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Maybe this is just me getting old, but I feel like Evernote has only gotten worse since I started using it over 10 years ago. Back then it was just a list of no

Maybe this is just me getting old, but I feel like Evernote has only gotten worse since I started using it over 10 years ago. Back then it was just a list of notes with some formatting and sync capabilities - perfect. These days they have added all these extra features which I don't need, and which have made the whole app slow and terribly clunky. When I use the iPad app it takes several seconds to load notes or search, and the UI keeps jumping around if it hasn't loaded completely yet. Terrible experience. The icing on the cake is that they changed the welcome page of the app to no longer show the list of notes - and if you want to edit the page to get that list back, you have to sign up to their premium subscription! And I'm already paying too, just not for the right level of subscription apparently. I have been meaning to find an alternative for months now, so if anyone has any suggestions please do let me know! The most important features to me are note syncing across iOS/Mac/Windows and the ability to import my notes from Evernote.

ibluehh 5y ago
Notion
- mywaifuismeta 5y ago
  Same thing. Incredibly slow and clunky for me as well. Seems like all tools go through this evolution because you know, somehow they have to get VC-sized returns instead of staying small and nimble. I stopped using tools with any kind of lock-in or custom format because I know they will eventually degrade into something unusable.
- nnoitra 5y ago
  Notion is just way too convoluted.
- mszcz 5y ago
  It's nice but it's slow. Would love to have a solution that combined Notion's capabilities with Sublime Text's speed and maybe JetBrains's ability to work with keyboard shortcuts.
  - randomluck040 5y ago
    You might take a look at Obsidian. For me it’s the best of two (or how many you like) worlds. You can sync your files via git or a cloud service of your liking. What bugs me is that it’s not open source but what makes it great is a lot of open source developers contributing plugins and themes.
    - mszcz 5y ago
      Oh, I did. It looked real nice but I'm not there yet. Sticking to Sublime Text for the time being but if I were to switch to something right now, I'd be Obsidian.
    - fguerraz 5y ago
      I know it's biased because it's an opinion from a competitor, but it's interesting nevertheless: https://blog.standardnotes.com/33536/how-not-to-build-a-secure-plugins-architecture https://blog.standardnotes.com/33536/how-not-to-build-a-secu...
      - randomluck040 5y ago
        I‘ll give it a read, thank you!
      - jitl 5y ago
        Have you considered adding a capability for plugins to draw HTML into an <iframe sandbox>? I'm always pondering such features, but I'm wary of letting a plugin potentially block the CPU forever with custom <script> elements. I have a solution to plugin CPU blocking for pure API plugins (https://github.com/justjake/quickjs-emscripten https://github.com/justjake/quickjs-emscripten) but not a way to meld it safely with HTML access.
- sdoering 5y ago
  Notion has a very nice feature set. I like to use it for my freelance side business. Currently it is sadly the best set of features within one tool for me (at least the subset I use). I would love to switch to an open source variant to self host. But till then I will probably stay with it. Still. I don't like the slowness (web and app). I don't like how it feels just off sometimes. And how the Android app just so-so works for me.
  - randomluck040 5y ago
    What bugs me more than Notion not being open source is that the notes are nowhere on my device apparently but on their servers. I don’t have anything locally. If something happens to Notion or I don’t have access to the web, I’m done?
    - conscion 5y ago
      Notion has export function that allows exporting your entire workspace to Markdown, HTML, or PDF. I do it once a month so that. (It'd be really nice though if Notion had an automated solution to back up to Google Drive, etc.)
      - randomluck040 5y ago
        Today I’ve learned! I knew about the export function but not that you could export the entire workspace. I’ll take a look into that. I’m currently 50/50 between Notion and Obsidian, however a blog post regarding obsidian plugins makes me think twice…
- grandchild 5y ago
  I find it telling that notion managed to break the core web concept of the hyperlink by implementing their own version of the <a> tag. If I middle-click on a link to open it in a new tab, I paste-insert my clipboard content _into the link text_ instead (I'm on Linux). That's just horrible.
  - jitl 5y ago
