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Ask HN: What software do you use to take notes?

by NuDinNou on 4/10/17, 3:36 PM with 90 comments

  • by baali on 4/10/17, 4:09 PM

    Org-Mode and Emacs: http://orgmode.org/

  • by hexmiles on 4/10/17, 4:19 PM

    Onenote.

    For me the killer feature is the ability to put text wherever i want, and move it later, i just click where i want to write in the page and type, it really changed the way i take note, it feel more natural and more close to the "paper experience".

    i tried opensource solution, but all the one i found allow only for "linear" note taking, witch is ok if i need to take a quick note, but if i need to "prototype" or brainstorm something i feel them to restrictive.

    where onenote is not avaible or overkill i simply use markdown files, with git for versioning and Syncthing for syncronization.

    edit: correct some typo

  • by 654wak654 on 4/10/17, 4:07 PM

  • by LorenzoLlamas on 4/12/17, 8:58 AM

    What? Really? No one but one other uses TextEdit? At least among Mac users? And before that, I used NotePad on Windows.

    It's notes. It doesn't need to 'sync' to your mobile device and be in a cloud somewhere. It's just some notes. What is with everyone these days sharing their whole lives on a server somewhere?

    Is everyone paranoid of data loss? So what? If you lose it all, it was meant to be. Relax. You guys are supposed to be geeks and yet you are giving the NSA more data than they could ever hope to get from the average Joe.

    If I see another Org-mode or wiki "note" demo on YouTube, I'll croak. Get a life. Or a girlfriend. Or go play with your children. Or visit some nature. Get away from the screeeeen.... Not even the president has to organize notes.

    I saw one Org-Mode clown rant about how he had 1000+ lines of notes for various things in one file. That's not notes. That's the fringes of madness.

    Delete it all. Start over.

    I'm starting to think that the days of hard drive crashes were actually a good thing.

    I can understand if you are a real science researcher or investigative journalist (for work). Or if you want to ensure you have copies of your tax returns or medical records.

    But notes? NOTES? Grocery lists? Who makes grocery lists and needs to sync them everywhere?

    Go live on a farm for a while or something. Uh, it's cheese of some kind, milk of some kind, coffee of some kind, produce, fish, meat, and avoid the candy and canned item aisles. There's your grocery list.

    Do you same folks have list about what order to put on your clothes each day? (Don't answer that).

  • by askafriend on 4/10/17, 4:03 PM

    Default Notes on iOS/OSX

  • by ericzawo on 4/10/17, 9:56 PM

    Dynalist.

    It's the ultimate to-do list application. Syncs offline, can support markdown AND LaTeX AND code, images, links, and shareable options with your team. It's basically the successor to Workflowy you didn't know you needed. AND it's made by two awesome university students that maintain a public roadmap and actually listen to their community.

  • by ryeon on 4/10/17, 4:12 PM

    Pen and Paper

  • by reitanqild on 4/10/17, 4:25 PM

    Happy with Asciidoc FX with gitlab as backend for now although I am sometimes looking for and might[0] be happy to pay for an even better solution.

    [0]: yep. I sometimes even pay for inexpensive software just because I like the idea even if I don't end up using it.

  • by artimaeis on 4/10/17, 4:26 PM

    I'm a pretty big fan of taking notes with pen & paper then setting time aside to transcribe them to a markdown file and saving them in a GitHub repo.

    The pen & paper part means I don't have to lug my laptop around so often - I try not to use meeting times to actually do things anyways. I figure if a handful of people are in a room together it's best to focus on the reason we're all in one place and pen/paper lets me do just that.

    Then the digital archival is a way to force me to review my notes and commit the better parts of them to memory. So long as I can get that done within a few hours it tends to work well. Then they're available for me and others to text search accordingly.

  • by stijlist on 4/10/17, 4:59 PM

    This shell script:

    #!/bin/sh while true; do $EDITOR $NOTESDIR"$(ls -t $NOTESDIR | selecta --scrolloff --passthrough)" done

    It replicates the core interaction model of Notational Velocity: type to fuzzy-filter the list of notes (sorted by MRU) by filename, enter to edit the notes, and quit the editor to end up back in the list of notes.

