by cyneox on 6/15/21, 9:37 AM with 205 comments
by tptacek on 6/17/21, 2:43 AM
There's a lot of things people tend to want from note-taking setups: easy entry, navigation and organization, wiki-like linkages, export to various formats, encryption. What I've found actually matters for my day-to-day and gets me to actually take lots of notes, though, is just (1) search and (2) sync --- I need my notes mirrored onto my phone.
For several years I just use Apple's Notes.app. It's honestly pretty great; it's frustratingly good, in fact, because it doesn't feel much better to use than does TextEdit. Both search and sync work fine. I don't have to think about what I'm writing or how it fits into the scheme of things because I'm guaranteed to be able to find things with search. I can drag screenshots of lecture videos in and write short sentences about them.
I had Bear.app for awhile and was initially skeptical of it, but it has now replaced Notes.app for me; it's a better writing environment, it has sticky notes (pinned to the top of the note list) which turn out to be really valuable, does native Markdown, and search and sync work reliably on my laptop and phone.
So, Notes and Bear.app are my two recommendations.
I'm interested to see if anybody comes up with something macOS-supported that outdoes Bear.
I'm an Emacs person, I've written a couple thousand lines of elisp, and I have never, ever been able to get into org mode.
by jrm4 on 6/17/21, 3:35 AM
I'm continually baffled at how the rest of the world hasn't discovered this, but it could be because I sort of live at the margins of "ultra geek" and "normie."
Local, self-hosted "wiki-like" tool. You write notes, it saves them, supports links and todos and calendars etc. Tons of plugins for math, git, etc etc.
The killer aspect, I think, though. Any hypothetical "grandma" can open it up and use it immediately and it's very useful. But because it saves as plain-text (Markdown-ish) with links and pages equalling files and folders, it's always infinitely extensible with Bash or other scripts. For me, it's all the extensibility of org-mode without, I mean, you know.
by nxc18 on 6/17/21, 2:22 AM
by bachmeier on 6/17/21, 3:30 AM
by crossroadsguy on 6/17/21, 3:20 AM
Bear would have been fine if it wasn’t subscription based and allowed me to choose a sync option like dropbox or iCloud sync and let me have local files. FSNotes has years , at this speed, ahead of it. Everything else is just sad Electron - web apps masquerading as native apps. No I don’t like Joplin interface.
Also, among Apple cloud offerings or iCloud suite Notes.app is the only one probably that doesn’t suck disgustingly. But then I don’t trust Apple to keep the sync working fine as they deprecate apps too soon on older OS versions.
by KTallguy on 6/17/21, 3:24 AM
In the end I bit the bullet and started using Emacs + Org-Mode/Org-Roam. The flexibility and customization are unparallelled. I use it for to-dos, for random scribbles, for in-depth musings. Categorizing thoughts and linking them together is so much easier than any other software I've used.
The first few months are really tough, and for someone who has never used Vim or other terminal style interfaces before learning shortcuts took a while. But after 6 months, I can't go back.
by petersellers on 6/17/21, 4:54 AM
For me it's pretty much perfect - it syncs with all my devices, supports the iPad pencil, supports OCR and text searching in images, has native apps, and it's free.
by oezi on 6/17/21, 5:14 AM
The main advantage is that you can "migrate" all unfinished todos to a new page/day and thus get a clean start each day. This idea comes from bullet journalling.
To get it done I had to dig a bit into ncurses, which turned out more interesting than I thought. For instance, Windows Terminal just gained support for bracketed paste a couple of months ago and my tool supports it.
Long term I would like to add generated views (for instance: last year this time one of your highlights was...) and support recurring tasks to be inserted into the daily log.
[1] https://github.com/coezbek/rodo
Stack: Ruby, Curses, Markdown
by TranquilMarmot on 6/17/21, 5:05 AM
I tried emacs and org mode but my vim muscle memory was too strong. I ended up mostly sticking with vim-wiki https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki I have a very small script that syncs my local wiki(s) with a private GitHub repo. I set them all up to be in markdown.
I use Google Keep for just random stuff I have to jot down but don't really care about organizing.
Honestly though, even plain markdown doesn't work for a lot of types of notes I take. For personal stuff I find myself using Notion a lot. The LaTeX support is pretty great.