    (I work at Notion) It's actually the browser's default behavior to do what you're describing! Inside a `contenteditable` element, links no longer behave as links -- they aren't clickable, and hovering over the link doesn't show a preview of the HREF attribute in the browsers I've tested. So in order for links to do link things, we have to fight the browser and re-implement these behaviors. Here's a codesandbox with no JS to demonstate this: https://codesandbox.io/embed/optimistic-resonance-jbyeef?fontsize=14&hidenavigation=1&theme=dark https://codesandbox.io/embed/optimistic-resonance-jbyeef?fon... I created a task to track this bug internally. I think we can probably solve by calling preventDefault for the middle-click event if it bubbles up from inside a link.
    - jfdksjf4hfsfasa 5y ago
      (not gp) Is there any way to track the progress of this? I would be very happy to see this fixed. Btw, if links inside a contenteditable aren't supposed to behave as links, why make it clickable in the first place? Because if you make it act like a link, you indeed have to reimplement the whole thing because of expectations. I'm no interaction designer, but imho a simple edit button would be mucher simpler. It could still be integrated nicely, no need to have wiki-like editing where the entire context is lost.
      - jitl 5y ago
        I think an edit button could improve Notion’s UX for small touchscreen devices where drag gesture is used for both scrolling and editing, but it would make the product worse for larger screen devices with precise pointing. It’s better to work hard in order to build the ideal product, than to make developers lives easy at the cost of a worse product.
- bellBivDinesh 5y ago
  I use notion and I have to say regardless of what you want to use it for it will probably do much more than that for your use case once you understand how it works. My only quibble is the lack of offline functionality.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Yes. We carry supercomputers in our pockets, it's nice being able to use them and not be subject to connection issues or server outages, or developer whim.
zerr 5y ago
Many products would have been better off by declaring them as feature complete and only continuing fixing bugs. Unfortunately, this happens rarely due to misalignment with employment incentives I believe.
- DesiLurker 5y ago
  This is the reason I believe there should be a framework/mechanism for dying companies to open source their works. this way they can continue to live on forever or at least have a way to influence something better.
  - lukifer 5y ago
    "Exit to Community": https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/exit-to-community https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/exit-to-community
    - DesiLurker 5y ago
      I did not know about that but thanks for sharing. this is what I am talking about though I believe it will have more teeth if VC firms have some sort of an alliance that adopts this model. in-fact if they do that they can dictate the terms of s/w release in more palatable licenses than say GPLv3. overall I feel a lot more work is needed in establishing some sort of commons framework.
      - lukifer 5y ago
        > establishing some sort of commons framework I very much agree, and there are some compelling projects happening in that space as well: - https://commonsstack.org/ https://commonsstack.org/ - https://commonsengine.org/ https://commonsengine.org/ Getting VC firms on-board is a tough sell, though. Their model intrinsically involves getting a greater return than the up-front investment, usually through centralization, quasi-monopoly, and rent-seeking. The low hit-rate of breakthrough successes makes the perverse incentive all the stronger: VCs need unicorn cash-cows, to offset and subsidize the failures. At best, exit-to-community would be a mechanism to cut losses on investments with a small-but-loyal userbase, but without enough revenue to be truly profitable from the VC's perspective.
avinoth 5y ago
I'm on the same boat, burnt by Evernote and trying to find the good alternative. Sticking with Obsidian for now with some apple notes in-between. But the former has too many features I don't need and later has this vendor lock-in. If I ever built a note taking app, I'll be using your tag line as a subtitle and a guiding principle :) "...just a list of notes with some formatting and sync capabilities"
- Arubis 5y ago
  It sounds like you want [nvAlt](https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/) pointed at a synced directory of text files.
not1ofU 5y ago
Joplin - https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/
- DangerousPie 5y ago
  Thank you for the suggestion, I am giving that a try right now. A little rough around the edges but seems to work quite well so far!
- lgbrandon 5y ago
  I use Joplin and a docker next cloud instance on my local home network and set Joplin to only sync on wifi. Works great to keep notes synced on phone and laptop!
