
Tired of note-taking apps - akkshu92
https://akkshaya.blog/2020/07/19/note-taking/
======
tomduncalf
Personally I find Apple Notes the most convenient for quick jotting down of
ideas etc. It’s not the most advanced in terms of features but it loads
instantly, is quick to use and is available on all of my devices. Have tried
numerous alternatives but they’ve never stuck e.g. they’re slow to start up or
are fussy to use or don’t work well on one platform.

For deeper sketching out of ideas, diagrams etc I really like Concepts on iPad
with the Apple Pencil. It has an infinite canvas and is all vector based,
which is great for never worrying about whether there’s room to fit your idea
on the page or whatever. Previously I used Notability and it was good and a
bit more traditionally note based, but I miss the infinite canvas. The text
recognition and handwriting features in Apple Notes on iOS 14 are pretty cool
though, will be nice to see what third party apps do with them.

~~~
sitkack
How do you backup Apple Notes? The PDF export loses fidelity. I really like AN
for the integrated camera, esp the document scanner. Is there another
application that allows for writing as well as annotating media, video, photos
and sound?

~~~
lbotos
I loved apple notes, and have used it for years. I left (for joplin) because
there was no easy way to do an export/backup without scripts or workarounds.

I don't use the document scanner tho :(

~~~
lalo2302
You can save your notes as emails when you connect your gmail account.

------
vijucat
My theory about handwritten note-taking is that the bandwidth difference
between thinking (fast) and writing (slow) is somehow extremely beneficial to
the process of generating creative and evocative output. There have been so
many journaling sessions which I started with the absolute conviction that I
had nothing new to say, and after 4 pages of extremely creative and detailed
ideas, _surprising even to me_ , I had no choice but to exclaim, "Now where
did that even come from?!". Maybe the hypnotic act of twirling the pen on
paper slowly puts the mind into that sub-conscious creative state similar to
what happens when one is about to fall asleep? It is honestly magical. I now
use OneNote every day (because I can search through a large volume of notes
easily), and I quite miss the dramatic revelations of pen on paper journaling.
My notes were about programming and trading. For those who write fiction, I
bet slow, old, typewriters are similarly more beneficial than the latest
ergonomic keyboard and Word 365!

~~~
intended
That’s my issue with the Microsoft surface stylus work- and a lesser extent
Apple.

They don’t compare to written, and a decent amount is the pen tip friction.

Wacom comes close.

However the apps themselves ?

I’d like to use one note more, but PDFs don’t become copy-able text.
Searchable but not copyable.

Writing on a surface device is ugh. And I had really high hopes that they
would push on the tech.

Procreate -iOS- has the best redo and undo features and gestures - which may
as well be a lost art since no one else seems to be copying them and saving us
manhours of annoyance.

~~~
claudeganon
They make screen films to recreate this friction on the iPad Pro. A lot of my
artists friends use them:

[https://paperlike.com/](https://paperlike.com/)

~~~
dopu
Haven't used paperlike, but I use a much cheaper matte protector from
TechArmor for drawing / taking notes on my iPad Pro and it's great. Would
definitely recommend getting something like it. Bare screen's always felt too
'slippery' for me.

------
jjice
I searched far and wide for a good note taking app a few years ago, only to
find that the best solution for me was right in front of me the entire time.

    
    
      git init fall2020
    

Git lets me keep track of everything, and I have free hosting at multiple
different websites, or my own server if I want to. It's simple and
customizable, and depending on what type of notes, I have different scripts to
automate new notes and searching.

Next semester, I'm going to run the above command and then make a directory
for each course I'm taking. In there, there will be a series of markdown
documents numbered 'nn.md' with a header at the top of the file with the date
and the subject. After that, it's just plain markdown. I alternate between VS
Code and Vim, but both get the same job done. When I'm done, I just 'git add .
&& git commit' and move about my day.

Since I currently use GitHub private repos for hosting, if I'm walking to
class, I can view the rendered Markdown right on my phone. This is nice for
getting a quick recap about what the last class covered.

I also use a Git repo for my journal, but with different ways of formatting
entries. The entire thing is very extensible, but not as friendly as some
other note taking apps if you don't like plain Markdown. Writing a web
interface for this setup wouldn't require much work, and it's something that's
on my list of things to do.

~~~
Feolkin
I feel like this is half a solution to me. I use Git too, but it does nothing
about how notes are structured or linked, for which I lean on sublime,
Obsidian and Zettelkasten.

~~~
rorykoehler
I recently started with Obsidian which I sync up via DropBox using a text
editor on my machine or Markor on Android (still haven't selected an iOS
equivalent.. tips welcome). I see Zettelkasten mentioned in tandem with
Obsidian frequently but I can't figure out what it does? Is it just
timestamping for notes?

~~~
Feolkin
Zettelkasten in digital form has been largely bastardized for some reason that
I haven't quite figured out. The original ZK doesn't have timestamps and
timestamps are such a terrible, uninformative, non-contextual way to codify
notes. ZK originally uses a hierarchical and sequential numbering system that
immediately tells you when it was created in relation to other notes _and_
tells you its hierarchical relationship to neighboring notes (note 1a2 is a
child of 1a; 1b is a sibling of 1a; and if 1 is an overarching theme, 1a, 1b,
and 1a2 are each sub-ideas under that theme).

I've resorted to using the original numbering system manually, but I'm still
waiting for a tool that understands them and knows how to work with them (or
maybe I'll get fed up after a while and make my own).

------
koheripbal
I've tried many different systems, and the one I settled on is a single simple
doc. It's the only method I've used for over a year.

You can do google doc or office doc, but the key for me was having one doc
that I just keep prepending to.

Each day i'll add the date yyyy-mm-dd (dow) in bold and then list my work for
the day... I use hyperlinks to dedicated docs or online guides for more
involved projects (quick ctrl-k), and add a little check mark when it's done.

By adding days in the future, I am able to schedule work or set reminders, and
with ctrl-f I can search the doc for anything I've done previously as it also
acts as a journal.

I often used to get lost in the minutia of catagorization, and having list
sorting help me determine priority, but I've come to realize that I already
know what needs to be done, and roughly in which order. ... my bottleneck was
always focus. Excessive task structure can be a procrastination in itself.

Going back to paper as op suggests seems like a step back.

It's not perfect, but it works. I do still wish I could add some sort of
hierarchy to line items and also be able to zoom out to see the bigger
picture, but for now that just sits in another dedicated doc that I schedule
myself to look at now and again.

Hitting 18 months now on this system. Have never felt so organized.

~~~
tedmiston
An outliner app like WorkFlowy (YC S10) or TaskPaper is nice for adding
nesting and the ability to zoom in and out.

You can also directly link to any node, at least in WorkFlowy.

My approach is similar to yours except it's one hierarchical entry per day.

[https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/)

[https://www.taskpaper.com/](https://www.taskpaper.com/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner)

~~~
dicytea
I'm sad there's still no good offline and native clone of Workflowy/Dynalist
after all these years. I've tried many other outliner-like note-taking
software, but I haven't found anything that is more comfortable to use than
the outliner system in Workflowy/Dynalist. To paraphrase a quote I've heard
online, "it fits my brain like a glove."

~~~
msamwald
Dynalist has an offline app (which syncs with the server when online). See
[https://dynalist.io/download](https://dynalist.io/download) . It's the same
interface as on the web (so not 'native'), though.

------
dmje
Funnily enough, I don’t think there is a really good one. There’s lots that
almost do it but not quite. \- Evernote: no note linking \- Bear: lovely but
no web or android version \- OneNote: appalling in the way only MS can be \-
SimpleNotes: too simple \- Zoho: too ...urgh \- Keep: too Googley \- Apple
notes: too Appley \- Standard Notes: too buggy

I’m clearly a fussy sod. But really, just a nice, oss, local files, ability to
encrypt, x-platform apps: surely not too much to ask....?

~~~
jasonv
What I really don't understand about OneNote is the default to a white-board-
like free form placement mode for text blocks. If you move it a little,
accidentally, it's not aligned the same as the other notes.

This _really_ put me off when I first started using it, and at a client site,
it's really the only option. Otherwise, the organization system is something
I've come to like/live-with, but still -- why the boxes that can be moved
around? Is there a "turn off free-form placement" mode that I haven't found?

~~~
GekkePrutser
Yes and if you type one backspace too many it will delete the whole box and
place it at an off-centre location when you click to make a new one.

There's a workaround though: Click on the title and then press enter and it'll
create one again in the right spot :)

But yeah OneNote is bloated, slow, has the typical MS UI boneheadedness... But
it's what I have to work with at work :'(

~~~
jabroni_salad
As much as I hate onenote, the ease of just hitting [super]+N to start a quick
note is the lowest friction way to go from 'i need to write' to 'i am
writing'. I've tried a few of the competitors but I guess I found my killer
feature.

------
gexla
Taking notes is a process. If you're tired of the apps, then you haven't put
enough thought into the process. The available apps are fine.

Picking a tool to solve a problem is the opposite approach to how you solve
the problem. You instead need to define the problem and then find the tool
which is the best fit. If you're frustrated with the tool, then you might need
to put more thought into the problem.

~~~
gukov
Premature optimization also plays a role. Everyone should start with a notepad
and a pencil and move up to something more advanced once they outgrow the most
basic method of note taking. It's a bit like buying a top of line DSLR when
you're just starting to get into photography.

~~~
osmarks
Having to carry some paper and writing tools around would make note-taking
significantly more annoying for me than just being able to use my
phone/laptop.

~~~
biztos
I did that for years, and I found it wonderful as I love ink on paper... but
one day I took a look at my several boxes full of journals and decided: nope,
Notes will have to do.

I still write and draw on paper but not for journal purposes.

------
mercacona
The best note app I found is a journal app. I’ve been using Day One for more
than a year now, and it’s holding Evernote’s promise of remembering
everything.

I do use Apple Notes too beside Day One for temp notes (email drafting, edit
texts, links to check & trash, etc), but it’s on my journals where my
knowledge-notes reside.

What people like from real notebooks is that you don’t have to think about
organization, you just start a note in the next blank page. With Day One
that’s what I got (even by email), and then, once I need to search for
something in my personal log, I can organize stuff with tags or backlinking
notes.

The “On this day” function also helps, as you can prune old ideas or notes
that were a dead-end.

Personally, I’m sold.

~~~
biddlesby
Totally agree. Having to think about how I need to organise my thoughts as the
same time as coming up with the thoughts themselves always seems like a
burden!

~~~
cborenstein
Very much agree with this. The idea of separating the "dump" phase from the
"organize" or "refine" phase has been an inspiration for what we're building
at Bytebase: [https://medium.com/@bytebase/an-iterative-approach-to-
notes-...](https://medium.com/@bytebase/an-iterative-approach-to-
notes-f1c2a28c4d29).

------
hliyan
I believe I shared this once before. After twenty years of trying every
possible note taking app from Word 95 to Notion, this is now the entirety of
my note taking app:

    
    
      #!/bin/bash
    
      read text
      _date=$(date +'%Y-%m-%d')
      echo -e "\n$_date: $text" >> ~/Dropbox/notes/stream.txt

~~~
kostarelo
So you only take notes while on your actual computer. You never take notes
besides when you are on your computer.

~~~
hliyan
I usually use a paper notebook when I'm away from my computer. But if I really
want to take a digital note, I can do so. Notice that the text file is synced
to Dropbox. I can open it using the Dropbox mobile app, scroll to the bottom
and add a manual entry. But obviously, it's not as fast as a command line
entry.

------
grtehy
Just another opinion on the balanced note taking method:

I think org-mode solves almost all _offline_ note-taking requirements

* org-roam makes it super-easy to link notes

* emacs as an editor is as usable as any other editor

* Rich media is possible and easy to do in org-mode. Attach a snapshot, embed a video file

* Code with documentation is a feature not available in most other note taking methods/apps. It's possible to run code snippets and add comments, documentation about them in the same space

* Latex support is advanced. Inline equations work seamlessly

* Search support is advanced

Drawbacks:

* One of the main drawbacks is that all your notes end up offline. This was a deal-breaker for me. ox-hugo helps in publishing your notes to a (private) static site where it can be searched, viewed but _not edited_ on the fly

* Publishing through ox-hugo is separate from maintaining a backup/sync of your notes in /org/ format. You'll have to do this separately through Dropbox/GDrive/etc

* A backup of your org notes is not usable until you set up your emacs environment and download all your notes

~~~
Multicomp
if org-mode would support Ctrl+V pasting a random image or file into it, and
if it could have rudimentary inking support, it sounds just about perfect to
me.

Sadly, the combo of (rich optional) text, easy paste in pictures, inking, file
embedding, easy linking, open file formats / all in a sqlite file you can sync
/ stick on a flash drive, that runs on Windows/Android/Linux/maaaaybe web is
just not there yet that I can see.

