Visual Studio Code and type out notes as Markdown.
This gives me some formatting as I go without being distracting.
Usually though I find a pen and paper works best.
Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
51–60 of 142 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#52Workflowy. It's the lowest-friction tool I have used for notes and ideas. Using tags, it can be used as a great hierarchical project/task management system. I still use Evernote for quick storage and access of images, pdfs and long-form notes as the search is great. However, their tag/notebook organisation system has annoying redundencies and is clunky in places. I would love to bin it but can't find a suitable alter…
Workflowy has organized my life and brought some order to my brain in a way that is invaluable to me. If only the put a bit more effort into the product... literally nothing has changed in the past 3 years. not a single feature! I could excuse them if the mobile apps were good enough, but that is not the case at all.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#53Workflowy. It's the lowest-friction tool I have used for notes and ideas. Using tags, it can be used as a great hierarchical project/task management system. I still use Evernote for quick storage and access of images, pdfs and long-form notes as the search is great. However, their tag/notebook organisation system has annoying redundencies and is clunky in places. I would love to bin it but can't find a suitable alter…
Workflowy has organized my life and brought some order to my brain in a way that is invaluable to me. If only the put a bit more effort into the product... literally nothing has changed in the past 3 years. not a single feature! I could excuse them if the mobile apps were good enough, but that is not the case at all.
You are right about the mobile apps... I am hoping that competition from dynalist will force them to up their game.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#54I've been a fan of the concept of Quiver ( http://happenapps.com/#quiver ) for a long time, but unable to use it daily as it is Mac only. I love the idea of having different notebooks, being able to easily merge text, code, mathematics and images into one note, and make 'cookbooks' out of them. Someone make it for Windows please.
Nice suggestions, thanks
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#55I've been a fan of the concept of Quiver ( http://happenapps.com/#quiver ) for a long time, but unable to use it daily as it is Mac only. I love the idea of having different notebooks, being able to easily merge text, code, mathematics and images into one note, and make 'cookbooks' out of them. Someone make it for Windows please.
Not quite what you want but I use GistBox (Chrome App that stores snippets in Gists) for a similar use case
Did have a native app (Snippets?) but I wasn't happy with it.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#56Like others already mentioned, Quiver (http://happenapps.com/#quiver), but it is Mac-only. Your a Mac-user, but I don't know how often you work with clients using another platform. That could be a problem.
For Windows and Linux, there's Cherrytree (http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/). I'm not using it myself, it's just something that I found when looking for Evernote alternatives. It has syntax highlighting and can handle images.
Good luck with finding a solution.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#57I use https://www.notebooksapp.com/. It works with plain files, txt, markdown and WYSIWYG (HTML). It also allows you to write your own stylesheet and JS. So I have a custom template (CSS) and I write almost everything in WYSIWYG (ie HTML). Works really well for code too, as I get syntax highlighting.
Other apps I have tried and used over the years:
- http://www.mweb.im/ (markdown) - https://ulyssesapp.com/ (markdown) - http://lightpaper.42squares.in/ (markdown) - http://alternoteapp.com/ (Evernote GUI) - Many, many others
Notebooks really stands out because it has a great iOS app, syncs via Dropbox (plain files), and handles TXT/MD/HTML + Custom CSS&JS.
The Mac app is not great, but it's adequate. I frequently talk to the author and they are rewriting it to be more "Mac friendly", but that's a bit away (1 year maybe?).
For the longest time, I tried to stay true to Markdown, but as I get older, I just want things to be easier, and to look nicer, and I now prefer writing everything in WYSIWYG. Since I have custom styles, I can stick to standard structure (ie H1, p, ul, ..), which is in spirit close to Markdown (ie structure only). And I can still customize when I want complicated things (I wrote a couple special classes for some use cases).
Plus, it works with the filesystem, so you get folders, which I personally prefer to all this tagging BS. It makes it easier to have everything in one place: work stuff and personal stuff, and to keep it all neat and tidy. Also, because it's files, it's always available offline (iOS app too).
The iOS app is like a small file manager, so I also keep pictures, PDFs, and some other docs. So I always have all my important stuff on hand, no matter where I am.
Overall, I think it's a great app, which still has room to grow (better GUI on desktop, encryption, ...)
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#58OneNote on a surface. I sprung for the office suite which includes a different version of OneNote with a better UI and more features. It is worth it if you take a lot of notes.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#59Evernote. My Evernote is the only valuable digital asset I have. Everything else is exchangeable.
You may want to read this https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/14/evernotes-new-privacy-ru...
While the privacy policy sucks I don't really have personal notes. It's mostly just lists. A lot of lists.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?
#60I have horrible handwriting. It is really bad.
But OneNote and ten-finger-typing makes up for that. If I need to share it, I can easily copy it in to an email, everyone can receive these without needing another account.
You might want to look into http://www.codefoster.com/codeinonenote/, a code highlighter for OneNote