- neilfrndes 5y ago
  I use Joplin with Hetzners storage box service to keep my notes in sync.
thepra 5y ago
Nextcloud Notes might work for you
robviren 5y ago
Syncthing and your favorite text editor has been great for me. Setup is fairly easy and you depend on no offical service other than people hosting a relay server which you could also host. A little more setup and DIY, but at least the experience will remain the same for a long time.
- stedguv 5y ago
  Agree! Syncthing is fabulous and this is a good use for it. Though hese days, I use Nextcloud Files and Deck more often (I can run my own Nextcloud instance).
- criddell 5y ago
  Evernote does a lot more than text. For me, the first killer feature was taking a picture of a whiteboard after a meeting. The photo metadata is indexed (date, time, location) and all the text in the photo is recognized as well. Evernote’s text recognition works better for me than any other solution I’ve tried, although Apple is getting pretty good at that too.
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    On that topic, anyone know of an automated way to convert whiteboard text and diagrams into proper vectorized diagrams (ideally including anchoring the endpoints of lines and arrows)?
  - nicwolff 5y ago
    And Apple Notes will automatically name a note with the first words of the OCRed document – did Evernote get around to adding that feature after I gave up on it?
causality0 5y ago
Evernote has only gotten worse since I started using it over 10 years ago That is the modern business model. First you build something so good it becomes indespensible then you squeeze money out of it until your customers hate you just enough to not stop using you.
- netsharc 5y ago
  I had an idea for a website: crowd-maintained list of downgrades for products, e.g. "Product: Twitter, Feature: login nag-wall when you scroll down. First Noticed: $month 2021,; Feature: killed the open API, Date: ___", etc. I still have the idea, if anyone wants to implement it, feel free.
  - maccard 5y ago
    I bet you would get a much better conversion rate if you implemented a login wall on that service though!
  - causality0 5y ago
    Hell, it's fractal, all the way from major services to operating systems to the most minor app store apps. Products get better until someone decides they aren't growing fast enough and then they get worse until they die or someone sane realizes that your video file player doesn't need its own social network.
- joshspankit 5y ago
  This is what I call “cashing out the social capital”. I don’t know if I’d call it a business model, but it’s certainly something that many modern businesses do.
  - shrimp_emoji 5y ago
    Ah, so that's what Blizzard/Bethesda have been doing. :D
    - 5y ago
_gy5c 5y ago
https://standardnotes.com https://standardnotes.com syncs well. cant speak to importing. they have an interesting privacy/encryption approach and some (all?) open source https://github.com/standardnotes https://github.com/standardnotes
- c0wb0yc0d3r 5y ago
  I found it hard to tell if standard notes is fully open source, as well. My bigger gripes are that it doesn't support (markdown) formatting without a subscription, and I can't figure out how to put notes into folders.
  - lenova 5y ago
    Folders requires a subscription on Standard Notes as well. I only use the free version of Standard Notes, but I am a big fan of the product. Their syncing has been the most solid/problem-free I've seen amongst all of the notes apps I've tried over the years.
  - tlavoie 5y ago
    I haven't used the folder option, but but search seems to have worked well enough for me. I believe the client at least is open source. (That is, when updating on Arch-based Linux, it's going through a JavaScript-based build process. Should all be there somewhere.) Their selling feature (to me) is the privacy focus, because end to end encryption is the default, and a very rare one among other note apps I've taken a look at. Sync works well, and is one way I use the app, even when I have other things like org-mode in play on some devices. It is typically quite handy to just paste something on my Linux desktop, and copy-paste on my iPhone to send somewhere iOS-specific.
abatilo 5y ago
I switched from Evernote to obsidian.md last year and am very happy with my purchase. You have to pay for the ability to sync between devices but I'm okay with that.
- gnuj3 5y ago
  You dont. I use iCloud to sync between my devices and its free. I donated to Obsidian team regardless because they created amazing piece of software but just pointing it out that you dont have to for it to work.
sofixa 5y ago
