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Ask HN: What's your catch-all note taker?

25 points by b1gtuna ↗ HN
I use Microsoft OneNote and it has been working great for dumping all kinds of stuff (screenshots, logs, ideas, thoughts, love letters, resignation letters, resumes, code snippets and etc). That said I use an iPhone, use Linux for work, and Windows at home. So accessing the OneNote when I am not home has been difficult. What is your favorite dumpster(?) app? Do you recommend it? I am open for both free and paid solutions.

83 comments

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mihaifm
Plain text for notes/bookmarks/todo items/wishlists with my own markdown-like syntax for formatting. I use a small app (Editorial) on my iphone and Dropbox to sync.
b1gtuna
Thanks. This is probably 1 of my top 3 choices at the moment. It is timeless, no need to worry about service shutdown, and robust and free. Of course, it probably has the most learning curve as I have to type out everything.
drKarl
Vimwiki for text notes
b1gtuna
Thanks! Never seen this but I already like it. I use Vim and the fact that I don't have to leave my terminal is definitely a bonus. Have you found a way to access it via your phone/mobile?
kowdermeister
Google keep
b1gtuna
I love Google Keep, but I am afraid they'd kill it all of sudden much like Google Notebook and Inbox.
kowdermeister
So what? Use it till you can. The worst case scenario is that I have to spend half an hour again to pick a todo app sometime in the future :)
sitzkrieg
sure, but beware if you want to export your data from google keep, it will be HTML and not easy to import to most other tools
rwc
It's part of GSuite, which is a higher threshold of support and predictability. Neither Inbox or Notebook were part of GSuite.
Mister_Snuggles
I'm also a OneNote fan. I use it in a similar fashion - tons of work-related stuff, a bunch of personal stuff, and a notebook shared with my SO so we can both update grocery lists, etc.

I've got the OneNote app on my iPhone and it works well enough for what I need to access on the go. What trouble do you have accessing it when you're not at home? My biggest use-case for OneNote on the iPhone is to tick items on the grocery list - it works great and changes propagate to my SO's phone in under a second.

b1gtuna
Right, I forgot about the iOS version of the OneNote app. I guess I am searching for a more cross-platform solution (much like Google Notebook. Also, it looks like Microsoft is migrating OneNote out of Office suite and make it available as a default app in Windows, but will require a subscription to Office 365 to unlock features [1]. So cost becomes an issue when this occurs..

[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/3269056/software-productivit...

Mister_Snuggles
This is something I will need to keep an eye on. I've come to depend on OneNote pretty heavily.

On the plus side, Office 365 is quite cheap considering you get 1TB of OneDrive storage for the price. Since you're a Linux user that might not be useful to you though.

ukyrgf
I want to like OneNote, but I just can't stand how things can be positioned anywhere on the page. It's so hard to make my notes look neat and organized.

I started using Notion.so (after a recommendation on HN recently) and the difference is incredible. All the versatility of OneNote, but there is actually somewhat of a hierarchy.

jjuhl
Emacs org mode (https://orgmode.org).
nine_k
What I badly miss about it is some kind of "org mode server" to synchronize things between several nodes, e.g. laptop and mobile, in a structure-aware way.

So far I sync via git, which sort of works but is definitely not great on mobile.

vtail
Curious why you want a structure aware way?

My current setup (syncing between home and work laptops) is to auto-save files every few second in emacs, and "git pull; git commit -am `date`; git push" every few minutes in a cron. Works like a charm.

edit: I also do "git add * .org; git add * .org_archive" inside the org folder before the commit, in the same cron job.

nine_k
Structure-aware: if one change sets a TODO item to WIP, and another to DONE, a structure-aware merge algorithm could resolve this conflict, e.g. based on time; plain git needs human attention.

Well, yes, immediate sync should work, all merges would be fast-forward except for a vanishingly rare case of two conflicting simultaneous pushes.

It's not very practical if one of the devices is mobile, so it's not always online, and parallel changes may build up sometimes.

vtail
That makes sense. I realize in my use case, even if I have one device offline, e.g., working on a laptop on a flight, in most times I will be able to sync before I switch to another device, so it rarely creates a problem.
xte
Unison it's not new and work flawlessly, all you need is the ability to reach all devices via network...

