I've given up on using any sort of branded app for notetaking. At best it's open source and the maintainers will lose interest in a few years.
When you write things down, you're investing in your future. It's silly to use software that isn't making that same investment.
After trying Evernote, Workflowy, Notion, wikis, org-mode, and essentially everything else I could find, I gave up and tried building my own system for notes. Plain timestamped markdown files linked together. Edited with vim and a few bash scripts, rendered with a custom deployment of Gollum. All in a git repo.
It's... wonderful. Surprisingly easy. Fast. If there's a feature I wish it had, I can write a quick bash script to implement it. If Gollum stops being maintained, I can use whatever the next best markdown renderer is. Markdown isn't going away anytime soon.
It's liberating to be in control. I find myself more eager to write things down. I'm surprised more people don't do the same.
Alternatively, you can use something which saves in a format that would be trivial to make a replacement for reading/writing it.
One example is jrnl[1]. Each journal (collection of entries) is written in a flat text file. You can optionally encrypt it with AES. They even give you reference code on how you could decrypt it yourself[2].
If jrnl stops being a thing, I can probably re-implement all of its functionality in a day. Or someone else can. Its output is very simple.
I used jrnl.sh for about a year. I was able to extend it to parse the output so I could do some analysis on what I had written (I was using it partially to track time spent on certain tasks). However, I came to find that write long-form on the command line is just awkward. Lately I have been using checkvist.com which has been working out great.
I had the same sort of idea. I built this when Notational Velocity broke when upgrading to the latest macOS:
https://github.com/JesseAldridge/toothbrush
It's a single python file for grepping a directory of text files as I type. I have a global keyboard shortcut cmd+J that gives focus to my terminal and I then launch the script by running `t`. Then I can just start typing to search a career's worth of notes.
Would be cool if you could share your setup on GitHub.
I use Spacemacs in my day job as a Clojure programmer but I prefer Bear Note for note taking because it starts up faster and all actions (pasting, adding images, adding todos, merging notes, exporting mardown) match simpler and I don't need to memorize new hotkeys and do any additional setup/scripting.
If taking notes was my daily job I would probably spend some efforts to learn org-mode.
I find org-mode perfect for this. It's lightweight, the files can be interlinked and over time, expanded, if necessary into larger notes.
I've been using a variant of the zettelkasten method for keeping book summaries and notes on index cards. It's been nice but the indexing method I'm using is cumbersome. I've been toying with the idea of moving just that into something digital.
That's quite the value judgement. Emacs, when compared with Atom and Sublime Text, has a tremendous learning curve for little payback. It's extensible? So are they, and with programming languages that are useful outside the editor, no less. It's powerful? So are they.
And more, they implement something resembling a common UI to the rest of the applications on your system. Sure, you can emulate that with the proper installation of modes into Emacs, but at that point you're already down the rabbit hole.
Emacs may still be the king of the hill, but it's a really nasty hill to climb. And with Atom and Sublime text sitting just a little below the summit with a nice, paved road to them it's going to take more than just being a bit better than them to justify that final hill climb.
So, no, people aren't afraid. Emacs is just not worth most people's time.
You're ignoring distributions of Emacs which are designed to solve this problem by bundling and pre-configuring everything.
Spacemacs, Prelude, and Scimacs are all good options depending on your use-case.
I mean if all you want is a text editor, some SCM integration, some build tool integration, syntax highlighting, and code completion then going with a specialized tool just for that is a good choice.
But the power of Emacs is that it can do nigh-anything and everything is a few lines of elisp away from being tightly integrated.
* Organize your tasks and projects with org-mode and work seemelessly with your team by syncing with org-trello.
* Use mu4e and magit integration to seemelessly send and apply patches and pull projects and todo items directly from email.
* Use one of the IRC clients or emacs-slack to do the same thing. Generate snippets on the fly in your team's chat from the currently selected text.
* Use org mode with org-babel and TRAMP to create interactive notebooks carrying out tricky tasks directly on the remote server from within emacs.
* Use emacsclient --tramp when you're SSH'd on a remote box to transparently edit in your local emacs.
Respectfully, you're describing workflows that very few people use today. Patches over email or chat? I've only seen that use at any scale with Linux kernel development. Tricky tasks on remote servers, editing files on remote servers? Most places prefer immutable servers, which run peer reviewed remedial scripts via Ansible/Puppet/Chef/Salt.
Org mode is one of the few unique bits of software available only on Emacs, but you can get 80% (if not more) of its functionality with markdown notes and regular email/calendaring software for 20% (if not less) of the learning curve.
EDIT: And I'm not ignoring Spacemacs and its kin. Yes, they are more user friendly, but they still do not follow many of the common OS UI models, and you still are interacting with a single-purpose programming language for any customization. The abstraction falls apart quickly when you try do do something more powerful (like opening the package manager).
Not to mention, the last three times I tried to do Go development in Spacemacs it would freeze in an infinite busy loop. It's unfortunate that a broken mode can completely hose the entire editor in this day.
Side note: I have been coding a large golang application for 3y now on emacs/spacemacs with the 'go' layer. Never had a single problem.
Otoh, I tried both atom and vscode for the same job, but quickly ran away because using an editor on which modal editing is not a first class citizen is not for me anymore.
> Organize your tasks and projects with org-mode and work seemelessly with your team by syncing with org-trello.
I disagree to this point. org-trello should work in that way "in theory", but actually it doesn't. Its usage is quite opinionated, and its syncing didn't work as I expected when I tried it out. Instead, we probably should have an org-mode integration with GitHub/GitLab issues.
I sincerely agree all you mentioned above. I believe emacs is the best editing tool, actually it is an Operating System. But I still not gonna use it, since it just not worth my time to master all of them skills comparing alternatives, which is just use Sublime and Atom. For me the choice equals to setup my own Git server, or use Github or Gitlab.
There is a huge difference. It's proprietary, what I mean by that is you can't really edit it with anything else than Emacs. I used it with Spacemacs, and when an upgrade broke it, I left with no notes... Very frustrating experience, I immedieately abandoned it when it happened. Never used org-mode since then.
It's not proprietary, it's still just plain text, and can be edited with anything. Emacs adds a lot of nice features on top of it to manipulate that text, but it's still just text.
Yes, I have been fooled by the "oh it's just plain text" notion also and have regretted it. Did you try to actually open an org-mode file with anything else than Emacs? Did you try get any meaningful information out of it on a mobile phone or with an another editor? I did...
Take a look at Orgzly for interacting with org files on Android, and set up a dropbox shared folder between your devices, including your smartphone. Works well for me.
As for extracting meaningful info with other editors, I would say it depends on how you structure your notes. For me it's just a very long bullet list with some tags here and there. So a plain text editor will only 'add' some star characters at the beginning of each lines, which appears quite readable to my eyes.
TBH, I wonder why you had to "leave without your notes", when pandoc eats org-mode for breakfast and gives you a multitude of target options, including markdown (and this is really after wondering what prevented you from using a fresh Emacs install, if you couldn't fix yours, to export them in the first place)
Gogs renders well behaved org files also. The VS Code extension should get the update to allow folding soon. After that the Ctrl-c Ctrl-v crowd could use it nicely with Orgzly and Syncthing say bypassing Emacs until they need a full development environment. You could use Pandoc importing/exporting to other formats without Emacs. For note taking it's promising. Sharing to Orgzly on mobile captures a lot.
In that sense markdown is also proprietary, since you need some editor making things easy for you to manipulate and navigate the text document(that's all emacs does; even github renders org docs).
Except Markdown looks like text with some special characters to embellish it a little. It's perfectly readable and legible in any text editor. Navigation is the only thing lacking, but manipulation is as easy as manipulating text is in your editor of choice.
Note: I don't know what raw orgmode files look like, maybe they're similar to Markdown.
They are. Org format is kind of a better and more powerful Markdown. As plaintext, it looks cleaner to me.
The thing is, Org format is defined by the way Org-mode in Emacs handles it. Beyond Markdown-like features (which are rather easy to parse out; the format is similar), you get things in the data format that to date are handled only by Emacs. Think of Emacs + org mode as a better Jupyter notebooks than just editor for static text documents.
Consider this note I have in my org file for work tasks.
** DONE [#A] Testing prior to syncup meeting :CUSTOMER_development:
CLOSED: [2018-07-13 Fri 14:04]
:LOGBOOK:
CLOCK: [2018-07-13 Fri 12:14]--[2018-07-13 Fri 14:04] => 1:50
:END:
- [X] Baseline test for REDACTED
- REDACTED NOTE
- [X] Baseline test for SOMETHING ELSE
If you rendered this as a static document (e.g. export to HTML), you'd see the headline "Testing prior to syncup meeting", and the bullet-point list at the bottom. The remaining things are metadata, nicely formatted by Emacs (and partially hidden; e.g. :LOGBOOK: / :END: block starts folded by default). The metadata shown are part of Org-mode's task management aspect - the todo state (DONE), date of task's finalization, time clocking (CLOCK: entries), tags (CUSTOMER_development). Together, they enable me to very efficiently mange tasks, track spent time, and autogenerate invoice data.
In this sense, org format is both a nice Markdown alternative, and - when coupled with Emacs - enables very powerful interactive documents that can handle task management, time clocking, literate programming, spreadsheeting, and other tasks.
I suspect Org will never be as popular as Markdown simply because, if you wanted to go beyond Markdown feature parity, you'd have to reimplement half of Emacs to handle those "advanced" aspects.
Oh I don't doubt the usefulness of Org-Mode, but I guess the point is the one you bring up: if you want to use Org-Mode it's Emacs or the highway.
With Markdown I can use any editor from a full-featured IDE all the way down to `cat` or `ed` and all I'm giving up are some quality of life features. It's the same format at the bottom, and it has the added benefit of being ubiquitous in that nearly every editor has some basic Markdown support. I can write it anywhere and take it anywhere, not so for Org-Mode.
I think I prefer the Markdown approach of keeping the file format light and plain, and building the quality of life features on top in the editor.
To be clear: Org format is just plaintext, and you can use it mostly in the same way you use Markdown. It's nowhere near as popular, but if all you want is Markdown feature parity, then there is growing support in other editors and places. It's only when you want to go beyond Markdown that this becomes "Emacs or the highway".
