Notes (PFA) was a lifestyle app developed by Karlsruher Institut für Technologie. It was removed from Google Play May 5, 2025 and is no longer available for download.
Download Statistics
Notes (PFA) had been downloaded 14 thousand times before it became unavailable.
User Ratings
Notes (PFA) was rated 4.50 out of 5 stars, based on 150 ratings.
App Information
Notes (PFA) was free to download. The APK download size was 8.01 MB. The last available version was 2.0.4. The last update was on April 19, 2025.
Technical Requirements
Notes (PFA) required Android 5.0+ or higher. The app had a content rating of Everyone. The app had been available on Google Play December 2016.
Description
Privacy Friendly Notes allows you to take and manage notes on Android devices. It belongs to the Privacy Friendly Apps group developed by the research group SECUSO at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. More information can be found an secuso.org/pfa
The following four types of notes are available: 1. Simple text notes 2. Checklist notes 3. Audio notes 4. Sketchnotes
Furthermore, the notes can be grouped into categories, reminders can be assigned to notes and the notes can be exported to the device storage.
How does Privacy Friendly Notes from other similar apps?
1. Minimal Permissions The permission "RECORD_AUDIO" (Category "Mikrofon") is required to record audio notes. In case this permission is not granted by the user (in Android versions higher than 6) it will not be possible to record audio notes.
"WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" (Category "Speicher") is used to export notes to the device storage. In case this permission is not granted by the user (in Android versions higher than 6) it will not be possible to export notes.
Beside the permissions above the permission “RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED” (Category “Normal/non-critical”) is required to reschedule notifications after a reboot. This permission cannot be modified by the user.
For comparison: The Top Ten of similar apps from the Google Play Store , die im Google Play Store requires an average of 11,7 permissions (in December 2016). These are for instance the location permission or the permissions to access, modify or delete storage.
2. No advertisement Moreover, Privacy Friendly Password Generator distinguishes from many other weather applications in the way that it completely relinquishes advertisements. Advertisement might track a user's actions. It could also shorten battery life or use mobile data.
You can reach us via Twitter - @SECUSOResearch (https://twitter.com/secusoresearch) Mastodon - @SECUSO_Research@bawü.social (https://xn--baw-joa.social/@SECUSO_Research/) Job opening - https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/Job_Offers_1557.php
Recent changes: Small visual in-app changes. Improves translations.
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★★★★★
Clean, easy to use, no required permissions, can allow storage permission if you want to save locally but not required.
★★★★★
Love it. Wish I could select to export all the files, and also to import multiple files. Or better yet, the ability to back up the database, since that doesn't seem to be accessible. I USE RAR to back up the files I need.
★★★★★
This app is great. I can have confidence that it isn't spying on me and I can easily take notes. I would like to have the option to export my notes database and import my notes' database. This would allow me to manually back up my notes for later.
★★☆☆☆
With the latest updates you have destroyed the usability of this simple app. Until now the notes have been displayed in the order they were created. Now they are displayed without any logic, in a quite random order, wich is not even alphabetic... Such a same!
Technologies used by Notes (PFA)
5 permissions·26 libraries
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