Ask HN: Personal Database Tool?

#1

Post by pockettanyas » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:52 AM UTC

I'm looking for a tool where I can dump content (images, notes, quotes, names of movies), tag each item with multiple tags ("book" "completed" "5 stars"), and then search for the content by tag ("show me all books I tagged with 5 stars"). Is there a good tool I can use for this?

Re: Ask HN: Personal Database Tool?

#2

Post by goohex » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 4:24 AM UTC

Airtable https://airtable.com/

Re: Ask HN: Personal Database Tool?

#3

Post by flukus » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

There a re CLI tagging tools like this: https://tmsu.org/

It's mostly driven by folders and symlinks, so you could create your own with a few shell scripts.

Re: Ask HN: Personal Database Tool?

#4

Post by lovelearning » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 4:47 AM UTC

Most note taking tools allow all that - organize content, tag, and search. They differ in user experience. Try Evernote, OneNote, Zotero, but there are many more.

Re: Ask HN: Personal Database Tool?

#5

Post by jvvlimme » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 5:30 AM UTC

Notion.so?

Re: Ask HN: Personal Database Tool?

#6

Post by scrappyjoe » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 6:18 AM UTC

A few years ago there was an OSS tool called Tagspaces that did exactly this. It was great, and briefly replaced Evernote for me.

At the time I used it quite successfully to manage research material across a range of projects; it ultimately hit a wall because it was an electron app that consumed huge amounts of RAM.

However, they are still around and appear to have moved away from electron so you may have more luck now.

Re: Ask HN: Personal Database Tool?

#7

Post by jesterson » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 6:33 AM UTC

I'd suggest to try Notion and AirTable. Notion is slightly more then just personal database, AirTable might be useful if you like working with tables/databases.