Obsidian. It's markdown based, so simple at the base, but you can go wild with plugins ( including latex, graph visualisations, dynamic queries across notes, etc.), and it supports metadata, tags, etc. if you want to. You can sync with anything supporting text files ( Git, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) or pay a bit for their ens to end encrypted service that works great.
- antiframe 5y ago
  I wouldn't mind using it but their license keeps me away.
  - uhuhoo 5y ago
    What is it about their license that bothers you? It seems pretty fair to me... Free for personal use, pay for commercial, unless you are a nonprofit or a single employee company. Did I miss something? (I assume you mean EULA: https://obsidian.md/eula https://obsidian.md/eula)
    - galkk 5y ago
      Some us based companies forbid to use obsidian due to this clause in license: This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the laws of Canada applicable in that Province. Any action or proceeding arising from or relating to this Agreement may only be brought in the courts located in Kitchener, Ontario and each party irrevocably submits to such exclusive jurisdiction and venue.
    - antiframe 5y ago
      I don't want to have to separate my notes between work and personal. Sometimes in my daily journal I will think about work things. That would requires me to pay $50 a year for an editor to edit Markdown files. That seems steep even if mostly I use it for personal use.
      - quesera 5y ago
        A solution springs to mind, but I fear it would be impolite to state it directly.
_the_inflator 5y ago
I think that Evernote went from an app to becoming a feature, a bit like Dropbox. This happened so some early startup apps 10-15 years ago. What once warranted an app is simply a feature somewhere in another app. MacOS comes with "Notes", which is perfectly sufficient for me.
temp8964 5y ago
There are comments recommending popular apps like Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, etc. I find hard to trust those apps will last 10, 15, or 20 years. I have switched note-keeping apps a few times in the past and no longer want to do so. That's why I decide I will not use any of those apps. Now I use MediaWiki through docker (with Sqlite database) on my home server. It's lightening fast for my personal use, and comes with tons of powerful features (categories, subpages, templates, math syntax, etc.). Because MediaWiki is the same system running Wikipedia, I believe it is very likely will run 10, 20, or even more years. It is not the most convenient to use, but I don't use it for quick notes, for which I just use the default note app on my phone.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kvark 5y ago
  The beauty of Obsidian (at least) is that it does not matter whether the company is still around. It’s your files in a standard Markdown format.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    I used to think so. Now I believe it's a misconception. Not all your notes can be just Markdown format. You will have image files. And then different apps handle image file location differently. Joplin turns attachment filenames to random strings. Also, Markdown format is insufficient. I will need categories and subcategories, etc. And then different apps handle those differently.
- bmarquez 5y ago
  I've previously bounced between different open-source notetaking apps but the great thing about any note format based on Markdown (Standard Notes/Obsidian/Zim/etc), is that it's pretty easy to move from one platform to another if they stop being maintained. Although in the end I ended up with Microsoft OneNote (with Obsidian for special cases), Microsoft isn't going away and they don't have a habit of killing core products like Google does.
lenova 5y ago
UpNote is my recommendation for an Evernote replacement: https://getupnote.com/ https://getupnote.com/ Cross-platform, and it feels like what Evernote was back in the day: a simple note-taking app with a beautiful UI. I replaced Evernote with it a few months ago, and it's been a daily driver since. It was first recommended to me on /r/evernote, a subreddit that has basically been echoing the OP's concerns about Evernote for the last two years it looks like.
- zuccs 5y ago
  OCR?
rossmohax 5y ago
Seen it first with Nero Burning ROM
sriku 5y ago
Workflowy! It's approach of "one infinite tree" has been a very simple mental model for me (been using for more than a decade) and they're recently bumped it up with some nice features like image support, optionally viewing lists as boards, and date support. They've had sharing and sync to Dropbox for backup for a while now (paid version). This is currently the only tool that works at "speed of thought" for me across a number of devices. Their hashtag support is the best I've experienced in any tool yet. For a sales pitch, the slack team apparently used workflowy to coordinate dev before they launched. https://workflowy.com https://workflowy.com

