You have probably written something like “restaurant on the corner by the bakery, order the shrimp one”. The text is saved somewhere. What is missing is the way back: among hundreds of notes, nothing ties that one to a corner, and months later you walk past the restaurant without remembering it exists.
A notes app with location exists for that class of note, the kind that only makes sense together with the place. The trouble is that “with location” means quite different things from one app to another. This guide gathers the questions worth asking before installing any of them, and ends with a ten-minute test you can run yourself.
A word on who is writing: this is Asterisco’s blog, so Asterisco appears at the end as one example. The questions apply to any app, including the ones that compete with it.
Does the note store a coordinate or a place from a map?
Some apps tie the note to a business in a map’s database. For restaurants and shops that works well. For nearly everything else it does not: a bench in the park, a viewpoint, a point on a trail or the spot where you left the car are in no database. And the business closes, but the corner stays where it was.
A coordinate stored with the note works for any place. It has one cost: a bare coordinate tells a reader nothing. A good app also shows the approximate address as a help for finding your bearings, without swapping it in as the note’s anchor.
Is writing as fast as in your phone’s notes app?
This is the question that weighs most, and the one most often ignored. If noting something costs one more tap than the app that came with the phone, you stop noting, and without notes the rest is worth nothing. Look for an app where writing is open, type, save, with the position attaching on its own and no folder to choose first.
And test it in the worst place available: a basement, a building site, a trail, abroad. The note has to save with no signal, and syncing should come afterwards, never as a condition for writing.
How does the note come back to you?
This is where apps differ most, and it helps to tell two paths apart.
The first is re-encounter: you are near the place again and the app shows what you wrote there, in a list by distance or in an alert. It is what gives the feeling that the app remembers for you. But it only fires where you return, and most places you never revisit.
The second is planning, and it is what keeps an app in use: “I am going to Lisbon next week, what did I write there?” Here what matters is a map of all your notes, folders by city or by subject, and a search that finds “cafe” when the note says “café”. Without that, the app is only useful at the instant you pass the place.
A reminder that rings when you get near is a useful extra, but it weighs on privacy, since it needs location tracking in the background. It is worth having it optional and off by default.
Where do your coordinates go?
A record of where you have been is one of the most sensitive things an app holds. Four questions give a good idea: does the app send coordinates to analytics or advertising tools? Is there any public map of people, or “nearby notes” from strangers? Does it read location only with the app open, or in the background too? And does the privacy policy say so in a way a person can follow?
Can you take what is yours and leave?
Exporting everything (text, coordinate, photos and voice) should be a right, not a paid feature. Without it, years of notes are tied to a company that can change its pricing or shut down.
Do you actually need another app?
Many people do not. If you mostly keep lists and ideas, your phone’s notes app is enough, and it is worth not complicating things. The system reminder apps do alert by place, but they generally anchor the alert to an address or a business and treat the result as a task, not as something you wrote. And your phone’s photo map shows where you have been, but it is not built for writing, and later finding, a sentence about each place.
A notes app with location pays off for one class of note: the one that only makes sense together with the place. It lives alongside the app you already use, and does not need to replace it.
A ten-minute test
Before committing to any app, do this:
- Turn on airplane mode and write a note. Did it save? With the position?
- Write about a place with no address, like a bench in a square, without choosing a folder first. Count the taps.
- Walk about 200 metres and see whether the app gives you the note back without your searching.
- Search for the note by the word, without the accent. Does “cafe” find “café”?
- Export everything and open the file. Does it have the text, the coordinate and the photos?
- Read the privacy policy looking for the word “coordinate”. What does it say?
How Asterisco answers
Asterisco stores each note’s coordinate and shows the address beside it, works offline and with no account, and shows notes on the map and, in Radar, in order of distance. Search ignores accents, arrival reminders are optional and come off, and location is read only with the app open, unless you yourself switch on a reminder. No coordinate goes to analytics tools, and exporting is free.
For personal use the whole app costs nothing. What you pay for is Grupo, for teams. If you want to try the steps above, download Asterisco.