~~~
vvillena
If you want to insert an image in an org file, drag-and-drop usually works,
although the default UX isn't good (e.g. images show in its native size until
you set a "#+ATTR_ORG: :width 600px" header above the image).

------
j0hnml
The biggest issue I have with note taking is not the medium or app, it’s the
fact that I would often write something and never look at the note again. This
essentially made the act of note writing, at least for me, futile since I
rarely remember my notes as I’m writing them.

The best solution for this, I’ve found, is to still take notes on the bigger
picture but then to add the smaller details, definitions, concepts to Anki
[1], which literally forces me to review those smaller details again and again
until they “stick”. Doing so then makes me want to revisit the notes to get
the full picture. As a result, my memorization of all kinds of things has
greatly improved, which makes future research and documentation all the more
better. It’s a very good positive reinforcing learning method and I recommend
it to anyone who may have similar issues.

[1] [https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/)

~~~
kaliszad
For me, if I have some more long-running projects or ideas I might return to
and e.g. give a presentation about them at some point, I find using
[https://orgpad.com](https://orgpad.com) an alternative. It tries to be a
general tool that helps you connect the dots in a graph and that helps
structuring information more like your brain does instead of forcing the
linear approach of lists or longer texts. It doesn't force a scheme or
anything like that on you and it can quite easily be turned into presentations
e.g. like this conference talk on Graph isomorphism:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8P7UwHhAA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8P7UwHhAA)
Btw. Orgpad is also a project, that is completely written in Clojure/
ClojureScript. (Full disclosure I have consulted and still consult the
developers on orgpad.com infrastructure.)

I the end, if you have the wrong tool or the wrong method for anything you are
going to have a bad time even if the tool or method is useful in a different
setting. An analogy: You can hardly unscrew something using a hammer unless
you want to have more problems then before.

~~~
GekkePrutser
Orgpad looks really good.

I always find this kind of mindmap stuff to go beyond my screen size too
quickly though.. I'd love to have something like this in VR so I can walk
around and write stuff everywhere, move things etc, just like I have my walls
covered in stuff like those stalkers in horror movies :D

VR would be great for this I think. I might even make an app like that.

~~~
klavik
VR would be great. As it gets more adopted, we will certainly play with this
technology. Currently, we use 43 inch displays as a replacement in our office.

------
djhworld
I gave up with the commercial and open source offerings and instead just wrote
my own solution.

All notes are markdown, stored in a SQLite DB with full text search. It has a
simple frontend and you can drag/drop images onto the editor and it will
upload them.

To facilitate quick note taking I wrote a FUSE driver for it and have bound
CMD+N to open a command line scratchpad window (I use i3wm) where I can write
and edit notes using conventional *nix tooling.

It's not perfect, nor slick, but it works for me.

~~~
stepstop
> To facilitate quick note taking I wrote a FUSE driver for it

I didn't understand this part. Why can't you just write the file and then
either manually/automatically trigger an import of the text into the SQLiteDB?

~~~
djhworld
The note taking service is on one of my raspberry pi's and exposes a HTTP API
which the fuse driver interacts with.

Could have used NFS or something to achieve what you've suggested, but this is
the path I went down and seems to work ok for my needs.

------
semibeard
Samuel Suresh's YouTube video titled "How I Take Notes with My iPad Pro in
Lectures" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0ql-
yeY9u0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0ql-yeY9u0)) makes some pretty good
points for taking handwritten notes on a device.

Akkshaya Varkhedi says in the article a couple downsides to handwriting notes
on paper are:

1\. Can't add screenshots, images, links, etc. 2\. can't easily search for
content.

Using something like Goodnotes addresses both of those items. You can take
screenshots, add images, and links, and even use the devices camera to capture
images (like the whiteboard/chalkboard during lecture). And (depending on how
good your handwriting is), there is a search feature which searches the words
you've written—and those words can be converted to type if you want to add
them to a document without needing to re-type it.

Buying a tablet and stylus (like iPad and the Apple Pencil) to solve the two
points paper notes does not solve seems a bit overkill—but in todays world, if
you're a student going into University and need to purchase a device, those
tablets are looking mighty attractive versus a standard laptop.

~~~
MH15
Ohio State University gives all incoming freshman an iPad and Apple Pencil
[1]. I can say with confidence it works amazingly well for taking notes in a
classroom setting and for doing homework. Copy-paste comes in handy for things
like large math problems of course.

However, I don't like using it for work/personal projects. Still trying to
figure out why.

[1]
[https://digitalflagship.osu.edu/students/technology](https://digitalflagship.osu.edu/students/technology)

------
Brajeshwar
In the early days of blogging, I used to write anything and everything. People
read them. If I find a better way to move a sprite on a timeline, I write
about it. If I find a way to hack an animation sync with a kicker layered
audio, I write about it. People will read about it, discuss on forums, and
sites such as Adobe would link to it.

Then, I became smarter. Before writing, I'd then research, ponder, and then
find a solution someone did. Awesome, there it goes.

I do still write notes -- Handwritten, erstwhile in Evernote, Apple Notes,
etc. Then I wanted to simplify it, in the hope that the notes will likely stay
on even after I'm no more. Recently, I chose to stay with plain text, markdown
is the next-step up, and then perhaps plain HTML.

Markdown - I write it as plain as possible. It is easily readable as Plain
Text, if needed. HTML - I'm pretty confident that HTML as its saner, plain
form will remain and live through time.

So, now, I have started collecting, writing pieces of notes in a set of Plain
Text Collections - akin to your Org-Mode but much much simpler. In order to
publish it[1], I threw in Jekyll for now but I'm not married to that and I'm
keeping it such that if I just change a tool the next time, I can do it
without much jugglery.

Of course, I still use quite a few Note-Apps but most of them are the tools to
my needs. I've stopped looking at Note-Apps that ingest and keeps it there.
For instance, I can write in iA Writer and the file stays where it has. I can
then continue writing it with SublimeText + Markdown. I will try to write
more, be naive all over again. I don't want to know who reads it, how things
are -- but just things that interest me.

1\. [https://oinam.fyi](https://oinam.fyi)

------
cycomanic
I think the note taking market is due for a takeover by one of the epaper
writers, like the remarkable, the Sony epaper or the onyx boox. I feel very
similar to the author, at the same time I've been using my Sony epaper for
reading papers and taking meeting notes which is much more convenient than
using a computer. If one of these companies would come up with a good note
taking app, preferably with some way of making easy cross-reference and maybe
ocr for search I'd move all my notes over to handwriting again.

~~~
Multicomp
I agree. It seems the epaper market is missing a niche. The 'cheap
remarkable'.

1\. e-ink screen of more than 5", less than 18"

2\. sd card (aside from the Likebook Mars, this is just about impossible to
get in most eReaders, let alone one for less than $500!) and an open format
(ODF-based linked files, json / svg in sqlite etc)

3\. syncthing access (android or native Go binary)

4\. headphone jack / built-in microphone

5\. stylus (wacom or whatever, can take or leave pressure sensitivity just
not-battery powered plz)

6\. low latency, even if ugly artifacts drawing of the lines

I guess if someone wanted to buy it it would exist and could be purchased, but
I ended up settling on the likebook mars since it did all of the above except
the stylus and low latency drawing.

Remarkable has apparently pushed the low latency way down and good for them,
but they IIRC off the top of my head do not support syncthing or sd cards, and
they are far, far too much for the average joes of the world to purchase. $300
USD is expensive, and it barely gets you halfway to the ~700 USD (IIRC) they
go for. Clearly a high-end product.

~~~
detaro
You literally can get SSH access to the linux running on a remarkable, I doubt
syncthing is impossible. And since the v2 is announced, you can buy v1 right
now for $299 new.

------
tristor
I feel mostly the same as the author of this blog post. I have been through so
many note taking apps and nothing has yet completely replaced just having a
pen and a notepad with me at all times. But, I have gotten close. For me, I am
very word-heavy, I don't need to draw (and if I do, I want a whiteboard, not a
notepad).

Just this month I started doing notes on my computer again after being
introduced to an app here on HN in another thread that seems to have hit the
high points for me. More than anything, it seems to work for me because it
just gets out of my way. Try Standard Notes if you haven't yet. I like writing
in Markdown, so I use it as I would a text editor, but rather than needing to
search at the command line and maintain a git repo, it has tagging and search
built-in as well as encrypted cloud syncing, but otherwise just stays out of
my way. It works really well.

~~~
jamil7
I'm in the same boat with standard notes, been using it for a few years now.
Recently after a bout of RSI I've been trying to do more note taking and
sketching on pen and paper to alleviate the typing between coding and other
tasks.

------
Maha-pudma
I used both.

If I'm learning I will write notes with a pencil and paper (pencil over pen
every time). This means I have to think more about what I'm writing and for me
is more flexible. I use an A4 squared pad with an index at the front, each
page is split similar to the Cornell note taking system which is good for
summarising and adding tags for quickly finding information. My notes are
scribbled and messy. I will then transcribe these onto a computer using text
files and folders for structure. You can't beat text files. As a front end for
this I use Zim Desktop Wiki. Cross platform, portable, and easy to use with a
simple markup syntax. It offers many excellent features, including a journal,
tasks, diagrams, spell checking, interlinking, back links, searching, tags,
images, tables, version control, and many others. Drop the notes into Dropbox
and you have syncing.

If the worse comes and Zim disappears it's all just text files and folders.
Pandoc can convert Zim to markdown or whatever you like.

For other quick notes I use a reporters jotter. I will transcribe them onto
the computer if they are important. But generally these notes are throw away.

~~~
jcelerier
vouching for zim too

~~~
Maha-pudma
The way Zim organises the notes really makes sense to me. I know you could do
what Zim does manually and use built in Linux tools to accomplish most if not
all its features but it's nice to have it all in one package.

------
dade_
My concern is usability and not being locked into proprietary formats, also I
use NextCloud for syncing. So, no single app does the trick, but this is
working well for me here days:

For had written notes, sketches, Daily journal & learning (graph paper with
straight lines and snapping) - Write by Stylus Labs, works on iPad, Android,
Window, etc. Files in svg/svgz. App opens nearly instant.

Joplin for Tasks, Notes, recipes, web clippings. Markdown with proprietary
indexed folders, but easy import/export. Local storage on my phone, so instant
access to my information with search.

QOwnnotes for long form, journal, blog entries. Markdown in regular file
structure. For iPad I use Writemator.

------
pjot
Nothing has been as frictionless as nvALT[1].

Plain text, full text search, and point it at iCloud/Dropbox/Drive and now you
have your notes fully synced.

I’ve spent far more time than I care to admit trying out new note
applications...

[1]:
[https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/](https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/)

~~~
rmkrmk
I hope they'll release nvUltra soon:
[https://nvultra.com](https://nvultra.com)

I use this as well, have all my stuff in a git repo and sync it to my iOS
device so I can edit it with apps like iA Writer or 1Writer easily.

~~~
pjot
Definite have been looking forward to nvultra for a while now.

I thought about putting it in git, wasn’t sure if even having to commit/push
would be too cumbersome for me.

I sync my notes with iCloud and have nvALT look at the folder there - then I
setup a shortcut on iOS that appends to a “daily” file - can even use Siri
too. Everything stays in sync and I don’t need to think about it. At least for
now

------
timwis
I've tried a lot of note taking apps over the last 8 years. Over the past few
months I've become less fussed about the tools and more focused on the
process: I now have a file for each week (I call it a journal or weekly
notes), with a heading for each day of the week, and a sub-heading for each
meeting/conversation/thing I'm thinking about. At the each week, as part of my
weekly review (GTD), I review the weekly notes file. I scan my notes for each
meeting/etc. and consider whether I need to do anything with them: I often
have to create a task; sometimes I want to hang on to something so I move it
into an evergreen note [1] on the topic (at the moment, I have one for work,
and one for personal, but I expect I'll split these out as they accumulate).
But for most things in my weekly notes, no action is necessary and I'll
probably never look at them again (unless I need to refer back to something
someone said later, which is easy to find if I wrote it).

So far it's working pretty well for me. I think the key is the regular
review/processing.

I think I could implement this in just about any tool, so long as there's an
easy way to quickly add an entry with a timestamp to the current weekly note
file. I happen to use org-mode in emacs for this with org-journal (using doom
emacs, only switched a couple months ago) but other tools would work just as
well I bet.

[1]:
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4SDCZQeRo4xFEQ8H4qrSqd68ucp...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4SDCZQeRo4xFEQ8H4qrSqd68ucpgE6LU155C)

~~~
amirkdv
> I've become less fussed about the tools and more focused on the process

This has been my conclusion after years of trying different tools or even
trying to make my own. Once I started focusing on the process I realized that
not only I don't need a lot of features from a tool, I'm actually better off
without any complex features.