Biggest difference for me is, that I had already been taking notes in markdown since before I heard about it. The only change for me was the welcome relief of not having to be creative any more about what headings or links should look like. Rest of the syntax I already used because that's how I've always made text files "look good".
As for your orgmode example, it's not a very good example of "just plaintext" if the metadata code in between the bits of text is larger than the content of the note. I imagine that with nice syntax highlighting it becomes easier to parse in just a glance, but then it's no longer "just plaintext" in the same way that e.g. YAML isn't.
It probably works very well, but to me it looks a lot like a plaintext encoding of a database record or something. It's a different use case. Not a simple note that is "basically plaintext". For instance I would not feel entirely comfortable editing your example without worrying I'd mess up the structure or produce a syntax error. Though maybe the format is really forgiving, I can't tell. What happens if you forget the :END: bit, for instance?
You can certainly write org in ed, if you're masochistic enough. You could also use Vim or VSCode or whatever floats your boat, and you will just be missing the more useful stuff (agenda integration, babel, etc), but if you just want to use it as a markup language, there's good support in other editors, and ease of export as well (pdf, html, docx, odt...) with pandoc. I don't get why you think that editing org is any harder than editing markdown, given editor support.
The big difference is that Markdown is way simpler, you can read it reasonably easy with Notepad even, and this is why every reasonable editor can Render it preview it, export it. Even browsers or small apps can show a HTML rendered markdown. There are even standalone Markdown editors, but there is no standalone org-mode editor.
You can render a subset of Org mode just as easily as Markdown - they mostly differ with syntax. The problem is, Org format is not just a format for static documents - it also accounts for things you'd like to achieve with plaintext notes, and most of those "extra features" are defined in terms of their Emacs/Org-mode implementation. Which is something very hard to clone.
Of course you can read Orgmode in plain text, because that’s all it is. Maybe you looked at a file with a bunch of meta-data, or a file with a bunch of code blocks, but so what? Ignore the meta-data and just read the notes. They are all delimited by asterisks by their header level. Links are simple. Tables are simple, even tables with formulas are readable.
Further more Markdown is a poorly defined plaintext format, which is why there are so many variants of it, and processors specific to those variants. If you don’t believe me, remember that GFM is not official markdown.
Orgmode is at least well defined, so when other editors catch up and are able to implement all the features Emacs has when using it, they should behave similarly. If you want a well defined plain text format that exports to HTML/PDF/Word/RichText take a look at AsciiDoc or reStructuredText.
But don’t blame Emacs for leveraging its power over a relatively simple plain text format. There are even packages these days for Vim, Sublime, Atom, Jetbrains to make good use of Orgmode without Emacs.
Org-mode itself is an Emacs addon, so it's not surprising that you cannot run it without Emacs. Emacs and org-mode are much more stable and much less likely to die than any other software, and that's precisely why I'm using them for a decade already.
The org-mode file format is plaintext, just like Markdown, and you definitely can edit and view it with any text editor. You will obviously lose the convenience of org-mode, though. Additionally, it's simple enough that you can easily implement a parser/importer for any other software.
> I've given up on using any sort of branded app for notetaking. At best it's open source and the maintainers will lose interest in a few years. When you write things down, you're investing in your future. It's silly to use software that isn't making that same investment.
I strongly agree with this. Actually I'm surprised that creating one's own tools is not more widespread in our industry as I consider this a quite unique trait of our profession.
> I consider this a quite unique trait of our profession.
(In case you really meant unique rather than special or valued). Machinists, woodworkers, and craftsmen in general all make their own tools when the situation calls for it.
Yep a private repo in GitHub goes a loooong way. With git you can be offline, dump whatever comes at any time. Markup syntax is remarkable in its simplicity but how much you can get out of it.
GitHub UI for on the move web committing is also pretty well done.
For a lot of things in life, you want to have simple interface yet sophisticated functionality. It’s incredibly hard to achieve that balance and so many software products screw up that balance.
For vim users, vimwiki[1] is great. It combines the wiki with jounaling features and is easy to call up while editing any other files. Just make sure to change the default from wiki to markdown format.
Another useful tool I've been using for note-taking is `mdbook` which I think accomplishes the same thing - organizing markdown files into a book of sorts. Just thought I would throw the name out here in case anyone is looking for alternatives to research.
I recently switched to simple markdown files as well.
"I find myself more eager to write things down."
I feel exactly the same. Something about the simplicity and lightweight approach makes it more inviting for writing.
I use QOwnNotes to manage the notes, it's open source and available on osx/linux/windows, uses a sqlLite DB to add tagging and fast searching.
I too am thinking of going this route so as to reduce dependencies on custom software for something as important as note taking. However, how do you handle images in such a system? For instance, I sometimes take pictures of a whiteboard discussion and paste them as is in One Note - how do I do the same with plaintext files?
I have two folders: notes/ and uploads/. I've been uploading any attachments (images, PDFs, etc) to uploads/ with a timestamped name (ex. "2018-07-15_interesting_document.pdf") and linking them from the associated note.
At first this was pretty annoying, but then I wrote a couple scripts to automate the upload + naming process. Now it's as simple as running the script and getting the Markdown reference copied to your clipboard (ex. "").
> lain timestamped markdown files linked together. Edited with vim and a few bash scripts, rendered with a custom deployment of Gollum. All in a git repo.
That sounds a lot like zimwiki,except it uses a media wiki derived markup, but does have wysiwyg ui.
http://zim-wiki.org/
I have a similar setup. Markdown files published in the open¹ using Hugo. That said, I'd love to have an easy way to add tagging and searching without having to create my Hugo template.
I've been doing that for quite some time as well, but recentlish (<6 month ago) stumbled upon BoostNote [0] (electron based) and have to say that I think its pretty neat.
Especially because I can (if it ever becomes unmaintained), export the data to my preferred format with a simple script, as everytthing is saved in plain json files.
I have to agree with you... but in a...an _expanded_ sort of way. I use Epsilon and you can do anything except maybe make an Omelet. That comes out in the next version. lol. No, seriously: Epsilon is an either/or/both kind of app. It is happy letting you use Markdown, or _just_ as happy if you decide on CommonMark (which is like Github-flavored Markdown and Multi-Markdown combined, then made easier to use than either of those). It has FontAwesome Icons, Tags, Indexing, YAML, MathJax, and CSS. You can find it on G+ if you are curious but not sure if you are interested in a full commit just yet. I don't even work for or have any vested interest in Epsilon Notes. I just Love it that much. Yeah Markdown IS here to stay. It's crazy-easy to learn and even more so on the fun and useful side of things. Ciao, and Happy Coding!
~MJC
I went through a similar path. Tried everything and it all kinda sucked. Finally settled on using plain markdown files stored in a folder on Dropbox and edited by Sublime Text.
I love the format, enjoy using Sublime for text-editing and never had a problem with syncing (as opposed to say OneNone or Evernote).
I’ve always favored physical notebooks (there’s something about putting pen to paper that you just don’t get from a laptop and keyboard), but I’ve since played around with org-journal on emacs to track my programming work and the fact the buffer is only one shortcut away makes it really welcoming. I can put it in git, version it, and it’s plain text as you say so as long as I maintain some kind of structure I can code against it.
Now if I added some stuff to automatically link to JIRA tickets or GitHub PRs, or even specific commits if I go to that level, that would be fantastic.
Same here, I built a UWP app called flatnote. It's basically just a markdown editor with a directory tree. Everything is stored in Dropbox and I have a mobile app which does the same.
I built it when OneNote had a week long outage on Windows Phone. I'll never go back. Storing everything in plain text files is wonderfully liberating. Any app can read them. There's zero lock in. I can build my own super client or just use notepad
How about trying https://hackmd.io ?
I started HackMD few years ago with similar reasons (but for hackpad), hope you enjoy and feel free to tell me more about your opinion!
Looks like Blink. It’s pretty awesome. The layout is relatively simple for using special keys and it works great with a keyboard on larger iOS screens. The UI is also almost entirely text based for workflows once you have servers setup. That was always the most annoying thing about using Prompt and other SSH clients on iPad. Pecking around on the screen to get to a shell before you can start typing away. Blink supports Mosh as well.
I have found org mode to be really useful for free form note taking. Granted, the emacs factor may scare away some users, but I think org mode is worth it even if you are using emacs solely because of it.
Org mode has configurable todos(todo, next, scheduled, deadline). You can attach tags to notes, have nested todos with percentage completion tracking, can write code snippets in any language with full syntax completion, log time for different tasks, and this is just all I can think on the top of my head.
And to top it all, it is just plain text. You can store org documents in dropbox and access them just like your other dropbox documents.
As a vim user, I too only use plain-text. My general writtings are organized in folders, within a single git repo. Project specific writtings are within one file within that project's repo. I always call it notes.txt, and then when I'm within a project, to open notes it's always the same operation (`:e notes.txt` or equivalent). I also have a notes.txt in my general writtings repo. It's by far the biggest file in the repo, where I keep information that can be useful in the future. In most files, especially the bigger ones, I keep to the structure of date stamping a day's entries. For that I use a vim abbreviation. That's 1 line of code and that's the only custom code that my "system" needs.
I have found it immensely advantageous to use monospace for writting and note keeping, because I can structure the writting with indentation. So my writtings are trees, I branch them similarly to how you punctuate text in English. That's very efficient for technical writting and notes, but also for ponderings and essays. It let's you drop many non-content words, because the indentation provides for sentence-glue with visual punctuation and walks you through the "thought tree". With prose it's not easy to see the structure from a glance, you only see it's biggest features. With lists, you are constrained to the point where the medium is not expressive enough for anything beyond a grocery list. With loose-form trees, you get the benefit of visual structure, text-efficiency and expressiveness. Code editors, like vim, are good for this, because they know how to wrap indented text.
Example of such notes. They're not in English, but you can see the structure. It's a week of entries on a project: https://hastebin.com/raw/gurexecubi
Standard Notes: https://standardnotes.org/ for plain text, encrypted notes. Everything is easily importable or exportable in .txt format.
MS OneNote is great however they have stopped updating their desktop application (which allows offline notes) in favor of putting everything in the cloud (which will require a subscription to yet another cloud service if you exceed the OneDrive limits.)
Thank you, have searched for things like Standard Notes before but without success. That is why I participate in HN, many times it works better than a search engine, you just need to wait for the right topic to appear in the first page.
