Notes on note-taking apps.

[specious_reasons]

Well, fuck:

Evernote has laid off most of its US staff and will move most operations to Europe - The Verge

I am a long time Evernote user. I have *so much* information in Evernote, it's where I keep track of most things in my life.

I use OneNote for work, and it wouldn't be too hard to transition to that for my personal notes, but I'm wondering if I should find another note-taking app that I can trust.

[specious_reasons]

Thinking about OneNote, Notion and Obsidian as good candidates to start with.

[Sock Puppet]

I hate OneNote really, really hard. That might be because of what I try to do with it, although I don't feel like I'm expecting much.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

I hate OneNote really, really hard. That might be because of what I try to do with it, although I don't feel like I'm expecting much.

We use it at work, and I'm not exactly a fan.

I would like:
- Reliable storage of critical information.
- Portability (PC, Mac, IOS).
- The ability to organize notes (For example, in Evernote, I have a whole notebook dedicated to paperwork related to my mother and her estate.)
- Store PDFs and images.

Pretty minimal subset, and I know OneNote can handle that.

[LarsMac]

I would like to find a good note tool for my phone.
I've used Notepad for years on PC.
Tried to use it on my phone, and it just goes off on some weird tangent when I try to install it.

Best I've figured out is to email back and forth between two email accounts.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

I would like to find a good note tool for my phone.
I've used Notepad for years on PC.
Tried to use it on my phone, and it just goes off on some weird tangent when I try to install it.

Best I've figured out is to email back and forth between two email accounts.

You can also just save the draft and not send it.

[Crumb]

I use Notion now. It seems to do the job.

[ShottleBop]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

Well, fuck:

Evernote has laid off most of its US staff and will move most operations to Europe - The Verge

I am a long time Evernote user. I have *so much* information in Evernote, it's where I keep track of most things in my life.

I use OneNote for work, and it wouldn't be too hard to transition to that for my personal notes, but I'm wondering if I should find another note-taking app that I can trust.

I've used it, too, for several years, for those same purposes.

[ceptimus]

liv always recommended OneNote I tried it for a while, but found that note-taking apps are not really my thing - I prefer editing my own plain text documents (containing snippets of HTML occasionally), in a folder on a network attached drive.

[JoeP]

Noted.

[JoeP]

I used to use Catch until Evernote bought it and killed it. Then I used Evernote for a while - and it's pretty good, up to a point. I think I moved away from in when it started restricting free users to 3 devices ... and shoving adverts for their physical products on your face.

Since then I've been using Simplenote - and it's pretty good ... up to a point. I recommend checking it out.

Like Sock, I hate OneNote with a passion.

I'm aware of Obsidian, and I think I've been aware of Notion, and recently have heard good things about Joplin.

But the main thing all these tools lack (as far as I'm aware - haven't properly tried out the 3 mentioned) is a fully hierarchical organisation. I want to be able to break big notes into logical sections as separate notes, and group notes into tasks, subprojects, projects, and whatever.

For this I've been using MindJet Mind Manager when I can get someone to pay for a licence, or the open source alternative FreeMind. These are brilliant for how I work - but also limited because they force you to put everything into one massive mind map, or break them up without much ability to cross-link or cross-search. Also there is no easy way to access them from mobile devices (some hacks exist).

So ... as a small matter of programming ... I've been building my own tool.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by JoeP

[...]

So ... as a small matter of programming ... I've been building my own tool.

BTW, still building my own tool.

[viscousmemories]

In the early days of the pandemic I got sucked in to the vortex of note-taking obsessives, and I was an early adopter (and 'believer' - $500 for lifetime membership) in Roam Research. I am no longer a 'believer' in Roam Research, but it is still what I use for storing notes. I've looked at all the others (Notion, Obsidian, etc.) but the only one that tempts me is Tana*, but I haven't yet invested in figuring out how well it works. Definitely look for the ability to export your entire database into a common format, because as Evernote demonstrates apps come and go, no matter how stable they might seem.

My original thread about Roam: https://www.freethought-forum.com/fo...ad.php?t=30062

*I was granted early access from a contact in the Roam community.

[specious_reasons]

I discovered I have until January to make a decision to move - that's when my yearly Evernote subscription ends.

I'm still leaning towards OneNote. I get it as part of Office365, which means one less subscription, and I'm familiar with it (definitely not in love with it. though.)

Notion looks like a lot - more than I need or want.

Obsidian looks nice and it looks like it'll be pretty intuitive once I get used to it, and I'm familiar with markdown. However, to get the full feature set I want (cross-platform sync), it's more expensive than what I'm paying for Evernote.

