AppFlowy 2nd Anniversary and 2023 Roundup

AppFlowy celebrated its second anniversary in November! We’d like to express our gratitude for your support of the AppFlowy project. Thank you for using, building, and supporting AppFlowy!

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect and plan. Let’s start with some numbers:

• We released 30 versions (from v0.0.9 to v0.4.0)
• We closed 860 GitHub issues
• Cumulative local desktop downloads: 90,000 → 400,000+
• #contributors to the main AppFlowy repo: 120 → 248
• GitHub stars: 29k → 45k
• Discord members: 2000 → 4000+
• Team size: 3 → 8

Building AppFlowy - a secure, open source workspace for wikis and projects, made to suit everyone

This year, we continued to build and improve the core experience around writing docs, tracking tasks, and managing projects. Here are some of our major improvements:

Task lists, project tracking, organizers

The database in AppFlowy now includes more essential and powerful features with a more polished look and feel. 

Some of the highlights include:

• Multiple views (Grid, Board, and Calendar) of the same database.
• Enhanced note-taking and the ability to hide/show properties when opening a row as a page.
• Configure row and column order, and sorts, filters, and view properties in each view of the same database without affecting others.
• Hide, show, rename, and add a stack in a Kanban with one click.
• Checklist improvements.

Note-taking, documentation, knowledge management

21 content types are available in the editor, enabling you to communicate your ideas efficiently and present them beautifully. Code snippet, math equation, toggles, images, and more can be found in the slash menu. 

You can nest pages inside pages in the side panel and organize them easily by drag-and-drop.

We have also supported linked pages and referenced databases in the editor.

Moreover, you can add reminders next to your to-dos to keep track of important tasks and receive timely notifications to stay on top of your schedule.

Make it more accessible

AppFlowy is translated into 25+ languages by its community, making AppFlowy more accessible to people with different language backgrounds. We have also supported the RTL layout to improve the reading and writing experience for speakers of RTL languages.

We enabled global custom Google fonts and personalized selected text fonts. In addition, we added dark mode and three more community themes.

AI-enabled

We brought AI into AppFlowy so you can enjoy the power of AI without switching tools.

You can utilize AI to write anything for you, auto-generate a nice summary for an article, and catch and fix misspelled words instantly. There is no need to switch between different tools; simply highlight the text and ask AI to quickly transform it into something better and more suitable for the task. In addition, AI can automatically rewrite its responses to provide you with alternatives.

Input text prompts and let AI generate beautiful images for you to express your ideas more creatively.

Taking AppFlowy to the Cloud

Built for people who want to take charge of their data, now you can self-host AppFlowy. It is designed for hassle-free self-hosting and customizable cloud storage management on platforms like Amazon EC2 or Azure Virtual Machines.

Try it out and let us know your feedback.

AppFlowy Cloud is on the way! Sign up for the beta Cloud.

Write and work on the go

We’re excited to announce that AppFlowy Mobile is available to download through invite on TestFlight and Play Console. Capture, write, and organize your work and life with AppFlowy mobile, available on both iOS and Android. 

Be among the first to experience this fast, native app. Give it a try!

Continue to shape AppFlowy with our growing community

Community is the backbone of AppFlowy. We continually work together with our community to build and shape the AppFlowy project and its software solutions. GitHub and Discord are two major platforms where we collaborate closely. The number of GitHub contributors across AppFlowy repos has grown from 120 to 300+, and the total Discord membership has increased from 2000 to 4000+. Over the last year, we closed 860 community issues on GitHub with the help from AppFlowy’s contributors. To recognize and express our gratitude, we put up a top 100 contributors page on appflowy.io.

To give back to the community, we’ve mentored seven talented junior developers through AppFlowy’s mentorship program and the GitHub Octernship. They’ve built many significant features that improved the user experience, including the calendar view, favorites, simple table, and personalized shortcuts. Check out their project docs to learn more about their journey. We also participated in Hacktoberfest 2023, during which 25 issues labeled as "Hacktoberfest" were accepted.

Rust has been critical to AppFlowy's strategy from the beginning. This year, we joined the Rust Foundation to contribute back and engage more deeply with the Rust community and ecosystem.

What our users say

We are always eager to hear how AppFlowy is making a difference in the lives and workflows of our users. Here are some testimonials highlighting their experiences and the impact of our platform on their daily productivity and success.

“We mainly use AppFlowy to collaborate on documentation for business and projects. The software is easier to use than our precedent documentation tool (Mindforger) and non-tech employees are eager to participate. It also is easier for onboarding as users are already familiar with other similar tools.” — P from France

“It has helped me to stay more on top of my life and be able to be more focused on actually doing school instead of organizing my life too.” — N from Utah

“[I use AppFlowy for] a book tracker, task manager, and other personal notes. And kanban for work, a very convenient feature, helps me not to miss anything. Nothing much has changed, because before that I used other similar programs, but of all the choices, I like yours more due to the design and simplicity.” — W from Russia

“I am a freelance digital marketer so I use it to manage my clients: calendar of contents, project management for new stuff and manage all the advertising campaigns. Having a different layout for different needs is really helpful. I can check my calendar and scrolling down a little bit I can see some todos or reports. It takes one second to build your note and it saves a lot of time when you work. It's a time saver.” — G from Italy

“I use AppFlowy to take day to day notes, schedule my tasks and also to contribute to the organization by writing code and documentation for it. It is open source so I love to contribute to it. And the community is great. I really enjoy the interaction with the community, admins and the authors.” — D from India

"I use AppFlowy for personal note-taking and knowledge management. Its ease of use and snappiness are great." — A from Helsinki

“[I use AppFlowy for] Personal notes, reminders, documentation about my home lab, ...Meeting notes for work, documentation about my courses, projects, … [I enjoy] Being able to use a '/' for basically every functionality.” — S from Belgium

“I have been using Appflowy for a long time. Primary use case is for notes, api documentation, bookmarking books articles, summary of books. movie or series watchlist. It helped me to organize my daily routine and keep track of productivity. The UI is elegant and slick.” — A from India

“As a software developer, I use AppFlowy to keep track of all the things I have to do. The minimal style of the UI is what I enjoy the most; it's not chaotic.” — C from Italy

“I use AppFlowy for personal documentation and project planning. What I enjoy most is that it's open source—FTW! It's built on reliable languages.” — B from France

“I am using the appflowy-editor in my own mobile app. It's really great! Thank you for the great work. Appflowy has been a game changer. Everyone loves Notion, but it is difficult to include a full-featured rich text editor in your own apps. Now we can do that!” — R from United States

2024, onward and upward

Developing AppFlowy from v0.0.9 to v0.4.0 throughout 2023 has been wonderful, productive, and rewarding. 2024 will be incredible, as we continue to offer a complete cross-platform collaborative experience to our customers. You'll enjoy a seamless transition and a fast experience across desktop, web, and mobile, available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

In addition, we very much look forward to bringing teams on AppFlowy, enabling them to get projects done and centralize collective knowledge without losing control of their data! And of course we’ll continue to bring more AI power into AppFlowy.

Thanks for reading this article. We hope you all have a wonderful New Year!

In closing, we say “thank you” to 2023 and “hello” to 2024!