ibluehh 5y ago

Notion

mywaifuismeta 5y ago
Same thing. Incredibly slow and clunky for me as well. Seems like all tools go through this evolution because you know, somehow they have to get VC-sized returns instead of staying small and nimble. I stopped using tools with any kind of lock-in or custom format because I know they will eventually degrade into something unusable.
nnoitra 5y ago
Notion is just way too convoluted.
mszcz 5y ago
It's nice but it's slow. Would love to have a solution that combined Notion's capabilities with Sublime Text's speed and maybe JetBrains's ability to work with keyboard shortcuts.
- randomluck040 5y ago
  You might take a look at Obsidian. For me it’s the best of two (or how many you like) worlds. You can sync your files via git or a cloud service of your liking. What bugs me is that it’s not open source but what makes it great is a lot of open source developers contributing plugins and themes.
  - mszcz 5y ago
    Oh, I did. It looked real nice but I'm not there yet. Sticking to Sublime Text for the time being but if I were to switch to something right now, I'd be Obsidian.
  - fguerraz 5y ago
    I know it's biased because it's an opinion from a competitor, but it's interesting nevertheless: https://blog.standardnotes.com/33536/how-not-to-build-a-secure-plugins-architecture https://blog.standardnotes.com/33536/how-not-to-build-a-secu...
    - randomluck040 5y ago
      I‘ll give it a read, thank you!
    - jitl 5y ago
      Have you considered adding a capability for plugins to draw HTML into an <iframe sandbox>? I'm always pondering such features, but I'm wary of letting a plugin potentially block the CPU forever with custom <script> elements. I have a solution to plugin CPU blocking for pure API plugins (https://github.com/justjake/quickjs-emscripten https://github.com/justjake/quickjs-emscripten) but not a way to meld it safely with HTML access.
sdoering 5y ago
Notion has a very nice feature set. I like to use it for my freelance side business. Currently it is sadly the best set of features within one tool for me (at least the subset I use). I would love to switch to an open source variant to self host. But till then I will probably stay with it. Still. I don't like the slowness (web and app). I don't like how it feels just off sometimes. And how the Android app just so-so works for me.
- randomluck040 5y ago
  What bugs me more than Notion not being open source is that the notes are nowhere on my device apparently but on their servers. I don’t have anything locally. If something happens to Notion or I don’t have access to the web, I’m done?
  - conscion 5y ago
    Notion has export function that allows exporting your entire workspace to Markdown, HTML, or PDF. I do it once a month so that. (It'd be really nice though if Notion had an automated solution to back up to Google Drive, etc.)
    - randomluck040 5y ago
      Today I’ve learned! I knew about the export function but not that you could export the entire workspace. I’ll take a look into that. I’m currently 50/50 between Notion and Obsidian, however a blog post regarding obsidian plugins makes me think twice…
grandchild 5y ago
I find it telling that notion managed to break the core web concept of the hyperlink by implementing their own version of the <a> tag. If I middle-click on a link to open it in a new tab, I paste-insert my clipboard content _into the link text_ instead (I'm on Linux). That's just horrible.
- jitl 5y ago
  (I work at Notion) It's actually the browser's default behavior to do what you're describing! Inside a `contenteditable` element, links no longer behave as links -- they aren't clickable, and hovering over the link doesn't show a preview of the HREF attribute in the browsers I've tested. So in order for links to do link things, we have to fight the browser and re-implement these behaviors. Here's a codesandbox with no JS to demonstate this: https://codesandbox.io/embed/optimistic-resonance-jbyeef?fontsize=14&hidenavigation=1&theme=dark https://codesandbox.io/embed/optimistic-resonance-jbyeef?fon... I created a task to track this bug internally. I think we can probably solve by calling preventDefault for the middle-click event if it bubbles up from inside a link.
  - jfdksjf4hfsfasa 5y ago
    (not gp) Is there any way to track the progress of this? I would be very happy to see this fixed. Btw, if links inside a contenteditable aren't supposed to behave as links, why make it clickable in the first place? Because if you make it act like a link, you indeed have to reimplement the whole thing because of expectations. I'm no interaction designer, but imho a simple edit button would be mucher simpler. It could still be integrated nicely, no need to have wiki-like editing where the entire context is lost.
    - jitl 5y ago
      I think an edit button could improve Notion’s UX for small touchscreen devices where drag gesture is used for both scrolling and editing, but it would make the product worse for larger screen devices with precise pointing. It’s better to work hard in order to build the ideal product, than to make developers lives easy at the cost of a worse product.
bellBivDinesh 5y ago
I use notion and I have to say regardless of what you want to use it for it will probably do much more than that for your use case once you understand how it works. My only quibble is the lack of offline functionality.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Yes. We carry supercomputers in our pockets, it's nice being able to use them and not be subject to connection issues or server outages, or developer whim.

