is nice. But it's not practical for a lot of people. This almost got me to switch to Android, becuase if I was going to be forced to sync through clouds, I no longer had a reason to stick with Apple products.

This is a great idea.

Like you and many others, I am very unhappy at Apple's arbitrary removal of local Notes sync from Mountain Lion. I went back to Lion as soon as I discovered the change. Now after updating to iTunes 11 there are yet more Notes sync problems ..

Thanks for the smart thinking. I'm going to test run it. Did you find any gotchas ?

I have been using MacJournal on the desktop, and importing iPhone Notes directly into it -- MacJournal preserves the name, date and time of the original writing of the Note, which I find important. I can add photos or links to the notes later and it still preserves the original time stamp of the note (or I can alter it if I wish).

I find MJ easier to use than Soho Notes, though I own that too - I used it for a while and found it was a bit buggy, though the corresponding iPhone app (Notelife) is great.

Though MacJournal does have an iPhone app, I am having a difficult time weaning myself away from Notes on the iPhone. I write 20 or so a day. I am trying to get into the habit of using the MacJournal app for the iphone but in the meantime, this works: I import the Notes using an app called PhoneView - I do an import of the notes about once a week and just drag them into MacJournal.

No iCloud required, and no lost notes. This will do for now.

Hi anc12,

It's working ok for me. Using the notes app would be easier, but using contacts for notes works ok.

When using contacts for notes, there's no formatting or bold or underline or pictures or font size etc. Just plain text.

For SUPER long notes, (something that might equal 5 typed pages) I found I needed to split them up for the contact to load without freezing/crashing.

I also often have the annoyance of leaving the category set to "notes" and then trying to search for a contact and not finding it initially - becuase I'm in the notes category, not "Contacts" or "All" etc. (minor issue).

No other problems really. And the ones above are minor.

Wish there was a better option, but since there isn't, this works!

Not sure how much of an investment you want to make, but the database app Bento, syncs directly over WiFi between the iOS and OSX versions - no cloud involved.

Matt

D'OH! I just found this thread and suggestion of Bento, but when I followed the link, it led to a page saying that Apple is discontinuing Bento. 😮