8 ms·
Ask HN: What software do you use to take notes?
- dmitripopov 10y agoNotepad
- Jtsummers 10y agoEmacs with org-mode and git for syncing across my computers.
- brianjolney 10y agoPersonal notes in Evernote but increasingly taking team notes in Dropbox's Paper.
- askafriend 10y agoDefault Notes on iOS/OSX
- soulchild37 10y agoQuiver app
- Sujan 10y agoSimplenote
- altern8tif 10y agoBear
- geoah 10y agoTried bear a bit, the lack of syncing do other things than apple cloud is an issue, as well as the lack of web/android clients.
- jmstfv 10y agogedit
- lanna 10y agoOmniOutliner
- ssambros 10y agoKeep
- 654wak654 10y agoGoogle Keep http://keep.google.com/ http://keep.google.com/
- ChristianGeek 10y agoToo much risk of them killing it with little warning.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- baldfat 10y agoI use it for shopping list with my wife. It is awesome for that one feature.
- xemoka 10y agoHave you tried wunderlist? My partner and I have a shared shopping list that we both can populate and finish items from—offers a bit more structure and to-do type item features than Keep.
- baldfat 10y agoI liked wunderlist but we have a different note for each store with a check box. Nothing beats the keep for shopping list for us. Simple and easy
- losteverything 10y agoKeep
- psyc 10y agoOneNote, Mac and iOS
- Walkman 10y agoOneNote webapp on Linux
- kujenga 10y agoEvernote for personal use, Slack messages to myself for work
- zulln 10y agoHow do you organize those 'notes' in Slack?
- AdamGibbins 10y agofrom:@me in:@me some search term here -- I'd imagine.
- baali 10y agoOrg-Mode and Emacs: http://orgmode.org/ http://orgmode.org/
- funkaster 10y agosame here. I keep notes in two-three different files (work, personal, misc) and add todos there. those files are part of the agenda, so I can quickly summarize everything in one place. I also use tags to group tasks.
- maliker 10y agoText files stored in Google Drive. Editing with Sublime Text on MacOS, Textastic/Workflow on iOS. Searching via Launchbar and Spotlight.
- buster 10y agoZim with some encrypted file sync is a great tool.
- ryeon 10y agoPen and Paper
- MichaelGG 10y agoBingo. I often can't read what I've written but it's much easier to flow and get ideas out on paper. Theoretically I want to use OneNote but a nice pen and paper wins.
- calebio 10y agoI write markdown files with emacs. These notes are stored at `~/notes` which I symlink to `~/Dropbox/notes`.
- proaralyst 10y agoI do similarly: Vim & reStructured Text.
- hammock 10y agoOutlook
- ateevchopra 10y agoDropbox Paper. Mainly because of non distracting UI and markdown support. Also copy paste keeps the format intact. That comes in handy to copy/paste code in notes.
- Thorncorona 10y agoEvernote
- achompas 10y agoDay One for general notes, 2Do for notes on tasks. (I use Mac and iOS.)
- reitanqild 10y agoDay One is one of a very few apps I miss from Mac OS X, another being Alarms from Mediaatelier I think although that one disappeared from Mac OS X as well because the API it used was phased out.
- hartator 10y agoIt's interesting that everyone seems to do something different. I wonder why this not a solved issue yet which one best and obvious way.
- tannerc 10y agoiA Writer has been invaluable for me in capturing notes at work or on-the-go.
- CypressXM 10y agoI use DIA, which is unusual since it's a diagramming program. I love it though I've been using it for 10 years to take notes and manage dev and spec out projects.
- Kenji 10y agonotepad.exe
- king_magic 10y agoOneNote, iOS, Mac and Win10
- goerz 10y agoGoodNotes on iPad Pro 12.9 inch with Apple Pencil
- niceperson 10y agoThis: https://github.com/pimterry/notes https://github.com/pimterry/notes This is not my repo.
- hexmiles 10y agoOnenote. For me the killer feature is the ability to put text wherever i want, and move it later, i just click where i want to write in the page and type, it really changed the way i take note, it feel more natural and more close to the "paper experience". i tried opensource solution, but all the one i found allow only for "linear" note taking, witch is ok if i need to take a quick note, but if i need to "prototype" or brainstorm something i feel them to restrictive. where onenote is not avaible or overkill i simply use markdown files, with git for versioning and Syncthing for syncronization. edit: correct some typo
- baldfat 10y agoAs a college student I hooked up a microphone (A tiny shotgun mic) and the audio would sync with my notes. It was simply amazing. As a librarian I bought OneNote for the whole student body and taught every freshman for 1.5 hours on how to use it. Less then 2 dozen students said at the end of the year they used it. I no longer purchased OneNote. People are strange.
