12 ms·

I have over a thousand notes in Evernote. One day I noticed that one was missing shortly after I created it. Eventually I discovered that the convenient new-no

I have over a thousand notes in Evernote. One day I noticed that one was missing shortly after I created it. Eventually I discovered that the convenient new-note shortcut was failing every time with a database corruption error - but the error only appeared in a system log I was unaware of. There was no indication to the user that the notes were failing. To this day I have no idea how many notes I lost due to this bug. It was a traumatic experience. It also sometimes simply doesn't sync for days on end, until I notice and trigger it manually. This leads to conflicts I must resolve manually. What do other people use that has similar: - Low-friction global shortcuts for creating and searching. - Organization (tags and notebooks, or something similar). - A UI that handles large note bodies well. - Is at least on Windows, macOS, and Android. I'd love an alternative, but I've yet to find one. And I don't even use most of its features.

acl777 8y ago
OneNote. It’s free on all platforms and handles your listed requirements.
- arkitaip 8y ago
  If OneNote had been made by a hot new startup if would have crushed the competition (easy to use! affordable! very flexible! just works!). Instead, it's too often glossed over because it's made by one of IT's behemoths and not considered to be sexy enough.
  - criddell 8y ago
    How is the OCR in OneNote now? One of the features keeping me on Evernote is being able to take a photo of a whiteboard and put it in Evernote which then does a surprisingly good job of recognizing the text and making the photo searchable.
    - landonxjames 8y ago
      Not bad at all, even with my atrocious handwriting it manages to be around 85% accurate.
      - criddell 8y ago
        I'll have to check it out again. Last time I spent some time with it, the UI just never clicked for me. My main notetaking device is my iPad with a Pencil stylus and GoodNotes. It does a great job of interpreting my handwriting and then I can export a searchable PDF to Evernote, or I guess, OneNote. Is the metadata search in OneNote decent? For example, can I search for notes I created in Houston?
        duado 8y ago
        The thing about Microsoft’s stuff is that it slowly but inexorably gets better over time. Like a watched pot, if you are waiting for a feature it will never arrive but if you walk away and come back a few years later it will be significantly better.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        coffeeling 8y ago
        "Is the metadata search in OneNote decent? For example, can I search for notes I created in Houston?" Don't think so. You can search note titles, bodies, section names, section group names, handwriting, OCRed text in attached images (OneNote can embed pdfs as attachments or insert a printout of the file as images, it doesn't have an inline pdf reader yet). It can't search inside attachments or inside cloud attachments. The app has its own tagging system that lets you attach tags to eg. paragraphs and the desktop clients have tag search and custom tag creation. The desktop and mobile apps both also have search that treats "#word" and "word" as different things, so you can jury-rig a hashtagging system should you want to.
  - asdff 8y ago
    When I first tried it in like 2012 it was absolutely a mess that crashed all the time and bogged down with hardly any notes and was deserving of all the hate it got. If it was in the hands of a startup it would have been long gone by now.
- adrianmsmith 8y ago
  It's worth noting that OneNote did always have synchronization issues until 1-2 years ago. There is plenty written about that on the web. Now it seems they've completely fixed them.
  - bwat49 8y ago
    In my experience, onenote's synchronization still has serious performance issues if you have a huge number of notes. Try moving or deleting a large number of notes and watch it just completely lock up for 20 minutes. Also, initial sync on a new machine is ridiculously slow. As in I need to leave it for hours before it totally syncs everything.