    I forked selecta to add those flags - --passthrough means that the text typed in to filter is emitted on stdout if it doesn't match anything. This way you create a note if it doesn't exist.

    https://github.com/stijlist/bin/blob/master/nv

  • by gorbachev on 4/10/17, 6:19 PM

    I primarily use Wunderlist, because it's truly cross platform. I can use it on my desktop, phone and the web just the same. I use it mostly for actionable notes...things I'm planning on doing something about at some point. It's more of an idea bank than a todo list, though, for me.

    For more free form note taking I'm using Rocketbook's "smart" notebooks (https://getrocketbook.com/). I can scan the notes to Evernote, and when the notebook gets full, I can easily erase the notes and reuse the notebook.

  • by lousken on 4/10/17, 8:22 PM

    Depends on type of notes - shopping list google keep(in case they shut it down there's omni notes). Otherwise I use markdown + latex(math) in whatever editor I have at my disposal. Then I view it in e.g. hackmd.io / VSC / neutriNote. I've tried word, onenote but it didn't work for me - writing formulas and equations is much faster in latex. I don't go full latex though because markdown is much more readable in its raw form. Graphs are still pain though, haven't really solved that, especially those without absolute values.

  • by ganonm on 4/10/17, 4:23 PM

    I have a directory ~/Documents/TODO/ inside which I have single file for each feature I'm working on. These files simply contain a list of items marked as completed or not completed using a tick/cross. It's simple, non-proprietary and is easy to put under source control.

    For long-term note taking I use Evernote. This is for things like obscure git commands and 'how-to's.

  • by niceperson on 4/10/17, 4:19 PM

    This: https://github.com/pimterry/notes

    This is not my repo.

  • by reacharavindh on 4/10/17, 4:29 PM

    Notability on 9.7inch iPad Pro with Apple Pencil. Closest I could get to the feel of writing on paper. But, I can access my notes whenever whereever. I can even import PDF docs into it and annotate on them while I read. Just like on printed paper.

    One thing I wish it did is to let me export as HTML instead of PDF. I would love share my notes as blog posts.

  • by pklausler on 4/10/17, 4:19 PM

    A fine-pointed Lamy 2000 fountain pen with Sailor black ink on Quo Vadis notebooks. Typing distracts me.

  • by oceanghost on 4/11/17, 2:11 AM

    I have been happy with Evernote for years. My user number is absurdly low (like in the 200ks). However I no longer keep any information in evernote I consider sensitive. Just research notes.

    I would love to find a reasonably well made self-hosted note app.

  • by brianjolney on 4/10/17, 4:08 PM

    Personal notes in Evernote but increasingly taking team notes in Dropbox's Paper.

  • by neurocroc on 4/10/17, 5:40 PM

    I use Mind Maps for all my note taking.

    https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map

    I found it to be the most optimal format for this task.

  • by pencilcode on 4/10/17, 11:50 PM

    Vim + vimwiki for notes that deserve to last. These are saved in bitbucket private repo. Per project also have a single markdown file inside the project's directory with dashes and crosses for tasks.

  • by neovive on 4/10/17, 4:19 PM

    Drafts seems interesting for mobile (with nice Markdown support). http://agiletortoise.com/drafts/

  • by CypressXM on 4/10/17, 4:14 PM

    I use DIA, which is unusual since it's a diagramming program. I love it though I've been using it for 10 years to take notes and manage dev and spec out projects.

  • by ateevchopra on 4/10/17, 4:12 PM

    Dropbox Paper. Mainly because of non distracting UI and markdown support. Also copy paste keeps the format intact. That comes in handy to copy/paste code in notes.

  • by kujenga on 4/10/17, 4:09 PM

    Evernote for personal use, Slack messages to myself for work

  • by iansowinski on 4/10/17, 4:41 PM

    I mainly use Lechtum1917 dotted A6 notebook + Micron pen, but when i take less analogue notes, i choose Vim + markdown + dropbox and MarkdownX on smartphone

  • by marcolussetti on 4/10/17, 11:07 PM

    Markdown files using Typora (https://typora.io/) on either Linux or Windows

  • by mnkmnk on 4/10/17, 4:35 PM

    Sublime text. I can just open a new document and start typing. I don't need to save the file and the tab collapse keeps the high level notes clean.

  • by jmcfarlane on 4/10/17, 4:50 PM

  • by maliker on 4/10/17, 4:10 PM

    Text files stored in Google Drive. Editing with Sublime Text on MacOS, Textastic/Workflow on iOS. Searching via Launchbar and Spotlight.