At work I've actually kind of fallen in love with Confluence. Even though the editor can be a little cumbersome, the search functionality is great the pages just look really nice. Confluence mobile viewing/editing also works really nice. Now that I'm saying (er, typing) all of this out loud, I almost want to switch to Confluence for personal notes instead of Notion haha.
by least on 6/17/21, 9:10 AM
I think Curio [1] is probably the closest thing to what I want in my head, though one of those HUGE downsides to software like this (and why plaintext is vastly preferred by the HN crowd) is that it's not at all portable or even necessarily decipherable. If Zengobi disappears or I lose access to their software then I'm just out of luck, which has made me hesitant to even try using it and why despite my feelings about it, a great deal of notes I've written are simply in plain text.
If anyone has suggestions for solutions that are like this, I'm all ears.
by ednico on 6/17/21, 6:23 AM
by slightwinder on 6/17/21, 8:09 AM
One reason is for sure is the wide number of requirements that everyone has. But another one seems to be the lack of big money flowing into that area and the low effort in researching it as a result. It's basically all just personal preference and randomness spreading.
by gexla on 6/17/21, 4:32 AM
I like Tiago Forte's approach for his PARA system. The system stands alone and may be adapted to any of your tools. This includes note taking, project management, calendar, etc.
The tools for note taking are basically view layers for me.
by preek on 6/17/21, 5:12 AM
by bnj on 6/17/21, 12:00 PM
But I've been thinking a lot about tags rather than specific tools lately. I've been hoping to find prior art on how to approach tagging in a clean way. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm seen Johnny Decimal[0] and I guess the itch I'm trying to scratch in my brain is to find a description of a way to approach tagging things which addresses the ways they can be hierarchical, and the ways they can be relational. A meta-tagging approach.
It's surprisingly difficult to find.
[0]: johnnydecimal.com
by ntaso on 6/17/21, 9:02 AM
Create text file named `YYYY-MM-DD Title of the Note.txt`. Save to a folder. Write freeform.
I think it's important to understand one concept of note-taking:
You can either spend more time organizing to spend less time retrieving information later. Or you can spend less time organizing and (slightly) more time retrieving information.
If you're starting out or don't refer to older notes that often, it's a better idea to just dump everything with as little friction as possible and use a search tool to find information.
by ryeguy_24 on 6/17/21, 9:44 AM
1. Notes
2. Tasks
These are not mutually exclusive. And the fact that they are not mutually exclusive is, in my opinion, one of the major obstacles in being able to develop a really good process for taking notes and then operating on those notes. I frankly don’t care much for any note software out there because the note taking part is generally easy so I just default to Apple notes for jotting down “external brain hard drive” stuff.
I’m actually working on a solution that integrates the notes and the tasks. See, I’m in meetings all the time so I write things like:
1. Client’s main priority is look and feel of website. (This is just a note)
2. Client needs to be done with project Dec 1 (also just a note)
*3. Ryan (me) to set up meeting with Joe and Jane. (This a note but I have to do something here and track it)
I can’t stand taking notes and separately having a todo list. They need to be integrated. You need to be able to take notes and quickly see all the todos that came out of it. You also need to be able to prioritize those todos and filter them as part of your day and executing on those todos. This is what I’m working on and I think it is the silver bullet for me.
If anyone wants to come along my journey or wants to see the prototype, email me (ryeguy_24 at yahoo).
by nullptr_deref on 6/17/21, 6:35 AM
by maxs on 6/17/21, 7:55 AM
Mine is called MindPalace and its special feature is that it is focused on spaced repetition and remembering the notes after they were written.
For me, whenever I would take notes, they would become stale and forgotten. Despite Emerson's quote “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”, I felt that there is a lot more to be gained from remembering them.
For instance, I can remember meetings past and insights gained by following up on meeting notes, or insights I got from reading books. I have almost a 1000 notes in my personal notebook.
