A fine Fyne Android app for quickly logging ideas programmed in Go
Published at 2024-03-03T00:07:21+02:00
I am an ideas person. I find myself frequently somewhere on the streets with an idea in my head but no paper journal noting it down.
I have tried many note apps for my Android (I use GrapheneOS) phone. Most of them either don't do what I want, are proprietary software, require Google Play services (I have the main profile on my phone de-googled) or are too bloated. I was never into mobile app development, as I'm not too fond of the complexity of the developer toolchains. I don't want to use Android Studio (as a NeoVim user), and I don't want to use Java or Kotlin. I want to use a language I know (and like) for mobile app development. Go would be one of those languages.
Table of Contents
Enter Quick logger
Quick logger is a small GUI Android app (well, cross-platform, thanks to Fyne) I wrote in Go with the Fyne framework. With Fyne, the app can be compiled easily into an Android APK. As of this writing, this app's whole Go source code is only 75 lines short!! It lets me quickly log my thoughts as plain text files on my Android phone. No fancy file formats. Just plain text!
https://github.com/snonux/quicklogger
https://fyne.io
https://go.dev
I jot down my Idea, and Quick logger saves it to a plain text file in a designated local folder on my phone. There is one text file per note (timestamp in the file name). Once logged, the file can't be edited anymore (it keeps it simple). If I want to correct or change a note, I simply write a new one. My notes are always small (usually one short sentence each), so there isn't the need for an edit functionality. I can edit them later on my actual computer if I want to.
With Syncthing, the note files are then synchronised to my home computer to my ~/Notes directory. From there, a small glue Raku script adds them to my Taskwarrior DB so that I can process them later (e.g. take action on that one Idea I had). That then will delete the original note files from my computer and also (through Syncthing) from my phone.
https://syncthing.net
https://raku.org
https://taskwarrior.org
Quick logger's user interface is as minimal as it gets. When I launch Quick logger, I'm greeted with a simple window where I can type plain text. Hit the "Log text" button, and the input is timestamped and saved as a file in my chosen directory. If I need to change the directory, the "Preferences" button brings up a window where I can set the notes folder and get back to logging.
Quick logger is also a neat little example of what you can do with Go and Fyne without touching any platform-specific details. I am pleased with how easy it is to make Android apps in Go this way.
My Android apps will never be polished, but they will get the job done, and this is precisely how I want them to be. Minimalistic but functional. I could spend more time polishing Quick logger, but my Quick logger app then may be the same as any other notes app out there (complicated or bloated).
All easy-peasy?
Updated 2025-05-15: When using fyne-cross android everything works now! I don't have to perform any of the work-arounds listed below anymore!
I did have some issues with the app logo for Android, though. Android always showed the default app icon and not my custom icon whenever I used a custom AndroidManifest.xml for custom app storage permissions. Without a custom AndroidAmnifest.xml the app icon would be displayed under Android, but then the app would not have the MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission, which is required for Quick logger to write to a custom directory. I found a workaround, which I commented on here at Github:
https://github.com/fyne-io/fyne/issues/3077#issuecomment-1912697360
What worked however (app icon showing up) was to clone the fyne project, change the occurances of android.permission.INTERNET to android.permission.MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (as these are all the changes I want in my custom android manifest) in the source tree, re-compile fyne. Now all works. I know, this is more of an hammer approach!
Hopefully, I won't need to use this workaround anymore. But for now, it is a fair tradeoff for what I am getting.
Maybe this inspires you to write your own small mobile apps in Go with Fyne. PS: The Quick logger logo was generated by ChatGPT.
E-Mail your comments to paul@nospam.buetow.org :-)
Other Go related posts are:
2024-03-03 A fine Fyne Android app for quickly logging ideas programmed in Go (You are currently reading this)
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