Indeed, one of the most important points is the Q&A in the FAQ: "Has Standard Notes completed a third-party security audit?" (Spoiler: yes, it did).
I like standard notes but having only plain text with no ability to attach images makes it unsuitable for me. I often take screen shots or photos as a note.
I take all my notes with Sublime Text 3. After having bought it and VS Code being more suitable for my programming needs I just use it as a snappy notes taking application. I can close it and everything I leave will be restored as is in a snap when I come back. Not sure if there's a way to sync this but if there is, that would defeat any other "note taking app" for me.
Eventually I want to try using Microsoft Whiteboard but I'm waiting to buy the Surface Pen before I try it out.
I've found myself doing this as well. I really appreciate the way Sublime Text persists unsaved files without having to give it any thought. I've kept a "scratch.txt" doc open with various notes and hints forever.
Best part is I can save them all to a 'notes' folder / directory (I get yelled about calling it folders apparently) and oh look I can open them anywhere else, and archive them and take them with me anywhere and even put them in 'the cloud' for super cheap storage.
Workflowy is great for quick, structured, hierarchical note taking. It is basically a text only bulleted list of lists. Navigable by keyboard or mouse and syncs to whatever phone / desktop etc you have.
Too expensive by half, and I don't think it is client side encrypted which is a deal breaker for anything sensitive. I really enjoy the simplicity though, great for checklists, writing papers, and all those little rare but important non-calendar based lists, ie. books to read, music to buy, etc.
My ideal note-app would be like workflowy, but allow de-hierarch-ising the list mentality. I mean, workflowy is basically a database back end and I can link tags between lists. But why not just have all the tags separate in the first place? You could have the constructed hierarchy tree to the left (ie bullet list), and the links tree to the right so you can see how the entries both compose and decompose.
That used to be me. Can I suggest you check out Dynalist? It's actually maintained and updated (unlike Workflowy at this point), with more useful features. I've been finding the colouring, headers and bookmarks very useful.
Two things I dislike though, 1) as far as I can tell the dates/times can't trigger notifications. 2) the paid plan is expensive.. they give so much away for free, but then charge a lot for seemingly little. A $3/m tier is a good price point imo for a todo app. Right now it costs basically the same as Netflix..
Can you please expand a bit more on your ideal note app? Results sound intriguing, but I can't imagine what it would look like from this short description.
The idea is that the issue with tags is they can be difficult to trace to all their referenced locations. I find myself not using them because they are difficult to keep track of.. you can't 'see' them at a glance.
But we don't need to see all the referenced locations, just the tree which leads away from the item you are looking at. So you get strict split between, and easy to understand, [left / right], [hierarchy / reference] organisation. Would make it easy to position and re-reference information. And would let you see referencing visually. Below for a really rough idea of what I am talking about.
- list 1 - sub-list 1 - item A | - sub-list 1 - list 1
- item B |
- item C | - sub-list 1
| \ sub-list 3 - list 2
- sub-list 2 - item D | - sub-list 2 - list 1
| \ sub-list 3 - list 2
- item E |
- item F | - sub-list 4 - list 2
- list 2 - sub-list 3 - item G | - sub-list 3 - list 2
- item C | - sub-list 1 - list 1
| \ sub-list 3 - list 2
- item D | - sub-list 2 - list 1
| \ sub-list 3 - list 2
Oh, I see what you mean now. Left side shows which branches you used to get to leaf, and right sides show other paths to root. It might be very useful occasionally, but would probably have to stay hidden most of time because it would clutter UI with redundant information.
If on the Mac ecosystem, Bear is Apple notes but with fewer sync bugs and more useful features (like a close cousin of markdown and amazing tagging). I've switched to that for notes that might stick around for a while (from Evernote and Apple notes, though I still forward emails into the former as a convenient archive). For transient notes (like shopping lists etc.) I just use drafts on iOS. Seems to work for me after years of frustration with Evernote and Apple notes.
I'm not sure how long ago you tried Apple Notes but I've use it all the time now after trying many apps. I don't have any sync problems and it has good support for images, pen input, tables, styles etc.
For anything more technical I use Quiver which supports MarkDown, code with pretty printing, LaTex and diagram markup, but it doesn't have an iPad editor (just reader).
I switched to Bear after having significant sync problems with apple notes (it was fine in iOS 10 but never ever worked properly in iOS 11). It was always OK on my Mac.
From various Apple support forum requests it seems that a lot of people were having similar - but also a number were totally unaffected.
My biggest gripe with Apple Notes is if I throw some snippet of code in there it mutates the quotes to "smart quotes" and thus the code produces syntax errors if I try and use it again :(
Bear lacks folders. Sure, it has tagging, but it's really a poor man's organization tool; for example, you can't create a new folder and then drag and drop a bunch of notes into it. Changing the "location" of multiple notes requires search and replace, something I don't think Bear even does (at least not the iOS version). Tags also clutter notes visually. Do you put them at the beginning? At the end? Either way you will see the tags. Very strange for an app which boasts about providing "beautiful" notes. There are ergonomic issues; copying a note into another app includes the tags, for example. Selecting a whole note and clicking the "italics" shortcuts will make the tags italics, too. And so on.
Same goes for the Markdown. Maybe some people find Markdown codes scattered all over the place "beautiful", but I don't.
Bear also doesn't handle images very well, at least on iOS (I don't remember how it behaves on the Mac). Images are rendered full width. You can't create nice grids of images like you can with Evernote.
Bear is awesome. I like it enough that the thought of finding an alternative hasn’t occurred to me in a long time.
As others have mentioned, organization can feel like a bit of a pain sometimes with how you have to organize with tags, but it hasn’t really hindered me as much as I thought it would.
I like Bear's more polished look but as far as I can find through a dozen apps I tried, only Apple Note allows documents to be encrypted. It's sad no app cares about it.
I've tried several different, SimpleNote, KeepNote, EverNote... and so on. I have come to a conclusion, that using the default iOS note app is enough for me. Using paper notes while @lectures and rewriting them sometimes to Notes.
I'm also using another method of note taking, which I prefer more, but which is not always accessible on the go. I stumbled upon a script here and modified it a little. (changed vim to nano and added some other):
#! /bin/bash
fpath=$HOME/notes.md
if [ "$1" == "cat" ]; then
cat "$fpath"
exit 0
elif [ "$1" == "rg" ]; then
rg "$2" "$fpath"
elif [ "$1" == "nano" ]; then
nano "$fpath"
elif [ "$1" == "--help" ]; then
printf 'Commands: \n-----------------------------------------------\n
$ notes \n
$ notes --help\t\t--\tdisplay this help\n
$ notes date\t\t--\tadd date row to notes\n
$ notes <text>\t\t--\tadd new entry \n
$ notes cat\t\t--\tprint notes using cat\n
$ notes rg <pattern>\t--\tripgrep notes\n
Remember to use #tags (for easier grepping)!\n\n'
elif [ "$1" == "date" ]; then
{
echo ''
echo '# '"$(date +"%m-%d-%Y-%T")"
echo '-'
} >> "$fpath"
elif [ "$1" == "" ]; then
less +G "$fpath"
else
{
echo ''
echo "$@"
echo ''
} >>"$fpath"
fi
In short, writing $ notes prints out displays the notes and writing $ notes <text> appends a new line. This is extremely powerful because of it's simplicity and easy accessibility in terminal (where I spend most of the time anyway)
edit:: formatting
edit2::
I very often keep this (with extended bash history) to keep notes about long commands I need to use later in the future, but not often. One had to do with imagemagick and resizing/compressing bunch of images in a directory. Added tags #imagemagick #command and in split of second I can get the command again whenever needed ;)
Typora! I just found it recently, but maan, I was searching for something like this for a long time! It is basically a Markdown editor but with an unique touch and extra features like outline, sidebar browser, built-in image viewer and stuff. It's very beautiful.
Typora also handles copy-pasting of images really well. It essentially copies the files to an assets folder next to your md document. If you paste image data from the clipboard it will create the file too.
It does look like a very polished Markdown editor and is available for Mac, Win and Linux.
Unfortunately it is neither open source, nor will it be free after the Beta.
... paid software certainly has its place, but with no clear pricing info, nor any concrete info about who's behind it, it makes me hesitate to jump on board. It does look really good though.
They are not comparable. Typora can handle images, render graphs, render markdown and show outlines and is cross platform. It also let's you edit markdown in a WYSIWYG-format.
Notepad can't do any of that.
Do you also complain about the size of blue-ray movies, when .txt documents are so much smaller?
The idea that i am using inefficient software boggles my mind. My laptop SSD is 128gb. Unpacked version of this software would be 100MB+ installation. It will also take a lot of my RAM during usage. So for a "truly minimal markdown editor" i get such a monster in my system.
Lets take another monster, Visual Studio Code. Its installation is 72mb, but i get so much more installing it including markdown editor.
To each their own. I far prefer my UX at the cost of RAM. I agree, there are a lot of abstractions in languages which leads to this bloat, but do I think we'd have better user experiences if everyone write perfectly efficient assembly? I don't, fwiw. Do you?
I know you're not suggesting everything needs to be perfect. We just have different lines we draw where our UX outweighs things like RAM or disk space. For me, if it gives a great UX, 75MB is a tiny fraction of my RAM, I'd gladly pay it.
Besides, I'm only going to have one copy of this thing running. If it was 75MBx25 or something then I'd be concerned, but 75x1? meh.
For my use case (.net development, visual studio) windows used to be superior, more efficient choice. Now, after the release of .NET Core and Visual Studio Code i might re-evaluate it.
And yet it's apparently completely foreign to you that others may make that exact same choice regarding other software?
(And this is coming from a guy that used to program entirely on text editors, because I didn't like how bloaty Eclipse was... I'm not deaf to your plight. I'm just curious that the idea of others making trade offs is so foreign to you.)
Why not be conscious about these things? I have a lot more than 128GB on my system, but I still don't want to install dozens of 100+MB apps to solve just one problem each. Eventually you will run out of disk space with that approach.
Why install a single-purpose Markdown editor when you already have VSCode installed that is an excellent Markdown editor plus a lightweight IDE for nearly every language ever?