I just use markdown, vim, and git. This specific choice of tools for me is
only guided by one thing: I don't want to waste _any_ brain cycles on figuring
out / deciding how my note taking tools should behave. For someone else this
could've been a Word doc and a folder structure. When you do that, then taking
notes becomes as trivial as writing with pen and paper, except for the ability
to edit and grep which is really all you need.

Bonus: it's ridicuously easy to work with markdown (and friends) with pandoc.
I routinely convert all my markdown notes to html and use < 100 loc of ad-hoc
JS to give it a decent browsing UI.

------
RMPR
Emacs org-mode (Desktop) + syncthing + Orgzly (mobile)

And I have pretty much everything to take a note when I want to + it's plain
text so I don't even need the apps to write, very convenient if for one reason
or another I don't have access to one of my devices.

------
sasaf5
Note-taking is best served by a system, not by a single app.

I used to struggle with note taking apps until I started to use org-mode on
termux. Human interface relies on emacs, syncing and versioning relies on git,
agenda and TODOs rely on org. Never needed any other note taking app.

As a bonus, emacs color themes look really nice on a crisp OLED screen.

~~~
ralls_ebfe
I assume you a real keyboard for this?

~~~
sasaf5
I do use a foldable keyboard when I need to write more.

But for random note capture the onscreen keyboard works well. Termux can be
configured to display C M shift. It might sound cumbersome but you quickly
develop a muscle memory for it. Add to that the richness of emacs+org commands
and it becomes faster than, say, Evernote.

------
darrmit
I’ve tried nearly every major app/service and always end up on Standard Notes.
It strikes the perfect balance for me between privacy, ease of use, and
functionality.

Prior to settling on SN I was a big fan of Simplenote and nvALT, but the lack
of even basic MFA for Simplenote drove me away.

Evernote, OneNote, etc just seem to be way too much for what I need. And Apple
Notes, while it has gotten a lot better, does not make it easy to get your
data back out.

------
mstngl
After this thread became a discussion of competing, sometimes extreme
approaches, I want to add one alternative. Markdown files, organized in folder
hierarchy and synchronized by the service of choice are fine for me - for
notes and knowledge collection. Recently I started to add the superpower of
tags and links to other files by using Apps like Obsidian[1] and Zettlr[2]
which are very similar. The great advantage is, that you just show these apps
the par of your notes folder and are not maintaining notes in an app-specific
environment. The syntax for tags and links is simple and will not disturb
massively even if opening the files in a text editor.

This approach merges the simplicity of plain text, the power of tags and links
and keep this independent of the of synchronization, backup or future
development of these apps or anything in this stack of tools.

[1] [https://obsidian.md/](https://obsidian.md/) [2]
[https://www.zettlr.com/](https://www.zettlr.com/)

~~~
BoysenberryPi
Obsidian's licensing makes it immediate non-starter for me and I would imagine
the same for most people who would want to use it for work, side projects, or
anything they hope to make money off of.

~~~
omnimus
What is the problem you see? I am interested why i should be cautious. It
seems like offline app that uses .md files. And the authors seem legit
bootstrappers with quality projects behind them.

~~~
BoysenberryPi
The free license and the one-time purchase license do not allow for commercial
use. You would need to purchase their Enterprise license to use this
commercially. Is it expensive? Not really, $50 a user per year isn't
necessarily expensive when considering price alone but when compared with
other alternatives in the space I'd rather not deal with a yearly license. I
used Obsidian Beta up until they released their licensing.

------
fblp
Quick rant triggered by this... We have our

\- Cloud document systems (Google docs, Dropbox paper, Notion)....

\- Project management systems (Trello, Asana, Monday)

\- Todo/task/notes management (Keep, Todoist, Evernote)

\- Customer Ticketing systems (Zendesk, helpscout, freshdesk)

\- Bug/issue tracking systems (Pivotal, Jira, Github)

\- Crms (Salesforce, Hubspot, Streak)

\- And then theres even specialized customer facing and internal facing
KnowledgeBase products (getguru, readme.io..)

Can you see the insanity? So many apps that are just different ways of
abstracting and sorting knowledge, relationships, time and next steps.

A lot of progress has been made in enabling developers to integrate customer
(event) data accross apps over the past 5 years (segment, mparticle with their
data layers). But what about a standard data layer for the folder /
project/tickets / tasks / notes hierarchies that exists in all these apps. So
our information and knowledge isnt so siloed?

~~~
jkelleyrtp
You can full-send into Notion (or any one of these systems) for a "jack of all
trades, master of none." Obviously, not as good as a single-purpose system,
but there really needs to be a space for unified data.

~~~
Cthulhu_
\+ you don't own the data with Notion; only a matter of time before they force
you into a subscription like Evernote did.

------
wistlo
Plain text, for me, after being burned multiple times.

Occasionally, I'll fire up Word to paste in screen shots, but for most
everything, I now write it out in plain text in Notepad++.

I felt burned when Microsoft's abandoned the Outlook Journal, where I had
collected years of notes—notes that were almost all plain text.

Microsoft came out with OneNote and I watch colleagues diligently recording
their thoughts there, but not me. Plain text, from here out. I may eventually
print them and put them in a binder, so I can have "papers" that survive me.

The git solution intrigues me, but I would use my words and little else if I
recorded notes there.

------
GuB-42
My note taking app or choice is Squid/Papyrus. Works best with a stylus.

It is essentially virtual paper, it replaces a notebook, no more, no less.

But the thing it has that I've seen nowhere else is that it is vector based,
with an unlimited size canevas and high zoom (10%-1000%).

It sounds so obvious as a feature. I mean, if you have a stylus, besides
drawing, taking notes is the most obvious thing you can do with it. And what
can a screen do and paper cannot? Scrolling and zooming. And because
smartphones are powerful computers and we have good algorithms, there is no
reason to limit canevas size artificially.

So I went in and looked at the most popular note taking apps, thinking: these
are made by many-million dollar companies they must have that. And no. All I
found was cloud-synchronized text files. None took advantage of the drawing
capabilities of smartphones, or they did it in a half-assed way. The S-Note
app (I have a Galaxy Note 4) is nice, but it is bitmap and with a limited
canevas size, why? Can't Samsung do better?

Only one app did it right and that's Squid (previously Papyrus). And it is a
little known one compared to the likes of Evernote. It isn't even mentioned in
the article even though it is the closest thing to the "writing things down"
solution it recommends, so I suspect the author doesn't know its existence.
Otherwise I think he would have mentioned it, even if it is just to talk about
how it doesn't fit his needs.

------
leonroy
The title of this blog post strikes a chord although whilst I love writing
with a fountain pen, transcribing my notes to computer later is a royal pain.

It's also irritating to have bunches of notes in Apple's Notes app, in
Confluence, in Notion, in Google Docs and goodness knows where else.

The movement to cloud has driven a coach and horses through the whole
reasoning behind the EU/US push to get Microsoft to be more open and not hold
institutions to ransom with data locked within a proprietary vendor's
platform:

[https://www.infoworld.com/article/2618153/how-microsoft-
was-...](https://www.infoworld.com/article/2618153/how-microsoft-was-forced-
to-open-office.html)

Now we've gone full tilt towards a world of proprietary clouds where we don't
even have custody of our own data and instead entrust it to a MongoDB cluster
somewhere managed by the latest hot, new note taking startup.

Where are the regulators when you need them to ensure we can get our data in
and out of these platforms?

As for me, I find vim or Sublime and Markdown synced via Dropbox work
tolerably well. I keep toying with the idea of writing an open source Markdown
syncing solution with open source clients for note taking...

That aside the proprietary nature of the cloud and especially how it pertains
to note taking (and todo apps) is a real step backwards. The regulators who
forced Microsoft to submit in the past would be gnashing their teeth at the
situation we have today.

------
tmsh
I find the Things.app very convenient (and worth the one time cost for macOS
and iOS since I use it 10-100 times per day).

The key part of using inbox-oriented task apps is to have a process to review
the inbox and fold it into some shallow hierarchy of “folders” or “projects”
etc. I didn’t realize this was the key part of all systems like bullet
journaling or GTD (or the different org mode flows or NV as I understand
them).

It’s basic data structures. But after a certain point it’s not efficient to
access things linearly, so you need to introduce some sort of tree.

Recently I took the time to go through my almost 1000 inbox notes and fold
them into ‘promo notes’ or ‘startup ideas’ or ‘startup resources’. All of
which can be usually grouped into one more level for even faster access (‘no
code resources’, ‘design resources’, etc).

It all comes down to caches being fast for writing and reading but then there
needs to be maintenance to preserve access speed.

It took me three years (and 1000 unfinished notes) to realize this. But you
just need that process to organize periodically and then the structure in
place is there (now I daily just move things to the right project/area; and
assess whether to create new projects / refactor maybe once a month).

------
swayson
[https://github.com/foambubble/foam](https://github.com/foambubble/foam)

Roam-like note taking app using VS Code. Still early days but has momentum.

Been using it for a week for some project docs, and so far I like it.

~~~
oldsj
Thanks for posting this! Been playing around with org-mode and org-roam but
setup is definitely more challenging and it does feel like a bit of platform
lock-in since the only useful org editor is emacs.

~~~
bitwize
Emacs is free software, it's fun and easy to program, and it emits mostly
plain text, which is trivial to integrate with other software.

Being "locked in" to a platform like that? Yes, please! It's vastly different
from, say, Windows vendor lock, and it opens up possibilities instead of
closing them off (especially since Emacs runs on nearly everything with a Von
Neumann architecture and at least a 32-bit word size).

------
omarhaneef
I think the reason writing things down is stickier than the apps is because
they have a dedicated “always on” quality.

I wonder if you could get part of the way there by having an iPad or
remarkable tablet that is just always on and charged ready to take notes.

~~~
powersnail
Digital notes are too limiting in my opinion.

All digital note apps have the problem of making me work very hard to fit my
thought into their "organization" of things: hyperlinks, a list of some
arbitrary order, a tree, synchronization quirks, and whatever.

It's very painful to work outside their envisioned use cases.

For instance, most open-source solutions focus on a plain text, and if I do
use plain text, they are reasonably good. They problem is I need more than
that. I need diagrams and tables. Tables written with ascii characters are
really hard to maintain.

In the end, I went back to a notebook, and occasionally a stack of sticky
memos when I need to clean up some disorganized thoughts. The benefit of the
physical world is the freedom of doing whatever I want to the medium:
ordering, clustering, rotating, clipping, pasting, etc.

I guess that the digital user experience just isn't there yet.

------
Layvier
Tried roam research for 2 weeks, don't think I'm going back. You almost never
read your paper notes because you quickly can't search them.

------
leksak
I've used Keep extensively, but have been slowly migrating over to Notion as I
need more structure than what tags in Keep can afford me.

The problem is probably me, I save a lot of stuff. But, Keep has become
sluggish as a result. I'm not great at utilising tags, so oftentimes I'll just
scroll through "everything" (sometimes narrowed by say searching for "images")
and I have pretty decent visual memory so I'll readily find the thing I'm
looking for just because things have the right shape (even text).

Notion is sluggish with embeds. It doesn't deal with the visual information I
store very well either. This might be a Firefox thing.

Have used Evernote too, in the past. The problem with that is that it doesn't
at all mirror my mental model of how things relate to one another. Granted,
neither does Notion nor Keep.

For me, things start out flat (Keep) and then they nest (Notion) but I also
have interrelationships, and need pointers between things. Sometimes, I just
want to explore the "web" of how things connect but I've never encountered a
system that affords me different "cameras" to explore my curated content.

