How did you describe me and my issues so perfectly. I ended up ditching Obsidian and Notion altogether. Stuck with DEVONThink as there isn't much tweaking.
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Note taking apps: what are you using?
- Thread starter Alvinc
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LOL The struggle is real! I've wrestled with that as well (with other notes apps). You are correct, apps that have a particular framework (rather than an open-ended sandbox) are best. Not only because it limits the amount and type of tinkering, but it helps force us to think about the task of notetaking consistently (within the boundaries of the particular apps' feature set).
I use SnipNotes. I needed something that would sync between Mac (and MacBook), iPhone, and Apple Watch. Nothing else seems to do it. I like Apple Notes well enough, but I needed Watch access.
It's not free, and I paid more for Mac access (iPhone and Watch alone was cheaper), but it's not a subscription, just pay once and it's yours. Sync is I believe through iCloud.
My only gripe is that the Watch app constantly notifies me that it can't get online. Just about once a day, I think. I can't bring my phone in to work, hence needing the Watch app.
It's not free, and I paid more for Mac access (iPhone and Watch alone was cheaper), but it's not a subscription, just pay once and it's yours. Sync is I believe through iCloud.
My only gripe is that the Watch app constantly notifies me that it can't get online. Just about once a day, I think. I can't bring my phone in to work, hence needing the Watch app.
I've used both Evernote and Bear in the past, and liked them both. But I found that Apple's own Notes does the job for me and is free.
I tried to use Obsidian, honest, like I’m “supposed“ to. But I had a bunch of indented bulleted lists that I was trying to unindent in Obsidian and I would’ve had to do each line individually for about 40 to 50 multi line lists. I did the entire operation in Agenda in about an eighth of the time it would’ve taken me in Obsidian, because I can select the entire list or even an entire daily note with multiple lists and unindent them all at once. Much more flexibility in formatting and Agenda has styles too.
If you purchase Agenda, even once, you have access to exporting in about five different file formats.
I’m very much keeping Agenda.
If you purchase Agenda, even once, you have access to exporting in about five different file formats.
I’m very much keeping Agenda.
Your experience with Obsidian is typical... on second thought, you got off easy! 😂 Many fall into the rabbit hole of Obsidian and get lost in plug-ins and working around the limitations of note formatting.
Agenda looks great. I appreciate their licensing approach (which is basically the first shareware model from the MS-DOS days). Everything old is new again.
IMO, these developers should be supported for that alone.
I tried Obsidian recently but gave up immediately twice. The feature set without plugins is fine but the overall experience is not so smooth for me.
I also considered Bear because of better writing experience than Apple Notes in which I am using. However I think I won't take it because writing contributes around 50-60% for me. Visual thinking, recording/organizing my thoughts/observations and flexibly managing my tasks do carry a certain proportion. I may do long-form writing on iA Writer in which I already own instead if I really need a focused environment (and backup my articles there too).
As a result I will stick to Apple Notes while having some backups at the same time.
Your experience with Obsidian is typical... on second thought, you got off easy! 😂 Many fall into the rabbit hole of Obsidian and get lost in plug-ins and working around the limitations of note formatting.
Agenda looks great. I appreciate their licensing approach (which is basically the first shareware model from the MS-DOS days). Everything old is new again.
IMO, these developers should be supported for that alone.
The biggest issue with Obsidian (for me) is that to get most out of it, you have to rely on plugins, which is a huge security risk.
Yes, if all I store in it is exercise logs and cookbook, no big deal. But any information that can be used for identity theft or social engineering, any financial data etc. is exposed to every single plugin, and the user just has to trust that an anonymous entity hiding behind a pseudonym is an honest developer and not some punk itching to do some harm just because they can.
I have realized long time ago that the information that I intend to store for a long time needs to reside in a common format, and preferably inside an encrypted container. Most modern OS now have some kind of indexed search functionality, so there's no need for a "wrapper" type Notes app around your data.
To take notes, Apple Notes is just fine. Onenote is great if you want to stay cross-platform. But to store info long term, PDF / Docx / Excel / plaintext files rule.