One tool, one job is fine for things that actually stick to the Unix principle and keep it lightweight and minimal. Single-purpose apps should be aiming at the 10MB mark, not 100MB. At 100MB+, you can probably find a multipurpose app to do the same job just as well if not better.
It's been mentioned already but allow me to repeat it: plain text is your friend. Use some markdown if you like. Store everything in folders, using a complex or simple hierarchy, depending on your style. Backup and sync your files using one of the many providers, have it all encrypted (or not if you don't care).
This is your core note-taking system that will last longer than you.
On top of that use any app or editor you fancy. I'm on a Mac, I use iaWriter as my markdown editor (I love that you can drag and drop images into the files), houdahspot to search, Monosnap to take screenshots. And a few OSX tags. But I expect all this to change anytime.
I have around 15 years worth of notes and journalling entries and this setup has emerged as the clear winner. If you care at all about long-levity, I highly advise against proprietary data formats.
I've found that actual paper works best for me -- I tend to jump around a lot, use special symbols, occasionally draw diagram fragments. Then when I'm done dumping core it gets transferred into emacs/org-mode, where it may get an editing pass to make it more coherent to future-me.
Termux on Android with emacs/org mode and a ton of custom capture templates is awesome. Capturing eg. workouts and expenses to org tables and then processing them with python to get summaries.. quick restaurant or sento reviews in my journal .. whatever you want to capture quickly, you can tailor it to serve you. And, at the end of the day, it's all plain text synced by git.
I’ve recently started using TiddlyWiki for my work and personal notes. It really excels at modeling complex, real world data through its tagging system. Also, it is open source and locally hosted so it is safe for work or other sensitive information.
I tried to give TiddlyWiki a serious try but eventually had to leave the boat.
On multiple occasions, I lost drafted notes-- I had a couple of notes opened in the unsaved state, I was thinking I would save all of them together but lost them because of some reason.
I understand when it started but why now it has to be a single page JS powered app which comes with so many restrictions.
I especially like being able to add any type of element (code, image, video, todo) to any page, the drag-and-drop reordering, and that I can export everything to Markdown if they ever go under because they (inexplicably) decided to remove limits on mobile users.
I see lots of people's answers include markdown or another plain text format. I have long held the opinion that note taking is the single most applicable situation for a WYSIWYG experience. On top of that, I find the ability to draw in my notes essential. For these reasons, my favorite software would be MS OneNote. However I run Linux and don't always have pen input available so I go with pen and paper instead.
So, how do you all deal with plain text notes? If you had a good WYSIWYG editor that fits in your workflow, would you switch?
Give me Emacs that handles inline images in buffers better, and I'll switch :).
Before going full Org Mode, I used MS OneNote, and liked it very much. My notes from that period has tons of images and annotated screenshots dumped into them. I miss that in my Emacs workflow nowadays. My dream software would be pieces of Org Mode on a OneNote-like canvas, with support for easily pasting images and drawing on them (especially using a graphics tablet, or at least a touchscreen). And of course with plaintext format (though the attachments could go into directories, automatically managed by the notetaking software).
I tried this solution as well, but I missed one core feature of Evernote, that you can search by tags or keywords, and it instantly list all related notes.
That is possible, but more impractical. In Evernote, I just click Win-Shift-F within any application, and then directly type the search keyword, and then get the list of notes, which I can preview in another window. It's just not the same experience.
> I don't even understand why anyone would think that you need a dedicated app for note taking.
You're missing a big part: user experience.
Everything you said, sure, that's great. But the majority of developers (or really just people in general) don't want to spend their time learning each one of those things and trying to piece something together when a single app can do it good enough for them.
I too stopped using a dedicated note taking app but I already understand how to use markdown, git, etc. But for the average user or the user who just wants something to work without trying to look up multiple things or, hell, even the user who wants access on all of their devices like a phone, this solution make absolutely no sense.
Heavy note taker here. If I'm on my Mac, I use the Notes app. My favorite things about the app are real time sync between the desktop and phone app, easy checklists, text format options and the ability to inline embed images.
When I'm on my phone I use Google Keep. What I love about it are the colored background, tile view and checklists. I wish Keep allowed inline embedding of images.
We use Google Keep for syncing our grocery shopping. It works very well, even offline (sometimes stores don't have strength for mobile data and allow you to use their WiFi but I prefer not). However, Google Keep has no API. You're forced to use the Google apps or use a browser. I also cannot get it work on my smartwatch.
MS OneNote as it features a nice integration with MS Outlook. You can create tasks directly in OneNote and have them automatically show up in Outlook. As my employer uses the enterprise version, I am not worried about the Cloud.
I honestly didn't realize how much I was using Apple Notes on iOS and Mac, until recently. The ability to create folders, and iCloud sync (after it became useful enough) are amazing.
I only wish Apple Notes would get a lot more features similar to Google Doc, but at that point it'd be an another replacement for Apple Pages.
I was never hooked to Evernote, despite the amount of traction it got. So I'm not sure if Notes on iOS and mac will be a good replacement for Evernote users though.
I also find myself using Apple Notes for a lot of short list-type stuff, from to-do lists to my daily cardio log. Somehow the simplicity and prevalence -- all my local machines are the spawn of Cupertino -- make the default just good enough I don't want to invest mental energy in a more featureful alternative.
Unless I write it myself, but I'm trying hard to avoid that temptation, as are probably half the people commenting here.
For longer-form stuff (brainstorms mostly) I switch to Markdown in whichever text editor I'm using that day, and... ooh I'm setting myself up here... Dropbox.
It really depends on how you do note-taking. In my case, I take notes related to my research projects, meetings and things I find useful, which require me to find a software with Latex, MathJax support. I don't like latex code inside my note, I like the rendered view. Second requirement is that this software should be mobile support. On the bus, on waiting line etc, I should be able to edit/add notes.
Outliners are good for noting ideas. It makes you think more structural and organized. The less bullet you spend, the simple the idea becomes, that way reading it requires less energy.
I use Dynalist because of the reasons above and its mobile app is 10/10.
Uniquely, AFAIK, the Dynalist team make their Trello kanban available for us all to see. We can also subscribe to and vote for our wished-for developments.
Personally I've not found a suitable mobile note taking app. I tend to use old paper and pencil for that, with a cross between bullet journal and a Japanese method of organisation (visual index) for them. If I feel I need to keep the notes as they might change, etc, I'll type them up.
I'm in the process of teaching myself Emacs because I like the idea of simple txt notes (org-mode) but I'm visual in my learning so treesheets works for me.
I find myself in a lot of situations where information isn't coming to me in a particularly organised fashion - interviews, presentations with several presenters, being on the receiving end of braindumps, etc. For those situations, I really need a mindmap app to be able to reorganise information with minimal effort into a structure that makes sense to me. It's a not-cheap, Apple-only app, but it can output into a variety of formats if I want to consume it on some other platform.
It also works well as a presentation tool if I don't know the audience's knowledge level. Rather than be tied into e.g a sequence of slides, using a mindmap tool I can skip over stuff the audience already knows, while still having the content there (just not visible) if I need to drill down deeply. I can go from receiving an unstructured braindump to presenting that same info in an organised fashion within a few minutes
I used to use Freemind and Freeplane, but the lack of an iOS option was a killer.
For most other situations, I find Evernote is great
I feel like I've used them all. OneNote, Notion.so, NotePlan, Outliner, Mac Notes, Scrivner, Evernote.
I personally seem to gravitate towards OneNote for pure note taking. I personally like Notion.so more for notes that refer to tasks, using Notionas more of a task management and organization app vs pure note taking.
Outliner is a great app for quick note taking in nested format.
I'm a huge fan of Notion.so. They offer personal plans, and a free plan to students.
They've helped me organise my life - I've built a small personal "wiki" of study notes, WIP writing, calendar plans & email drafts.
I recently persuaded a friend to get it (so we can collaboratively work on a startup idea) and it's worked really smoothly. We both love it. Can't recommend enough.
I looked at the screenshot and said "wow that's ugly". Then I saw the caption: "Don’t worry: The icons on the left can be made much less ugly." Nicely done.
Good to see the best features of Notational Velocity being carried forward. I like the sound of iCloud syncing, too.
Apple Notes is great. The only feature I wish it had is markdown or an easy way to make code blocks, but all of its other features make up for missing it.
I have used many other options, but Notes works best.
I like Apple Notes too. I wish table editing was a bit better, but the only thing that really annoys me is that the color scheme is not editable. Orange for hyperlinks sucks.
I used to use OneNote and quite enjoyed it but always felt it was slightly heavy weight.
As I’m fully in the Apple ecosystem I now just use Apple Notes and in all honesty am totally happy with it. It’s fairly simple but does everything I need for free.
I also use Notability on the iPad for when I want to scribble something with the Apple Pencil and am also quite happy with that!
Came here to say the same thing. I used OneNote for a while and then SublimeText + PlainTasks which was actually great but I couldn't find a good mobile client for PlainTasks. And every single time in between I would go back to org-mode so eventually I just stopped searching. It has everything I need.
I remember there being an IFTTT recipe for syncing DB and Google Drive, but I never gave it a try. I was using DB before I used Drive so I'm fine with Orgzly's reliance on it, but there are options.
I use syncthing to sync Org content between android and linux for orgzly consumption. I don't see any reason why I couldn't add a syncthing that copied into a mounted Google Drive if I wanted my info up on that cloud.
I’m paper and pen - so recently was introduced to Goodnotes on iPad with a pencil. I found a used eBay iPad and can rapidly take notes, draw diagrams and flowcharts. Full search with online recognition, too.
Honestly it’s pretty good. I am much more productive than on paper.
On laptop or desktop I stick with vim and copy to Word if required. I use Inkscape for diagrams.
Second the notion of goodnotes and the pen. The one feature that really is quite significant is being able to move hand written text around using the lasso tool.
So you write something, circle it and move it to the right spot.
If your brain works in chaotic ways at times it is such a cool feature to just write/dump everything and then order it later.
Also excellent for drawing diagrams and mockups and all kinds of other flows that require expansion or significant change later on.
Using the pen/ipad combo feels quite natural to write so this has been my solution for a while and has stuck more than any solution I have tried over the past 20 years aside from regular pen/paper.
I use Jotterpad on Android to edit markdown and text files. It syncs well with Dropbox (it feels just like a frontend for a dropbox folder) and supports .txt, .md, .markdown, and .fountain files.
