Thatās awesome! Now a serious Evernote replacement for me. Iāll just need to be able to add new sections and links. And an Android app.
My phone autocorrect doesnāt work well as well.
Thank you so much!
1 Like
Yes!!! Thank you!!!
2 Likes
This is a great feature that moves Coda forward in a huge way! So many applications. Thanks Coda team!
2 Likes
It still sucks. You should be embarrassed. Look at Notion. Look (quite a bit less) at Airtable. Your app should just be an electron container with limited caching. Done.
Instead what youāve done is terrible; gets terrible reviews (deservedly); and is probably your greatest and defining weakness compared to Notion (despite Coda having other competitive strengths).
Next to no progress lo, these many years. The VCs should be on your case.
2 Likes
Hi Lewis,
Which of the features that Coda has delivered over the last few years should they have not worked on to prioritise the mobile experience?
Packs? Which puts it head and shoulders above the competition? The new editor interface?
Any progress is a matter of trade-off, and the trade-offs will NEVER satisfy everybody.
Personally, I am a function over form kind of person. Every day of the week.
Best Regards
Rambling Pete
3 Likes
Oh, come onā¦ ādoc as powerful as appā? With App that is not working on mobile? I am sorry but super weak argument.
1 thing Iām hoping becomes a thing is being able to 2 finger zoom on images instead of the single level of zoom now. Lots of possibilities for mobile and hoping iPad gets some consideration as coda could be used as point of sale or gathering customer data in the field.
In my opinion, at this point mobile experience should be prioritised ahead of any new features.
I love Coda, but mobile app is just terrible.
3 Likes
Hey @Andrei_Kharlanov ,
I am going to take the risk that some people are going to accuse me of defending Coda no matter what, but I wholeheartedly disagree with āā¦, but mobile app is just terribleā.
My team and I use Coda on mobile every single day we are active (so, multi-user) and we are very happy with performance and user friendliness.
Yes, we still have wishes, lots of them actually, but Coda is not an app builder (even though we use it as an app all the time) and I canāt think of any other solution that allows me to do what I can do in and with Coda.
My main app has webhooks, automations, allows for new entries, tracking and monitoring activities, near real-time updates to our website, and on and on. I am not happy with the lack of layout options (to much white space, to few font options, positioning of elements and there are a few more issues), but we do have a working app, rather than beautiful looking prototypes or a much harder to maintain java app (actually, we do have a Java app published in the Apple appstore and Google playstore using Coda was a backend and Firebase for user management, but all functioneel development happens in Coda because development goes a zillion (ok, not a zillion, but very many many) times quicker).
I am always on the lookout for other programs (I kind of like bubble.io), but the cost, learning curve or development time never offer me the same (low) price and speedy development.
I would be very interest to hear which mobile environment can be setup as easy as Coda and give me so many advanced features.
It took us a lot of fine tuning to get where we are today, but honestly, what we have does not look all that bad and it works. That last word is often what really matters.
And a case story: last week I needed to get some information from a group of people using business accommodation and document it with photographs, do some individual and group calculations and prepare it for use on mobile (to collect data and photographs). It took me less than 15 minutes to build a working app. It doesnāt look super, but it looks OK and it works.
I am anxiously waiting for some much needed updates, but it still is a good (mobile) experience, definitely not a āterribleā one. Of course, you are entitled to your own opinion, but many users are reading this and I want them to āhearā my opinion to.
And oh, I like Coda on my desktop too, and Coda on my Chromebook works also very well.
Greetings, Joost
6 Likes
The irony of someone who has never posted here before and who suddenly has harsh words for Codans does not escape me.
Fair point, but imagine how you might build a company, team, and technology to get into the enviable position of needing a pervasively competent mobile version? 
You donāt get to this point without priorities that are aligned toward a non-mobile deliverable.
Iām rational - I agree, the mobile app has many flaws and vast room for improvement. Howeverā¦ allow me to share some ways our company uses the mobile app.
Design & Manufacturing
Data is collected from mobile and desktop Coda apps for the development and testing of our CyberLandr prototypes.
Customer Analytics
Stream It workers carry with them lots of CyberLandr customer analytics with a mobile Coda document. This makes it easy to see talking points and share specific metrics concerning our customers.
Real-time Sales Data
Stream It management always know the latest sales status with Coda mobile.
Highway Installation Guidelines
Our highway analytics team and installation/maintenance partners use Coda mobile to track locations of our edge appliances and configuration requirements. Note - these users are standing on highways in every imaginable weather and time of day/night. This app is pretty complex and described in greater detail here.
I know at least 75 users who have found Coda mobile something they cannot live without.
7 Likes
Sorry for the tone. The truth hurts. That you have colleagues that canāt get along without the current Coda mobile client only underscores how badly a viable mobile client is needed. Clearly Notion has its own deficiencies but this is not the Notion forum. Regex to filter table values? ā¦.seriously. Codaās table implementation is very competitive with Airtableāand has the advantage of a web page canvas to provide context and instruction that canāt be done with Airtable. And way beyond Notion. Awesome formulas with dot notation, filters on lookup formulas, formula editing, canvas controls with formulas. That said, I donāt think weāre obligated on the forum to avoid criticism.
