7 ms·

Due to the bugs in Apple Notes on macOS 10.15 and iOS 13, I just spent some time evaluating as many note taking apps for Mac as possible. I ended up picking htt

Due to the bugs in Apple Notes on macOS 10.15 and iOS 13, I just spent some time evaluating as many note taking apps for Mac as possible. I ended up picking https://ia.net/writer https://ia.net/writer Typora was interesting but it was very buggy, and doesn't handle tags which are important for notes. My main criteria were an open file format, ideally editing plain text files on disk using Markdown as the formatting. This ruled out apps like OneNote, InkDrop, Standard Notes and others. If you don't mind about having a proprietary database so long as the data can be exported to Markdown, https://bear.app https://bear.app is my favourite so long as you're on an Apple device. I will also be interested in https://nvultra.com/ https://nvultra.com/ once it comes out of private beta. I published my full writeup today at https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for-mac-markdown-open-format-cross-platform/ https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for-mac-m...

austhrow743 7y ago
FYI OneNote is free and in Bear you can export all notes at once to markdown which if coming from Notes you may not have thought to try. Can have a folder with all of your notes stored in markdown within a couple seconds.
- peternicky 7y ago
  onenote is a whole different ballgame than the editors in this thread. Onenote does not support markdown and is essentially a stripped down "word" variation.
Shinkirou 7y ago
What a very complete and interesting writeup, thank you for sharing. I've also recently started using iA Writer, on Win 10 and Android. The program is solid to a fault and extremely well designed, with the flexibility of saving .md files that you can save and export everywhere. Highly recommended!
jason_slack 7y ago
I have been using IA Writer too, but it doesn't support GitHub flavor markdown. So sometimes when I take content from IA Writer and paste it into GitHub (or even Discourse) the formatting and specifics are off or just not working without massaging things a bit. For my every day writings and academic pursuits IA Writer does work really well.
taeric 7y ago
You should check out org-mode in emacs. Fits your main criteria perfectly. :)
throwGuardian 7y ago
After reading your review, lack of tags and "Electron" were you biggest complaints against Typora. Typora is not a notes manger, and reviewing it for what it's not trying to be, is unfair. As for electron, despite the perception of being a hog, Typora's resource usage is about 150MB in RAM and 0.5% CPU when idle. I think your modern MacBook pro can trivially handle that. In my opinion, Typora's advantages are: 1. WYSIWYG markdown. I don't believe iAWriter is WYSIWYG. While that's ok for developers, Typora is more widely usable. 2. Extensions: from Mermaid, LateX, sequence diagrams to code highlighting, to export to ePub (via Pandoc), Typora is a lot more versatile 3. Saves files as text (.md) and assets, easily searchable via OS. Highly portable 4. Cross platform (Mac, Windows, Linux)
- mikewhy 7y ago
  > Typora is not a notes manger, and reviewing it for what it's not trying to be, is unfair. From the site: "Typora provides both file tree panel and articles (file list) panel, allows you to manage your files easily."
  - throwGuardian 7y ago
    Yes - a feature of the editor is that it shows a file list panel for the directory the .md file is in. I'm not seeing that as "We're a notes app"
Scarbutt 7y ago
Since you evaluated proprietary versions, have you check out notion.io? For note taking, I have found it great.

austhrow743 7y ago

FYI OneNote is free and in Bear you can export all notes at once to markdown which if coming from Notes you may not have thought to try. Can have a folder with all of your notes stored in markdown within a couple seconds.

peternicky 7y ago
onenote is a whole different ballgame than the editors in this thread. Onenote does not support markdown and is essentially a stripped down "word" variation.

Shinkirou 7y ago

What a very complete and interesting writeup, thank you for sharing. I've also recently started using iA Writer, on Win 10 and Android. The program is solid to a fault and extremely well designed, with the flexibility of saving .md files that you can save and export everywhere. Highly recommended!

jason_slack 7y ago

I have been using IA Writer too, but it doesn't support GitHub flavor markdown. So sometimes when I take content from IA Writer and paste it into GitHub (or even Discourse) the formatting and specifics are off or just not working without massaging things a bit. For my every day writings and academic pursuits IA Writer does work really well.

taeric 7y ago

You should check out org-mode in emacs. Fits your main criteria perfectly. :)

throwGuardian 7y ago

After reading your review, lack of tags and "Electron" were you biggest complaints against Typora. Typora is not a notes manger, and reviewing it for what it's not trying to be, is unfair. As for electron, despite the perception of being a hog, Typora's resource usage is about 150MB in RAM and 0.5% CPU when idle. I think your modern MacBook pro can trivially handle that. In my opinion, Typora's advantages are: 1. WYSIWYG markdown. I don't believe iAWriter is WYSIWYG. While that's ok for developers, Typora is more widely usable. 2. Extensions: from Mermaid, LateX, sequence diagrams to code highlighting, to export to ePub (via Pandoc), Typora is a lot more versatile 3. Saves files as text (.md) and assets, easily searchable via OS. Highly portable 4. Cross platform (Mac, Windows, Linux)

mikewhy 7y ago
> Typora is not a notes manger, and reviewing it for what it's not trying to be, is unfair. From the site: "Typora provides both file tree panel and articles (file list) panel, allows you to manage your files easily."
- throwGuardian 7y ago
  Yes - a feature of the editor is that it shows a file list panel for the directory the .md file is in. I'm not seeing that as "We're a notes app"

Scarbutt 7y ago

Since you evaluated proprietary versions, have you check out notion.io? For note taking, I have found it great.