BTW do not blame org for the mobile crappy OSes we have, they are not designed to serve us but to serve vendor leaving us small crumbs, milking us for commercial purpose.

m52go
Zotero. Cross-platform and open-source. You can sync it using your favorite syncing tool, and even encrypt before syncing using something like Cryptomator. I regularly use this set-up on Linux and Windows.
ArneBab
I’m using emacs org-mode. For everything, except notes on paper.
slouch
Trello and a WhatsApp thread with myself
gexla
As of 37 minutes in, not one Orgmode... ;)

I like Google Keep because it's one of the few apps I have found which gives me a readable preview of the notes. I generally try to keep the notes short. There is also an option to save the notes as Google Docs and then download as plain text if you like.

Of you wanted to arrange the short notes into a longer form, then Scrivener is a good next step. Again, Scrivener allows me to view these short notes in a readable preview. I can also drag and drop notes onto a larger document. Plus tons more features.

I have tried tons of other apps and none of them seem to allow a readable text preview. I like plain text, but I also like some sort of visual reference where I can scan loads of texts. Of course, this doesn't work well for longer text.

There have been some threads here lately about Perkeep, which I think has a lot of potential. A Google Keep interface on Perkeep would be perfect. What I like about Perkeep is that all content is content addressable and you can create meta-data external to the file which can hold things like tags, links between files, hierarchy, titles and a bunch more.

jjuhl
"As of 37 minutes in, not one Orgmode" - ehh, how did you miss my org mode comment?
swsieber
Well, your org mode comment was made 42 minutes in. At least, as I'm posting this, the post was 52 minutes old, your org mode comment was 10 minutes old, and this comment of yours was 1 minute in...

So... latency.

nafizh
I have been using Google Keep for some time and it is really great. But I am always dreading the day Google is announcing they are shutting it down. That is why looking for an alternative.
xte
Emacs-er (I'm a proud one) tend to live in Emacs, not in browsers so a delay it's normal :-)

Especially since HN emacs interface offer a decent way to read but not a way to post and since HN itself is not much good in term of conversation (even worse than Reddit, far far far worse than classic usenet) spending time in adding post capabilities it's probably not much interesting...

b1gtuna
Took a brief look at Orgmode and it looks great. It also appears to be more feature packed than Vimwiki. Let me give it a shot. I'm a Vim user, so I hope I don't get too disoriented by Emacs.
cle
When I'm on my computer, it's Emacs org-mode.

On my iPad, I use GoodNotes with an Apple Pencil, which is an amazing experience.

pandemicsyn
I made the switch to https://bear.app a while ago (over a year). Its simple yet full featured enough that its the one I've stuck with the longest.
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falcolas
Vimwiki. It's pretty much an 80% solution of org mode for vim, and works a treat for my usecase. I then just store those files in a cloud file sharing system and access them everywhere.
Daedren
Standard Notes. Encrypted, has a lot of nifty extensions such as a Markdown and Vim editors.

You can even selfhost it.

n_t
For many years it was plain text with Vim. Then started using Trello, then Zenkit for immediate actionable things. But in parallel also used Apple notes and now days Agenda.
cal97g
Typora. Just a simple WYSIWYG markdown editor. I use it for anything from writing articles to notes to invoices. Has pretty PDF exports which look good and professional for documentation as well a nice selection of themes.
im_dario
Amazing editor. I'm working in a little side project and I had in my mind an editor like this one.
Ocerge
Pen and paper has yet to be defeated for me, personally
paulgb
I switched from OneNote to Notion (notion.so) for my personal notes and love it. The mobile apps are pretty slick. There is no Linux client afaik but the web client is full-featured.
gotrythis
For note taking, I used to use the LiveScribe pen and paper, which records what's being said, synced to your notes. This is not simply attaching audio to notes. It's far better. You can click on a written note to hear what was being said when you wrote the note, and replay the audio and writing together.

It allows you to be present in meetings and just jotting down headlines of things to review, instead of madly scribbling notes.

Livescribe: https://www.livescribe.com

However, I hated the notebooks, simply because I didn't like carrying around multiple notebooks.

Now I use an iPad app called Notability, which does the same thing, without the annoyance of dealing with paper. I just wish they had a Windows version for when I get a Surface Book!

Notability: http://gingerlabs.com/

storgendibal
I used OneNote on a Surface Pro 1 for several years, but recently switched over to Goodnotes on an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil. Goodnotes has fewer features than OneNote, but the auto-shape tool is pretty sweet and I actually like the fact that it does not have infinite-sized pages.

I do miss OneNote's OCR, text indexing/search, and seamless cross-platform sync (web, mobile, laptop).