QuickAdvice: Meteor Notes Organizes Notes The Old Fashioned Way
Meteor Notes ($2.99) by Mathieu Routhier is an app that helps you organize your notes in folders on your iPhone.
Most note apps nowadays use lists to organize your notes. Sometimes this isn't enough. That's when Meteor Notes comes in. Users can organize their notes with folders and subfolders, and even more nested folders if needed. The amount of folders is unlimited.
The first thing you'll see when the app is launched is a screen that lists all folders and notes that aren't in a separate folder besides being in 'My iPhone.' You can add new folders, notes, and even add pictures with the three buttons in the bottom right. When they're selected, you'll have to direct the app to which folder you want to place the item in.
With all three choices, you'll be prompted to name the folder, note, or picture. With notes, it will bring you to a screen that is plain white with black text, where you will type to your heart's content. With photos, you'll have the option to pick from one already in your device library or take a new one with the camera.
Now that you have got some notes and images together in the app, what if you realize that you need to reorder something? Not a problem with Meteor Notes - you can just tap and hold an item to move or rename it, or delete if needed. Simple and efficient.
With a ton of folders and notes and images to go through, what if you need to look for something quick? There is a search option in the app, which will search-as-you-type, so you get results immediately. It helps if you don't remember exactly what you are searching for, since the results may jog your memory.
With all the folders and nested folders and individual notes and pictures, it may become a bit difficult to open up everything one-by-one. The button on the far bottom left will give you options to either expand all or collapse all, so it's easy to see everything at a glance.
There is also an Options menu, where you can select the text size for both titles and content, and pick the theme. There's three choices right now, hopefully more in the future: Night (default, which looks the nicest I think), White (traditional), and Black (inverted).
Meteor Notes will let users broadcast their notes over a Wi-Fi connection, in which you can access them on a computer by simply pointing your web browser to the selected address.
If you have notes from other places, the only way to import them is through Gmail Notes, which is convenient only if you have been using Gmail Notes this entire time. If not, then this may be a bit more tedious. To import from Gmail, just enter your credentials and you'll see your notes - you can import all of them or just check off the ones you need.
For exporting, the only option right now is to email the note to yourself. If you regularly plug your device in and do backups in iTunes, your data should stay safe. But we all know that iTunes backups can't be trusted completely - so email would be the safe option.
Overall, this is a good app if you are the type that needs to keep things organized in layers of folders. It isn't good if you are looking for something that keeps everything synced across all your devices, with a service like Dropbox, for example. Hopefully the developers can think about adding such a service into the app in the future. I think that more font choices should be added as well.
If folders are your thing and you like having a little control on the appearance of the experience, then you should take try this app. The price is a bit high for what is being offered, so in the end I would recommend just keeping your eyes peeled on more refinement on Meteor Notes.