I use Brackets and Typora to edit .md files on pc/mac/linux. I find image handling in .md files fairly simple as long as you maintain an appropriate folder structure on the backend. Typora makes this especially easy.
I would like to build a better self-hosted tagging/viewing program for my huge cache of notes - something like Google Keep without being, well, Google. Turtl comes closest to my needs, but the lack of import/export at this point is a problem. I do not wish to be tied to a particular format or storage space.
Hey, Turtl creator here. Import/export is launching with v0.7.0 very soon. I've been working really hard on the upcoming release, and self hosting should be easier since we're moving to Nodejs for the server (saying goodbye to lisp).
What about WriterPlus? I've been using it for years to edit my Markdown files on Android. (I was about to say that it's also open source but that seems to have changed recently.)
Also, what do you mean by "Dropbox-aware"? It's all just files after all.
Exactly- it is the best I have found so far. However, the main problem hides in everything to do with images, as they cannot be appended to a text document. Because of that, I am using this naming scheme:
example.txt needs an appended image. In the doc, I write “[0]”, and create an image named example-0.jpg.
That's what I use it for. I've found the "One column of concepts, with one column of articles in each concept" to be a really useful formalism. I found, when using wikis (even just my own) that it wound up being an unorganized mess.
I wound up writing a Quiver-alike for the windows/linux world at work.
Zim is great. It has grown to be a part of my working process.
My TODO lists with tickboxes are in Zim. (use [] to make a box). This way I can check what tasks are left and which are done. When the list of "done"-tasks grows, I move those to an own page to declutter and have a searchable history.
When I read an interesting paper or book, I add summaries to be reviewed later. When I develop, I build "case files" of things I am doing (e.g. set of commands, replies from a device, mini-HOWTOs, observations). Often these can be communicated to other people after a little polish.
One problem is that some notes tend to become spread out and somewhat chaotic, especially when having to multitask under time pressure. Many notes taken have little if any value after some weeks or months so I don't pay much attention to strict discipline there. Zim is essentially a somewhat messy lab journal intended for myself.
I used it for about 5 years, and in the end I'm just more comfortable working directly with text files in my text editor. I do like that it has a nice export capability for e.g. quickly organizing and setting up an informational website.
* manage to-do-lists based on the page they occur, and/or their tags, deadlines and priority level.
* table of contents for a larger one page note
* auto git add/commit upon application start
What I would love to see is:
* automated and robust git push/pull with GUI based conflict resolvement so I could collaborate with colleagues who are not too comfi with git using zim
* organize pages using a nested tag structure (like gmail lables) instead of folder structure.
Yup. I use zim for every longer term project. I do personal documentation in it, all of my notes for my pnp campaigns are done in it, ideas for games: zim.
I really like Federated Wiki, which was created by Ward Cunningham. I run it both locally (for private notes) and on a VPS.
I find it is a computer tool that actually helps and encourages me to write and organize information and does not impede me in this activity. ("Clippings" together with a program called FinderNote on Mac OS Classic are another.)
1. Google Keep: For light weight temporary note taking - grocery items, during travel - hotel addresses, rental details etc.
Where lighting quick sync is needed between web and mobile interface, for transferring data between my laptop and mobile.
2. Microsoft OneNote: For heavy duty archival note taking, where font formatting, picture and document embedding is a necessity.
Which should be also available on mobile, but quick sync is not necessary.
I started using onenote, and it still pleasantly surprises me from time to time. The last feature I stumbled upon was that it autocompletes simple calculations[1].
Supermemo, but it's not really a note taking program perse. Most people use it to learn languages or skill specific vocabulary. But, I throw my notes in there too.
Edit:
Specifically, the incremental reading feature and annotated notes. Essentially you can add an article like it's a flashcard, and then it'll schedule it for reviews, and you can even review your notes. If you need something specific, you can search for the note itself.
Although not ideal, I ended up with OneNote. Also for temporary notes, I use Trello (easily accessible from my mobile), but the notes don't live there for more than a week.
I like how many people advice to build your own system with git and markdown. Ideally, I want such a system to work quickly on non-cutting edge mobile and sync on the fly, so maybe that's an idea for a side project.
To all the lovers of OneNote: doesn't it bother you that printing the notes / pages (physically, or to PDF file) provides a sub-par experience? Writing notes in OneNote is great, including managing them... unless you want to print a page to share the notes to someone via another medium. Than it just annoys me, and I wished that I'd started in Dropbox Paper or Google Docs.
It allows you to very quickly do a full text search, it saves the files as plain text, it supports external editors (I use MacVim) and it syncs with simplenote.com so I can see my notes on NV on my various macs and the simplenote app on my phone. It's very minimal and I like it a lot.
Turtl: https://turtlapp.com/
Largely because it's open source and privacy oriented, encrypted client-side. It's not as convenient and feature-rich as OneNote, but entrusting Microsoft with all my notes seems crazy.
I love Turtl's interface, tagging system, hosting options, multi-OS setup, and privacy stance. Turtl would be my go-to solution if they supported .md import/export. I think they have .json export planned for the next release, which might be tractable with a bit of pandoc manipulation, but not ideal.
I appreciate your excellent work. Google Keep, for example, exports both a .json and a folder of individual html files. I ended up piping the individual .html files through pandoc to .md files for idiosyncratic reasons. To be fair, I think turtl is so many leagues ahead of other solutions on the rest of its feature set that a .json export - which appears to be standard - is enough.
I suspect that turtl appeals to a lot of users with a large directory of plaintext notes who would be enticed to adopt the service if bulk textfile import were also streamlined. I hope the next release is a success!
I find a single pane outliner the best for me. You can nest, group and move ideas around quickly. For windows, the best still is Ecco Pro. It's a free software written back in the 90's that has an awesome outliner. I know there are many other windows based single pane outlines but I have not used windows for my desktop for several years.
On Linux, which is my primary desktop, I use Ecco Pro on Wine.
If using OSX / IOS, I would recommend Omni Outliner.
Regarding two pane outliners vs singleness pane, I simply don't find the fragmentation of information across two panes intuitive. This may be subjective though. To me, having all information in a single tree, flows much better when brainstorming.
For Android, I don't have many good options for Outlining and therefore a regular note taker for now that's Evernote.
I'm currently evaluating several different options, and I'm beginning to lean towards "One tool is probably not enough". Bigger tools such as Notion.so or a personal wiki are great as a repository of knowledge, you can easily browse and organize information. But writing a one-off quick note is not their forte. Lighter tools like markdown files in a text editor or a pure note app all handle the jot-down-a-note aspect very well, but they lack in organization and structure.
I prefer not having to use a bunch of tools for the same task, but here it seems like that's probably the best idea. Use a light note-taking app (or a physical notebook) to scribble things down, then enter it into a more repository-like software when I'm back at my computer.
(All of the following are macos only). I've used OmniOutliner, NoteBook (Circus Ponies, now defunct) and Growly Notes (www.growlybird.com). I've enjoyed using Growly Notes for many years, first as a free app and now as a nominal $4.99 on the App Store. It is closed source, but it's very versatile, flexible, and has a good scalable organization heirarchy (notebooks/sections/pages). It can import and export many different formats. It's also currently maintained and the support is good.
I write markdown in Visual Studio Code and just save it in a notes directory.
I can then grep across the directory, or use VSC in built search in folder tool. I also get the formatting of markdown. It is already on my machine and usually already open and running.
I use Evernote Premium and I’m mostly content with it. It’s worth $95/year to me. There’s no device limit in the Premium edition. You also get full-text search in PDFs and other nice features.
So far I haven’t found any alternative that suits me better. I really like being able to use different notebooks for different purposes and being able to tag individual notes. (This is something that e.g. Apple’s Notes is missing.)
I won’t trust Evernote to stay around forever so my plan is to research alternatives in two years or so just to see if any good alternatives are available. (NTS: I should also make backups of my Evernote data...)
If you are using Apple devices, consider switching to Bear, it is $15 annually. Tagging is the main organizing method in the app, also much faster then Evernote.
Bear's tagging is objectively not as nice as true hierarchies. For example, you can't create a new folder and then drag and drop a bunch of notes into it. Changing the "location" of multiple notes requires search and replace, something I don't think Bear even does (at least not the iOS version).
Tags also clutter notes. Do you put them at the beginning? At the end? Either way you will see the tags. Very strange for an app which boasts about providing "beautiful" notes.
Same goes for the Markdown. Maybe some people find Markdown codes scattered all over the place "beautiful", but I don't.
Bear also doesn't handle images very well, at least on iOS (I don't remember how it behaves on the Mac). Images are rendered full width. You can't create nice grids of images like you can with Evernote.
It's sad that for something as simple as note taking app (though it seems it's hard to get it just right) to be subscription based and there aren't enough good single time pay app to take it down.
Thank you for the recommendation. Does Bear have a web version? For me, that’s one of Evernote’s killer features. It’s very convenient not having to install Evernote on my Windows computer at work.
They don't, since they use iCloud for data storage (so they do get privacy points!) That's why it's Apple only. I know they are working on some stuff for web/Android, but I have no idea how it will work. Maybe users will either be Apple hosted or Bear hosted.
Sachin Rekhi here, YC alum from 2007. Wanted to throw a plug out for our app Notejoy: https://notejoy.com
We've built Notejoy as a collaborative notes app. So it's not only great for personal notes, but also great for easily sharing notes with your team with real-time editing, @mentions, threaded comments, and more.
But also built with a lot of the productivity features you expect from a note-taking app, including Mac, Windows, iOS apps, keyboard shortcuts / markdown accelerators, syntax highlighting, clean distraction-free interface, and more.
For short notes I've been using deft[1] on emacs. It gives a Notational Velocity like interface for searching/viewing within emacs. The actual note-taking is via org-mode.
For notes from online courses, I recently started using the stock Notes app on macOS/iOS because of the Pencil support on the iPad.
Not sure if this helps as I don't know what platform/editor you use and I wouldn't expect you to switch either for note taking :)
MindForger is human mind inspired knowledge management tool which aims to connect the tradition of outline editors with emerging technologies. Its mission is to help you in organization of your knowledge and associated local, web and real world resources in a way that enables quick navigation, concise representation, automatic interconnections, associative completion and inferencing.