- reitanqild 10y agoReally like OneNote too. One geature it really lacks though is real tagging (#hashtags). Ideally keep the current system (ctrl+1 to cycle through checkbox, checked checkbox and nothing is nice) but add tags on top. (If they have added tags and I haven't realized then I'll be happy to know.)
- 10y ago
- pklausler 10y agoA fine-pointed Lamy 2000 fountain pen with Sailor black ink on Quo Vadis notebooks. Typing distracts me.
- PLenz 10y agoGraph notebooks, the real, dead tree kind. I also like sharpie pens.
- germinalphrase 10y agoDefault Notes on iPhone. TextEdit > iCloud on desktop.
- neovive 10y agoDrafts seems interesting for mobile (with nice Markdown support). http://agiletortoise.com/drafts/ http://agiletortoise.com/drafts/
- andremendes 10y agoA Telegram group with myself, only.
- reitanqild 10y agoSame here, in addition to long form in Asciidoc FX. (It is searchable and taggable so I'll use it like """#LP12345 #oil +2dl km234567""" where LP12345 is my license plate number. That way I can for example always go back and find how much oil my car uses.
- khasan222 10y agoWorkflowy. Simple and effective.
- goranb 10y agoVim + VimWiki
- ganonm 10y agoI have a directory ~/Documents/TODO/ inside which I have single file for each feature I'm working on. These files simply contain a list of items marked as completed or not completed using a tick/cross. It's simple, non-proprietary and is easy to put under source control. For long-term note taking I use Evernote. This is for things like obscure git commands and 'how-to's.
- reitanqild 10y agoHappy with Asciidoc FX with gitlab as backend for now although I am sometimes looking for and might[0] be happy to pay for an even better solution. [0]: yep. I sometimes even pay for inexpensive software just because I like the idea even if I don't end up using it.
- artimaeis 10y agoI'm a pretty big fan of taking notes with pen & paper then setting time aside to transcribe them to a markdown file and saving them in a GitHub repo. The pen & paper part means I don't have to lug my laptop around so often - I try not to use meeting times to actually do things anyways. I figure if a handful of people are in a room together it's best to focus on the reason we're all in one place and pen/paper lets me do just that. Then the digital archival is a way to force me to review my notes and commit the better parts of them to memory. So long as I can get that done within a few hours it tends to work well. Then they're available for me and others to text search accordingly.
- patleeman 10y agoI've always tried to reconcile notebook taking with digital notes and this sounds like a great reason to use both. I have a bad habit of taking notes in meetings and then forgetting about them.
- reacharavindh 10y agoNotability on 9.7inch iPad Pro with Apple Pencil. Closest I could get to the feel of writing on paper. But, I can access my notes whenever whereever. I can even import PDF docs into it and annotate on them while I read. Just like on printed paper. One thing I wish it did is to let me export as HTML instead of PDF. I would love share my notes as blog posts.
- mnkmnk 10y agoSublime text. I can just open a new document and start typing. I don't need to save the file and the tab collapse keeps the high level notes clean.
- iansowinski 10y agoI mainly use Lechtum1917 dotted A6 notebook + Micron pen, but when i take less analogue notes, i choose Vim + markdown + dropbox and MarkdownX on smartphone
- mfaessel 10y agoBoostnote
- mfaessel 10y agoBoostnote
- reitanqild 10y agoWas this thread just killed? I can't see it on any of the three first pages.
- RUG3Y 10y agoI'm using the Plain Notes Sublime plugin right now, but I also like OneNote. I haven't landed on a long-term solution yet.
- jmcfarlane 10y agohttps://github.com/jmcfarlane/notable https://github.com/jmcfarlane/notable
- jmcfarlane 10y agohttps://github.com/jmcfarlane/notable https://github.com/jmcfarlane/notable
- jm0dotcodes 10y agoClassic UNIX file, edited with the 'ed' command :) Nothing fancy.
- stijlist 10y agoThis shell script: #!/bin/sh while true; do $EDITOR $NOTESDIR"$(ls -t $NOTESDIR | selecta --scrolloff --passthrough)" done It replicates the core interaction model of Notational Velocity: type to fuzzy-filter the list of notes (sorted by MRU) by filename, enter to edit the notes, and quit the editor to end up back in the list of notes. I forked selecta to add those flags - --passthrough means that the text typed in to filter is emitted on stdout if it doesn't match anything. This way you create a note if it doesn't exist. https://github.com/stijlist/bin/blob/master/nv https://github.com/stijlist/bin/blob/master/nv
- charlieegan3 10y agoI have a simple crud app hosted on heroku.
