7 ms·

I tried a few alternatives and landed on Apple Notes. It's blinding fast, and while it's not exactly feature-rich, it does everything I need while being seamles

I tried a few alternatives and landed on Apple Notes. It's blinding fast, and while it's not exactly feature-rich, it does everything I need while being seamlessly synced to the cloud and my devices.

ravenstine 4y ago
I use Apple Notes because I realized that, for my needs, all the structure and organization that so many other note taking apps/services provide really just make things more complicated and isn't beneficial. Notes is simple, has one level of folders, and supports labeling. I'll almost never look at 95% of my notes again, but in case I do, I can just search by keyword and usually I'll find it. My one gripe with Notes is that the search function really isn't all that great. Maybe I need to force it to reindex or something. I've found many cases where it doesn't find a note by a word that I know it contains. I really don't get why it seems that nearly all search functions are terrible in any given app. It would be nice if Apple improved the search for Notes, and it shouldn't be that hard to do given that it's just using SQLite under the hood.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Same for me. It does about 90%+ of what I'd ever need, it has rock-solid sync across all my devices, I can share notes with my wife without her having to sign up for a service and download an app, etc. Not to mention that it avoids me onboarding to some unprofitable note taking tool that will languish until it gets stripped for parts. There was a midtwit meme about productivity hackers vs "I just use apple notes" guys like this too haha.
  - ravenstine 4y ago
    That's awesome that it syncs that well, though one of the reasons I use it is because I can specifically opt out of the syncing and keep everything offline. I use Notes to jot a lot of things down, and that can mean some very intimate/private thoughts, and I've come to distaste having those thoughts floating in the digital ether. Most note taking apps don't seem to allow you to work entirely offline, and if they do, they still phone home a lot and harass you to sign up for an account.
- podviaznikov 4y ago
  small nit pick. Apple Notes have support for nested folders:) But agree with the rest.
- Kye 4y ago
  The lack of export functionality without a Mac kept me from using it. edit: HN won't let me reply so... That sure is a lot of trouble just to grab a copy of my notes. This is something I do often enough that I don't want to have to go through two MFA prompts, and then another when the process is done. Not acceptable.
  - packet_pusher 4y ago
    You can bulk export all your Notes through appleid.apple.com. They can come down as text files, or a JSON, I believe. I just went through the process recently to migrate notes into Joplin.
  - mananaysiempre 4y ago
    FYI, HN probably does let you reply (unless you’ve tripped the rate limit, but in that case it won’t let you edit, either), it’s just that in deep threads you need to either wait a bit or do it from the comment’s page[1]. [1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/master/README.md#hidden-reply-links https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    Like most apple software, it only considers users who are totally bought into the ecosystem. I hardly know what you mean, "grab a copy of my notes", all my notes are copied to all my devices, as long as those devices run Apple Notes ;)
CharlesW 4y ago
TIL Apple Notes supports Evernote .enex import. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205793 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205793 https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/migrate-from-evernote-to-apple-notes/ https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/migrate-from-evernote-to-ap...
TremendousJudge 4y ago
I have a directory of .txts on my phone. There are nicer solutions but at least I 100% will never lose access to my notes since they're just files.
- daveidol 4y ago
  How do you quickly make a new note? Is this Android or iOS?
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    I'm on Andrid, I use a small file manager called MK Explorer [0] Flow is, open the app, go to bookmarks->notes (this is a shortcut I set up), choose a folder (I have a bunch for different things), then menu button->new file, enter a title, and use the file explorer's own text editor. It's not as quick as opening Google Keep and tapping plus, but at least I know I can trust it. [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.mkexplorer.kormateusz https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.mkexplorer....
crossroadsguy 4y ago
Apple Notes might do a lot of things or do them well, but seamless sync is not one of those.
egypturnash 4y ago
I like a lot of things about it except for the part where I can't collaborate with my Windows-using collaborator. "Make them use it on iCloud.com" is a non-starter, I don't wanna inflict a shitty web-app on them after fleeing EN mostly because it turned into a shitty web-app crammed into an app container.
alexjplant 4y ago
Everybody on HN seems to talk about what they use to "take notes". I personally use Trello as an organization tool for things such as my to-do list, checklists (packing for a trip this weekend, for instance), random thoughts and ideas, lists of music and movies people suggest, transcriptions of phone conversations, etc. Is this the same use case as when people talk about Evernote/Apple Notes/OneNote/org-mode, and if so am I a total weirdo for using a Kanban tool for this purpose? I've used it this way for almost a decade and the abstraction of boards of stacks of cards is very flexible and intuitive to me.
mehrzad 4y ago
If you put multiple images in an Apple Notes note, it’s insanely slow and also it only exports as txt files so no images afaicr