BTW, the app is self-hosted and avilable here if anyone is interested: https://github.com/msipos/mind-palace
I'd be curious if anyone else does "spaced repetition note taking" and if anyone can share cool tools for that (my tool is not particularly good)
by hyb on 6/17/21, 7:55 AM
CLI and local web plain text note‑taking, bookmarking, and archiving with linking, tagging, filtering, search, Git versioning & syncing, Pandoc conversion, + more in a single portable script.
by Timothycquinn on 6/17/21, 4:04 AM
Ecco Pro only has one level of undo but it just does just what is needed and I've never had it loose any data on me. It was last compiled in 1997 but there are ways to tweak it out for modern OS's.
I have automated scripts to convert Ecco outlines into Markdown also have time invoicing outputs etc. As Ecco does not have any rich text or any intrinsic special formatting coding, its easy to use Ecco as your own personal note taking DSL. For Example: .: <title_block> :. [.] - todo (open) [x] - todo (done) [~] - todo (in progress) etc...
by hyperluz on 6/17/21, 5:57 AM
IMHO, if you want to do digital note taking in 2021, your best tools are on iPadOS, Android and Windows, where such tools allows handwritten notes and optionally allow to convert those into plain text via OCR.
This or using one of those recent expensive last generation e-ink devices.
by cyneox on 6/17/21, 12:13 PM
It wasn't my intention to have such a big thread. I couldn't anticipate that "2021" in the title would trigger so many people to share their personal thoughts about apps and note taking techniques.
While the article's main focus was about note taking itself, I didn't want to compare existing solutions or even have some ranking. I also didn't have the time to try everything out (like Roam, Obsidian etc.). It's just that I have a strong preference for Tiddlywiki since I've been using it for years (not only for a Zettelkasten and note taking but also as a great UI for visualizing links between objects).
Nevertheless I'll definitely have a look at your recommendations.
by andrewzah on 6/17/21, 2:09 PM
It supports hierarchical or tag based notes + to-do lists, in plaintext/markdown/wysiwyg. It supports syncing to several providers, and I sync with my personal webdav server. It has vi/emacs keybindings and supports external editors. It also has a mobile app.
So I use that for digital notes, and a nice leuchtterm grid journal for physical notes. I generally do language studies in the physical journal and use the digital notes more for references.
by mark_l_watson on 6/17/21, 9:34 AM
I am now done with such time wasting nonsense. For several years I have been using Apple Notes (all my Apple devices except Apple Watch, and web browser version on Linux). I bought a simple app that exports all notes to a standard text file format for periodic backups.
by liprais on 6/17/21, 5:16 AM
Younger digital native generation wants to go all digital? totally ok with me.just we have to learn to agree to disagree.
by Sophistifunk on 6/17/21, 3:55 AM
by nxpnsv on 6/17/21, 7:49 AM
by mtsolitary on 6/17/21, 8:40 AM
by nixass on 6/17/21, 6:13 AM
Any good offline solution anyone would recommend?
by ogwh on 6/17/21, 2:08 AM
Dynalist for organised notes that work well in list/tree structures
Standard Notes for unorganised, random brain dumps
And good old fashioned pen and paper everywhere else.
The miMind app from the article looks like it may be useful.
by mr_o47 on 6/17/21, 3:45 AM
Note taking is very important as it helps you retain stuff and helps you learn better in general. I am huge on taking notes whenever I'm learning something new and the strategy that worked for me best was using markdown in vim to take notes and use git to save them.
Last but not least if you are a huge note taker I would suggest using Mdbook(A project powered by Rust) as it allows you to write in markdown and uses full-text search feature which makes it easier when searching for something specific in your notes.
Anyways would love to hear from you guys what tools have worked for you guys when taking notes
by wolpoli on 6/17/21, 7:47 AM
Most importantly, I could store the Docx file next to my other project resources, and when I am done, I could archive the whole folder away.
by insanet on 6/17/21, 7:37 AM
by iamsanteri on 6/17/21, 11:07 AM
by noisy_boy on 6/17/21, 8:59 AM
by qwerty456127 on 6/18/21, 9:23 PM
by Jeff_Brown on 6/17/21, 12:46 PM
In grad school I was for a year part of a small study group. We shared notes, on paper and aloud. It made each of us far, far better at the subject than we could have been on our own. And we were at most 7 people (sometimes only 3).