As many others, we build our own tool and by now we are named as a "Trello-killer" by Make use of. https://zenkit.com can be used to organize anything in the way you want it. You can choose between several data views and switch whenever you want. Use a lot of customization features to show your data as you need it. From a simple list view through kanban and databases, everything is possible.
It´s available for every device, without limitation. There is also a Snap for Linux.
Products from www.literatureandlatte.com deserve a mention on this list - they are called Scrivener and Scapple. I realize they might not be for everyone (both are paid), but I find them delightful.
As I’m exclusively using iOS and macOS I simply use Apple Notes.app. It syncs and you can even collaborate with other apple notes users.
EDIT: not to forget the Apple Pencil support it brings.
On the Mac, I highly recommend OmniOutliner. I have outlines that have evolved over, literally, decades. Before using OmniOutliner, I used More, an early Mac outliner that ran on a Mac Plus. OmniOutliner could import More files[1], so, when More was discontinued, I could keep using my outlines without a hitch. I am still actively evolving and growing outlines today that I may been working with, literally, for 40 years or even a bit longer!
I love the process of working with outlines. They're the perfect way to store information in an organized way.
There's a common outline storage format, OPML (Outline Processor Martup Language), which OmniOutliner exports to. So, if the Mac ever entirely disappears, or OmniOutliner's publisher (OmniGroup) goes out of business, you should be able to keep using your OO outlines on whatever platform you move to next. Also, OmniOutliner does run on the iPad today.
One tip which is key to my own use: use hashtags so that you can instantaneously find the outline heading for whatever notes you're looking for.
I have been using Dropbox Paper for about two years now. I highly recommend it for cloud note taking app, because:
(1) Can easily collaborate and share
(2) Markdown syntax with LaTeX support
(3) Embed images, youtube, PDF and lots of other stuff straight into the note.
(4) Visually clean and elegant
The downsides are:
(a) No offline editing (only limited support on mobile)
(b) Dependent on Dropbox Inc
+1 for Paper, but how are you embedding PDF? I can only add it if it's already in my Dropbox, and it is not editable (notes, highlighting, etc..) Only thing missing for me to make it go from good to great.
PDF has to in the dropbox folder somewhere before you can add it. Then it appears as a single page preview. Clicking on it allows to view the full doc within Paper, but there is no annotation feature as of now. Example:
I hate to admit it. I tried everything, maybe except for org-mode. My favorite - which I do a bunch of stuff in real time and which generates money for me is: Microsoft OneNote thick client. Supreme user experience. Second best: tables in Microsoft Excel.
sigh I am supposed to be a die hard open source guy. Well well maybe npt so much at the end of the day. Corporate life is all proprietery high end Oracle, SAS, IBM and Microsoft.
Seconded. It's the first notes app I've stuck with for a while. It's a really cool take on notes that's makes it all feel very modular and you can build little notes pages with widgets the way you want.
Over my last two terms I've invested in using markdown with Pandoc to write any notes in class. I needed a way to be able to take math notes, and be simple to use. After migrating to Linux, OneNote was no longer an option. It's simple to use, as it uses markdown syntax for anything text based, and LaTeX syntax for inlined math formulas.
I as of recently also found out that VimWiki exists. I've started to use it because of the note linking capabilities. I'm starting to keep notes on events, certain tools, languages, and all other information I need in the wiki. It's also in Markdown which is nice.
Find tools that are close to what you want, and try to make your own suite. It may seem like a lot of work, but knowing your note taking solution inside and out can be very handy. When you're presented with something new that you don't know how to take down, you can evolve the system into being capable of handling it. Which you can do if you've make your own system, but using ready made solutions won't allow this.
+1 for VimWiki, it's just simple enough for decent note-taking although it's not as highly customizable as org-mode. Btw, I think the internal linking features and others do not work with Markdown syntax of VimWiki after the export, or have you figured out something ?
I haven't had a chance to integrated vimwiki into my school notes just yet. I havent used the export function in vimwiki yet, as I stick with viewing my notes in vim.
I'm not sure if HTML outputs the paths the same way that the vimwiki does, could you possibly use relative links or something? I can't get HTML conversion to work for me right now for some reason. You could also possibly compile all the notes at once, and use sections to refer to certain files. Similar to how LaTeX outputs sections.
I haven't tried using links after an export before. One thing to check might be the source code of the exported file? That might give you a hint of where the exported page is looking for its link targets.
Used to use MS OneNote, switched to using Outline (Mac) when I moved away from Windows. I'm still pretty happy with it, but I'm a one-device-at-a-time, laptops-are-as-mobile-as-I-go kind of guy who doesn't care about syncing, etc.
However, most of the time I just use paper. I generally use 200-ish page hardbound books with a narrow rule, and go through around 2 a year with work; entries are dated, volumes are dated when filled and filed away. I don't treat them with the full rigor that you would a real "lab notebook", but it's the same general idea.
For hobby use, I use similar books, but usually blank or graph lined.
For day-to-day reminders and such, I'm almost always carrying a little 50-cent spiral-bound notebook. When used up, remove the spring, toss the pages and cover into the recycle bin.
My use of software for note taking at this point is pretty much confined to initial research where I'm more interested in saving images and URLs than any actual details that might end up on paper later.
This has been bothering me for a while too, I take 3 kinds of notes:
1. Project-related notes: I write those close to the source in a special `.todo` file highlighted with an extension I wrote [1].
2. Short-lived notes: I write those in my sticky notes app [2], which allows me to have different "categories" of notes while still requiring only a single window.
3. Long-lived notes: I write those in Evernote as well, and like many others here I've long searched for a replacement. I guess I'll have to code my own, I don't really need anything fancy, just an interface for searching and tagging markdown files.
I went through the very same kind of issues with note taking. I was looking for a portable format, not depending on any 3rd party service that stores my data on some unknown format in a server somewhere, simple to use and customize.
After trying almost every application out there, and being a developer myself, I ended up writing a minimalist package for the Atom editor that I called "second memory". Base text format is markdown, it includes grammar / syntax highlight, and some "nice" and simple features like TODO items, stars, and some text widgets. I use it together with markdown-preview package and syncthing for keeping notes in sync across all my devices. If you like the Atom editor, you can take a look at it on https://atom.io/packages/secondmemory
Daily I use a FileMaker default template as it allows me to attach docs and media along with text. And by-the-way, it has kept almost 5 years of daily pics of me! For meetings I use an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil using GoodNotes4—works great. I take a pic of the handouts and mark them up. Easy, orderly.
I have been using the Day One[0] and it has been fantastic. It is marketed as a journaling app but it works really well for general note taking.
Pros:
- The developers offer a service where they will publish all notes as a book for a small fee. Exporting notes into physical media is a great way to ensure notes stay preserved into the future.
- They are available on most apple platforms (ipads, macOS, iphones) and the notes sync up between all of them. There is also an android app.
- The subscription isn’t expensive
Cons:
- Doesn’t support Windows
- The service to publish a book from notes is still in beta, has not worked well for me so far.
I have been using this app for making notes for about 8 months now and it’s been working great.
Surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet but WizNote is a pretty decent Evernote clone with clients for all platforms. Use Google translate on the site: https://wiz.cn/
I used Keep for
a while, but now just have a folder with some markdown files (roughly one per note). I use git to push it to a server and download onto my phone and tablet. Works well, but obviously does not sync across all devices in real time.
For quick notes about things I might want to search for later (e.g. books to consider buying): Notational Acceleration (Android clone of Notational Velocity), and nvpy (python GUI app, cross platform), synced to Simplenote.
Notes I'm going to share with others (e.g. interview notes, or important things to consider when we do X): Google Docs or Word (stored in corporate OneDrive), so that they're editable and people always have the latest version.
I tried Dynalist (workflowy clone) and like it, but somehow I stopped using it after using it regularly for a month or so. Not sure it's the product's fault, though.
149 comments and no mention of http://www.ulyssesapp.com/ yet. Although the recent change to a subscription pricing model was off-putting at first, it is reassuring in some ways because it underlines the developer's longterm commitment.
That said, I've recently been using Notion for EVERYTHING at work, and now considering if I could do likewise for my personal notes/essays.
PS. It's funny how the intense competition between 'distraction-free' writing tools has almost become distracting in its own right.
I tried every note-taking and distraction-free writing tool there was - Evernote, iA Writer, ByWord etc.. never stuck with one for more than a few months.
Then I found Ulysses. I love the indexing of all the notes within folders, and the simplicity of the app.
I'm not a huge fan of the painfully slow pace of updates, especially when they're charging a subscription fee. The app is great though.
The problem with Notion is that on iOS it's a web-app, so it feels terrible to use. It white-screens while it reloads whenever you do any navigation, and doesn't support multi-tasking on iPad.
OP, I am like you, but so far I wasn't able to find anything better than Evernote, so I learned to live with the 2 device limit...I just use the web version on the 3rd device.
In evernote, I can add new note very quickly via shortcut, search very quickly by tags or keywords, and also a lot of information fits on one screen. It's a unique mix of those conveniences which keeps me using Evernote.
Also, on Windows, what a lot of other apps lacks is that there isn't a native windows app. Then some things like hiding to system tray don't work, or the whole application looks just like a webpage.
Kind of related, but does anyone have good software for dealing with PDFs?
Any important letters (or something I may want to refer back to later) I scan and email to myself. I used Evernote previously, the nice part is it OCRs the PDF so I can search text within them, but the workflow isn't that nice (and I'd prefer something self-hosted).
When I've asked before I've received recommendations for full blown enterprise document management systems, but all I want is something with an interface like Gmail for PDFs (I'm suprised Google themselves don't do this within Gmail).
I've never been able to find the one note-taking system to rule them all, but that seems to be because the contexts in which I need to write/access notes are quite different.
At the moment I've settled on a three-tier system:
NVAlt - as a scratchpad, clipboard buffer and other transient notes.
Moo.do - for structured notes, Todo lists, reminders and agenda/scheduling
Dokuwiki - for long term knowledge base stuff and for documenting personal and home projects. Love this because my family can easily read and use it too.
I've tried loads of tools but I've stuck with this set longer than any other so far.
Gmail drafts, when I finish something, I put an X infront of it and feel accomplished. Every Sunday I review my tasks, add what I think I need, remove any completed items, or items I will never complete.