I do not have the energy to build it though.

~~~
akkshu92
Hmm, that's an interesting take, and I agree with all your points. Notion is
decent, but it requires some learning curve to begin with. I also feel that
the apps that optimize for taking notes in a structured, connected manner
compromise on the UX front. There's no one size fits all.

------
intended
Same - shifted to one note and then that made me start writing notes on paper.

Unless the writing experience on the tablet improves to match the real world,
it’s just not going to be good enough.

Procreate on the iPad has some of the best redo/undo gestures and some
excellent inking.

If they used that engine to run a note program, and allow a way to sync across
ecosystems - it would be the best written note taking app bar paper.

~~~
rpastuszak
> Procreate on the iPad has some of the best redo/undo gestures and some
> excellent inking.

Yes, same with Concepts
([https://apps.apple.com/us/app/concepts/id560586497)—(initial...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/concepts/id560586497\)—\(initially\))
it feels a tad less user-friendly than procreate, but stores drawings as
vectors and you can work with an infinite canvas. Check it out if you like
Procreate:) It's great for im promptu diagrams and hand written notes.

Now, the three finger swipe gesture on iOS (Notes, annotations) just pisses me
off. It's slower, more error-prone and different than any other App. I wish
Apple followed Procreate/Concept on that one.

~~~
intended
I have concepts ! It’s pretty nice. But procreate has pretty much demolished
every other app.

I’ve been doodling on the iPad since the day they came out, and procreate
simply nailed the gestures.

Apple has a moat around them, so I don’t see why they don’t take the gestures
either.

------
noja
QOwnnotes is a cross-platform markdown gui app that integrates with NextCloud
Notes. [https://www.qownnotes.org/](https://www.qownnotes.org/)

------
vijayshankarv
I really liked Andy Matuschak's article “Better note-taking” misses the point;
what matters is “better thinking” -
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z7kEFe6NfUSgtaDuUjST1oczKKzQ...](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z7kEFe6NfUSgtaDuUjST1oczKKzQQeQWk4Dbc)

Over the years, I have also moved from one app to another when it comes to
note-taking. Frankly, I was using them more as a place to put things that I
might want to refer to later than using them to think about the problems that
I was trying to solve.

Personally, I find that there are times when I need more of a free flowing
format like paper or an iPad, but most of the time, text suffices. For the
last six months or so, I have been using Roam Research and related
apps(Obsidian) and they do really help me evolve a structure around my
thoughts without having to have one when I am starting out.

------
pvorb
I think some of the reasons why there are so many note taking apps are that
it's easy to start with, everybody has a use case for it (easy dogfooding) and
you don't need a business idea. If you need an idea for your startup, it's
just too easy to either build a note taking app or a chat app.

~~~
Slartie
To do: add to-do-list apps to that list

------
bt1a
I too am paralyzed by the number of choices available. I've found that a
simple todo.txt in Sublime with a Notes syntax highlighting package is all
that I need.
[https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Notes](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Notes)

------
therealmarv
I'm also tired. Now it's only a folder of Markdown files and pictures, Google
Drive and VScode. Nobody can take it away from me. I'm in control.

Btw. I think git is too cumbersome for notes. I don't care about history and
git log and I don't want to push things manually for notes.

~~~
madacol
What extensions for VSCode are you using?

I'm fairly new to this, and so far I've been using __Markdown Memo __as the
main one, with this others as Add-Ons:

\- Markdown All in One

\- Markdown Paste

\- Auto Snippet - for configuring templates by auto-applying VSCode snippets
to new markdown files

BTW: Markdown Memo is fairly new, was just released this month

~~~
therealmarv
I use only Markdown Checkbox (GH style checkboxes) and Paste Image for pasting
images directly into the same folder.

------
timothy-quinn
I think we all end up on our own journey of trying to find the note taking
style that works best for us, and the variety of styles (git, onenote,
evernote, pen & paper, notes app, etc.) has lent to a variety of applications
being built to cater for each.

I've got my own slightly different style of note taking that works really well
for me, but only when I start to work on multiple projects simultaneously and
I need a way to track tasks across them all. When I fall back to one or two
projects, then my note taking needs disappear. I joined the fray anyway and
turned it into a web app so I could at least have something that _I_ want:
[https://screwnotes.com](https://screwnotes.com)

------
rchase
Years ago I took a tip from (the admittedly fictional) Mr. Sherlock Holmes: I
never go anywhere without my small notebook and a pen. Back pocket for
notebook (and yeah, the current one is 3/4 full and beat to hell) and pen in
front pocket(preferably a black Pilot Precise V5, which is both cheap and high
quality).

It's really impossible to express how many times a day this comes in handy.
The most mundane information usually, for me, is also the most forgettable,
and a quick jot fixes that.

And finally, when the thing is cashed, though most of the notations within are
completely useless after a couple days, the object itself has, through wear
and abuse, become a compelling and aesthetically pleasing artifact.

------
hardwaregeek
Personally I use Apple Notes or org mode. Whenever I see an alternative, I
refuse because it's not like my notes will all magically migrate to
Notion/Roam/whatever. No, I'll just append on a name to the list of notetaking
apps I use. That's not worth it. Even for some fancy backlinking features that
I'll definitely bikeshed to hell.

What it'd take for me to move to a new note taking app (not that I'm holding
my breath for a new one) is that it would have to be an information black
hole. I wouldn't have to migrate notes because it would automatically suck up
everything. Of course that's tricky and potentially privacy invading, so I'm
not expecting a solution anytime soon.

------
codeknight11
Lol. This is exactly what I was thinking the other day. Everyone is churning
out new notetaking tools as if we don't have enough already.

------
dvtrn
_the global note-taking management software market is estimated to reach $1.35
billion by 2026_

That’s an interesting indicator. Would anyone happen to know what report the
author is sourcing or have a link? I’m curious to read more of these numbers
in full.

~~~
akkshu92
[https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/product/note-
making-m...](https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/product/note-making-
management-software-
market/#:~:text=According%20to%20Verified%20Market%20Research,5.32%25%20from%202019%20to%202026).

Not sure if it's a trusted source. Let me link it to the article though.

------
fenesiistvan
I was trying and using one single app for this purpose: Simplenote.

Installed a few years ago to all my devices. Simple and works. Why should
anyone waste time trying all alternatives, after a first good enough app have
been found which fulfills most needs?

------
CareyB
I’ve tried many, many different apps, and approaches over the years. On of my
peeves is doing things twice, so here are, to my mind, the important decision
making factors:

1\. cross-device/platform support. Once I was entirely Apple, I settled on
Drafts (post processing when necessary), and Apple Notes. If you have multiple
OS’s involved, the decision is harder (Evernote). The logic is that I wanted
some contextually sensitive templates for field notes, and Drafts does that
with its version of ‘macros’. Having the MacOS version makes writing reports
from my notes is dead easy.

If you’re less concerned with re-typing, and/or transcribing, do what you
want.

~~~
groby_b
There is a non-zero chance you won't always be on the same platform. That
doesn't mean you shouldn't use the best app for your platform, but it's worth
to think about how you migrate data out when that day comes.

I've spent roughly a decade or so on each platform I've been on, and then
moved on, because either the platform lost its way, or I needed different
things. I've learned the painful way that you want data liberation.

~~~
dredmorbius
What platforms & timeline, if you don't mind?

~~~
groby_b
1982-1989 MS DOS 1988-1996 Unix - first SCO, then Linux (since '91) 1994-2006
Windows - mostly NT 2002-??? macOS 2011-??? Linux

Yes, there's overlap, and yes, I'm currently considering Windows again :)

~~~
dredmorbius
Thanks.

And yes, needs/utility vary.

Any CPM, Classic Mac, or BeOS experience by chance? (Or others.)

~~~
groby_b
A bit of CP/M. I'd say around 82-84? Way too much classic Mac. (Wrote a SCSI
driver for System 6, still have nightmares ;). No BeOS, Amiga distracted me
from that :)

And plenty of others, just never as the main system.

------
jillesvangurp
Not so much tired of it as extremely indifferent. I'm simply not the type of
person that uses tools like this; at all. I know plenty of people that take
notes, use post its, etc. I can't even read my own handwriting and wielding a
pen is physically painful for me. So not a thing in my life.

I tend to treat written notes as short lived and transient. I'll literally
create a new tab in whatever editor, write or paste something there and
typically never even bother to save it. Either I act on it or it's a form of
documentation that ends up in a more permanent place like a README, issue
report, article, code comment, etc.

~~~
antisthenes
I'm in the same boat.

Every minute I spend taking notes on something is probably better spent doing
the actual thing. I have tabs open until I do the thing, then I just archive
them and close them.

Same goes for any to-do list.

~~~
stevedonovan
Except for written dialog with my inner Rubber Duck. But then it's all about
process, and the result is not important after a few days.

------
kirstenbirgit
I have used Apple Notes since I got my first iPhone, there's still notes from
back then in there! Mainly for quick lists and things I need to remember,
ideas, shopping, etc. Haven't really found any issues with it.

~~~
satysin
Yes I use Apple Notes for actual notes. It works well enough for everything I
do with the only draw back (to me) being it isn't available as raw text.
Although copy/paste works just fine so not a huge deal tbh.

For anything that I find lives in Apple Notes a bit _too_ long I move it over
to plain text and use iA Writer. I try to keep anything in Apple Notes as
short term notes. Anything I plan to keep around as more (small) documentation
I switch over to iA.

A few years ago I just got tired of trying out all these different notes apps.
I figured I have iA Writer and Apple Notes and that works well enough so gave
up trying every new note taking app that came out and haven't had any regrets.

Recently I tried out Notion and god it was awful. I felt I spent longer
arranging things in Notion than I did working on things.

These days I find a more limited and simpler solution is better for me. I
switched back to Things 3 a year or so ago as I found Todoist overwhelming
after a while. Sure Things is more limited but I like that. It is basically a
post-it note and I realised that is all I needed.

------
banku_brougham
I’d like to engage with the content of this peice, rather than share my
ignorance of history and empire. So some observations / questions:

1\. Its clear to me that the decades long trend of militarizing police
exemplifies the author’s idea of the frontier returning to the imperial core.

2\. What is the EU in this context?

3\. American civilization has transformed in admirable ways away from
reprehensible practices in the past, I don’t think trend extrapolation will
accurately forecast the future.

4\. The War on Terror has been a fiasco.

------
bachmeier
This is true for a certain class of apps. (I really like the website too.
Clean and readable.)

Having recently moved back to a Chromebook, I'll add one more to the long
list, one that you don't really hear about. Gitlab comes with a very nice Web
IDE. Create a new markdown file and start typing away. You get all the beauty
of version control without having to use version control. Can even set it to
automatically build your own private site. All free of charge. I'd argue this
does stand out compared with, say, Evernote or OneNote.

------
iamwpj
I recommend not taking notes usually. Unless you're in a class or lecture, I'm
not sure I see why you're taking notes. If you're learning a new technology
you should be documenting that for use as you go. If you're writing code you
should be adding notes to your code and readme. If you're troubleshooting, the
details should be in the ticket. I'm not against note taking by any measure,
but I don't see the function of it in a day to day workflow.

~~~
marvinblum
I take notes for others (collaboration and knowledge sharing) and to create a
concept for problems I cannot keep in my head. Additionally I use a note book
for quick notes, drawings and so on. Usually I will take pictures of parts
that might be useful later and add them to my digital notes.

------
bhauer
> _It’s not because of limited choices. But it’s the other way around. There
> are so many note-taking apps you could try but end up sticking to none. At
> least, that’s my story. It’s a perfect example of the paradox of choice._

Either this is not a good example of the paradox of choice, or as I am more
inclined to believe, the paradox of choice is mostly bunk.

While I don't discount that some consumers may be frustrated at times by an
abundance of choice and may naively think their life would be better with
fewer choices, I don't think reality would bear that out. Maybe easier in the
moment of the choice, but less satisfactory in the experience of the outcome
of that choice. I know my life would be measurably less enjoyable with fewer
choices in all walks of life: fewer food options, fewer cities and towns to
live in, fewer computer manufacturers, and yes, fewer note-taking apps. Fewer
apps would _not_ make the apps better. It would only remove some of the
options that are satisfying niche needs for other people. It's a bit elitist
to say there should be fewer of any category, because it implies that the
subtlety of preference felt by others is unimportant.