- newbear 10y agoWhat back end? In general, what's the set up like?
- charlieegan3 10y agoRails and Postgres. Pretty standard setup really. Used the rails scaffolding to put it together.
- jenhsun 10y agonvALT and any smartphone voice recorder.
- 7hertz 10y agoThis! Can't believe there aren't more people using nvALT. My question for iOS nvALT users is, what app do you use for the iPhone? I've only been able to find Simplenote, which is fine, but it syncs the content of my notes as clear text, which isn't fine. Is there any other iOS app that syncs with nvALT?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- neurocroc 10y agoI use Mind Maps for all my note taking. https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map I found it to be the most optimal format for this task.
- xdux 10y agothat's awesome!
- baldfat 10y agoI usually do notes in a plain text files and I LOVE MIND MAPS for concepts and use XMind.
- gorbachev 10y agoI primarily use Wunderlist, because it's truly cross platform. I can use it on my desktop, phone and the web just the same. I use it mostly for actionable notes...things I'm planning on doing something about at some point. It's more of an idea bank than a todo list, though, for me. For more free form note taking I'm using Rocketbook's "smart" notebooks (https://getrocketbook.com/ https://getrocketbook.com/). I can scan the notes to Evernote, and when the notebook gets full, I can easily erase the notes and reuse the notebook.
- janitor61 10y agoWikidPad
- lousken 10y agoDepends on type of notes - shopping list google keep(in case they shut it down there's omni notes). Otherwise I use markdown + latex(math) in whatever editor I have at my disposal. Then I view it in e.g. hackmd.io / VSC / neutriNote. I've tried word, onenote but it didn't work for me - writing formulas and equations is much faster in latex. I don't go full latex though because markdown is much more readable in its raw form. Graphs are still pain though, haven't really solved that, especially those without absolute values.
- ericzawo 10y agoDynalist. It's the ultimate to-do list application. Syncs offline, can support markdown AND LaTeX AND code, images, links, and shareable options with your team. It's basically the successor to Workflowy you didn't know you needed. AND it's made by two awesome university students that maintain a public roadmap and actually listen to their community.
- onuralp 10y agoBear App. http://www.bear-writer.com/ http://www.bear-writer.com/
- marcolussetti 10y agoMarkdown files using Typora (https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/) on either Linux or Windows
- pencilcode 10y agoVim + vimwiki for notes that deserve to last. These are saved in bitbucket private repo. Per project also have a single markdown file inside the project's directory with dashes and crosses for tasks.
- oceanghost 10y agoI have been happy with Evernote for years. My user number is absurdly low (like in the 200ks). However I no longer keep any information in evernote I consider sensitive. Just research notes. I would love to find a reasonably well made self-hosted note app.
- mirodin 10y agoTiddlywiki http://tiddlywiki.com/ http://tiddlywiki.com/
- patleeman 10y agoCollate Full disclosure, I created it! I made it because there was nothing comparable on the market. Cross-platform, plain text with a powerful markdown editor. I've since added a rich text editor, web clipper and a workflowy style outline note type. I'm also planning on adding git support soon. http://collatenotes.com http://collatenotes.com
- icedata 10y agoEmacs and org-mode, use Dropbox to sync across windows, linux, android. Orgzly on Android.
- LorenzoLlamas 10y agoWhat? Really? No one but one other uses TextEdit? At least among Mac users? And before that, I used NotePad on Windows. It's notes. It doesn't need to 'sync' to your mobile device and be in a cloud somewhere. It's just some notes. What is with everyone these days sharing their whole lives on a server somewhere? Is everyone paranoid of data loss? So what? If you lose it all, it was meant to be. Relax. You guys are supposed to be geeks and yet you are giving the NSA more data than they could ever hope to get from the average Joe. If I see another Org-mode or wiki "note" demo on YouTube, I'll croak. Get a life. Or a girlfriend. Or go play with your children. Or visit some nature. Get away from the screeeeen.... Not even the president has to organize notes. I saw one Org-Mode clown rant about how he had 1000+ lines of notes for various things in one file. That's not notes. That's the fringes of madness. Delete it all. Start over. I'm starting to think that the days of hard drive crashes were actually a good thing. I can understand if you are a real science researcher or investigative journalist (for work). Or if you want to ensure you have copies of your tax returns or medical records. But notes? NOTES? Grocery lists? Who makes grocery lists and needs to sync them everywhere? Go live on a farm for a while or something. Uh, it's cheese of some kind, milk of some kind, coffee of some kind, produce, fish, meat, and avoid the candy and canned item aisles. There's your grocery list. Do you same folks have list about what order to put on your clothes each day? (Don't answer that).
- ivcha 9y agoRedNotebook