I’ve been reflecting on what I like about the Reflect.app. I’ve been using the app for a couple of weeks, experimenting with it to determine if it’s something I want to use long-term.

I think the main thing is its simplicity. It feels like a minimal app. In fact, when I started using it, I thought it felt incomplete somehow. The lack of buttons and menus threw me off.

Yet, as I used it, I felt as though it had just the right amount of features to make it a quite powerful tool for writing.

At first glance, Reflect looks like an outliner, where each line is a block, similar to Roam Research or Logseq. However, Reflect is not an outliner. While the daily note page defaults to use bullets, they’re not required. In fact, when you create a new note, you start with a simple blank page with a title. I love this!

The main features that attracted me to Reflect are the focus on speed and reliability, end-to-end encryption, and import and export capabilities. But, there are many more features, including templates, calendar integration, Kindle Sync, Readwise Integration, Tasks (beta), and they recently added very robust AI integration. They accomplished all of this without adding any clutter to the app, which I appreciate.

I’ve also been trying the AI integration to see how I could use it. It works great for cleaning up meeting notes, creating lists, counterarguments, and even fixing grammar and spelling. I’m not a big AI user, but its helpful to be able to clean up my notes.

There is also an iOS app in beta that is quite solid. It doesn’t have many features yet, but it works great for finding and editing notes.