    - coffeeling 8y ago
      2016 or the Win10 app? 2016 sync is a lot slower than modern sync (Win10, macOS, mobile)
      - bwat49 8y ago
        I've used both, most recently the win10 app.
- mathattack 8y ago
  This! Once Microsoft bundles something that has 80% of what people want, you need to get far ahead on the innovation curve. (Though I will never understand why the formatting gets messed up when copying pasting from OneNote to Outlook)
- lscotte 8y ago
  I like and use OneNote, but "all platforms" isn't quite correct - there is no native Linux client, so I have to use the browser version, which isn't nearly as good as native versions.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    While MS doesn't do great on Linux support, given their web push, I can usually find a decent Electron alternative for desktop linux. Of course it's more overhead than native, but a lot of MS's own implementations for tools are now electron based. https://github.com/patrikx3/onenote https://github.com/patrikx3/onenote
    - lscotte 8y ago
      Thanks for that link, I'll definitely be trying that out.
- torstenvl 8y ago
  There is no Mac version of OneNote. There is only a Mac version of a thin client for OneNote on OneDrive.
  - markolschesky 8y ago
    Is this not the full version? https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id784801555?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id78480155... It's not quite as feature complete if you're not using Office, but it's still pretty handy.
    - torstenvl 8y ago
      It cannot save or open local notebooks. That's beyond "not quite as feature complete." It's a thin client for a web app.
      - coffeeling 8y ago
        That's a gross exaggeration. Every OneNote client (except for the browser one) downloads everything from OneDrive to the local machine and does all the changes to that local copy, which then gets synced to OneDrive. You could take weeks' worth of notes and peruse mountains of reference without any Internet access and the app wouldn't bat an eye. It's true the app's positioned as an online service rather than a file reader for offline files the way it started, but calling a native app that operates on local data a "thin client" is just disingenuous.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- eddiecalzone 8y ago
  Are you able to create/filter/update/delete tags across all devices now in OneNote? I know that wasn't the case for Android as recently as 6 months ago.
ubermonkey 8y ago
For me? OrgMode. I'm 100% done trusting proprietary formats for this data. My OrgMode files are all plain text, so they can be read on any platform.
- bloopernova 8y ago
  I was going to comment to recommend orgmode too. Like you said, the org files are plain text, they can be opened by practically anything, and can be saved practically anywhere. I use Orgzly on Android, which syncs manually to DropBox. A free dropbox 2GB space is going to store a lot of orgmode files! I edit mostly through Orgzly, although I do use the orgmode extension in Visual Studio Code to edit on my laptop. http://www.orgzly.com/ http://www.orgzly.com/
  - ubermonkey 8y ago
    I guess the real answer is "a folder of text files you sync." You don't have to use Orgmode or emacs at all to get a good chunk of the benefit here. True, you can't do rich text or media, but it turns out I almost never even WANT to do that. Anyway, I was doing sync'd text with a Mac tool called Notational Velocity for years before I got sucked into OrgMode (emacs' Deft mode is a workalike). Point any iOS or Android editor at a Dropbox folder and you've got mobile sync on the cheap with versioned backup and more or less ever present and completely open data that works on any platform. OneNote and EN may have some shiny features, but NOTHING they do is worth locking your data up.
    - bloopernova 8y ago