I tried a few alternatives and landed on Apple Notes. It's blinding fast, and while it's not exactly feature-rich, it does everything I need while being seamlessly synced to the cloud and my devices.

ravenstine 4y ago

I use Apple Notes because I realized that, for my needs, all the structure and organization that so many other note taking apps/services provide really just make things more complicated and isn't beneficial. Notes is simple, has one level of folders, and supports labeling. I'll almost never look at 95% of my notes again, but in case I do, I can just search by keyword and usually I'll find it. My one gripe with Notes is that the search function really isn't all that great. Maybe I need to force it to reindex or something. I've found many cases where it doesn't find a note by a word that I know it contains. I really don't get why it seems that nearly all search functions are terrible in any given app. It would be nice if Apple improved the search for Notes, and it shouldn't be that hard to do given that it's just using SQLite under the hood.

steveBK123 4y ago
Same for me. It does about 90%+ of what I'd ever need, it has rock-solid sync across all my devices, I can share notes with my wife without her having to sign up for a service and download an app, etc. Not to mention that it avoids me onboarding to some unprofitable note taking tool that will languish until it gets stripped for parts. There was a midtwit meme about productivity hackers vs "I just use apple notes" guys like this too haha.
- ravenstine 4y ago
  That's awesome that it syncs that well, though one of the reasons I use it is because I can specifically opt out of the syncing and keep everything offline. I use Notes to jot a lot of things down, and that can mean some very intimate/private thoughts, and I've come to distaste having those thoughts floating in the digital ether. Most note taking apps don't seem to allow you to work entirely offline, and if they do, they still phone home a lot and harass you to sign up for an account.
podviaznikov 4y ago
small nit pick. Apple Notes have support for nested folders:) But agree with the rest.
Kye 4y ago
The lack of export functionality without a Mac kept me from using it. edit: HN won't let me reply so... That sure is a lot of trouble just to grab a copy of my notes. This is something I do often enough that I don't want to have to go through two MFA prompts, and then another when the process is done. Not acceptable.
- packet_pusher 4y ago
  You can bulk export all your Notes through appleid.apple.com. They can come down as text files, or a JSON, I believe. I just went through the process recently to migrate notes into Joplin.
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  FYI, HN probably does let you reply (unless you’ve tripped the rate limit, but in that case it won’t let you edit, either), it’s just that in deep threads you need to either wait a bit or do it from the comment’s page[1]. [1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/master/README.md#hidden-reply-links https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...
- jazzyjackson 4y ago
  Like most apple software, it only considers users who are totally bought into the ecosystem. I hardly know what you mean, "grab a copy of my notes", all my notes are copied to all my devices, as long as those devices run Apple Notes ;)

CharlesW 4y ago

TIL Apple Notes supports Evernote .enex import. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205793 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205793 https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/migrate-from-evernote-to-apple-notes/ https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/migrate-from-evernote-to-ap...

TremendousJudge 4y ago

I have a directory of .txts on my phone. There are nicer solutions but at least I 100% will never lose access to my notes since they're just files.

daveidol 4y ago
How do you quickly make a new note? Is this Android or iOS?
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  I'm on Andrid, I use a small file manager called MK Explorer [0] Flow is, open the app, go to bookmarks->notes (this is a shortcut I set up), choose a folder (I have a bunch for different things), then menu button->new file, enter a title, and use the file explorer's own text editor. It's not as quick as opening Google Keep and tapping plus, but at least I know I can trust it. [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.mkexplorer.kormateusz https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.mkexplorer....

crossroadsguy 4y ago

Apple Notes might do a lot of things or do them well, but seamless sync is not one of those.

egypturnash 4y ago

I like a lot of things about it except for the part where I can't collaborate with my Windows-using collaborator. "Make them use it on iCloud.com" is a non-starter, I don't wanna inflict a shitty web-app on them after fleeing EN mostly because it turned into a shitty web-app crammed into an app container.

alexjplant 4y ago

Everybody on HN seems to talk about what they use to "take notes". I personally use Trello as an organization tool for things such as my to-do list, checklists (packing for a trip this weekend, for instance), random thoughts and ideas, lists of music and movies people suggest, transcriptions of phone conversations, etc. Is this the same use case as when people talk about Evernote/Apple Notes/OneNote/org-mode, and if so am I a total weirdo for using a Kanban tool for this purpose? I've used it this way for almost a decade and the abstraction of boards of stacks of cards is very flexible and intuitive to me.

mehrzad 4y ago

If you put multiple images in an Apple Notes note, it’s insanely slow and also it only exports as txt files so no images afaicr