zerr 5y ago

Many products would have been better off by declaring them as feature complete and only continuing fixing bugs. Unfortunately, this happens rarely due to misalignment with employment incentives I believe.

DesiLurker 5y ago
This is the reason I believe there should be a framework/mechanism for dying companies to open source their works. this way they can continue to live on forever or at least have a way to influence something better.
- lukifer 5y ago
  "Exit to Community": https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/exit-to-community https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/exit-to-community
  - DesiLurker 5y ago
    I did not know about that but thanks for sharing. this is what I am talking about though I believe it will have more teeth if VC firms have some sort of an alliance that adopts this model. in-fact if they do that they can dictate the terms of s/w release in more palatable licenses than say GPLv3. overall I feel a lot more work is needed in establishing some sort of commons framework.
    - lukifer 5y ago
      > establishing some sort of commons framework I very much agree, and there are some compelling projects happening in that space as well: - https://commonsstack.org/ https://commonsstack.org/ - https://commonsengine.org/ https://commonsengine.org/ Getting VC firms on-board is a tough sell, though. Their model intrinsically involves getting a greater return than the up-front investment, usually through centralization, quasi-monopoly, and rent-seeking. The low hit-rate of breakthrough successes makes the perverse incentive all the stronger: VCs need unicorn cash-cows, to offset and subsidize the failures. At best, exit-to-community would be a mechanism to cut losses on investments with a small-but-loyal userbase, but without enough revenue to be truly profitable from the VC's perspective.

avinoth 5y ago

I'm on the same boat, burnt by Evernote and trying to find the good alternative. Sticking with Obsidian for now with some apple notes in-between. But the former has too many features I don't need and later has this vendor lock-in. If I ever built a note taking app, I'll be using your tag line as a subtitle and a guiding principle :) "...just a list of notes with some formatting and sync capabilities"

Arubis 5y ago
It sounds like you want [nvAlt](https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/) pointed at a synced directory of text files.

not1ofU 5y ago

Joplin - https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/

DangerousPie 5y ago
Thank you for the suggestion, I am giving that a try right now. A little rough around the edges but seems to work quite well so far!
lgbrandon 5y ago
I use Joplin and a docker next cloud instance on my local home network and set Joplin to only sync on wifi. Works great to keep notes synced on phone and laptop!
neilfrndes 5y ago
I use Joplin with Hetzners storage box service to keep my notes in sync.