      > True, you can't do rich text or media, but it turns out I almost never even WANT to do that. And the times that you do, you can use Markdown and Pandoc to convert it. And mdfind/spotlight will index and search it just fine, as will any other search tool you wish to use. I lament some of my coworkers inability to see the utility in text+markdown+pandoc or even just a plain old wiki like Dokuwiki. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to wait a day for someone to dig out an excel spreadsheet to email me an immediately-out-of-date copy. While I will joke about how people would find it so much easier if they just did everything I said, I do wonder why so many people keep themselves permanently handicapped by their choice of information storage and sharing.
jalopy 8y ago
I've captured (in Evernote, ironically) a few Evernote alternatives. Haven't had time to look them over yet, so not sure how much they address each of your needs: - https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/: open source html and pdf document manager. Supports Anki flashcards, local storage, markup of pdfs, tracking reading progress, more - https://www.notion.so https://www.notion.so - paid/hosted service - https://joplin.cozic.net/ https://joplin.cozic.net/ - seems like a decent open source project If you check these out and respond here (or in a new "Tell HN") with your thoughts, I'd love to read it.
- russellbeattie 8y ago
  I've been happily using Joplin for about a year now, after having been an Evernote paid user for years. It's definitely "good enough" for my needs, and it's open source so it's hackable (I added in a 'today's date' shortcut key just by hacking the production package - I didn't even bother to build it.) Everyone of course wants something different from a note taker, but I figured I'd chime in with an endorsement.
Blaiz0r 8y ago
Turtl, it's free, open source, and IF you want, you can self host it.
h0p3 8y ago
I cannot speak highly enough of Tiddlywiki. I prefer shaping my wiki (https://philosopher.life/ https://philosopher.life/) to relying upon Evernote.
McDev 8y ago
I've started using Standard Notes. https://standardnotes.org/ https://standardnotes.org/ They have purpose built plugins (which also work seamlessly between desktop and mobile) to allow for tags & markdown. Their 'longevity' statement was quite appealing to me also: https://standardnotes.org/longevity https://standardnotes.org/longevity
asdff 8y ago
I use zotero for papers and plain text files in folders for everything else. Dropbox keeps everything synced and I'll definitely be able to open a text or pdf file in 40 years, not too sure about evernote.
analogmemory 8y ago
I've switched over to Notion. They even have a tool now to transfer all your notes from Evernote. Feels simple to use but has some really powerful features. https://www.notion.so https://www.notion.so
redwards510 8y ago
If you have a Synology NAS, DS Note is amazing. It's a full featured Evernote/OneNote clone that you self-host on your NAS. Mobile clients available. Easy import from Evernote backup, etc.
sxldier 8y ago
I've been using Trilium[1] over the past two months and I really like it. It's being actively maintained and worked on and is just getting better and better. Although, the Android client is quite limited. There's an app to send notes. You can however, use the browser. [1] https://github.com/zadam/trilium/ https://github.com/zadam/trilium/
coffeeling 8y ago
OneNote maybe? Ctrl+E = search across all notebooks Ctrl+F = search within currently selected note You can also search within current notebook, section or section group but there's no keyboard shortcut for that. Hierarchical organization's stronger than Evernote: https://i.imgur.com/X0qbxg3.png https://i.imgur.com/X0qbxg3.png The app has its own tagging system that lets you attach tags to eg. paragraphs and the desktop clients have tag search and custom tag creation. The desktop and mobile apps both also have search that treats "#word" and "word" as different things, so you can jury-rig a hashtagging system should you want to. The big difference is that both OneNote Tags and #hashtags have to live within the note body, they're not metadata properties of the note the way they are in Evernote. UI for large notes shouldn't be worse than Evernote's. Is on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, web, though different clients have different featuresets. Cost is the price of however much OneDrive storage you need for the notes.

