Pocket Prose

Pocket Prose is a writing app for Android. If you write and don't know what Markdown is, this app might be for you. If you're looking for a Markdown editor with a preview pane, it might not.

Point it at a directory full of Markdown files or start building your notebook from scratch — no storage permission needed. Notes are filed by the tags in their frontmatter, nested with /, and nowhere else.

Uninstall it and the folder is byte-identical to how it found it, apart from edits you actually made.

It was built for a personal archive of lyrics and prose, a couple of hundred notes written over years, which is why it is opinionated about leaving things alone.

Early-stage release — expect rough edges. Feedback and bug reports welcome via Issues.

What it will not do

This is the point of the app rather than a list of missing features.

* No renaming files to match their titles, no injecting IDs or app-owned keys into frontmatter, no rewriting frontmatter it did not itself change.
* No importing into an internal database. No required folder layout, naming scheme or index file.
* No auto-deleting a note because its file vanished, and no auto-merging when one changes underneath it — a synced folder does that. Conflicts are surfaced, never resolved for you.
* No cloud account, no telemetry, no network permission.

Filed by tag

* A tag tree read from the frontmatter tags: list and nothing else. F# in a lyric is a sharp; a #hashtag in the text is text.
* Nesting with /, filtering by a parent takes its children, and a tag can be renamed across the folder — the children go with it.
* Pin a note by tag: notes carrying the pin tag sit at the top of the library, whatever the sort. It is an ordinary tag in every other way, so it syncs with the note and outlives the app.
* A folder that still keeps its tags and titles in the text — as another editor's export left them — gets a one-time offer to move them into the frontmatter, with a count of what would change. The zip export can write them back.

Reading and writing

* Titles come from the frontmatter, never from the file name — the two often differ, and duplicate titles across files stay separate notes.
* Dates come from the file. A note written in 2015 is dated 2015, not the day the app first saw it, and re-filing a note under another tag does not move its date; only writing does.
* Relative images and attachments resolve against the note's own folder, so a chord diagram in attachments/ renders and a linked PDF opens in an external viewer. Add an image and it is written beside the note, not into the app.
* A plain editor that writes ordinary Markdown and rewrites none of yours. A source view shows the note with nothing hidden. Headings render as headings, and a --- under a line of text stays a rule rather than turning the line into a heading.
* Scratch lines: start a line with a + glued to the text and it shows dimmed while you write; an eye button reads the note without them. It is plain text in the file, and the app never adds or removes one.
* Saves are atomic — temp file plus rename — so a sync client never sees a half-written note.

The library

* Full-text search, filter by tag, by attachments, or down to duplicate titles.
* Sort by last change, by creation date, title or length; full rows or compact ones; a start tag to open on.
* Share text from any app into a new note. Long-press the icon for New note and Search.
* Select several notes to retag, merge or delete them.
* Export the whole folder as a zip, byte for byte, with each note's entry dated as the note is.

Reading comfort

* Literata or EB Garamond for the notes, or the system font; five text sizes and three line spacings.
* Light, dark or system theme. English and German.

License

GPL-3.0-only. The icon and the wordmark are CC BY 4.0; the name is not licensed, so a fork needs its own.