As far as conversion:

A few searches makes it look like Obsidian has some options.

I discovered that the Microsoft official conversion tool evernote->onenote has stopped support, but there's an open source conversion tool and a commercial tool as well.

I might try out a conversion on a notebook for both tools and see if it works decently.

[viscousmemories]

I meant to second Joe's reference to Simplenote. I use that to take work-related notes because I don't have to think about saving anything I want to access across devices. If I type something into a note it is available to me everywhere instantly, even if the computer dies/reboots, or I'm halfway through a sentence and get pulled in another direction, then next time I check is on my phone. There's no formatting or anything, but for plain text notes it is pretty great.

[specious_reasons]

I moved all my notes to OneNote using the open-source tool. It was maybe 90% successful, with some formatting issues and some newer Evernote features that didn't export.

I did switch to 2FA for the account that has these notes - there's lot of personal information in there. This worked fine, but it's definitely a pain to get all the places I was signed in to sign back in, and I got a bunch of 2FA notices that will be annoying until it settles down, if it does.

I should add 2FA/MFA as a requirement for any cloud storage for my notes. It's a bit more painful, but it's important given the information I have in some of these notes.

[specious_reasons]

An interesting article on note-taking apps.

Why note-taking apps don't make us smarter - The Verge

My gusto for concept-based, link-heavy note-taking diminished. Roam’s development slowed to a crawl, and I spent a season with the lightweight, mostly free alternative known as Obsidian. Obsidian’s brutalist design wore on me, though, and eventually I decamped for the more polished user interface of Mem. (These apps all enable the exporting of your notes in Markdown, making switching relatively painless.)

I continue to journal most days, and occasionally find myself working to refine one concept or another among those notes.

But the original promise of Roam — that it would improve my thinking by helping me to build a knowledge base and discover new ideas — fizzled completely.

I'm sticking with OneNote for the near-term, but form this article, Notion sounds like it still has some appealing features I may want to try.

[It's Me!]

I have a couple of Rocketbooks that I use, and one of the options was to interface with Evernote. I would be able to go to conferences, take notes, and then have it convert to a PDF and upload to Evernote, at which point I could do a word search (it beat having to go through several notepads for the note I know I made but couldn't remember if it was 3, 5, or 7 years ago).

Then my job stopped allowing us to use Evernote. I still use the Rocketbook, and push things to OneNote, because they went all-in on Microsoft products, but I liked Evernote better, especially for the seamless ability to collaborate.

[LarsMac]

I've given up on the note app. I have an email on outlook, and an email on Gmail.
I simply send emails back and forth quoting the conversation.
All the other shit comes along.
A new title starts a new thread, and I end up with a whole record of the Conversation, without any real effort.

Wish I'd thought of it sooner.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

I've given up on the note app. I have an email on outlook, and an email on Gmail.
I simply send emails back and forth quoting the conversation.
All the other shit comes along.
A new title starts a new thread, and I end up with a whole record of the Conversation, without any real effort.

Wish I'd thought of it sooner.

Livin' like it's the 90s.

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Livin' like it's the 90s.

Can't knock it if it works.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

Can't knock it if it works.

I am very much knocking it

[fragment]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

I've given up on the note app. I have an email on outlook, and an email on Gmail.
I simply send emails back and forth quoting the conversation.

You know you can send email from an email address to that same address, right? No back and forth required.

[michio]

I use Dynalist for both personal and professional things. Home - Dynalist

No clue if you'd find this useful. I have very simple needs, and I like how straightforward and simple it is.

I'm building an FAQ app right now, powered by an LLM. The idea behind it is you provide documents and notes, then when you ask it some kind of question, the documents and notes are used as context and this is used by the LLM when returning an answer. People have already built things like this, but I haven't found any of them useful for exactly what I need, so I'm just building my own. I need some really simple and all the existing apps are too complicated and bloated and I haven't liked any of the user interfaces people have built.

Such an app is useful in a professional setting for something like uploading SOPs so when employees need to know something, they can type in an open-ended query, and receive an answer + receipts back (so you can double-check for hallucinations).

My personal motivation for making this app is for studying. For example uploading a PDF of a book, then being able to ask an open-ended question, the answer that comes back is influenced by the context of the book.

If this turns out well, I may open it up to the public and potentially make some money out of it by allowing more storage and more queries for a fee. I'll share it here at some point.

[specious_reasons]

BTW, still taking the path of least-resistance, and sticking with OneNote for the moment. It's... fine.

I may try Notion at some point, but I have to sign up for it, and that's enough of a barrier.

I'm not renewing my Evernote subscription.