acl777 8y ago

OneNote. It’s free on all platforms and handles your listed requirements.

arkitaip 8y ago
If OneNote had been made by a hot new startup if would have crushed the competition (easy to use! affordable! very flexible! just works!). Instead, it's too often glossed over because it's made by one of IT's behemoths and not considered to be sexy enough.
- criddell 8y ago
  How is the OCR in OneNote now? One of the features keeping me on Evernote is being able to take a photo of a whiteboard and put it in Evernote which then does a surprisingly good job of recognizing the text and making the photo searchable.
  - landonxjames 8y ago
    Not bad at all, even with my atrocious handwriting it manages to be around 85% accurate.
    - criddell 8y ago
      I'll have to check it out again. Last time I spent some time with it, the UI just never clicked for me. My main notetaking device is my iPad with a Pencil stylus and GoodNotes. It does a great job of interpreting my handwriting and then I can export a searchable PDF to Evernote, or I guess, OneNote. Is the metadata search in OneNote decent? For example, can I search for notes I created in Houston?
      - duado 8y ago
        The thing about Microsoft’s stuff is that it slowly but inexorably gets better over time. Like a watched pot, if you are waiting for a feature it will never arrive but if you walk away and come back a few years later it will be significantly better.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - coffeeling 8y ago
        "Is the metadata search in OneNote decent? For example, can I search for notes I created in Houston?" Don't think so. You can search note titles, bodies, section names, section group names, handwriting, OCRed text in attached images (OneNote can embed pdfs as attachments or insert a printout of the file as images, it doesn't have an inline pdf reader yet). It can't search inside attachments or inside cloud attachments. The app has its own tagging system that lets you attach tags to eg. paragraphs and the desktop clients have tag search and custom tag creation. The desktop and mobile apps both also have search that treats "#word" and "word" as different things, so you can jury-rig a hashtagging system should you want to.
- asdff 8y ago
  When I first tried it in like 2012 it was absolutely a mess that crashed all the time and bogged down with hardly any notes and was deserving of all the hate it got. If it was in the hands of a startup it would have been long gone by now.
adrianmsmith 8y ago
It's worth noting that OneNote did always have synchronization issues until 1-2 years ago. There is plenty written about that on the web. Now it seems they've completely fixed them.
- bwat49 8y ago
  In my experience, onenote's synchronization still has serious performance issues if you have a huge number of notes. Try moving or deleting a large number of notes and watch it just completely lock up for 20 minutes. Also, initial sync on a new machine is ridiculously slow. As in I need to leave it for hours before it totally syncs everything.
  - coffeeling 8y ago
    2016 or the Win10 app? 2016 sync is a lot slower than modern sync (Win10, macOS, mobile)
    - bwat49 8y ago
      I've used both, most recently the win10 app.
mathattack 8y ago
This! Once Microsoft bundles something that has 80% of what people want, you need to get far ahead on the innovation curve. (Though I will never understand why the formatting gets messed up when copying pasting from OneNote to Outlook)
lscotte 8y ago
I like and use OneNote, but "all platforms" isn't quite correct - there is no native Linux client, so I have to use the browser version, which isn't nearly as good as native versions.
- tracker1 8y ago
  While MS doesn't do great on Linux support, given their web push, I can usually find a decent Electron alternative for desktop linux. Of course it's more overhead than native, but a lot of MS's own implementations for tools are now electron based. https://github.com/patrikx3/onenote https://github.com/patrikx3/onenote
  - lscotte 8y ago
    Thanks for that link, I'll definitely be trying that out.
torstenvl 8y ago
There is no Mac version of OneNote. There is only a Mac version of a thin client for OneNote on OneDrive.
- markolschesky 8y ago
  Is this not the full version? https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id784801555?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id78480155... It's not quite as feature complete if you're not using Office, but it's still pretty handy.
  - torstenvl 8y ago
    It cannot save or open local notebooks. That's beyond "not quite as feature complete." It's a thin client for a web app.
    - coffeeling 8y ago
      That's a gross exaggeration. Every OneNote client (except for the browser one) downloads everything from OneDrive to the local machine and does all the changes to that local copy, which then gets synced to OneDrive. You could take weeks' worth of notes and peruse mountains of reference without any Internet access and the app wouldn't bat an eye. It's true the app's positioned as an online service rather than a file reader for offline files the way it started, but calling a native app that operates on local data a "thin client" is just disingenuous.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
eddiecalzone 8y ago
Are you able to create/filter/update/delete tags across all devices now in OneNote? I know that wasn't the case for Android as recently as 6 months ago.

ubermonkey 8y ago

For me? OrgMode. I'm 100% done trusting proprietary formats for this data. My OrgMode files are all plain text, so they can be read on any platform.

bloopernova 8y ago
I was going to comment to recommend orgmode too. Like you said, the org files are plain text, they can be opened by practically anything, and can be saved practically anywhere. I use Orgzly on Android, which syncs manually to DropBox. A free dropbox 2GB space is going to store a lot of orgmode files! I edit mostly through Orgzly, although I do use the orgmode extension in Visual Studio Code to edit on my laptop. http://www.orgzly.com/ http://www.orgzly.com/
- ubermonkey 8y ago
  I guess the real answer is "a folder of text files you sync." You don't have to use Orgmode or emacs at all to get a good chunk of the benefit here. True, you can't do rich text or media, but it turns out I almost never even WANT to do that. Anyway, I was doing sync'd text with a Mac tool called Notational Velocity for years before I got sucked into OrgMode (emacs' Deft mode is a workalike). Point any iOS or Android editor at a Dropbox folder and you've got mobile sync on the cheap with versioned backup and more or less ever present and completely open data that works on any platform. OneNote and EN may have some shiny features, but NOTHING they do is worth locking your data up.
  - bloopernova 8y ago
    > True, you can't do rich text or media, but it turns out I almost never even WANT to do that. And the times that you do, you can use Markdown and Pandoc to convert it. And mdfind/spotlight will index and search it just fine, as will any other search tool you wish to use. I lament some of my coworkers inability to see the utility in text+markdown+pandoc or even just a plain old wiki like Dokuwiki. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to wait a day for someone to dig out an excel spreadsheet to email me an immediately-out-of-date copy. While I will joke about how people would find it so much easier if they just did everything I said, I do wonder why so many people keep themselves permanently handicapped by their choice of information storage and sharing.