Choice is the consumer side of the innovation process. If anything, the non-
satisfaction with note-taking applications shows that more exploration, more
innovation, and yes, more choices are in fact needed. Technology still has a
ways to go before we have a robust approximation of the free-flowing paper and
pencil note-taking, augmented seamlessly by the computer. We see where we're
heading with things like OneNote, but we're still generations of innovation
away.

~~~
chishaku
> Fewer apps would not make the apps better.

I don't think the author is saying this.

You can agree on the following simultaneously:

* More competition and innovation in this space might lead to better tools and _possibly better_ individual outcomes.

* More options might lead to more exploration, experimentation and high switching costs, paralysis by indecision, procrastination via tinkering, and _possibly worse_ individual outcomes.

The truly major innovations are behind us: language, writing, writing
instruments, paper, word processor.

Of course, _other tools_ could accelerate your process but depending on what
you're working on, if you don't pick a system and stick with it for a while,
you might experience worse outcomes.

> the non-satisfaction with note-taking applications shows ... more choices
> are in fact needed.

Satisfaction is as much a function of our perspective as it is of the tool.

You can ask

"What is the best tool?"

or you can ask

"What is good enough?"

------
woadwarrior01
I've tried Evernote, Apple Notes, the Remarkable Tablet, vimwiki, and I keep
going back to handwritten notes on paper.

My current workflow for notes is: I take notes on the notes app on the iPhone
or my Mac if I don't have my A4 Moleskin notebook handy. And then I transcribe
the notes on the Moleskin whenever I can. Another recent addition I have to
this workflow is a Brother VC-500W label printer. I use it to print QRcode
stickers for URLs that I stick on my notebook.

~~~
_eigenfoo
Have you considered linking notes from one notebook to another? E.g. if you
named each notebook and numbered pages, you could just point to "page X in
notebook Y", and wouldn't need to transcribe. Would this be something helpful
to you?

~~~
woadwarrior01
I run through about two A4 192 page Moleskin notebooks in a year. Every entry
is dated, and back references are essentially in the form of “On $date, I
wrote ...”, so the lookup is sub-linear time.

------
c-smile
In fact original EverNote implementation (EverNote 2.0) used physical notebook
metaphor.

Notes appeared as an "endless tape":

[https://www.phonearena.com/news/Two-thirds-of-app-users-
in-U...](https://www.phonearena.com/news/Two-thirds-of-app-users-in-U.S.-have-
paid-for-at-least-one_id30191#media-59667)

I think we (initial EverNote dev team [1]) were first who came up with
reasonable virtual list implementation for notes.

The metaphor of notes tape (a.k.a. "writing notes down") was quite natural for
most of people, that's why EverNote got so many users initially. The key point
was to add powerful search tools (including OCR and image recognition) and
categorization (tags) on top of that tape.

Just in case: Sciter's SDK contains sample implementation[2] of such virtual
tape: [https://quark.sciter.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/05/vtape.pn...](https://quark.sciter.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/05/vtape.png)

[1] [https://notes.sciter.com/2017/09/11/motivation-and-a-bit-
of-...](https://notes.sciter.com/2017/09/11/motivation-and-a-bit-of-history/)

[2] [https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-
sdk/tree/master/samples/%2...](https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-
sdk/tree/master/samples/%2Breactor/components/vtape)

~~~
da5is
Are there any note apps still around that take an endless tape approach? It
seems like everyone's gone away from it, but my mind still works best with
endless tape + tags + search.

------
runjake
I took a different approach than the author.

I just found a notes app that worked and stuck with it and stopped worrying
about the options. I still get all the advantages of digital notes.

------
cik
The problem with note-taking (currently) in app form is the way we do things
differently by hand, versus digitally. By hand I write notes, draw items that
matter to me. I frequently mix languages on a page - simply because it works
for me. But, I can flip through a notebook in seconds, compared to clicking
through Evernote/Onenote/Notion/etc. when something is 2-3 days back. I keep
trying. I've used Evernote, Onenote, local TagSpaces, Notion, Wikis of various
sorts, a VIMWiki that I used to keep. I bought RocketBook notebooks, their
beacons, the whole thing. I'll keep trying digital note taking.

The reality is that pen and paper is infinitely faster and the brain processes
finding things more quickly. Some people like myself are wired such that
merely writing the note is the method of locking it into memory.
Unfortunately, the digital tools solve history and retrieval better than the
tactile, writing answer.

For now, I write with fountain pens, some great ink, and a Stalology B6
notebook. I just spent a month, once again trying to make Notion work. The
reality is that writing is just better at this - even though I constantly hope
it won't be. At least for me.

------
yalogin
The main feature for note taking should be it’s simplicity. I am just writing
down a list. All I need is a place to keep referring to and may be search
them. The problem comes when they try to cram too much functionality in it. If
I wanted more functionality there are other apps like pages and numbers
already available. I would just start there. It’s understandable though, Every
company wants to hoard all the enterprise functionality

------
happyweasel
ZIM desktop wiki (open source). For me, a real replacement for OneNote.
Desktop app, no finicky markup skills required. Saves plain text files.
Problem solved.

------
Firehawke
I get that these aren't for everyone, but I'd rather have too many choices
than not enough. Finding the precise tool that does exactly what one needs is
a challenge even with the number of note-taking apps out there.

In my case, I've recently switched to using Trilium Notes which ALMOST meets
my needs, but I still need OneNote as well for sketch-based notes for the time
being.

------
SllX
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by choice, but consider all of the different ways
that people have recorded paper notes, and you can figure that there will be
at least as much diversity in electronic notes. What we’re seeing today is
just the tip of the iceberg, we’ll probably keep inventing new note taking
software for as long as we have interesting computers to do so with.

------
htk
It’s fashionable to say that the best note taking system is pen&paper, but I
think it ends up being a disservice to the idea of registering knowledge. I
think written and digital have completely different pros and cons.

I love to physically write things down on a moleskine, but I decided to not
storage knowledge there, I just dump things from my short term memory to act
upon them in the short term. I tried storing knowledge there but when I needed
later I didn’t have the notepad with me, or it was in an old one etc.

Digital note taking has several disadvantages, but at least it’s always with
me.

Like they say about cameras, the best one is the one that’s with you.

Having created several note taking apps (the latest being Mindown), I’m deeply
interested in the note taking problem, but it seems to be impossible to create
the ideal one. Sometimes we want “simple”, other times we want advanced
features. This is the first layer of challenge I see in the note taking world,
but I can peel this onion in almost endless layers...

~~~
mannschott
I'm familiar with this conundrum. I've been taking notes, managing tasks and
appointments on paper since 2015; before that I took most notes in Emacs org-
mode and managed some tasks there, and some in OmniFocus.

Lack of search is a definite disadvantage of handwritten notes. Here's what
I've done to blunt that:

(1) Every notebook begins with a few pages for a table of contents. (2) When a
notebook is full, I scan it in as a PDF. (3) I type up the table of contents
to make it searchable and add that to the PDF. (4) The PDFs are all available
on my phone.

I am generally able to find things this way, but it is not as convenient as
i-searching around a giant buffer in Emacs or using something like deft.el.
For the moment I am continuing in this fashion, but I do periodically consider
switching back to using a computer for note taking. Perhaps some day I will.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
There are "smart notebooks" that make it relatively easy to send your
handwritten notes to the cloud. The problem is that, at least when I checked a
couple of years ago, they had no OCR, and only uploaded images to which you
could attach a name, so they are not especially helpful when it comes to
search.

I hope in a few years, with good OCR, they will be a good solution for those
of us stuck in this dilemma.

------
techntoke
Markdown and similar markup languages is the perfect note taking solution.

------
gorgoiler
It would be nice to have a small tools approach to note taking.

Small tools for searching and discovery. Another small tool for editing that
uses another small tool to manage and lint any linking.

The use of hashtags in Bear is great, but it’s tied to its own filesystem.

Notable’s live editor is the best, with a great focus mode, but it’s tied to a
single directory of notes where, in the case of macOS, titles with colons get
mangled because the filesystem can’t cope with titles == filenames. It also
stopped being open source without being bug free. I can’t fix bugs in it
myself.

Atom has a lovely focus mode but no built in way of organising notes (left
side columns) like Bear and Notable have.

And they all default to markdown instead of the functionally superior
asciidoc. Markdown is fine up until you have material you wish to format with
any kind of seriousness. Or to boil it down another way: Asciidoc has table
width hints and markdown don’t.

I do love, at least, the level of choice we have these days.

------
emiliovesprini
I've tried dozens and none work better for me than

    
    
      $EDITOR $HOME/txt/note
    

where $EDITOR is Good. The only thing I want from a notes app is to sync txt
with my phone, let me edit the files and do exactly nothing else. They all
fail.

Side note: there was a laughing emoji in the previous text but HN removes it.
Anyone know why that might be?

~~~
perlgeek
store txt/note in Dropbox, then you also have the sync.

------
qwerty456127
If only somebody would make a really good, deep, explanatory review and
comparison of note-taking and knowledge organizing apps available today
(including old and simple tools like Apple Notes and Evernote as well as
Notion, Roam and all the apps they inspired) I would even pay some real money
to read it.

~~~
Cthulhu_
There's plenty of reviews and comparison posts out there; it would help if you
would cite some of them and explain what you think is wrong with them.

My take: usually they're written by the note taking app themselves or an
employee thereof. The rest is people who went for one app (usually emacs org-
mode, lol) and are evangelizing about it.

------
robotsquidward
I'm temperamental and have suffered the paralysis of a hundred note
apps/techniques. I have a notebook I handwrite in too, but it's just one of
the many approaches on the pile.

I was successful for a long time using GitHub Gists for notes, so much so in
fact that I wrote an iOS client that lets you take markdown notes and saves
them all directly to your Gists (OctoNote on iOS
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octonote/id1433164731](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octonote/id1433164731))
but since then I've added probably 5+ notes apps to the list.

Just for fun, my feature list includes: * Markdown (ideally compatibility +
basic styling) * Project viewing (sidebar listing out notes, representing
folder structure) * Customizable themes/fonts * Git integration (or other
cloud backup) * Mac app * iOS app

------
garrettm
I empathize with the "didn't make me a repeat user" part of the post (at least
for typed notes). And being a repeat user is very important to taking notes
and making them useful!

The inbox is a place you naturally visit often, and we think that makes it a
great place for your simple typed notes. We made Twobird to put notes in your
inbox! It leverages the same tools you use for email to help manage and remind
you of stuff for your notes. I find it very useful to keep lists and basic
typed notes alongside the inbox I'm already working in every day. I know I
used to email myself notes -- no longer.

[https://www.twobird.com](https://www.twobird.com)

Disclaimer: I work at Ginger Labs, which makes Twobird and Notability (which
is great for rich + handwritten notes).

------
hs86
There is a lot of feature overlap between these note-taking apps, but I always
find one or two missing critical features. It seems like most apps try to be a
one-size-fits-all solution, and they fail in doing so.

My new approach uses dedicated apps for each use case. I am trying Raindrop.io
(or Pinboard.in) as web clippers / persistent bookmark managers, I am using
Todoist to organize (and gamify) my tasks, and I use VSCode for general note-
taking. Especially VSCode, with its vast extension marketplace, seems to be a
balanced solution for customizing the note-taking experience. I can pick my
preferred Markdown extension with LaTeX math support and add additional
comfort features like TabNine or Grammarly for a better writing experience
than whatever these one-size-fits-all solutions such as Evernote or Notion can
offer.

------
chrisbai
Easy cross-linking notes and the ability to categorize with tags are essential
to note taking apps. A fast and powerful search is as much important. If the
note taking app can be turned into a Zettelkasten system, then you definitely
should have a more detailed look at the app.
[https://passfindr.com](https://passfindr.com) does exactly this. Passfindr
also lets one encrypt user generated content so it can be used as a
password/secrets store as well. It needs to work on every internet enabled
platform and devices. So your choice must be the best maintained application:
the web browser. As an everyday user for my micro documents, articles, secrets
and all kind of resources and ideas, I'm definitely not tired of Passfindr.

------
aj2
Building a simple chat-like note taking app exactly for this.

Try InstaNote on iPhone ([https://apps.apple.com/us/app/instanote-
pro/id1499393902?ls=...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/instanote-
pro/id1499393902?ls=1) or Android
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.instanote.i...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.instanote.instanote))

Keep very simple free form text, or lists, audio notes, images, documents.
Everything is backed up in the cloud. Has built in support for sharing and
repeated reminders.

The main goal is to make the interface super simple to use, support journaling
like note-taking and fast search.

------
AJRF
Yes this is self promotion, but its also under a thread about people
frustrated with note taking apps so I think it is ok - I made NitroNotes[0]
because I was annoyed at even the slow startup speed of Apple Notes.

You have 7 Dots, each one corresponding to a separate note. You swipe between
each note (or on macOS you can Click Cmd+1, 2, etc).

The app is less than a MB on iOS, and just over a MB on macOS.

It syncs using your iCloud account between macOS, iOS & iPadOS.

Its like the Sticky Notes app for Mac, but cross platform and with zero-
friction sync.

Email me @ adam@adamfallon.com if you can't afford the $4.99 and I will send
you over a promo code.

[0] -
[https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/nitronotes/id1502080216](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/nitronotes/id1502080216)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
US apple store, for the ones in the US [0]. Just made me discover that the
Apple App ID is the same. Only difference is :s/GB/US/g

[0]:
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nitronotes/id1502080216](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nitronotes/id1502080216)

~~~
AJRF
Thank you for that.

