Ask HN: What tool you use for notes and to organise thoughts? - codesternews
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astrikos
I’m in university so I use OneNote for hand drawn diagrams. I eventually want
an Apple Pencil and upgraded iPad and use good notes, but I don’t have the
dollars right now haha. OneNote is great because of the expandable canvas and
the handwriting recognition. I do like auto shapes feature of preview though.

I annotate PowerPoint slides directly with Preview.

For other notes, I use FSNotes which is like nvALT and it’s easily searchable
and quick to use.

I sometimes edit those MD notes in Typora.

I also like to curate ideas in a Gitbook, which I have public but it’s kinda
messy right now.
([https://index.kalispera.xyz/](https://index.kalispera.xyz/))

For some writing projects, I love Scrivener.

I kinda feel like I’m addicted to trying tools though oops.

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pkalinowski
Apple Notes for quick stuff at work.

Had a stint with Microsoft OneNote, but I don't trust it to hold my data
reliably.

Ended up with Notes folder with Markdown files. It's very logical
(filesystem), easy to backup, version and transfer.

Visual Studio Code is my editor of choice. I'm using custom workspace settings
which changes my theme to lighter one, bigger fonts etc whenever I open any
note.

It's not perfect. Everytime I want to create note I need to create new file,
choose its name and add ".md" extension. It takes 3 seconds, but simple CMD+N
would be easier.

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miccah
I use Zim Wiki [1]. I like the hierarchical structure plus the ability to link
to any other page internally. It does a good job of staying out of your way
and has support for check boxes, searching, and various plugins. It also saves
to disk in plaintext so I can version control it.

[1] [https://zim-wiki.org/](https://zim-wiki.org/)

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morninglight
It's small, simple, unobtrusive, free and portable- It is also old and
unmaintained, but I love it. Just unzip and run. No installation required.
[http://theguide.sourceforge.net/](http://theguide.sourceforge.net/)

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randomor
For notes, I use Apple Notes. For organizing thoughts, I created an app called
ZenJournal that was showcased here last week:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876939)

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larmstrong
I use Dynalist ([https://dynalist.io/](https://dynalist.io/)), which is a
cross platform infinitely nested list tool that has a ton of features.

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LMMojo
Depends on where I am, and who the notes are for.

Random location, I use my MobiScribe.

At my computer, either the MobiScribe, or Tomboy Notes, sorry of a personal
wiki.

At work, possibly needing to be read by others, our group's Knowledge Base,
managed by Confluence.

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HenryKissinger
Good old Notepad.

