Announcing Inkdrop plugin developer license

You can use it for free, forever, if you created a plugin for Inkdrop.

Takuya Matsuyama

28 Jan 2020 — 5 min read

You can use it for free, forever, if you create a plugin for Inkdrop.

⚠️ NOTE: The plugin developer licenses are suspended. New licenses are not issued at the moment. See this post for more details.

Hi, it’s Takuya. Inkdrop is a note-taking app that lets you organize your Markdown notes across devices including mobile. I am building and maintaining it alone. It has successfully grown with 1,500 paid customers and I am now living off of it. I believe it improves your productivity more than its monthly cost ($4.99). That’s why people (and maybe you) are paying for it. I would like to make it better and better, instead of bigger like VC-backed startups. I would not focus on making a huge revenue from it. But in order to keep it evolving, it is not possible without your help because I am alone and like to be small.

I have got a lot of feature requests which would look nice to have. But my solo development policy is that I only add features that I use. Recalcitrant? — Maybe. But that keeps the app simple, consistent and stable as I discussed in this article. I still strongly believe that less feature set makes the app better. That’s the trait solo developers have which lets you do better than big companies. But at the same time, I understand people have their own ways and various preferences on using such kind of note-taking apps. Besides, Markdown was originally designed by John Gruber in 2004 and now has a lot of dialects made by many people such as GitHub because its syntax was kind of too simple. So, how can I solve those issues?

That’s the one of big reasons why I implemented plugin system into Inkdrop. It allows you to extend various functionalities of the app.You can find plugins here (https://my.inkdrop.app/plugins).

Inkdrop’s plugin can extend not only Markdown but also its functionalities like the editor, file import & export, theme, etc. Learn more about how to install plugins here. Thankfully, we've got great community-made plugins in addition to Inkdrop’s official plugins. For example, Otawara-san made a beautiful syntax theme named “material-dark-mod-syntax” which has got downloaded more than 2 thousand times:

A beautiful syntax theme “material-dark-mod-syntax” created by Otawara-san

libeanim created a Markdown renderer extension called “admonition” that allows to add block-styled side content to your notes, which got over a thousand downloads:

And more. This is incredible. How can you believe that they made those plugins while paying for Inkdrop? I can’t appreciate enough such great contributions because it definitely helped grow Inkdrop’s community. I was deeply thinking about it and I recently decided to provide them a special license which allows to use the app for free, forever. They told me they are so happy to get it — and I’m very happy with that. It’s one of the greatest experience I have ever had through Inkdrop.

By the way, recently plugin is even supported in the mobile version from v3.5.0:

Having this update, both the desktop and mobile apps can be now extended by your hands. It looks like the apps have got mature enough — So, I guess it’s time to encourage the users to develop plugins.

Again, this app is for hackers.

Twitter has succeeded because third-party hackers invented great tools and apps with its public API. I have ever built a Twitter web client long time ago, too. I love hacking with APIs to make life more convenient. It’s not only for myself but also for their community. I would love to see that people make it happen also in the Inkdrop community. To encourage that, I would like to introduce Plugin Developer License for Inkdrop. Here is the detail:

What you get

You can use Inkdrop for free, forever

Who is eligible

You must have at least one plugin you originally created

How to request

First, create a user account on the user forum. By logging in to it, your account will be automatically created based on the Inkdrop account.

Email me at t@inkdrop.app from your registered email address so that I can identify your account, with your plugin link in the mail body and your forum username.

Guideline

Basically, I will not hesitate to offer you the license but please respect the following guideline:

You have to be an original author of the plugin
Your plugin must add at least one feature that cannot be done with configuration
If there is an existing similar plugin, you have to explain the differences from it.
Provide documentation in English on how to install and use your plugin in README.md with screenshots if necessary (screenshots are required for themes)
You have to keep maintaining your plugin
No beta or WIP version

Note

Be sure that you can’t get a refund for the past payment. If you made any contribution on other people’s plugin, you can get 20% discount valid for 1 year instead.

FAQ

How to build plugin?

There are tutorials on how to create a theme and a plugin on the documentation:

What to make?

You can get ideas from topics tagged with plugin-idea on our forum here. I’m always happy to help you build.

I hope it would be a good perk for your plugin development. I’m looking forward to seeing your great works! Can’t wait to make Inkdrop better together :D