I was able to use nv (nvALT was a fork) before the development stopped and people slowly figured out it stopped. The website is still up https://notational.net and the last binary is still up for download. It worked for a crazy long time as it was. I am not sure but iirc there were some "stability" patches, in the original nv, or not. Then nvALT also stopped and then Brett started on something else and that kinda took a lot of time, really a long time (might have been released now but not sure). That is when I lost track of that lineage of note apps - the nvX - - the ones I started on. That was the reason my next was Simplenote and I stuck with it for really long.

After leaving Simplenote I could never really find a successor. Kept jumping from one app to another - UpNote (very electron), FS Notes (very unstable; come across a bug every other day that it's tiring), then Bear (might move to it, maybe), Joplin (no sadly) etc and what not. Now I just try to use something that lets me keep notes in a folder and use it but then iOS becomes a mess unless I use iCloud. I could never find another simple note taking app. I wish Automattic took privacy seriously and kept the development of Simplenote afresh and maybe charged for it.

Maybe I am not supposed to find that one note taking app for me. Maybe it doesn't exist. That makes sense. I think it's about notes and not the note apps? Keep the notes and apps are a-changin'.