I agree. I bolded the part that is important for longevity.
My PKMS will turn 48 years old this year (2024). It has changed formats over the years. It started as "analog" cards and composition notebooks, but is now fully digital. Since converting to digital (around 1978, Radio Shack TRS-80) I've used approximately 10 apps. The latest one is UpNote.
The primary format that I've used has been plain text. I used my own method of highlighting, headings, and lists for basic formatting. It was essentially my own version of markdown before markdown was a things. The growing acceptance of markdown has been very helpful for me. (it was a simple matter to write a few scripts to convert my own homegrown markup to markdown)
UpNote offers relatively clean exports to markdown when the need arises to move on from it. But it requires a bit of self-discipline because UpNote's rich text editor can produce notes with formatting that is not supported by markdown.
The ASCII text format was first invented in 1961 and continues to be a universal standard. That was the first digital format of my PKMS and it will most likely end up being the last. 😁
I use notes for ephemerals/things I need to remember.
My main note taking app is Devonthink. I do everything in Devonthink, even journal.
My main note taking app is Devonthink. I do everything in Devonthink, even journal.
Yes!!! I use it for everything. So good. It has the best web clipper I have ever seen. Even if I switched to something else, I would install it for the web clipper.
Every note I have is indexed in Devonthink. But I rarely edit them there. Sometimes I edit markdown documents in Visual Code and sometimes in Obsidian. Sometimes documents in Devonthink are OmniOutliner documents which I edit in that app. Devonthink is mainly the way I find notes and control their organization. It's kind of the same for things I clip from the web into Devonthink (which I do a lot); if I'm going to spend some time looking at one of them, I'll open it from Devonthink in Safari or Preview.
I am curious how you do that. Do you type in markdown documents or something else? Do you use templates?
I am curious how you do that. Do you type in markdown documents or something else? Do you use templates?
Well, I can't speak for the other poster, but I use Markdown. It's honestly the weakest part of DEVONThink.
It's been one week since I switched to Bear and I am not missing Obsidian at all. Bear is so nice and lean, I really like it.
I've spent some time this weekend playing with Devonthink, to use it more, since others seem to. I'm finding ways of working that are big improvements to what I was doing before. Before, I would create documents someplace on disk which would be later indexed in Devonthink. I've now started creating the items directly in Devonthink and I'm finding some very useful things.
I saved a couple of templates - one for ad hoc notes in Markdown with certain sections filled out, another an empty OmniOutliner document. (I'll probably make other kinds.) Then I made a couple of smart rules that automatically name the items based on their content (and optionally date). After I set up the note, while it's sitting in my inbox, I keep the "See Also & Classify" inspector open and it tells me where I should place the item on disk to be with other similar documents. I think it's all pretty great. We'll see how it goes working that way over the next few weeks.
None of this rules out working with the same markdown documents within my Obsidian vaults.
I saved a couple of templates - one for ad hoc notes in Markdown with certain sections filled out, another an empty OmniOutliner document. (I'll probably make other kinds.) Then I made a couple of smart rules that automatically name the items based on their content (and optionally date). After I set up the note, while it's sitting in my inbox, I keep the "See Also & Classify" inspector open and it tells me where I should place the item on disk to be with other similar documents. I think it's all pretty great. We'll see how it goes working that way over the next few weeks.
None of this rules out working with the same markdown documents within my Obsidian vaults.
Apple Notes for some stuff, Goodnotes for handwritten stuff and very much iA Writer for anything I write. It is superbly designed, beautiful typography, all the files are cloud-synced and basically just txt files, great export options (which couuuuuld be easier to personalize) I love the function of highlighting «filler» words, it's really a neat tool to work on notes, even if I miss a feature like language tool or ChatGPT for AI-corrections and maybe a search function in ALL texts would be nice, but otherwise it is the tool that I always end up, just because it is really done well and one of best «minimalistic» text tools.
You are getting corrupted by the crazy power of DEVONThink! Soon you will be having it taking PDFs that are dropped into the inbox and moving them to specific groups automatically based on keywords.
And then you will realize how trapped you are by this weird program. Nothing else is quite like it.