I’ve used Evernote forever. I’ve got over a decade’s worth of notes, journals, plans and ideas in there, ranging from the mundane to the important.
Every now and again, I have a look around to see what else is out there, and I’m starting to do that again, partly prompted by the fact that my annual sub is about to renew. Also, Evernote has just been bought out by some company I’ve never heard of, so it wouldn’t hurt to have a plan B in case it all goes wrong.
My notes tend to fall into these categories:
Throwaway, useful-once notes. Shopping lists etc.
Reference information that I want to keep forever.
Planning for projects, research etc
Journaling - free form thoughts.
I make use of Evernote’s folder structure, and sometimes use tags. At a minimum, I need a note taking app to handle text, images, code blocks, web clips and to-do checkboxes.
I’d want to be able to create and access notes from my iPhone, iPad and Mac desktop - but I’d feel happier if there was a web app that I could access from any computer in the case of a “lost phone” emergency.
I sometimes share notes with my wife, but this isn’t a deal breaker - I cut cut and paste into WhatsApp or something if it came to it.
Oh, and this is for strictly personal use - I won’t be putting any work notes into my personal system.
So this thread is partly a call for recommendations and partly just a place for my fellow digital notetaking geeks to chat about what they use.
Microsoft OneNote has my last 15-ish years in it. Like you they range from now-obsolete throw-aways to grandiose plans. I’d be lost without it.
All my Windows and Android devices are synced and the same data is all also available on the web via any browser. I suspect, but do not know, that there’s a Mac / iPad / iPhone version that would sync with all the others.
You can share what OneNote calls “notebooks” with other people. That’s the highest level of their organizing hierarchy. Once you’ve shared a notebook w somebody else for either read-only or read-write access, it’ll be available to them on all their device(s) and on the website under their log-in.
Another OneNote-r here. I actually have three permanent notebooks set up:
My default notebook, where I have my planner/journal and current projects;
“Household,” where shopping lists, payroll, bills, tax returns, cat vaccinations, etc. all wind up.
“Library,” where all my miscellaneous reference information winds up. In fact, I have it organized by the Dewey Decimal system: section groups by major categories (e.g. 300 - Social Sciences, 500 - Natural Sciences, 700 - The Arts) and then by sections for more specific divisions (e.g. 320 - Political Science, 610 - Medical Science, 790 - Recreation & performing arts).
…I’ve used all sorts over the years, but nothing really settled the “must have” app. Was using Notion for a while, but I’ve started to migrate to Obsidian.
Its pretty damn good, minimalist, decent community, and you can download it and use it locally for free. (you can sync it for a monthly fee, billed annually, but that’s something that I don’t need)
And the open graph view looks really cool: I’m just diving more into that now.
Huh, i sometimes use OneNote at work, and i don’t like it. It’s hard for me to find what i want, somehow. Maybe i just need to spend more time learning it.
(I use Google docs, mostly Google sheets, for most of my note taking these days. We have a shared grocery list in sheets that we just update each time we shop. It has columns for where in each supermarket items are, so i can sort the list for whatever store I’m going to. But I’m an actuary, so i live in spread sheets all day.)
Google Keep. It’s pretty simplistic to be honest, but I have simple notetaking needs. It works on any browser, plus has a phone app. Not sure about code blocks, but it does picture, drawings, recordings, checkboxes, labels, and a few other things.
I used a Rocketbook for a while. It’s a book with reusable, wipe-clean pages that you write on with special pens. The clever feature is that you also get an app which scans the page and routes the digital copy to the cloud service of your choice automatically. I think it does OCR as well.
I stopped using it because I got sick of having to wipe clean the pages all the time, but you might have more patience than me.
I think Moleskin do one with a normal notebook, with paper, and the pen stores the info. I assume you just have to keep buying new notebooks, which I don’t mind
I’m similar.
One for each job or volunteer “job” I have / had, one for health matters & logs, and one for generic everything else. Within each book the section groups and sections provide enough subdivision. I’ve drifted away from deep folder hierarchies in favor of more like “dump stuff into loose topical or chronological groupings and use search to find what I want.”
The old job books are closed but are still available with a couple clicks if I ever needed to go back.
If I was to critique OneNote’s features, it’d be the lack of fancier searching than simple text matching, and I’d like a way to disable / tweak spell checking locally by page or section or book. Just because I repeatedly use some jargon term or personal abbreviation on pages about Project X does NOT mean I want that same set of letters marked as OK on Project Y much less everywhere in Office or even everywhere in Windows, including my browser.
I was an Evernote guy, using it sporadically, but found the GUI too obnoxious. I used Evernote sparingly at work for stuff. Both of which are relatively useless, because when I’m at work, I can’t get to Evernote (policies in place to block the website). When I’m at home, it’s a royal PITA to log into my work network (fire up the company laptop, sign in, VPN in, log in again. . . ).
For me, it’s notebook paper to save for later, or it goes into my indestructable, federal Green Book (aka the “Campaign Book.”)
For my day-to-day schedules and planners, I use some productivity tools from Dave Seah.
Electronic apps don’t work for me. Pen & paper–youbetcha.
I did have a separate notebook for my law office job, until that closed.
The search function seems to work for me, especially within the section/section group divisions. You can checking locally by section & notebook.
Electronic apps don’t work for me. Pen & paper–youbetcha.
…
Fountain pens, at that, too!
Uggh. I hate writing anything by hand. Even as a child. I discovered the typewriter at the age of ten (Mom took me to the office) and I’ve never looked back. Even on my tablet, I tend to use the keyboard (albeit “swiping” from key to key – produces some interesting results that I have to edit).
I see your point, and coupled with the fact that my handwriting looks like scribbled-Hangul-in-Western-Latin-Cursive, I can sympathize.
But lugging around tech, or even an electric typewriter seems cumbersome when I’m so used to just flipping to a page and jotting. Plus, I tend to do math on my paper, which seems hard to do through text. OH! And another exculpatory thing: my employer wildly frowns upon cellphones or wireless tech “behind the fenceline,” kinda forcing me to keep it simply paper-based.
