The Nitty-Gritty

The legacy version of Simplenote’s API is hosted on Google App Engine. Many of the apps that sync with Simplenote, including some of our favorites like Notational Velocity and nvALT, still use this legacy API.

Our newer Simperium service uses Amazon Web Services (AWS), and is built to be much more resilient to failure. DashNote and ResophNotes are on this new API already. We know that many of you rely on Simplenote to run your lives, so even a few minutes of downtime is a major pain. We’re committed to dealing more gracefully with unexpected failures, bugs, limitations, and communicating better with you when there is a problem.

Holiday Bonus

We’ve given all premium subscribers two months free to thank you for being early adopters and sticking with us through some tough times in the last year. We’re also going to be working with all our developers to get their apps on the new API so we can officially deprecate our older, less scalable systems by the end of 2013.

Finally, we’re going to loop back on some of the most popular user requests, including an Android app, Mac app, and native support for Markdown while of course preserving the simplicity you've come to expect.

We hope that you, too, are using this holiday season to relax and recharge for a full 2013, and here’s to many more (simple) notes in our future together.

Our primary syncing systems are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Earlier this week, AWS experienced significant downtime that caused Simplenote syncing to fail. The AWS downtime also affected sites like Reddit, Airbnb, and Foursquare.

We have a separate system for syncing notes with third-party apps (like Notational Velocity) that is currently hosted on Google App Engine (GAE). About three weeks ago, we started experiencing significant latency when writing changes to this system, resulting in delayed syncing ranging from a few minutes to a few hours. Our efforts to fix this on our own weren't successful, so we turned to the GAE team for advice.

They recommended we immediately migrate our third-party syncing to a newer version of their platform. On Wednesday night, we decided to do this. It went less smoothly than we hoped. We did not properly take into account some consequences of the migration, but we corrected this last night.

This morning, GAE is experiencing a global outage and we are waiting to hear more news on that front. Our official iOS apps and all third-party apps that have upgraded to our latest API (like ResophNotes and DashNote) should be working since they don't rely on GAE. Our web app is still hosted on GAE, so it will be down until their service is restored.

We'll work on a process to remove duplicate notes that have appeared in some users' accounts. We're a small team working hard to get things stable again. Thanks for sticking with us.

We're taking steps to prevent these kinds of interruptions in the future, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

The latest version is also much better at handling lots of notes. As a growing number of users pass the 1000 note threshold, this new version will accommodate them easily.

If you're having any trouble with the update, please contact us at support@simplenoteapp.com and we'll work hard to help you.

Here's a complete list of changes: 

Thanks to the many people who have contacted us with their kind words, suggestions, and bug reports. We're excited to share this update with you.

Alas, Simplenote for iOS won't be available for download in the meantime, but hopefully not for long.

If you were among the small number of people who downloaded the update before it was pulled, and you're experiencing a crash, please get in touch with us at support@simplenoteapp.com. Only premium users and those who have been using Simplenote since iOS version 3.x could be affected, and only if they happened to download the update during the hour or so that it was available.

We're also continuing our work on a bigger update that greatly improves syncing and overall performance. It's currently being tested.

A Simplenote iOS update also hit the App Store awhile back with a variety of fixes.

Most importantly, we've been hard at work on a big improvement to the way syncing works. This is a huge undertaking. Our goal is to make syncing even faster and more reliable since we believe it's Simplenote's core strength.

We look forward to sharing the changes with you when they're ready.

We decided to pull the update from the App Store, which means new users can't download it either. We've already fixed the problem and are now awaiting App Store approval. If all goes well, Simplenote will return to the App Store by this Friday.

If you were unfortunate enough to snag the update before we took it down, you can avoid the bug by not creating new notes while viewing a particular tag. Closing Simplenote from the task manager and reopening it will make all notes visible again.

We're very sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime.

Tabs. You can now use the Tab key to indent your selection or the current line. If you don’t want this feature, you can disable it in Settings.

Preview lines. You can choose how many preview lines are shown in the note list.

Markdown. For those who want to format their notes using Markdown syntax, you can now enable support for this in the new Note Info dialog. Doing so allows you to toggle between editing and previewing your note. When you publish a Markdown note, the publishing link sends people to a nicely rendered version that stays in sync with your updates.

Sharing. There's now a sharing menu in the web app where you can easily publish a note. To let other people edit a note with you, you can add their email addresses as tags.

Better links. When you click on a shared note link in a notification email, you're brought to that note inside your account (if you're already signed in). The links are now shortened using our simp.ly domain.

Printing. For old school people who like paper.

Import and export. We believe data should flow freely. You can now import and export notes using a variety of formats. This feature, which can be accessed from your account menu, is still in beta (its interface will be improved in the future).

Fixed overzealous warnings. There was a problem where you might be warned about changes not being saved even if you hadn't made any changes. Also, some browsers were displaying an unnecessary security warning. Both of these have been fixed.

Session recovery. If you become signed out of your account for some reason, the app will now prompt you to sign in again. This solves a potential case where unsaved data could have been lost under some circumstances.

Word count. Displayed in the new Note Info dialog. Also shows character count.

Untagged notes. For those who just have to tag everything, searching for tag:untagged will now display all your untagged notes so you can tag them to your heart's content.

Haven't tried the web app in awhile? You can sign in here.