For the crowd that happens to have a Synology I switched to DS Note when Evernote went 2 device only, it even imported all my notes. Has desktop and mobile apps, best Evernote clone I've found.
I have an Alfred workflow that lets me copy any text, press CMD + Shift + X, and emails me the snippet. I then have a simple app that connects to my email account (Gmail) and lets me add tags (labels) to notes. This allows me to take notes quickly (I'll just write something in Sublime) and easily review/categorise them later. This has been really wonderful and I am constantly tweaking the workflow to suit me. It's also really simple and only relies on Alfred (which is a great tool anyway).
I use zim-wiki and slickrun/jot [1] on windows for quick notes. slickrun has a WIN-J shortcut which can be used to pop up and focus the quick note buffer, copy something from inside and close the buffer window without leaving the keyboard. Pretty happy with anything from bayden.com
I use IA Writer in a Git repository inside of Dropbox. I have a shell command that creates a new Markdown note for today's date in the right folder.
Dropbox lets me access files across devices. I got commit every day or so using another shell shortcut, which makes all of the markdown files readable on the GitHub UI.
I was getting tired of proprietary software solutions. This just works. If I wanted more advanced tooling, I would probably add a build system like Softcover.io.
Hi, you can use https://checkvist.com both for note taking and for any kind of planning. This is a hierarchical outliner with tons of features focused on work from keyboard (tags, notes, due dates and repeating tasks, Markdown with code support, file attachments, public lists, collaboration). Dark scheme if you dare :)
I'm one of the devs, so ping me if you have questions.
You can get around the 2 device limit by getting a subscription to evernote.
I like DevonThink because it has good fuzzy searching. Good for finding articles that kept that kinda sorta has to do with the article you are currently writing.
For general notes not directly linked to some project with it's own document hierarchy and so on I use a paper notebook with hard covers. Seriously - it's so much more convenient than any digital alternative. The only discipline I need is to write the date before any new entry so I can backtrack on what I wrote.
For projects I use plain txt files unless I really, really, really need something more complex
I separate notes into two categories "Actionable" and "Reference I may need in the future"
For Actionable I use "OK Google, note to self" to send to my email and then use a tool I developed to manage Actionable email/todo/links/files etc.
For "Reference I may need in the future" I use Evernote and add keywords I may use for searching
Currently a combination of apple notes and a personal wiki. I was unhappy with the existing wiki software (both paid and open source) and so my partner and I built https://www.wikiful.com/.
We're currently in a sort of soft launch phase. Working on a few more things before really doing a Show HN or product hunt.
I like the directory full of .md and txt files. Similar to Notational Velocity and nvAlt - but cross-platform is terminal_velocity. https://github.com/terminal-velocity-notes/terminal_velocity - it lost the maintainer recently, but it works fine!
I've started creating my own command-line flat-file note software [1]. It's very basic, brittle and still in alpha (committed version 0.4.0a2 last night), but even now I vastly prefer it to any kind of corporate app. Plaintext files in a directory beats almost anything else.
For privacy and portability the text editor in Tails Live OS is no frills. Notes are basic text files, persisted to a password protected and encrypted disk partition, with the option to additionally encrypt and password protect individual files.
Notes are saved in a standard format and can locked down in an instant simply by pulling the Tails USB from whatever device you happen to be using.
I've been using OneNote (Windows 10 app) so far with a surface pro device. It really is great, though I'll have to research how exportable the notes are (print to PDF is... Difficult)
I for one trust Microsoft to provide me software to access my notes and cut me off, but nothing is too big to fall, so I'm thinking about switching to markdown + images scribbled with my pen.
I would switch to Google Keep in an instant if it has a web clipper. I can't quite wrap my head around changing my workflow to do without one at this point. Probably should start paying Evernote to support them but still fall within their free tier (as much as they keep scaling that back).
I've tried a lot of applications for notes, and I always end up back in a plaintext editor like Atom. This is for common, work-related notes, etc. For everything else, its all about pen and paper.
For me, one reason I used Evernote for the longest time was so I could load my notes on my Pebble. This worked, but not consistently. Next best thing? Pen and paper.
Evernote works awesome, worth every penny. I use the checkbox lists fot todos, share notes with contractors with task instructions easily, the notes can have embedded images and files. I access it on phone, tablet and desktop works perfectly, i highly recommend it.
Edit: forgot to mention it includes a buil-in chat that i use all the time with contractors
I've found the Search function in Gmail to be lackluster. Not only does it require an Internet connection, it's not as fast as I'd expect and oftentimes wouldn't surface information I knew was still there.
I love iA Writer -- I keep it open in a fullscreen window on my mac that I can just swipe over to. It's perfect for potentially converting short notes into long form. Also, once I start typing out a note, it is completely immersive and I don't see windows elsewhere on the screen vying for my attention to get back to them.
I tend to use several machines/devices during my working week, so anything installed locally is a no-no.
My solution was to knock up a web app in php (you can use the backend of your choice) that lets me create notes using markdown, these are auto saved to the server and browse-able via another php page.
I tried these solutions as well, but I found it too slow to add note. With evernote, I can click ctrl-alt-N from any app I am in, and a New note window pops up. I still didn't find how to achieve this with web version.
I use a private wordpress.com account and write notes in markdown. It supports full-text searching and has a nice markdown renderer. I publish quick notes/bookmarks as blog posts and important notes that I plan to constantly update as static pages. Categories and tags help me arrange things in the side menus.
I think Microsoft's OneNote is probably the best one I've used personally. The only thing that is a little labourious is setting up your notebooks/sections but once you have that set up, its actually pretty good.
I just wished it had markdown support built in and also Syntax highlighting for code examples.
Though rather focused on todos, I use Taskwarrior with taskd deployed to a VPS. On mobile I use it inside Termux.
For code snippets I wrote an interactive CLI that supports shell hooks which pushes changes into a Git repository automatically.
Quite a nice combination for my shell-centric workflow.
I am a happy user since early beta of MedleyText https://medleytext.net
Please be aware that this note taking solution is potentially geared to cater to the software user community or alike mostly.
This is a bit of a special case but my note taking app of choice is squid/papyrus.
Unlike all the other text based alternatives this is virtual paper. It is best used with a device with a stylus (ex: Galaxy Note). The advantage is an infinite size canevas, and a high level of zoom.
OneNote, it syncs automatically, you can open it on the web, and the dedicated apps are pretty great. I went from not using it at all and eyeing it with suspicion to using it daily about a year ago and haven't looked back.
I'm using OneNote for sketches and handwritten notes (Tablet). For everything else, I use a private DokuWiki instance. I like having a web-based, but private, note-taking solution that supports media files and hyperlinks.
Simplenote works for me. I was always in awe of the Apple ecosystem and at least when it comes to note taking, I use Simplenote to sync between Ubuntu and a smartphone running Android keeping things plain and simple.
I’ve (mostly) settled on using Google Docs for text-heavy notes, and just regular old paper for notes that will contain a lot of symbols and math. I also rely on paper for super short-lived notes and brainstorming.
I use Telegram and write messages to myself. It's extremely convenient, because it's my main communication tool and it's always open so I don't need to take any special action to make a note.
I like MediaWiki for note taking. My Dreamhost account features a one-click install for that. I added https (DreamHost supports automated LetsEncrypt renewal), added a responsive theme and basic auth.
I've been looking for perfect solution for over 15 years. Finally found it. Emacs's Org-mode. Nothing else truly beats its simplicity, versatility and robustness for note taking.
Mostly Quiver (or Boostnote) with the files backed up to a remote git repo. Added benefit of being a format that is not locked in and can be parsed out later if required.
Been using way too many apps in the past twenty years. AskSam on Windows in the 90s until early 2000s. Then they stopped developing it. Exported my notes in HTML format, waiting to be migrated into my latest tool. - Then when the iPhone arrived tried to do note taking on it. Used Momonote app (still exists, but practically abandonware), created a couple of thousand notes. Exported them as csv, waiting to be migrated... Then Evernote. Excellent tool. I have 12k notes in it. Love it. Still use it. Paying member. In between tried to migrate from Windows to Ubuntu. Started using Emacs+Org (several hundred notes in there, waiting to be migrated). But also ZimWiki. Then moved to Mac/OS. Went back to Evernote. Currently using a combo of Evernote and Bear Writer app. Love Bear. Has a phantastic UI, markdown, super fast interface, syncs with all my iDevices.
But I am aware that in twenty years from now none of these tools might be alive anymore. I keep exporting and backing up my data because of this. And my backlog of "to be migrated" grows longer and longer.
For now I find it more convenient to use a tool with a sleak interface that offer all the features I need in a "personal wiki" / note taking app: inserting screenshots into notes (this is a killer feature for me), beutifully rendering my markdown text, fulltext search, nested folders (or tags in Bear lingo), syncing across all my devices. The alternative is too cumbersome: For instance Emacs/Org + rgrep + Dropbox for syncing + git + a bunch of .emacs entries that allow me to insert screenshots.
Edit: Forgot to mention IdeaNote. Used it when I tried to replace my iPhone with a BlackBerry device. Excellent app. I could create super long and time stamped journal entries / logs / notes on the superb keyboard of the BB device in seconds (never got used to typing on a touchscreen). But eventually the BB got abandonware itself. And so the app. Luckily I could pay 50$ to export my 3k notes. Migrated them successfully to Evernote with a bit of Ruby script.
Edit 2: Lesson learned for me: No tool is going to be there forever. Need to have a clear concept for how I will keep my data independent from tools du jour.
I use the plain notes plugin for Sublime for notes that I need to keep around for a while, and pen and paper for more ephemeral notes that I go through and toss once a week.
I keep an instance of VS Code open that points to ~/notes, which is a folder containing markdown files. I've tried lots of other more branded note taking apps, but markdown is how I think, and VS Code has good markdown support out of the box. Plus, I don't have to context switch to a different set of key commands, since VS Code is also my primary code editor.
I've been using Evernote for 6 years, and still continue to use it for the following reasons:
* Everyday I use https://marxi.co to write my technical work journals in Markdown (with nice extensions like flowcharts) that gets rendered into rich text format within Evernote
* I archive and tag each article I read with the Evernote Web Clipper, because URLs always go stale so you want your own copy.
* Evernote works with https://ifttt.com so it integrates seamlessly with my other applications and workflows
* Evernote is also capable of OCR within PDFs if you use the paid pro version.