------
Hippocrates
Notes on iOS/OSX/iPad is the only one I use. Plenty of formatting and media
features, search (and from spotlight) sync between devices, sharing/collab,
and on iPad I can hand-write and it will transcribe and index my handwriting.

Nothing else has come close for me and it’s free.

------
B1aZer
For the past few years I've been trying to find ideal app for notes. Google
keep, Google Doc, Trello, Timers, Workflowy, Github projects, Zettlr, Notion.

The last 2 looked promising, but were lacking in some aspects. TO elaborate,
note system should have 3 aspects to be easy to use:

\- fast writing \- fast lookup \- has a connection between notes

I found out that Vim perfectly completes all 3:

\- efficient writing and navigation \- fuzzy search in file names and content
\- supports markdown links and follows them

So I keep my notes directory in Dropbox, processing it with the help of Vim
and currently working on lightweight web client to create notes from any
device. That can be further processed by main system.

~~~
stjohnswarts
How do you handle images? I find them necessary a lot of the time. I like to
just drop them right in my notes and not bother making links in markdown.
Currently I just use libreoffice odt files on my google drive service.

------
residualmind
I'm mostly using text files at the moment:

I have a 'global' notes file in my home directory and then sometimes project
specific notes in project directories.

My .envrc in project directories prints the project-specific notes file when I
cd into there.

I have aliases and scripts that make adding a line to a file easy:

m foobar # (m for memo) appends "* foobar" to my global notes.

t foobar # (t for task) appends "o foobar" to it (the `o` I replace with an x
when it's done)

There's an alias to print the notes file and one to edit it.

The notes file is synced bidirectionally to a server from my laptop.

My android phone is doing the same sync. The phone displays the notes in a
widget which lets me edit it with one tap.

This way I can add notes from the command line and they get synced to my
phone. When I edit them on my phone they get synced back.

~~~
qzx_pierri
this sounds neat

------
the_dripper
Im actually trying to build a note-taking app myself. I haven't gotten very
far, becuase I kinda suck at managing my project. But I think if I manage to
improve in that regard, sooner or later I will have a functioning note-taking
app.

------
buybackoff
I used emails to self for notes. Tried Evernote, OneNote, Keep. The problem
always was: it is a separate app/page, more actions are needed than just
writing an email.

But since Google added three buttons and panel at the right of GMail web
interface with tasks, calendar and Keep - that problem is gone. It's also
possible to attach an email to a task or note, and tasks with notifications go
automatically to the calendar.

I still miss some features from Keep, e.g. richer formatting or markgown would
be nice, but the main friction is gone and I use tasks and Keep quite
regularly.

For work I use StickyNotes in Windows, one per projects. Before that it was
just notepad, but StickyNotes have richer formatting (than nothing) and
autosave.

------
Wazzymandias
I've tried so many options for note taking but I can never find a good
solution that fits all my needs. I find writing things down helps with
comprehension and retention, but using a physical notebook has its limitations
when you want to reference images or snippets found online.

In the end I landed on OneNote, but I find it to be slow for larger notebooks,
and it doesn't have an intuititive method of linking different notes from
different sections for easy reference. However I like the handwriting
recognition far better than Apple variants, and I felt like with apps like
Notion I spent more time customizing and grokking the app than actually taking
notes.

------
mechhacker
I've been really happy with combining both Nebo and Evernote

Nebo has great handwriting/math/schematic recognition and I can export as
recognized text to Evernote. That way both the original handwriting and the
text are stored in two different places.

------
bobflorian
I agree with the sentiment, but it's a crowded market that if there was an
easy, elegant solution that met everyone's needs we'd already have some
leaders out there. Maybe we already do. My person preference is Notion at the
moment.

~~~
akkshu92
That's nice. I used to like taking notes on Notion. But one day, I got annoyed
when I was not able to quickly search an old note as it was nested under some
other note. Took a while for me to realize and make sense of that.

------
dcchambers
Honestly, markdown files + git for history/version control is all you really
need for effective note taking. Use whatever editor you like, and feel free to
use some paid service for backups/versioning/etc if you feel git is too
complicated, but IMO there's nothing that beats the simplicity and enduring
nature of plain text files combined with the power of markdown and git/version
control.

I also think paper notes are vastly underrated by many people in Tech. I keep
a notebook and write stuff down _all day long_ in addition to keeping more
detailed notes digitally.

------
smukherjee19
I feel the author's pain. I've been trying to organize all my notes for quite
some time, and for now only Onenote seems to tick some of the boxes.

My requirements for notes, alongwith the issues I face in Onenote are:

\- I should be able to organize them in some way. Sure, Onenote works okayish.
I like the Notebook->Section->Pages structure. However, God forbid if I try to
rename a notebook... I need to open Onedrive in my browser, rename from there,
wait a day for the changes to sync (no I'm not joking, some notebooks I could
only open the next day), open each of the 60 or so notebooks inside Onenote
2016 (NOT Onenote UWP since it couldn't find those new notebooks, or errored
out trying to open them with old names), and then open those 60 notebooks
again on my two desktops and a laptop. Was an awful experience and I almost
quit Onenote.

\- It has to be cross-platform. I do have an iPad but my main workstations are
Windows and Ubuntu, and I take notes on all of these platforms, so that
basically kills almost all the Apple-only apps, which is a shame since many of
them seem good.

\- It should either support handwriting recognition, or LaTeX in notes. The
reason is I need to write down equations and/or diagrams quite often, so if I
just type I'd need LaTeX, and if I jotted derivations using Apple Pencil, I
should be able to bring those up later. For Onenote, this is a hit or miss.
Apple pencil + Onenote works superb for jotting down, especially with the
Paperlike screen protector, BUT the delay after which it becomes searchable is
totally dependent on Microsoft's servers, since the server-side OCR needs to
run on my notes and I have no control on the process...

Sometimes I just give up and use my trusty pencil and paper. But if I do that,
I sometimes forget which notebook I had written some random derivation in
September last year. Also, there's no way to search and to archive the data
unless I manually scan or take photos, and even then the archival would be
super clunky in the form of pictures...

All in all, this is a pretty half-assed solution I have right now. I wish
there were atleast some app which was cross-platform and supported LaTeX, or
some app which magically solved my problems outlined above...

------
Andrex
I migrated from Chrome Scratchpad to Google Keep when the former got killed as
Google is wont to do.

And I've been pretty happy with it, though I am a simple man with simple
needs. My biggest angst with using Keep has been uncertainty over Google's
interest in it, they did kill the original note taking app I used, but it's
been getting pretty good updates for the past few years. And each note has an
"Export to Google Docs" option as a last resort, I suppose.

Keep's simplicity and especially reliability have been golden in my use. Even
syncing is almost-real-time between devices. It "just works."

~~~
galkk
I dropped Keep after finding (hard way) that there's no way to revert
accidental edit if you switched note.

I love card view though, I wish OneNote had it.

------
JSavageOne
I don't have a solution for mobile (not a big deal for me), but at least on
desktop I just use a git repository of markdown files with Sublime Text.

My main complaint is that markdown hyperlinks are just extremely ugly to look
at in text form, so I wish there was a nice editor or extension that supports
hyperlinks. I've stuck with Sublime Text for the note-taking simply because it
loads so fast and the keyboard shortcuts are great, but open to alternative
editors (ideally open source). Or maybe there's a good Markdown extension for
Sublime that I'm not aware of.

~~~
sylens
Check out Bear. You can write notes in Markdown format but with some QoL
features from traditional note taking apps, including a nicer hyperlink
experience

~~~
JSavageOne
Sad that it's Mac/iPad/iPhone only :\

------
Abtin88
I like to look at notes-taking as a broader way of capturing information you
have seen. The value of keeping notes is to eventually make use of them. The
tool should focus on serving this core workflow, not creating overhead.

We created a tool that tries to minimize the cognitive load for capturing
things. We were inspired by messaging system and email to yourself, and build
a tool for capturing infos on the go for ourself. We're testing it with small
group. If you are interested and willing to write us feedbacks, drop me a line
and I will invite you to the beta community.

abtin.setyani@gmail.com

------
hanklazard
I also prefer writing things down. However, the ability to quickly search and
link years worth of notes is the reason I’m putting effort into org-roam ...
dozens of notebooks on a shelf will never be able to do that.

------
torgian
The purpose for me to taking notes is to help me learn, remember, and possibly
come back to in the future. I almost _never_ look at my computer written notes
unless I know that I am going to look it up later in the day.

To that end I have a few notebooks that I have wrote in over time. I have
returned to them occasionally. The biggest downside to this, however, is
space.

I just can't focus if I'm writing notes on a computer though. And it's harder
for me to remember things if I don't physically ( as in, pen on paper ) write
things down.

------
rcarmo
I moved from Evernote to OneNote six or seven years ago and use that for a mix
of work notes, document scans and the occasional TIL-style note (as well as a
few things I want to keep track of between work/real life).

Everything else goes onto my public wiki/blog (taoofmac.com), which is just
Markdown inside a git repo.

But I am struggling with web page snapshots (the OneNote clipper is horrible
when compared to Pocket, which I also use) and more structured notes, since
OneNote has become quite slow on iOS of late and it is a pain to draft
anything beyond a few paragraphs.

~~~
sturakov
I recommend webrecorder.io for web page snapshots.

------
jcun4128
Made a few of my own. Locally I use a shared API hosted by a Pi, and then my
phone(Android widget) and cross platform app(Electron) uses it. It's basic
note title/body. Also have one online but it's statically encrypted. For
drawing I use Krita. I was working on an SVG drawing app integrated into the
cross platform app but haven't finished it. I also have a Pi-hosted URL-based
notepad too where you use it by urls/whole screen is a textarea element. Work
wise use both OneNote and Apple notes.

------
melling
I like using Notability with the Apple Pencil on the iPad. Hoping the text
recognition in iOS 14 works with it.

GoodNotes is also nice. These pdf’s were created with it.

[https://github.com/melling/MathAndScienceNotes/tree/master/s...](https://github.com/melling/MathAndScienceNotes/tree/master/statistics/uc_irvine_131a)

I also use Bear for my Markdown notes. Having everything on my iPhone and
easily searchable is important for fast retrieval.

Apple Notes doesn’t let you limit search to a folder/tag.

------
theodric
I'm using envelopes. Like the ones you get sent in the mail with invoices. I
save them and take notes on them. Works great. A computer is not always the
solution to every problem!

------
greenhacker
Because of many of your noted downfalls of popular note-taking apps, I spent a
few years developing MinimaList Outline: a nested list mobile app for Android.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.toadlybrood...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.toadlybroodledev.sublist&hl=en_US)

I use it everyday as it easily helps me organize huge amounts of data in a
clean hierarchical manner. Give it a try, let me know what you think!

------
wintermutestwin
Against my better judgement, I switched from apple notes to notion for half of
my note taking. I'm using Notion to document the things I am learning, but not
for anything personal. As most of my learning includes a lot of URLs, the
workflow I setup in Notion is easy and speedy.

Overall though, I hate the idea of putting my thoughts on the cloud (someone
else's computer) and worry about the future when tool "B" comes along and I
want to move my data. I see a lot of cut n paste in my future :(

------
oblib
Haven't we all made a note app by now?

I spent over a month at "TodoMVC.com" playing with frameworks. After all that
I couldn't decide which one I should use and ended up deciding not to use any
of them and then made my own.

And I don't use it much either :D

I do look at new ones still though. Some of them have so many features that
just the notion of spending the time learning how to use them puts me off.

As I write this I'm looking at 4-5 sheets of paper scattered on my desk with
notes scribbled all over them.

------
forgotmypw17
I've tried a few note-taking apps, and then I've gone back to text editors. My
notes are stored in an untethered, unlocked, unowned, accessible, open-format
repository, and I can use a different program every day and never run out. Or,
if I find a program I like, I can keep using it for as long as it serves me.

I don't really see the point of a note-taking app, except that iOS and now
Android lock down the file system and force it on you.

------
kissgyorgy
I write a lot when designing software, but hate paper, so I ordered reMarkable
2, which I expect to change my note-taking habits completely. I plan to write
everything into it.

