This is the fourth and final part of our Craft review. We covered the basics in the first part of this review, items we can add in the second one, and the third helped us get organised in the app.
Search Tool
Craft can search your entire workspace, and I love how easy universal search is to find. The result previews are brilliant when you hover over them. They are the biggest and definitely most informative I have seen in a while. You can also search through your current document. However, the results don’t stand out because the highlighter for your search results is subtle and very light. It won’t pop anything out of the page, which I would argue is exactly what you need if you have colourful notes like mine. So, let’s hope the developers can make these stand out a bit more. Otherwise, one of the best search tools you can have in a note-taking app. The term stands out more when you navigate to it, which is what I was expecting for all the terms. Then some colour difference after that, perhaps.
AI
I like AI for calculations; it’s really great with that. For our work, though, there’s not much out there yet for AI to be useful. In Craft, you can do all sorts of different thing with ChatGPT 3.5. Switching to 4.0 is also fairly simple if you prefer using that. When you’re happy with the response, you can add it to your notes very easily, or even replace your selection. So, pretty much everything ChatGPT can do is accessible within Craft. At this point, I am tired of complaining about developers adding AI to note-taking apps. The good thing is, you can simply choose not to use it.
Collaboration
What’s a note-taking app without collaboration? Craft has real-time collaboration where you can invite people to work on documents together. With permissions over who can see your document and whether or not they can edit, what more can you ask for? Comments, reactions; the app has everything you need to work with others when you need to. I love the reactions, especially. I know they are just emojis, but they are more fun than comments. We can at least appreciate that, right?
Comments alone are great to have in any app that supports collaboration, but the ability to format them. That is just awesome. You can even add links! Once you’ve gone through the comments, you can resolve them. I wish there was a central place to view all the comments, though. Somewhere to go through them faster because opening them one-by-one can be tiring when you have plenty to go through.
Exporting
Craft can publish your document online, and I love how much control you have over how it is presented and how people can interact with it. Unfortunately, the expiration date for your link is a paid feature. It is quite a good reason to upgrade if you want your document to automatically disappear after a while. Stats are also locked; my curiosity is piqued.
Another way to share your documents with others is by exporting them. Craft supports a lot of formats, and I love that the PDF document you export looks exactly like your notes. For the free version, your export options are locked. Text-based note-taking apps always lock PDF exporting, which sucks since in most apps it is free. They have set an industry standard for the niche, I suppose, so if you want to work with PDFs, you’ll have to upgrade to the paid version of Craft. You can also export Word, images, and Markdown documents, and those are all great options.Â
Sync & Backup
Craft syncs across your devices. But I didn’t find any backup options. It shouldn’t be hard to find. I always want to back up my notes in case something happens to the app. Or if I have my decluttering phase. A backup has saved me several times in the past, and it’s one of the things I look for when considering if I should use an app.
Verdict
Craft is great. I love the app design. It is well thought out, and the features it packs are brilliant, especially for the free version. However, without a backup solution, I would be hesitant to use it. I wouldn’t use any app, actually if it doesn’t have backup. Losing notes is not fun, and I would appreciate even manual backup at least. But if that doesn’t bother you, then Craft is a great app to try.