jalopy 8y ago

I've captured (in Evernote, ironically) a few Evernote alternatives. Haven't had time to look them over yet, so not sure how much they address each of your needs: - https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/: open source html and pdf document manager. Supports Anki flashcards, local storage, markup of pdfs, tracking reading progress, more - https://www.notion.so https://www.notion.so - paid/hosted service - https://joplin.cozic.net/ https://joplin.cozic.net/ - seems like a decent open source project If you check these out and respond here (or in a new "Tell HN") with your thoughts, I'd love to read it.

russellbeattie 8y ago
I've been happily using Joplin for about a year now, after having been an Evernote paid user for years. It's definitely "good enough" for my needs, and it's open source so it's hackable (I added in a 'today's date' shortcut key just by hacking the production package - I didn't even bother to build it.) Everyone of course wants something different from a note taker, but I figured I'd chime in with an endorsement.

Blaiz0r 8y ago

Turtl, it's free, open source, and IF you want, you can self host it.

h0p3 8y ago

I cannot speak highly enough of Tiddlywiki. I prefer shaping my wiki (https://philosopher.life/ https://philosopher.life/) to relying upon Evernote.

McDev 8y ago

I've started using Standard Notes. https://standardnotes.org/ https://standardnotes.org/ They have purpose built plugins (which also work seamlessly between desktop and mobile) to allow for tags & markdown. Their 'longevity' statement was quite appealing to me also: https://standardnotes.org/longevity https://standardnotes.org/longevity

asdff 8y ago

I use zotero for papers and plain text files in folders for everything else. Dropbox keeps everything synced and I'll definitely be able to open a text or pdf file in 40 years, not too sure about evernote.

analogmemory 8y ago

I've switched over to Notion. They even have a tool now to transfer all your notes from Evernote. Feels simple to use but has some really powerful features. https://www.notion.so https://www.notion.so

redwards510 8y ago

If you have a Synology NAS, DS Note is amazing. It's a full featured Evernote/OneNote clone that you self-host on your NAS. Mobile clients available. Easy import from Evernote backup, etc.

sxldier 8y ago

I've been using Trilium[1] over the past two months and I really like it. It's being actively maintained and worked on and is just getting better and better. Although, the Android client is quite limited. There's an app to send notes. You can however, use the browser. [1] https://github.com/zadam/trilium/ https://github.com/zadam/trilium/

coffeeling 8y ago

OneNote maybe? Ctrl+E = search across all notebooks Ctrl+F = search within currently selected note You can also search within current notebook, section or section group but there's no keyboard shortcut for that. Hierarchical organization's stronger than Evernote: https://i.imgur.com/X0qbxg3.png https://i.imgur.com/X0qbxg3.png The app has its own tagging system that lets you attach tags to eg. paragraphs and the desktop clients have tag search and custom tag creation. The desktop and mobile apps both also have search that treats "#word" and "word" as different things, so you can jury-rig a hashtagging system should you want to. The big difference is that both OneNote Tags and #hashtags have to live within the note body, they're not metadata properties of the note the way they are in Evernote. UI for large notes shouldn't be worse than Evernote's. Is on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, web, though different clients have different featuresets. Cost is the price of however much OneDrive storage you need for the notes.