thepra 5y ago

Nextcloud Notes might work for you

robviren 5y ago

Syncthing and your favorite text editor has been great for me. Setup is fairly easy and you depend on no offical service other than people hosting a relay server which you could also host. A little more setup and DIY, but at least the experience will remain the same for a long time.

stedguv 5y ago
Agree! Syncthing is fabulous and this is a good use for it. Though hese days, I use Nextcloud Files and Deck more often (I can run my own Nextcloud instance).
criddell 5y ago
Evernote does a lot more than text. For me, the first killer feature was taking a picture of a whiteboard after a meeting. The photo metadata is indexed (date, time, location) and all the text in the photo is recognized as well. Evernote’s text recognition works better for me than any other solution I’ve tried, although Apple is getting pretty good at that too.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  On that topic, anyone know of an automated way to convert whiteboard text and diagrams into proper vectorized diagrams (ideally including anchoring the endpoints of lines and arrows)?
- nicwolff 5y ago
  And Apple Notes will automatically name a note with the first words of the OCRed document – did Evernote get around to adding that feature after I gave up on it?

causality0 5y ago

Evernote has only gotten worse since I started using it over 10 years ago That is the modern business model. First you build something so good it becomes indespensible then you squeeze money out of it until your customers hate you just enough to not stop using you.

netsharc 5y ago
I had an idea for a website: crowd-maintained list of downgrades for products, e.g. "Product: Twitter, Feature: login nag-wall when you scroll down. First Noticed: $month 2021,; Feature: killed the open API, Date: ___", etc. I still have the idea, if anyone wants to implement it, feel free.
- maccard 5y ago
  I bet you would get a much better conversion rate if you implemented a login wall on that service though!
- causality0 5y ago
  Hell, it's fractal, all the way from major services to operating systems to the most minor app store apps. Products get better until someone decides they aren't growing fast enough and then they get worse until they die or someone sane realizes that your video file player doesn't need its own social network.
joshspankit 5y ago
This is what I call “cashing out the social capital”. I don’t know if I’d call it a business model, but it’s certainly something that many modern businesses do.
- shrimp_emoji 5y ago
  Ah, so that's what Blizzard/Bethesda have been doing. :D
  - 5y ago

_gy5c 5y ago

https://standardnotes.com https://standardnotes.com syncs well. cant speak to importing. they have an interesting privacy/encryption approach and some (all?) open source https://github.com/standardnotes https://github.com/standardnotes

c0wb0yc0d3r 5y ago
I found it hard to tell if standard notes is fully open source, as well. My bigger gripes are that it doesn't support (markdown) formatting without a subscription, and I can't figure out how to put notes into folders.
- lenova 5y ago
  Folders requires a subscription on Standard Notes as well. I only use the free version of Standard Notes, but I am a big fan of the product. Their syncing has been the most solid/problem-free I've seen amongst all of the notes apps I've tried over the years.
- tlavoie 5y ago
  I haven't used the folder option, but but search seems to have worked well enough for me. I believe the client at least is open source. (That is, when updating on Arch-based Linux, it's going through a JavaScript-based build process. Should all be there somewhere.) Their selling feature (to me) is the privacy focus, because end to end encryption is the default, and a very rare one among other note apps I've taken a look at. Sync works well, and is one way I use the app, even when I have other things like org-mode in play on some devices. It is typically quite handy to just paste something on my Linux desktop, and copy-paste on my iPhone to send somewhere iOS-specific.

abatilo 5y ago

I switched from Evernote to obsidian.md last year and am very happy with my purchase. You have to pay for the ability to sync between devices but I'm okay with that.

gnuj3 5y ago
You dont. I use iCloud to sync between my devices and its free. I donated to Obsidian team regardless because they created amazing piece of software but just pointing it out that you dont have to for it to work.

sofixa 5y ago

Obsidian. It's markdown based, so simple at the base, but you can go wild with plugins ( including latex, graph visualisations, dynamic queries across notes, etc.), and it supports metadata, tags, etc. if you want to. You can sync with anything supporting text files ( Git, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) or pay a bit for their ens to end encrypted service that works great.