  • by RUG3Y on 4/10/17, 4:48 PM

    I'm using the Plain Notes Sublime plugin right now, but I also like OneNote. I haven't landed on a long-term solution yet.

  • by soulchild37 on 4/10/17, 4:04 PM

    Quiver app

  • by onuralp on 4/10/17, 10:41 PM

  • by charlieegan3 on 4/10/17, 5:12 PM

    I have a simple crud app hosted on heroku.

  • by calebio on 4/10/17, 4:12 PM

    I write markdown files with emacs.

    These notes are stored at `~/notes` which I symlink to `~/Dropbox/notes`.

  • by patleeman on 4/11/17, 1:35 PM

    Collate

    Full disclosure, I created it! I made it because there was nothing comparable on the market. Cross-platform, plain text with a powerful markdown editor. I've since added a rich text editor, web clipper and a workflowy style outline note type. I'm also planning on adding git support soon.

    http://collatenotes.com

  • by mirodin on 4/11/17, 9:54 AM

  • by andremendes on 4/10/17, 4:19 PM

    A Telegram group with myself, only.

  • by goranb on 4/10/17, 4:22 PM

    Vim + VimWiki

  • by icedata on 4/11/17, 3:53 PM

    Emacs and org-mode, use Dropbox to sync across windows, linux, android. Orgzly on Android.

  • by baldfat on 4/10/17, 5:57 PM

    I usually do notes in a plain text files and I LOVE MIND MAPS for concepts and use XMind.

  • by reitanqild on 4/10/17, 4:48 PM

    Was this thread just killed? I can't see it on any of the three first pages.

  • by PLenz on 4/10/17, 4:19 PM

    Graph notebooks, the real, dead tree kind. I also like sharpie pens.

  • by Jtsummers on 4/10/17, 4:08 PM

    Emacs with org-mode and git for syncing across my computers.

  • by jm0dotcodes on 4/10/17, 4:55 PM

    Classic UNIX file, edited with the 'ed' command :)

    Nothing fancy.

  • by psyc on 4/10/17, 3:55 PM

    OneNote, Mac and iOS

  • by achompas on 4/10/17, 4:13 PM

    Day One for general notes, 2Do for notes on tasks.

    (I use Mac and iOS.)

  • by buster on 4/10/17, 4:11 PM

    Zim with some encrypted file sync is a great tool.

  • by goerz on 4/10/17, 4:17 PM

    GoodNotes on iPad Pro 12.9 inch with Apple Pencil

  • by germinalphrase on 4/10/17, 4:19 PM

    Default Notes on iPhone.

    TextEdit > iCloud on desktop.

  • by hartator on 4/10/17, 4:14 PM

    It's interesting that everyone seems to do something different. I wonder why this not a solved issue yet which one best and obvious way.

  • by khasan222 on 4/10/17, 4:22 PM

    Workflowy. Simple and effective.

  • by tannerc on 4/10/17, 4:14 PM

    iA Writer has been invaluable for me in capturing notes at work or on-the-go.

  • by king_magic on 4/10/17, 4:15 PM

    OneNote, iOS, Mac and Win10

  • by Thorncorona on 4/10/17, 4:13 PM

    Evernote

  • by Sujan on 4/10/17, 4:04 PM

    Simplenote

  • by dmitripopov on 4/10/17, 4:00 PM

    Notepad

  • by Walkman on 4/10/17, 4:09 PM

    OneNote webapp on Linux

  • by jenhsun on 4/10/17, 5:33 PM

    nvALT and any smartphone voice recorder.

  • by lanna on 4/10/17, 4:07 PM

    OmniOutliner

  • by ivcha on 4/20/17, 11:29 PM

    RedNotebook

  • by janitor61 on 4/10/17, 6:26 PM

    WikidPad

  • by mfaessel on 4/10/17, 4:42 PM

    Boostnote

  • by hammock on 4/10/17, 4:12 PM

    Outlook

  • by losteverything on 4/10/17, 4:07 PM

    Keep

  • by ssambros on 4/10/17, 4:07 PM

    Keep

  • by jmstfv on 4/10/17, 4:06 PM

    gedit

  • by altern8tif on 4/10/17, 4:05 PM

    Bear

  • by Kenji on 4/10/17, 4:15 PM

    notepad.exe