Laverna is a FOSS MarkDown note taking editor who’s USP is that it includes passphrase-based encryption with upto 256 bit size and 128 key length, with a customisable ‘strengthen factor’ that defaults to 10000. Laverna has DropBox support built in and has an Android app on the way, currently it supports all desktops with it’s Electron architecture, which means that any updates should hit all platforms at the same time, no favouritism. It’s live preview feature is extremely appealing as there is no other note-taking app that does this out of the box in the way Laverna does, key-by-key updating in real time, no delay. At the time of writing, Laverna is still in development, but runs stably.

Pros

  • Passphrase-based upto 256-bit encryption
  • Live key-by-key MarkDown preview
  • Linux/Windows/MacOS apps (Android support ‘coming soon’)
  • Active development (check out the GitHub releases here)
  • Intuitive keyboard shortcuts
  • Fully FOSS
  • Very good design
  • DropBox support Files are saved locally in absense of DropBox or internet

Cons

  • No Android app, yet (Pre releases available on github!)
  • No theme support built in
  • Non-adjustable panel sizing
  • No font selector
  • No font size selector
  • Currently, if you click a link within Laverna itself, it will replace the Laverna container with the container of the website, which is a bug as you cannot go back

Bugs

I thought it would be best to have a separate section for bugs.

  1. Currently there is a bug where you cannot see ‘editor’ settings in the settings menu. Subjective as it is a bug, but it’s here as this may add functionality that might remove some cons of this review.
  2. If you click a link within Laverna itself, it will replace the Laverna container with a page telling you it’s broken or not found. This could be a peak into the future, showing where the development is probably going… but it’s not there yet. It might also be worth mentioning that the mobile app works, however synchronisation with DropBox is broken, and it’s constantly crashing. But that is to be expected in early stages of development and most pre-release software.

Conclusion

Laverna has a nice, clean overall look and feel. Well-coded and stylishly put together with subtle fade’s on the buttons which automatically highlight and de-highlight depending on where the cursor is. I think it has the winning MarkDown editor, and gets brownie points for including a live preview, instead of having tabs which you have to annoyingly switch between to see the preview and the editor in SimpleNote, The drawback to this is you see the full screen preview before you save.

Sidenote: When you save with Laverna and go back to review, you see your nicely formatted text in a full screen window

Laverna includes DropBox support, which I realise isn’t relevant to allot of you, which means you’ll be stuck with having to wrestle with your own server or nothing at all. This is kind of a con but since it does have DropBox, which has a free version with more than enough space to use Laverna (all files are stored in the slightly more cumbersome JSON format. Laverna did crash on me while shuffling through the settings. Reminding me the app is still in development…

Fin