Why I added sync to the notes app I built without it

In September I wrote an essay called "Why I took sync out of a notes app". MEMOROLL does not sync, I said; your notes stay on your phone. With version 2.1, MEMOROLL syncs through iCloud. A note you write on your iPhone now appears on your iPad and your Mac.

It may look as if the same person is saying the opposite thing two months later. So I want to set down what I changed my mind about, and what I did not.

"Sent from my iPad"

It started with an email. A user in Germany wrote to me with thoughts about the app and a few requests. I read it carefully, and the last line stopped me: "Sent from my iPad". The line Apple's Mail app adds at the bottom.

In that moment I saw MEMOROLL on an iPad screen. Until then I had only ever pictured it on an iPhone. What I saw was the iPhone layout, simply placed on the iPad, making nothing of the larger screen. I felt, somehow, that I owed that person an apology.

Thinking about it calmly, they may simply have sent the email from their iPad. Still, that one line was the first step.

No better than paper

The other reason was my own experience.

When I went to Kakeroma Island for a filming job, MEMOROLL was a great help for notes on location. It was faster than writing on paper. But back home, working on my Mac, when I wanted to look back at those notes, I had to type them out again or send them across. I remember thinking: then it is no better than paper.

In the first essay I wrote that I always write on the phone, and that the tablet and the computer were where I sometimes read things back. About writing, that is still true. But I had underrated the place where you read back. For some people, looking back fits a larger screen better. It did for me.

What I wanted to leave out was never sync

So was the first essay wrong? Reading it again, I noticed something.

What I wanted to avoid was not sync as such. To sync, a note has to leave the phone and live on someone's server — mine, in this case. An account, a database to protect, and a promise that a company you have never met will look after your unfinished thoughts. That was the promise I did not want to make.

And since 1.0, each time you wrote, MEMOROLL had been copying your notes and photos into your own iCloud Drive. Not onto my server, but inside your own Apple Account. If that was already true, then keeping your devices in step, only inside that same Apple Account, was just the next step from the copy. That is how I came to see it.

What sync in 2.1 does

Sync in 2.1 goes only through the private database of your own iCloud (Apple's CloudKit). There is no server of mine. There is no new account; you stay with the Apple Account you already have.

It is protected by the same iCloud mechanisms as Apple's own Notes app, encrypted in transit and on iCloud's servers. If you have turned on Apple's Advanced Data Protection, the text of a note, its place and your photos are end-to-end encrypted, just as Apple's Notes are. As with Apple's own apps, the times used for ordering stay outside that.

Sync is your choice, and it starts off. While it is off, nothing changes: nothing is sent for syncing, and your notes stay on that device. When it is on, you still write to the device in your hand first, and sync catches up in the background, so writing is no slower. A note you delete is deleted from all your devices. And you can still export everything as a ZIP, as before.

On the iPad and the Mac, the calendar and the day's map sit beside your timeline. A note you start on your iPhone can be handed to your Mac with Handoff, and you carry on writing.

What changed, and what did not

I changed my mind about one thing. In the first essay I said I had given up the multi-device story, and that MEMOROLL was not for people who want to write on a keyboard and read on a tablet. I no longer think that.

What I did not change is the question I asked in that essay, and its answer. Who should hold this? The person who wrote it. In 2.1, your notes still live only on your devices and in your own iCloud. They are never stored on our servers, or anyone else's.

Later, when I thought back to that "Sent from my iPad" email, something settled. Before convenience, and before the number of users, I added sync because I thought of one person, and of the other screen in their hands. Remembering that, this turn feels, to me, like the way it was always going to go.

No account. No social network. Your notes live only on your devices and in your own iCloud. Just your memories — and your memories stay yours.

MEMOROLL is free on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac. It was made by one developer on Amami Oshima, Japan. — https://resdev.jp/en/app/memoroll/