~~~
atrus
I have that similar feeling, I don't want a bunch of paper around, but writing
on paper is just SUPERIOR to anything digital, as it's so much easier to
freeform write, add sketches, etc. That's why a bought (several sizes now) a
Rocketbook. Paperish, can write/draw, easy to digitize and reusable.

------
dnorman
“But my greatest worry is if I’d continue using it.“

The reason people abandon note taking apps is that they are subordinate to the
whims of the developer, OR they are an island of personal control with no
mindshare / collaborative power.

Annotation and collaboration are what make our civilization. Everyone wants to
harness this and profit off of it, but you can’t trap lightning in a bottle.
The control dynamics of the channel matter a lot.

------
danfritz
I use a paper A5 atom notebook. You can easily rip out pages and rearrange
them. I mostly use it for quick todos, db relation schemas and writing down
some logic.

I do take some notes with Apples Notes but I periodically clean them out. I
don't see the benefit in keeping old notes. If a project is done the notes are
also deleted / trashed.

Why do people keep their 5 year old notes anyway? From a IT programming
perspective anything that old is probably out date and not relevant.

~~~
5986043handy
I do some frontend web dev and all my tech notes from >2 years ago is heavily
outdated.

------
dmortin
For me the most important part of note taking is quickly retrieving previous
notes. Paper notes don't work for this if one has lots of notes, so digital it
is.

------
dghughes
I find Google Keep convenient it's simple and quick.

Colour coding of notes, pinning notes, add a url to a note all basic stuff I
find useful.

The only missing feature is categories but I can do that manually. I add a
header like "Tip" for notes I may need for work. Other categories I make up
may be "Groceries " or what context the not related to.

I prefer fast and simple over anything needlessly complex I mean it's quick
notes not a thesis.

------
wb14123
I use QOwnNote with NextCloud. It has a lot of features and is very enjoyable
to use. It doesn't lock you down with a specific format. It just adds an
additional database for tags. You have the raw files with txt or markdown
format organized perfectly in your folders. And with the ability to host the
sync server by yourself, you don't need to give the sensitive information to
third-party organization.

------
torstenvl
I don't know of any good note-taking software. The best (i.e., least bad) I've
found is Apple Notes, but it isn't cross-platform and uses proprietary
syncing.

Something like an Evernote/Apple Notes interface on top of a 1Password-style
back end would be ideal. Let me store my note vault wherever the heck I want,
and if I keep it in Dropbox, I can use it wherever I want.

------
kirubakaran
"Note Taking" is the wrong approach, imho. _You_ are responsible for putting
things in and keeping it up to date, and of course this is prone to fatigue.

An automatic knowledge base that is created from the signals you already
generate anyway would serve you the best, I think. This is what I'm building
with [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/)

~~~
orthecreedence
Does it have e2e encryption? This is more or less a requirement nowadays for
me.

~~~
kirubakaran
From your profile: "Turtl a surveillance-resistant note-taking app". Nice!
Looks like you've built your own note taking app. Of course you're not going
to use mine :-)

------
peterlk
Ha! I actually wrote a blog post on this today:
[http://peterklipfel.com/blog/taking_notes/](http://peterklipfel.com/blog/taking_notes/)

I have gone through a lot of note-taking iteration, and I have finally found
something that really works for me. If anyone cares enough about the post,
feel free to submit it on my behalf

------
manigandham
After trying dozens of tools, I've come back to just using text files. Easy to
edit, sync instantly with dropbox, compatible with everything. Images or other
stuff just stored in folders. Word/excel files for more complicated stuff.
Nothing beats files and folders.

Also use a physical notepad for writing ephemeral things down because the
tactile feeling of writing and crossing things off is very satisfying.

------
habosa
I'm a serious pen and paper person but the only note taking app I've stuck
with is Google Keep.

I think the constraints are a virtue. No hierarchy, no structure more complex
than a list. It imitates my paper workflow which is a bunch of scattered post
its and single sheets on my desk.

I do like Notion for more academic or deep work but it's not something I'd
fire up without a second thought.

------
JohnL4
I've recently started using org-capture and org-agenda (LONG-time org-mode
user with a hot-key (Auto HotKey) to bring up emacs). Seems to work pretty
well. (I'm always at my keyboard during the work day, and sometimes even when
not.)

With just my phone, Google Keep.

If I was back in school, Live Scribe (but only with a pen with a manual on-
switch; the Aegir turns itself on too much and the battery drains fast).

~~~
JohnL4
P.S. sometimes Orgzly/Drpbox when mobile.

Evernote being my bookmark tool now that Delicio.us has been nerfed. (If it's
even still around.)

(Also this P.S. because Materialistic doesn't seem to allow editing.)

------
aae42
i would definitely consider myself one of those who jumps around but never
becomes a repeat user..

just recently i came across the first exception to that... Joplin...
[https://joplinapp.org/](https://joplinapp.org/)

been using it for a little while now and am planning on sticking to it for a
bit longer, i have it integrated with my personal nextcloud instance

------
andylynch
I think this post almost touches on an interesting point - note taking apps &
software are also competing against pen and paper, which are many ways
stronger.

As a product for example, Moleskine (arguably the brand leader) most recently
reports nearly EUR 175M in sales - nearly double that of Evernote, and you
have many good alternatives in any stationer for just a few dollars.

~~~
djhworld
> software are also competing against pen and paper, which are many ways
> stronger.

for scratchy notes that you don't care about sure, but if you want to search,
copy/paste, erase etc. physical notebooks are the worst.

I was an advocate for moleskine books at one time, but got sick of trying to
remember where I wrote something

------
YetAnotherNick
I take notes with Apple pencil on iPad. I feel more creative when writing.
Plus, I tried to enforce structure using various apps including org mode, but
it turned out either I am bad at using structured note taking or my use case
of ideating and planning is not very structured. And it feels less effortful
than typing to me.

------
tonymet
If you do a feature by feature comparison , including data retention , uptime
, throughput , graphics support ( writing enables unlimited diagramming ) ,
power requirements , reliability — Pen and paper come out on top every time .

I recommend getting into fountain pens. They are the mechanical keyboards of
the writing world . And the ink flow is cathartic

~~~
tonymet
also environmental impact.

------
ajmurmann
Another huge benefit of physical note taking is that if you are doing it in a
meeting other people won't think you are on Slack or otherwise distracted and
not listening. Instead people will feel more appreciated, since you are
valuing what they are saying though to write it down.

The same can be accomplished with some iPad note taking apps.

------
ddelphin
Trying to use all the bells and whistles of a note taking app is a distraction
from just using the app to write things down. Depending on the platform, get
yourself a stylus and just write as you normally would on paper. Later you can
learn the features... Worked for me and I love it! I use my digital notebook
as a secondary brain.

------
coding123
If anyone hates a recent change to Apple Notes that makes your first line BIG,
do this:

Preferences -> New Notes Start With ___Body___

------
flipjsio
I save my notes as text files (markdown format). It is universal so its not
dependent to any app. It is searchable and future-proof. I save them in Apple
iCloud so it auto-syncs to my iPhone and use iA Writer app to read/write to
it. I used to use GitHub and git app (Working Copy app) on my phone to sync
between devices.

~~~
kevinslin
since you're using markdown, I would check out
[https://dendron.so](https://dendron.so) (disclaimer, I'm the author). its an
open source, markdown-based note taking app that works with markdown notes on
your file system. also supports back-links, hierarchies, tagging, and more.
its built as a plugin for vscode so you also have access to vim keybindings
and anything else you might need with vscode extensions

------
didip
Between Apple Notes, private git repo, and sending myself links via email...
this problem is solved forever for me.

------
dilandau
Creating a note-taking app and/or a Todo list are effectively rites of
passage. There's something aspirational both in the creation of the app and
the creation of a more orderly daily existence.

Looked at this way, I think we can explain both the proliferation for, and the
dissatisfaction with note taking apps.

------
douglaswlance
Nothing beats plaintext.

~~~
grugagag
I learned that a while ago and settled on notepad++ to organize my daily work.
Every new tab opens and without needing to be saved is persisted even if
computer restarts. That is a perfect scratchpad for ideas.

What I want to keep gets named and is then classified. For is no longer useful
the tab gets closed and not saved.

Notepad++ allows for searching all documents within folders as well.

Another great option is moving lines up and down for prioritizing lists for
which there is a shortcut ctrl+alt+up/down arrows.

~~~
mxuribe
I absolutely love notepad++; for many reaosns including but not limited to:
beinglightweight, fast, quite featureful even before resorting to the many
plugins, etc. The only downside is it is for windows only. For my dayjob i'm
forced to use windows, so can enjoy notepad++ for everything (from dev. to
basic notetaking, to journaling)...but all my personal machines run linx
OS...so no notepad++. I love the choice of note-taking apps on linux - kwrite,
leafpad, etc. - but i wish notepad++ would exist for linux distros. If anyone
could recommend a notepad++ clone but for linux, would greatly appreciate it!

Also, yeah, I've learned so long ago that plain text - regardless of which
actual app i use - is awesome (flexible, scriptable, readable far off into the
future, no system lock-in, etc.).

~~~
douglaswlance
VSCode can support most any plaintext workflow, as long as you're ok with the
electron overhead.

~~~
mxuribe
I tried to give VSCode a decent shot...and it is not bad at all; actually
pretty good. I do like its customizability, the plugins, etc...and it does
check the box of being available on the major operating systems that i use
(windows for work, linux for personal)...but it can get quite heavy on
resources. I'm on the fence about anything electron-related: great to be able
to roll out on numerous OS/platforms, but heavy on resources. Ultimately,
because of the heavy overhead - in my mind - i've put vscode as only a second-
best text editor to my preferred notepad++. Thank you very much, though, for
the recommendation!!

p.s. - Because of some comments here, I'm actually trying Geany (seems
lightweight, cross-platform, etc.)...we'll see if it can replace notepad++ for
me.

------
m3kw9
If you are iOS user apples notes is the best. Is like the camera theory that
the camera with you all the time is the best camera. In this case is always
gonna be around, auto back up, no install needed, available on all devices.
The best part is it does 90% of what the most advanced note apps does.

------
kontxt
Check out [https://Kontxt.io](https://Kontxt.io). It’s like Pocket, Genius,
and Reddit combined. There’s personal features for note taking, organization,
and permission based sharing, and social features to discover the best parts
of the web.

------
ArtDev
After Google Notes was retired, I was determined to find a replacement.
Evernote is okay but will the company still be around for years? Not sure.
Since I already have a hosting account, I recently installed DocuWiki. So far,
I really like it!

------
jimnotgym
I use Microsoft Onenote. I use it because it is bundled with Office 365. It
suits me encourage the use of 365 rather than another app, because my team
then have less software to support. It is good enough, and that's enough for
me to not be bothered with anything else.

------
MH15
I've been using Google Keep for temporary things, e.g. grocery lists or ideas
I'll need to expand upon later; and I use notebooks to brainstorm/document my
ideas as I actually go in depth. This is what works for me for software
engineering and my general life.

------
amadeuspagel
Shameless Plug: ThinkType[1] comes pretty close to just writing things down in
a notebook. It's probably even easier, though it doesn't support formats other
then text.

[1]: [https://thinktype.app](https://thinktype.app)

------
thallukrish
I write a lot of notes in a notebook with pen. But I never see them. Very
rarely I may revisit something. And I have often found that even if I read
them they don't seem to matter to me now. So is all the hype of taking notes
justified I wonder?

------
znpy
I settled on Rednotebook on Linux on my work laptop.

It has almost no features beyond a daily page and a term cloud (basically, an
index of terms where the most frequent terms have bigger fonts).

I use some informal markdown syntax, in the sense that i mostly recognize
visually.

------
LoveMortuus
I agree with y'all there is magic when writing on paper. When you're actually
writing. That's why Sony's DPT-RP1 (DPT-S1, DPT-CP1) feel like magic and
future for note taking the only downside is the price and the availability of
replacements pen tips. While there is, of course, a lot that could be
improved, I was moved by the core idea itself, virtually infinite notebook.
Imagine how much different your experience through schools and life would be
of all of your notes from elementary school until now we're always in one
place, always available to you. So much potential... Makes me quite excited
for the future. (There are of course other 'digital paper' devices
(remarkable, ...), but DPT-S1 was my first love, although we never got to
meet, I did, for a week, own DPT-RP1 before I returned it to Amazon, because
at the time I couldn't afford a ~700-900€ device)

------
WalterBright
"I’ve finally resorted to the most personal and easy alternative — writing
things down."

Haha, we've come full circle! I have a $.79 spiral notebook on my desk for
notes. When it fills up, I scan it in, and buy another one.

------
DigitallyFidget
I actually use GIMP for taking notes and save as both an xcf and pdf. GIMP is
basically a simplified and free Photoshop. I can doodle concepts that can't be
explained clearly with text alone unless I do a bunch of formatting and ASCII
art.

