I realize this is already on the roadmap, but thought it would be good to have a place where we can discuss it.
There was a Discord post gathering volunteers for a beta version, which was closed a few days ago. As far as I know they would be sharing this end of Sep. Anyone got contacted about it?
Especially the local only option would be the most useful feature that could be added. What is holding me back from using RemNote for personal notes is my unwillingness to share my thoughts with strangers, who would be able to read them at will.
Even if you insist that “You own your data. We will never attempt to monetize or share your data with third parties.” (source), there are many privacy related reasons not to do this.
Of course, if you want to make this a pro feature, I would gladly pay for it.
Cheers
I strongly agree with you. A desktop app with the local option would be wonderful.
The main issue for me is that, particularly as of late, there have been many times where the server seemed to be down for extended periods of time; during these times, a number of important features bug out. There’s the obvious inability to sync, but also more subtle defects like rem occasionally becoming un-editable, and highlighting no longer working at all for things like zoomed-in rem. I personally don’t mind the off-chance someone else may access my notes, but these rare instances where remnote becomes unreliable have made it hard to rely on RemNote in totality. Last week I had a lot of issues on one particular day full of lectures and RemNote ended up more a headache than a help.
I think completely alleviating the strain of having to retain user data would help the devs in the long run and also give us more peace of mind.
Edit: so I just read about the 10/06/20 update which includes the release of a Progressive Web App version of RemNote. I’m not familiar with PWAs, but seems promising!
@Martin , on beginning of Sep 6 I was told via email that beta testing with the desktop version would be starting that month. It will soon be 3 months with no news on that. One more update came out today with yet no desktop beta testing.
Is beta testing going on already? (I signed up, but maybe wasn’t chosen?)
To many of us, local/offline is essential in a tool. Which is why a realistic estimate about this is important to us.
I know you wouldn’t keep saying “it will come out soon” just to avoid losing users, so I assume the team really thought they’d have desktop done in September, but issues came up.
In that case, could you please update us to what is the next realistic estimate?
Again, we don’t want you to give us hope at any cost. We’re really just wanting to know a realistic estimate!
Thanks!
Sorry for the delay - we’ve been moving towards getting the desktop app done, but you’re right that it’s been slower than we anticipated.
A large part of this was the the complete backend rebuild that we released on October 26th. This release not only took a significant amount of our attention for the preceding weeks, but also meant that we had to largely restart the desktop app progress that we had made. (We think this was the right prioritization - the new backend has contributed a lot to stability.)
We’ve rebuilt the desktop app back to a workable state, and are now testing it internally. I, for example, have been using it as my primary RemNote client. So, we’re close! There are a few final kinks that we have to work out, and a few more features to finish building, but as a whole it seems to be working well.
At risk of giving another overly-optimistic timeline, we’re hoping to get a significant group of beta testers involved in one of the next two updates (for which we have aggressive timelines), and open it to the public soon after.
hi @Martin, is desktop app an independent program itself or it still needs to communicate with a server? I think people here are looking for a fully independent program.
The desktop app with offer both synced and local-only (fully independent) knowledgebases 
Wonderful @Martin!!
I do hope there would be an iPad app on the roadmap too, since most of the students do note-taking mostly on a tablet. I would really like if I can make my workflow with Goodnotes and Remnote locally, even when I do not have a Wifi.
And good luck for the Desktop!!
Good to know!
I thought it was an all-or-nothing kind of deal.
I want most of my data local only, but would be nice to have less sensitive info be available online.
Quick update: testing on the desktop app (Win and Linux) is currently taking place
(for some of the people who registered for it in Discord)
Desktop released!
We even got a little extra OS integration:
You can add a quick note or focus RemNote from anywhere on the Desktop.