Notion is limited by its own past along with some advantages (better document management) and more time to get a mobile client right. Their mobile client is really a delight and incredibly usable.
Coda, Notion and several competitors and near competitors are facing a situation where there will be a shake-out. Too many overlapping products. Itās all OK now while all are growing. Then growth slows. I would like to see Coda be one of the survivors and then someāto be really successful. I pay for Coda. I donāt pay for Notion.
2 Likes
Hi @Lewis_Levin ,
There is a difference between āthe truth hurtsā, and posting a rude and unwarranted comment about the Coda developers in the first five minutes after joining the community forum.
I have asked you after your first post, which of the features added in the past 18 months should have been left by the wayside. You have not given me the courtesy of a reply.
@Andrei_Kharlanov jumped in and demanded that mobile should immediately be given the highest priority.
Based on what research do the two of you make these comments?
In the Suggestion box, I found 25 suggestions with 10 or more upvotes from the community. (I stopped counting at 25ā¦)
ONE of those suggestions was for something mobile related, and that was a very specific topic about mobile widgets, not the generic mobile experience.
The Coda 3.0 release was a major step forward, the ability for users to create packs was a game changer in the no-code industry, which was followed up with the pack market place.
Therefor it seems to me that Coda is more in tune with the requirements of its installed and experienced user base, than somebody that joined the forums less than two weeks ago.
The tone on the Coda forums has always been civil and courteous, I would appreciate it if you could abide by that as well.
Regards
Piet
1 Like
Weāve traded a lot of posts for suggestions on the Coda app I have worked on and completed. Iāve done several searches on specific questions, got some leads and in one case got the perfect answer that wasnāt available in documentation. Iāve looked at several templates and, in particular, looked at formulas. I am now a paying customer. And I am not a cheerleader.
To your question:
Features arenāt either/or. Itās about priorities and balancing work across multiple priorities. Itās hard because there is always more that could be done than there is time to do with available resources.
Coda is great for desktop oriented apps that rely extensively on databases. Many of those apps would serve customers who also want mobile access. Coda has 1 very close and 1 less than close competitor with well-regarded mobile apps. Thatās a hint.
One of the tests any software company ought to apply is how do developers, testers, designers and support folks (hey and finance and HR people) feel about their own product? Does the internal culture (no need to share everything with customers) allow honest feedback among co-workers? Is the mobile client work people are proud of? Does it provide the capabilities and user experience that Coda wants to achieve? Donāt answer or be defensive. Just ask around. If the hallway (virtual hallway) isnāt in love with some aspect of the product, then chances are customers arenāt in love with that aspect either. While a company canāt always rely on internal views for all feedback, it seems reasonable that many Coda employees are ideal Coda users. People at Coda are smart; they know where things are in really good shape in the product. They know where things are in less good shape. What do they think?ādonāt reply; itās not for the forum; itās for internal decisions to be kept private until the company wants to communicate about a new release.
There is little good to dismissing customer feedback whether itās put on a formal voting list or not. In the end, your best bet is trusting the judgment of people inside who use your product heavily, who make a point of evaluating competing products (the designer who did the Thumbtack research app and a lot of competitive comparisons as Coda docs is very astute and positions things nicely, for example), and who see what customers do (not just asking, āwhat do you want?āābut really looking at the work that gets done in Coda and the work that does not get done in Coda). There are areas to focus on that would benefit from improvement. There are also opportunities to enable new kinds of uses for Coda.
I did not owe you an answer. I wonāt reply again. The forum is better for very specific questions.
Whoa, I didnāt demand anything. You asked a question:
I (unsolicitedly) answered your question (but itās an open forum where we can share our opinions, right?). Bold text for emphasis:
Thatās my opinion as a customer and I donāt demand anything. Everyone have their own priorities, but for sure many customers think the same way. @Sarah_Arminta, your fellow Community Champion, liked my short reply. Itās not ridiculous to think that some people want to see fast and robust mobile app in 2022.
It doesnāt mean weāre right. Coda team knows better than anyone else what they should focus on.
I shared my opinion, definitely not a demand.
As I said, I love Coda and wish it to become a profitable long lasting company.
Looks like our experiences with mobile app is different, but on my one year old iPhone Pro I have problems with just scrolling or text selection in Coda app sometimes.
Maybe you can reread your replies too. I didnāt feel your description of my short opinion was courteous.
Coda forums are amazing and people here always help each other.
Letās keep it that way, but also letās leave an option to disagree with each other in a civil way.
1 Like
Does the Coda app on phones need some love and attention? Yes, I think many would agree to that. But I found that there are ways to write docs for use on mobile that make it beautiful and allow me to make a phone app with very little time used at all.
Using tables on the pages used on the phone is a bad idea, but using cards, turns out beautiful!
I hate using cards normally because Iām a table kind of person. It took me a bit to make the change.
But Notion being better than Coda? Notion is beautiful and it does a few things I like better than how Coda does it, but Notion cannot deliver on the packs and the powerful database as Coda does. Each user/developer has to choose which features are more important to them so isnāt it wonderful we are all free to make our own, right choices for ourselves!