antiframe 5y ago
I wouldn't mind using it but their license keeps me away.
- uhuhoo 5y ago
  What is it about their license that bothers you? It seems pretty fair to me... Free for personal use, pay for commercial, unless you are a nonprofit or a single employee company. Did I miss something? (I assume you mean EULA: https://obsidian.md/eula https://obsidian.md/eula)
  - galkk 5y ago
    Some us based companies forbid to use obsidian due to this clause in license: This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the laws of Canada applicable in that Province. Any action or proceeding arising from or relating to this Agreement may only be brought in the courts located in Kitchener, Ontario and each party irrevocably submits to such exclusive jurisdiction and venue.
  - antiframe 5y ago
    I don't want to have to separate my notes between work and personal. Sometimes in my daily journal I will think about work things. That would requires me to pay $50 a year for an editor to edit Markdown files. That seems steep even if mostly I use it for personal use.
    - quesera 5y ago
      A solution springs to mind, but I fear it would be impolite to state it directly.

_the_inflator 5y ago

I think that Evernote went from an app to becoming a feature, a bit like Dropbox. This happened so some early startup apps 10-15 years ago. What once warranted an app is simply a feature somewhere in another app. MacOS comes with "Notes", which is perfectly sufficient for me.

temp8964 5y ago

There are comments recommending popular apps like Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, etc. I find hard to trust those apps will last 10, 15, or 20 years. I have switched note-keeping apps a few times in the past and no longer want to do so. That's why I decide I will not use any of those apps. Now I use MediaWiki through docker (with Sqlite database) on my home server. It's lightening fast for my personal use, and comes with tons of powerful features (categories, subpages, templates, math syntax, etc.). Because MediaWiki is the same system running Wikipedia, I believe it is very likely will run 10, 20, or even more years. It is not the most convenient to use, but I don't use it for quick notes, for which I just use the default note app on my phone.

deleted 5y ago
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kvark 5y ago
The beauty of Obsidian (at least) is that it does not matter whether the company is still around. It’s your files in a standard Markdown format.
- temp8964 5y ago
  I used to think so. Now I believe it's a misconception. Not all your notes can be just Markdown format. You will have image files. And then different apps handle image file location differently. Joplin turns attachment filenames to random strings. Also, Markdown format is insufficient. I will need categories and subcategories, etc. And then different apps handle those differently.
bmarquez 5y ago
I've previously bounced between different open-source notetaking apps but the great thing about any note format based on Markdown (Standard Notes/Obsidian/Zim/etc), is that it's pretty easy to move from one platform to another if they stop being maintained. Although in the end I ended up with Microsoft OneNote (with Obsidian for special cases), Microsoft isn't going away and they don't have a habit of killing core products like Google does.

lenova 5y ago

UpNote is my recommendation for an Evernote replacement: https://getupnote.com/ https://getupnote.com/ Cross-platform, and it feels like what Evernote was back in the day: a simple note-taking app with a beautiful UI. I replaced Evernote with it a few months ago, and it's been a daily driver since. It was first recommended to me on /r/evernote, a subreddit that has basically been echoing the OP's concerns about Evernote for the last two years it looks like.

zuccs 5y ago
OCR?

rossmohax 5y ago

Seen it first with Nero Burning ROM

sriku 5y ago

Workflowy! It's approach of "one infinite tree" has been a very simple mental model for me (been using for more than a decade) and they're recently bumped it up with some nice features like image support, optionally viewing lists as boards, and date support. They've had sharing and sync to Dropbox for backup for a while now (paid version). This is currently the only tool that works at "speed of thought" for me across a number of devices. Their hashtag support is the best I've experienced in any tool yet. For a sales pitch, the slack team apparently used workflowy to coordinate dev before they launched. https://workflowy.com https://workflowy.com