Notezilla: A monster of a Post-it note application

I rely a lot on Evernote for long-term note-taking. I also use Anylist for things like shopping and other checklists. The problem with both of these is I have to remember to check them. I’ve also tried time-based reminder apps on my phone, but there are a lot of important things on my To-Do list that aren’t due at a specific time.

For personal stuff, I would usually resort to sending myself emails and keep them in my Inbox until completed. This, however, works against my obsessive nature of keeping my Inbox clean when items linger undone. At work, I use trusty old Post-it notes. I just knew there had to be a digital equivalent that met the following criteria:

1. Put a simple Post-it-like text window on my computer desktop;
2. Supported Windows and iOS; and
3. Synced between platforms

The Search

I was expecting to find an application that leveraged Dropbox as the back-end central storage repository since that would make the web-storage part free to the developer. Sadly, I found no such thing. There are many Post-it note applications, as well as Sticky Notes, which comes with Windows; however, only one met all of my needs: Notezilla from ConceptWorld. Also, most of the applications were overkill and Windows’ Sticky Notes was just too limited. (In my younger days, I probably would have just coded an app myself ;-)

Unique Notezilla Features

Notezilla has several unique features that I love. One is that it has a trash folder. This allows you to restore a note if you accidentally delete it. All of the other apps I tried actually deleted notes when you clicked the close X button on the note! Some would give you a warning, but that just seemed way to risky considering the importance of my To-Do list.

Another cool feature is the ability to attach notes to documents, websites, and folders. Since I want the note to always be on top, it can become a nuisance moving it around or collapsing it when it covers something up that you need to see. With Notezilla, you can set a note to only appear on a certain webpage. So I set my To-Do list to only appear when I have my GMail tab open in Chrome. It takes a moment to pop up which adds a visual cue to check it. Open a different tab and it disappears. This is just an awesome feature! (Note: You may need to add an asterisk (i.e., wildcard) in the window title name it looks for if it isn’t always the same.)

Checkbox lists are also supported and it’s what I use for my To-Do list.

Other Uses

There are often times that I want to quickly transfer a block of text from my iPhone to my desktop or vice versa. Often, this is an URL that I have on my phone that I want to open on my desktop browser. Typically, I would resort to emailing it to myself since I’m too impatient to go through the process of saving it as a bookmark and then waiting for Chrome to sync it to my desktop. With Notezilla, I paste it into a note on my iPhone and it instantly appears on my desktop.

Notezilla is also great for storing temporary bits of text. For example, I needed the URLs for a bunch of images that I was posting to a photography forum. I just copied and pasted the URLs to a note which conveniently sits on top of the browser window. Normally, I would have used Notepad, but this was way easier.

Notezilla also features reminder alarms, password protection, tagging, spellcheck, and rich-text formatting. Android is supported and there is a web-based app. No Mac version, however.

Cons

The only negative with Notezilla is the price. However, since the writing of this post, the price has been cut in half to a much more palatable $15. It costs $30! Moreover, if you want the cloud-based version, it will cost you $30 every year. This is pretty steep, but for me it is so perfect for my needs I’m willing to pony up. Also, the iOS app interface, is a little dated, but it works. The iOS (and Android) apps are now free. costs $1, but you can ask for that back if you order the cloud version.

Conclusion

If you don’t need to sync notes between platforms, I would opt for the non-cloud version. If syncing is a requirement you’re just gonna have to pony up the $30 $15 annual subscription cost. Of course, it’s really only effectively $2.50 per month which isn’t gonna break the bank and subsequent years is half that at $15/year. However, that still seems a lot when you consider Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom or Microsoft Office 365 are only $10 per month. Keep an eye out for specials too. I got the first year for $20.

You can try a fully functioning version for 30 days and there is also a 30-day money-back guarantee.