Coda is not perfect, but they have impressed me with how many updates they have made since I first become a customer. Notion, however, last time I was over there still hadnāt created their API but Coda was cranking out more and more packs. I hear Notion now has their API which is great news. I wish them well.
I think that when considering whether Coda or Notion is the right fit one must first decide what is most important to them. But Coda is a ādocā first and foremost. So if I were to take a PDF that I created from a Microsoft Word doc and try to view it on my phone it looks horrible. Itās difficult to navigate and hard to read. I have to resize and move things around to read an entire page and itās horrible. If I were to move that pdf to some other format some ebook reader format, then it changes size, shape, scale, etc. and becomes much more user friendly on my phone. Is the PDF to blame because it is what it is? Docs are typically designed to be viewed on a larger screen. Apps are designed to show you less information but allow you access to certain things.
Coda can render your doc smaller and make what once was a PDF nightmare into something usable on the screen and I donāt have to convert it for where itās being used. BUTā¦I can make my doc look better on my phone screen if there are certain things I like to do from my phone.
For me, I input my fuel purchases to track gas mileage. I changed that page in my doc so it looks beautiful on the phone. I also added an input form for that which I have embedded on another page I use on my browser so I can just pull up my browser, open that widget and input the info right there and not even wait for my doc to load on my phone!
Coda is not perfect. But they are always listening to their customers and they push out updates faster than anything Iāve ever used and more importantly, their support is amazing. I have never had a Coda support person not go above and beyond to help me accomplish my task whether they are helping with an actual bug I reported or I just canāt figure out how to write the formula to get the result I want.
And this Coda Community has been FANTASTIC! So many people openly share their ideas and use their time to help others learning become better doc makers.
5 Likes
I might be switching to Notion
Exactly!
Out of curiosity I tried Notion again about a week ago.
As soon as you want to do something a bit complex with tables and formulas in Notion it becomes either impossible to do or crazy unintuitive.
For example, as far as I understand, Notion doesnāt have Count() formula.
Here is a formula to count number of tags in Tags column I found:
if(length(prop("Tags")) > 0, length(replaceAll(prop("Tags"), "[^,]", "")) + 1, 0)
Excuse me, what?! 
4 Likes
I found Notion first, then Coda, and used the two in parallel for a while.
Until I tried to do something slightly serious. I was stumped in Notion, tried Coda, and it was a breeze.
I have since also tried Roam Research, and while it is an extremely interesting concept, in the end Coda just has the biggest sweet spot. Yes, there is a lot of things things that a lot of people would like to see improved, but it is part of ongoing kaizen.
I have since made a conscious decision to focus on Coda, and specifically on its no-coda aspects. Its pack concept is a game changer, but for now I will remain a pack consumer and not a pack producer.
P
3 Likes
@Andrei_Kharlanov Iām not sure I said Notion was ābetterā than Coda. I prefer Coda because Iām a data analyst at heart. I need tables, relational tables and the ability to do a lot of calculations and manipulations easily. For me, Coda is definitely better.
However, I do like some of the ways Notion allows you to place content on the page that Coda has still not implemented. Coda did finally give us the columns on the canvas but they are limited where Notion allows for columns in columns on the canvas.
If one was wanting to just use the app to take notes and not do a lot of calculations or automations or wish to integrate with other third party sources, then Notion might be a better choice for that use case.
Itās like the difference between Macs and PCs. The Mac lovers believe their platform is superior and the PC lovers believe theirs is and itās all based on how they use it. For serious software developers that are old school like myself, we canāt stand the restrictions Apple places on their software. For more audio-video creative types, they seem to always prefer Macs. You cannot compare the two apples to apples they are more like apples and oranges. Both have their uses but have very different tastes and textures.
Coda and Notion are like that. Two great products but one needs to understand the pros and cons of each. Trying to build a very connected, automation driven doc in Notion will push you to the Coda is the best camp very quickly.
For me, hands down, Coda is superior. But there are some visual aspects of Notion that I do like so I keep going back over there to check on it.
Just like there are still reasons I have some things in Microsoftās OneNote! It has some unique features that allow it to interface with Outlook but I sure donāt do anything with it that I need to do any calculations with.
2 Likes
One thing from Notion that I would really like in Coda are āNativeā reminders. Its so easy in Notion, pick a date, pick a time, say remind me and thatās it. If you need to change or postpone reminder just pick another date/time from Date popup and done. Both on Desktop and Mobile.
In Coda its way more complicated to setup and you must use automation which run once very hour so you cant pick 30mins or 45 etc. I mean you can use some workarounds and stuff but its such a simple feature that is native in almost any platform I tried, it āfeelsā like it should be already in Coda long time ago.
But apart from that, now that we have Canvas columns, I really donāt see any other big advantages of Notion, and Coda is far superiors for any more complex workflow or structure. Codas formula language is probably the best thing ever, its so powerful, flexible and user friendly, havenāt seen better on any other platform (when we talk about no-code ālanguageā)
1 Like