When developing Hode[1], and when helping develop Semantic Synchrony[2], I imagined some kind of mind-meld utopia where superbeings would not just frolic in but also tend each others' knowledge gardens. (Brandon Toner on Twitter[3] even introduced me to a hashtag for them ... which I can't remember ...)
Reading nonlinearly is a faster way to accumulate knowledge than reading linearly. That's is why people who really care prefer newspapers to watching the news on TV. And a format that lets lots of people contribute their input can potentially convey more than a format that locks you into reading a single author. Alas, the potential for noise is higher too -- but still, this is why Wikipedia has been so wildly successful.
One might ask, "We've already got Wikipedia; what possible improvement on that do you see?" The thing about Wikipedia is it presents what the author(s) consider(s) settled knowledge. It is a place for record, not a place for debate. A good shared knowledge base would by contrast also resemble Twitter -- but more organized, more navigable.
In practice the personal knowledge bases I've seen look much more like silos. I once frolicked for an afternoon through Andy Matuschak's[4], which was quite enjoyable. But it was mostly about ... can you guess? ... how to build a knowledge base.
If someone finds a scheme that scales, I believe it could be much more powerful than what we currently call AI.
[1] https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode
[2] https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/
[3] https://twitter.com/brandontoner
[4] https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Knowledge_work_should_accret...
by fairramone on 6/17/21, 3:05 PM
by agambrahma on 6/17/21, 4:02 AM
- Mostly Obsidian, with each vault (two right now) indexed within DevonThink.
- Blog posts in iAWriter
- Paper and pen for brainstorming etc
by Datagenerator on 6/17/21, 7:23 AM
by yinyang_in on 6/17/21, 1:51 PM
Is there any similar tool for managing notes via Dropbox/self-hosted, I mean with some control over your notes, but similar interface.
Notion I hate is you don't have any control over your data.
by replwoacause on 6/17/21, 2:23 PM
by rsyring on 6/17/21, 4:23 AM
Not found everything in a single app yet, please enlighten me if possible to something that fits that I've missed.
by dfal on 6/17/21, 11:51 AM
by speedcoder on 6/17/21, 12:46 PM
by keithnz on 6/17/21, 6:27 AM
by aj2 on 6/17/21, 6:30 AM
by jcelerier on 6/17/21, 8:39 AM
by gooeykabuki on 6/17/21, 4:59 AM
by DenverCode on 6/17/21, 2:05 AM
by emptyparadise on 6/17/21, 9:30 AM
by marcus_cemes on 6/17/21, 7:49 AM
It's free. I wouldn't mind paying for something, but this gives you peace of mind that it will stay yours without restrictions, like Google Docs/Sheets/etc. Secondly, it's fast. It's an optimized Windows app that starts in the blink of an eye and uses few system resources. It's visually simple, doens't distract you and has nice smooth animations, it's easier to read/write formatted text with equations than muck around with Markdown/LaTeX. Instant sync, in fact, real-time like Google Docs between devices. The equation support is great once you learn it, it's almost as good as LaTeX. It has pretty decent spell check (although I wish I could set a preferred writing language and not have it deduce from my active keyboard). Good organisation into books, sections and pages. Students get unlimited storage with OneDrive, so no problem there, and trust me, it will be a while until you exhaust your free storage with note taking. Paste images/screen captures, tables. I've never used the pen mode because I don't have any device with a stylus, but I prefer text anyway for it's searchability and typing speed. It takes a little while to really understand the formatting engine, but once you get a feel for the markdown-like underlying invisible structure, it makes it easier to format and move things around. You create your own style and organisation that you can understand and navigate quickly.
It's one of the things keeping me on Windows, sadly. Encryption is absolutely not important for me for lecture note-taking, anything remotly important I'll stick in 1password or on a locally encrypted drive. The day I want to migrate, I'll export it as PDF and archive it in the fairly unlikely event I will want to refer back to something. Over time I've learnt that what's in your head is more important than having a perfectly organised personal wiki of knowledge. I would reconsider it for the long-term, but it's fantastic to use something that feels polished and backed by a large company, like GMail vs settings up your own VPS/email software and client. I'm not a fan of big-tech endorsed products, but I can't seem to keep myself away from this one.
by privatdozent on 6/17/21, 7:05 AM
by sAbakumoff on 6/17/21, 9:49 AM