~~~
unixhero
Radical!

------
13415
I'm using Leuchtturm 1917 Notebooks with enumerated pages and a table of
contents. I've tried many electronic notetaking solutions but none of them
have the flexibility, especially not with regards to formulas and diagrams.

------
boomskats
To add mine into the mix, I went through all the apps imaginable before
settling on Inkdrop. The electron-ness of it all annoys me a bit, but aside
from that it does everything I’ve ever wanted (aside from inking) very very
well.

~~~
jorgekong
Looks good. Do you use Inkdrop with cloud or can you store save it locally?

~~~
AdamGibbins
It's cloud only, end-to-end encrypted. Usable offline. You can host your own
sync server if need be, its just CouchDB:
[https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/synchronizing-in-the-
cloud/#...](https://docs.inkdrop.app/manual/synchronizing-in-the-cloud/#how-
to-set-up-your-own-sync-server)

------
celeritascelery
This is why I love Emacs org-mode. You can create the note taking app that you
want. Don’t like something? change it. Which it had feature X? Add it. There
so many great packages already that often what you want is done for you.

------
mihaaly
I am not tired of my notepad.exe

------
chillpenguin
I really like TiddlyWiki for note taking. 2-way links and transclusion are
important features for me. It's not Xanadu, but it's an easy to use
alternative that strikes the right balance for me.

------
stormdennis
The biggest problem for me is finding the stuff I wrote sometime that I might
need again. What works best for me is to send myself a gmail. Google search
makes finding things quick and simple.

------
nazgulnarsil
I have yet to find a cloud based notes system that doesn't have dumpster fire
levels of responsiveness and search. Any suggestions? I've taken to just
syncing a text file across devices.

------
cobalt
I'm not a daily note taking type of person but I have a notepad on my desk for
doodling, sublime/notepad.exe for quick scratch pad stuff, and a todo app for
longer term things

------
vaxman
Noteability

Audio synchronized with your typing, writing and drawing, plus WebDAV
backstore and ability to drop PDFs and links into your notes. I think
GoodNotes is a close second —need layers in Notability.

------
nojito
The amount of notion spam on the internet is pretty remarkable.

Every year...there's a new FOTM note taking app, but this post hit the nail on
the head....they are all absolutely awful and cater to serial movers.

------
aftergibson
I'm liking PARA with Notion right now. I make pretty heavy use of linked
databases to keep track of things day to day and I can get a high level view
of what I've got going on/completed for reviews/1:1s/when people ask what I
did 2 quarters ago. I can throw a bunch of varied data formats into Notion
too, which is great.

This is all only for work-life however, normal-life doesn't fit into this
approach or more specifially I don't want to ruin life outside work with this
approach(believe me I tried, it's a great way to feel like a constant
failure). I have yet to find anything useful for non-work insights. Nothing
fits, but maybe it doesn't matter?

------
hzhou321
Personally I find conventional notebooks and pens work best for me. I tried
note-taking apps from time to time, never sticks for more than 10 minutes and
never understood why.

------
ddevault
My note taking app is vim editing a text file named ~/notes.

------
jp42
I had same issue of using several apps and not sticking to anyone. Now I
forced myself to stick to apple notes and its working fine. plain text + cloud
sync worked out for me.

------
bshoemaker
I just keep a running document with all my meetings, notes, etc. and when I
need to pull things out into a more focused document, I do so. It's worked
pretty well.

------
rs23296008n1
I'm still using my old note app I wrote years ago back in 2003 and keep
porting to every gadget I use. Its amusing to use such an old ppc app under
Windows 10.

~~~
thomas536
Sorry to hijack this thread, but too curious if you made any headway from your
"Non-cloud voice recognition for home use?" post? Sounded like an interesting
use-case.

tia

------
tananaev
I used to use Simplenote, but after I lost some changes due to a glitch in
their system, I decided to switch to something safer. Now I'm just using a
Google Doc.

~~~
glenstein
This is exactly what happened to me. A glitch, lost changes and unpredictable
behavior at unpredictable times. It's too bad, because I thought it was a
keeper.

------
52-hertz_whale
[https://remarkable.com/](https://remarkable.com/)

Combines the best of analog and digital.

I use mine every day all day. Works great.

------
unixhero
Simplenote for the win. Used it for 4 years, absolutely no fuzz.

[https://simplenote.com/](https://simplenote.com/)

~~~
jan_Inkepa
I used it for a long time - really liked how no frills it is, but the fact
that notes aren't stored encrypted in the cloud (by design) was a deal-breaker
for me in the end. I use the notes as a brain backup and they're absolutely
unfiltered thoughts, which need to be stored securely. In the end I switched
to standard notes, which has functioned perfectly well for me since then (a
bit over a year I think).

------
dgut
I've been using Notational Velocity + Alfred to quickly take notes for years.
Recommended for anyone who wants something lightweight.

~~~
kevinslin
longtime notational velocity user. loved how simple it was but found that I
needed some more structure as I took more notes. ended up creating
[https://dendron.so](https://dendron.so), a local-first markdown note taking
app build on top of vscode. same modeless file lookup/creation as notational
velocity combined with features like backlinks, tagging and vim bindings

~~~
dgut
Hats off to you. Too overkill for my current note-taking habits, but Dendron
looks great.

------
dageshi
Roam Research was the one I settled on. It melds exactly with how my mind
works. I think it's probably doubled my productivity.

~~~
msamwald
I got very motivated to use Roam, but then settled for Dynalist. It's more
polished, cheaper, and they recently added backlinks as well.

~~~
dageshi
Opposite way around for me interestingly, I used dynalist (and paid for it)
last year before moving to roam. The thing I really like about roam other than
the graph is the auto generated daily todo pages, so you've always got
somewhere to immediately start writing. And the TODO overview page, which lets
you see all the todos you added across all notes. The two are really powerful,
you can organically write out whatever is in your head, leaving todo's as
breadcrumbs to regain context later.

------
rawoke083600
lol maybe just I'm old , my method these days is: In each of my "many"
current+unfinished projects. I usually have a "design.txt" or "design.plan"
(when I feel very hackerman) which I just edit with my fav text editor,
usually geany. This covers 85% of my note-taking requirements.

------
PaulHoule
Note taking apps are stuck in a place similar to where "chat" apps are stuck.

Competition between "chat" applications is driven by network effects. You
don't choose Zoom because it is the best, you choose it because somebody else
chose it for you. The overwhelming pattern is "CUSeeMe used to be good but now
we use PalTalk, "Skype used to be good, but now everybody uses WebEx", or
"WebEx used to be good and now everybody uses Zoom", or "AOL Instant Messenger
used to be good and now everybody uses Facebook Messenger". Despite a large
advance in the underlying technology, the functionality of these applications
doesn't seem much better.

I worked at a startup where one of our problems was finding documents in the
20 different cloud services we might put documents. The usual answer people
had was to add a new cloud service, but that means you now have 21 places a
document might be and it is astonishing how far people will go down this road
without any insight into how it is an obvious dead end.

The obvious way out is to build some system that sucks in content from places,
a "note finding" app or "note organizing" app instead of a "note taking".

What astonishes me is that so few people are working on that or even believe
that it is possible. Two factors are that

(1) People are intimidated by full text search. First people think "you can't
beat Google" and second if you look at Google you see Google is not very good.
That's depressing. The first four volumes of TREC are depressing because
people try all the obvious things that should improve relevance. (in the 5th
volume they discover BM25, which nobody to this day since they don't work to
do the work to tune two numeric parameters to the data set) Ask people how to
make a scalable full text engine and they say "Solr" and I say "are you
kidding?" OpenText and ten thousand imitators will boast about the hundreds of
connectors they have to the most enterprise-y data sources, but they will say
very little about relevance, in fact if they participated in TREC they did it
as an advertisement, not because they saw accuracy tuning as a competitive
differentiator. A breakthrough is possible, but nobody believes it.

(2) The "app economy" itself is dependent on lock-in. If there was "one ring
to bind them all" in terms of the document spaces a person uses, that's an
existential threat to all of the programs that want you to keep using them. So
once you get some traction in this area you are going to see frantic measures
taken quickly to cut off access -- like what happened with the Twitter API
when they put all the alternative clients out of business.

------
joshstrange
I was a long-time nvAlt (macOS + SimpleNotes on iOS) user and then used Drafts
for the last 6 months which is a nice replacement (I use about 1% of the
features). I'm trying to get into Notion for a few types of notes I take but
it's too heavy for quick notes so I feel like I'll probably settle into using
Drafts for quick notes/scratch-pad and then use Notion for structured
notes/knowledge base type stuff.

------
pjmlp
I just use whatever comes with the phone, never understood the "market" of
note taking apps.

~~~
criddell
Does Android ship with a note taking app?

~~~
pjmlp
Kind of, either you have Google's or some other one provided by the device
manufacter.

For me that use them as digital paper replacement, more than enough, just like
on the Symbian days.

Before J2ME and Symbian, I would just use SMS drafts as quick notes.

So I am not the target market, whatever it might be.

~~~
criddell
I don't believe Keep comes pre-installed on Android. AFAIK, there's no default
notes app other than email (and a lot of people use their email client as a
notes app).

~~~
pjmlp
My Nokia 7 plus had it pre-installed, and my former LG, Asus and Samsung all
had their own note taking apps pre-installed.

------
kirso
I love bear and use Obsidian for my PKM and writing output with bi-directional
links. Love it!

------
Errancer
I started doing my notes in ms access database and it's currently working
really well for me. I'm doing zettelkasten inspired system and right now it's
having only 3 columns - notes, sources and tags. The ability to fully modify
the relation between them is something I find infinitely more valuable than
anything an app can provide.

------
100-xyz
I use beastnotes and like it. I like the way it's organized into books and
chapters.

------
5986043handy
The primary disadvantage of handwriting notes for me is a total lack of search
functionality.

------
anonymousse1234
I'm using Pilot Custom 74 fountain pen with my favourite inks on high quality
paper notebooks. It makes me want to take notes due to the whole experience
and does't restrict me in any way the computer does . For longer
text/programming related stuff nothing beats pure text and files in common
directory.

------
zeckalpha
> add screenshots/images, links, etc

A printer and a url shortened would replace these

------
setheron
I'm a big fan of jrnl Single plain text file with simple CLI

------
threatofrain
What are people's preferred solutions for markdown + latex?

~~~
kevinslin
[https://dendron.so](https://dendron.so) has markdown and latex support
(disclaimer, I'm the author). its an open source, markdown-based note taking
app that works with markdown notes on your file system. also supports
backlinks, hierarchies, tagging, and more. its built as a plugin for vscode so
you also have access to vim keybindings and anything else you might need with
vscode extensions

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kostarelo
How was the market size calculated? Where was sourced from?

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paulcole
> helps me stay in touch with my handwriting

What does this even mean?

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elihawkins
try out

[https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/](https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/)

super clean and nice.

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moneywoes
Markdown and VScode is worth a look.

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mikestaub
I love using joplinapp.org

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Aperocky
The best note taking app is vim.

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simonebrunozzi
TL;DR: I decided to write things down, because no single note-taking app
convinced me so far.

Well, obvious. I use Notion (and love/hate it), and write things down a lot.
What a surprise.

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thomasjudge
obligatory xkcd [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