* This means that all sorts of note taking is in a single place, making it a breeze to quickly search.
I pay for Evernote to get around the device limit, offline usage etc, as the free version is pretty crippled. I know there are definitely cheaper alternatives in terms of price, but I feel it's worth it for all the features available because I value my precious time, which I don't want to consume more of to maintain the same set of features using FOSS alternatives. Good thing is that Evernote allows export to a human readable archive format which I use to ensure that I have a personal copy of the notes to prevent vendor lock-in.
Can realy recommend https://joplin.cozic.net/.
It speaks md. Can do usefull syncing with many different services. has a firefox and chrome website importer and seems open-source on first sight. I use it now after a lot of other trys. i like it
firefox notes for quick notes, dropbox paper is not bad, and zotero for more detailed research note taking. I frequently just open VIM with Pencil/mark down and take notes directly onto a Dropbox folder.
So I probably tried a vast majority of all the major notetaking solutions out there. And many of the different ways you can organize things (GTD, david allen, secretweapon, inbox zero, etc) as well as my own creative variations as well.
The solution I have is that there is no gold bullet when it comes to notetaking. They all have problems. You just have to try many different methods and solutions to see what works, based on how you organize things, and the way you think.
To give you a quick gist of it this is how I organize things on dynalist
- Journal (New items added uptop)
- Courses (New items added at bottom)
- Ideas if I have nothing else to do (New items added uptop)
- Everything else (Meeting notes / Collaboration)
There was a lot of psychology and research that I did personally detailing what goes on behind why I chose things this way. It mostly deals with a 2x2 selection matrix I made called UPIE (structured vs unstructured, internal vs external).
Second, I organize writing in its own form via wordpress.
- Drafts / Ideas for writing (40+ drafts atm)
- One time posts (write everything in an hour or two and post, regardless of grammatical issues)
Third, I also use github for SVN control on larger repositories. Everything goes either in the `C:\www` folder based on PHP best practices (I don't write in php). Also, I have a folder called `C:\dropbox\github` for repos that are small in file (e.g. no node modules) and SVN control is too burdonsome to deal with. I use an extension called "markdown preview enhanced"(MPE) which in all of my research of markdown, is the best markdown extension to date on VScode and atom
Fourth, I use codepen similar to how I organize evernote. I have over 2500 notes on evernote so I know what the best practices here are. Each codepen file = one evernote note. I tag things, and search through it via as I normally would in evernote. I follow the "microsite" ideas heavily from chris coyier https://css-tricks.com/microsites-for-case-studies/. I find I am able to talk hours maybe days explaining how complex some of my private codepens are for the project I'm working on, to get a better relay this information about my skillsets as a frontend dev.
Fifth, I have several other methods of organizingi things in general. I call it "self-data-collection" methods that I made up myself. For instance,
- Youtube video I've watched so I can check a log of videos I've looked up and limit search queries to just that. I have a system of bookmarking and commenting useful things here.
- Hackernews posts I've read for more than 30 seconds, so I can see it under `myusername/comments`.
- Stackoverflow posts. Upvote so I know what the best solution is to the question, namely so I can also keep track of what I've read as well that was helpful in obscure solutions and tech
- Google maps. If you looked at my local area maps on my account, I have about 200 stars and indexed / cataloged what each business is for. Hackerspaces, startup studios, areas with freewifi for working with laptops (coffee shops, bookstores), etc
- Shopping / Physical goods. I have a 2500 (limit of wishlist count) and another 1000+ ongoing list on amazon. I have different ways of searching through this so I can cross-pollinate different ideas from different industries. For instance, xbox controllers used in space/engineering simulations
- Lastpass. I manage about 200 account emails here
LASTLY I have some support systems
- Anki for flashcard and SRS (space repetition learning) among other things
- A list of 700+ applications I used on alternativeto.net at one point. I wrote 200 + reviews of these so I know why I did or did not like them, so I don't need to repeat the errors I made previously
- 700+ stars I bookmarked on github for ideas on opensource libraries to use, depending on project need. I fork it if its worth investing into
- A list of bookmarking system on google bookmarks based on emojis for quicker ways to grok what folder I want to look for. I organize it A-Z
- Different browsers for different functionality
- customized toolbar and spacers inbetween software apps for faster visual grouping identification
- Directory Opus for my file explorer. Apple Mac's have a significantly better native file explorer system and some apps, but directoryOpus bridges that gap for windows
I could go on all day but I will leave it at that, to answer your question blankly I use mostly dynalist.io and a bunch of other things I slew together. I call it my "SOP" or standard operating procedures which ended up being several pages long. Its constantly evolving but now I just commit things to memory based on some industrial engineering practices I learned called LEAN for identifying and mapping value streams based on best business practices. This is something I do natively now and don't think very hard into, it mostly stems from how I used to run my own virtual business starting in middle school.
Lastly, I am writing my own notetaking software as well and I am not going to say more than this, but its mostly based on pitfalls I found in the above writing I wrote.
Notetaking requires a set of principlces that you need to follow as well as rigirous daily practice to enforce principlces of accountability. I do daily sprints here normally too in dynalist under journal section
What and how you use software vastly depends on what your field of interests is as well. I personally don't get too invested in tooling despite everything I stated above, there's a really good quote from one of my favorite youtubers "MJP funfunfunction" -> e.g. "Everything has a maintenance cost. The pros of that software needs to outweigh the cons of maintenance and debugging". This means you won't ever probably hear me talking about org-mode/linux/vim/emacs because I honestly like the simplicity of my GUI tools on windows.
Also, because I know what an optimized approach is to notetaking I can also identify based on metadata which people are worth following. I use twitter to keep a list of these people
I run backups of long posts I make here on pinboard.in using a keyboard shortcut
The approach I take to formatting long text mostly stems from how I've seen people use reddit to organize their public posts / notes in markdown format
Changing jobs in 2005 caused me to switch from taking notes on paper to doing it electronically.
My new employer provided a tablet PC with a stylus running Windows and [OneNote](https://products.office.com/en-US/onenote). Taking notes on that system with excellent handwriting recognition was a revelation. The tablet was pretty clunky by today's standards, but it worked well. It was particularly useful for generating meeting notes in real time and projecting them during meetings.
After moving to another employer, I no longer had access to such a tablet but used [TiddlyWiki](https://tiddlywiki.com) to keep my notes. It was great until the number of notes became large (in the thousands).
After that, I became an early adopter of [Evernote](https://evernote.com). It was an adequate note-taking app, but the killer feature for me was searching for text in images. At that time, we put meeting notes up on a whiteboard. After the meeting, I could take a picture of the whiteboard, insert it in Evernote, and search it any time after that. I maintained a subscription to Evernote until the end of 2016 until they got squirrely about their subscriptions and some privacy issues.
After several years absence, I went back to TiddlyWiki. It was very much improved. But after importing thousands of notes, it became too slow at editing. The search was on for another system.
I looked at several open-source tools under active development:
* [TreeSheets](http://strlen.com/treesheets/) has been around a long time and has some unique features for organizing your information.
* [CherryTree](https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/) it has been around for quite some time. Very long feature list. Very long wishlist too.
* [BoostNote](https://github.com/BoostIO/Boostnote) bills itself as a note-taking app for programmers. It has clients for lots of platforms and can keep them all in sync.
* [iA Writer](https://ia.net/writer) is very focused on writing.
I committed to [Collate](https://collatenotes.com) for awhile, even bought a license, but development seemed to stop shortly after I paid for it. And it keeps asking me to re-enter my license key. So, slowly moving off of it. And no more closed-source apps.
These days, my notes usually start short and then get longer and more detailed over time. Often they include mathematics, so typesetting math is crucial to me. Joplin fills the bill very well. It's almost perfect for me. But linking to other notes is a bit clumsy.
I set up a self-hosted [MediaWiki](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki). It did everything I wanted (and way more) but was more cumbersome to administer than I wanted to deal with.
What I finally ended up doing was writing my own wiki.
* It uses a version of Markdown that can typeset math (_via_ [MathJax](https://www.mathjax.org)) and accepts wikilink syntax as well.
* Syntax highlighting for program snippets.
* It seems to be cross-platform. (I started development on Windows, now do it on macOS, and can (but shouldn't) self-host it on a Linux server.
* It runs on a desktop. (I can't read long notes with math on a phone and tablets are pushing it a bit with my poor vision.)
* It's written in Clojure and ClojureScript, languages I enjoy working with.
* The editor I wrote has a real-time preview (but the scroll bars don't' sync yet.)
* The editor is compatible with Grammarly, so I get some help with my atrocious spelling and grammar.
* All data is stored locally in a SQL database but can be exported to Markdown files with one keystroke.
* Pages can be exported with YAML so that they can be imported directly to my blog.
* and on and on.
Another option that might be useful is a [Jupyter](http://jupyter.org) notebook. It looks interesting, but I don't really have much experience with it. There's even a [kernel for Clojure](https://github.com/clojupyter/clojupyter) that I want to check out.
If you have the interest and the desire, I encourage you to look into writing your own tool. It isn't as hard as you might imagine just to get something working. It is incredibly hard to polish things to just the shininess you might want, but that's part of the fun.
Neither has an easy markdown format that doesn't require fairly proprietary tools to convert to ascii. Plus I'm underwhelmed with the ux in general. But thanks anyway, glad to know more about the state of the art.
Don’t take notes. If you can’t remember it, it’s not worth knowing. If there is something you want to remember but you can’t, simplify it down to the basics until you can explain it back to yourself in such concepts that you would never forget.
After trying Evernote, Workflowy, Notion, wikis, org-mode, and essentially everything else I could find, I gave up and tried building my own system for notes. Plain timestamped markdown files linked together. Edited with vim and a few bash scripts, rendered with a custom deployment of Gollum. All in a git repo.
It's... wonderful. Surprisingly easy. Fast. If there's a feature I wish it had, I can write a quick bash script to implement it. If Gollum stops being maintained, I can use whatever the next best markdown renderer is. Markdown isn't going away anytime soon.
It's liberating to be in control. I find myself more eager to write things down. I'm surprised more people don't do the same.
Edit: here's what my system looks like https://imgur.com/a/nGplj
X-post from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15057002 10 months ago. Still using & loving it.