I was originally considering it as a lightweight alternative to something like Keep It! or DevonThink, so I was only looking at using it as those apps were designed, as a single, large repository of files, available cross-platform. IA Writer isn’t the same type of app.
But it’s quite powerful and for the Mac offers optional services like “Add Selection as Markdown to FSNotes” (something I use elsewhere as a PopClip extension, and it has Alfred workflows too for Open/Import/Search/CreateFromClipboard. As an open-source project written in Swift that’s already really solid it has the potential to be around for a while.
Lots of notes apps out there to choose but would think only a handful stand out enough to make decent $. Btw, saw a post that $ of iA Writer iOS version went up significantly. Glad I purchased both Mac and iOS a while back.
After getting completely fed up of searching multiple places for notes (I had notes in Drafts, Bear and Apple Notes), I moved everything to Drafts a while ago. Spotlight worked normally but still took far too long to find information. I certainly don’t regret it. Now I know exactly where my notes are and I have come to really like the lightning fast search and tag filtering. The advanced text processing available in Drafts is light years ahead of other notes apps, and I’ve found myself using these facilities on new and old notes alike.
It’s taken away one of the most frustrating experiences in the age of the app - knowing where some important information is. I know already I’ve saved a lot of time.
Another reason was being fed up of formatting when I pasted anything, especially on iOS. I will never go back to rich text after finally getting used to markdown for all my text. I’ve always kept all images and PDFs I need in DEVONthink (which is my GTD “Reference” repository, so where I send anything I need later), therefore I won’t miss being able to attach files.
I still use Ulysses for writing, as it is the best tool I’ve found for the job.
Seems Drafts has solved a lot of problems for you. For faster searching, have you tried HoudahSpot? Works well for me, searching across multiple drives, etc.
Unless I totally missed it somewhere, I’m surprised that Agenda didn’t get a mention. I see it linked here in Discourse, but no show mention.
I really like attaching notes to calendar events because it keeps things where I can find them at the right time. The developers seem to be adding updates regularly and it’s not a subscription. (The free tier is pretty solid, but if you pay that gets you access to all updates for a year. At the end of the year, you can pay for another year or just stop with the updates you paid for.)
For those of you that haven’t looked at it recently (the last comments I found here in the discourse were from 2018), there are a lot of improvements added.
If they’d add a way to link to a document in an iCloud folder rather than just copy it to Agenda, it’d be the perfect notes app for me. (Right now it copies the file to the note. I like to be able to edit or write on PDF’s during meetings and Agenda doesn’t support that, yet. Furthermore I’d like to do that in my favorite PDF app, so I’d rather a link to the file over them trying to bake in a PDF editor. You can sort of do that now if you’re willing to jump through a bunch of hoops with Files, but it’s not very friendly.)
The other note markup features and the calendar mindset has made me switch to Agenda over Apple Notes because my Apple Notes has just turned into a dumpster fire. While search is good for Apple Notes, I much prefer to just link the note to the event, and use Agenda’s other organizational tools for the non-calendar kind of notes.
+1 on Agenda. I’ve been using it for almost 2 years now to take notes on all meetings (internal and with clients) and phone calls. Beyond taking notes, I’ve incorporated Agenda into a workflow for follow-up that involves linking the event to calendars, and over the last 2 years, it has had the biggest positive impact of any software I have implemented.
Yes, I’ve gone the file link route, but have you tried to get that link iOS? Unless I’m totally missing something, it’s not easy or quick, which defeats the purpose. Maybe it’s better in 14, I haven’t tried it yet.
I know getting that file link is more iOS’s fault that Agenda’s (it really shouldn’t be that hard), but I’d love for Agenda to have that baked in. Maybe an option when you drag a file in to a note, or an option to change the dragged file to a link would make it much better.
I use iCloud to store my files, so anything linked would be available on all my devices. (That’s also a requirement for me.) But for users that use other cloud services, this may not be so simple. Agenda needs access to the file everywhere it is, so I understand the problem. I’d just love a simple solution that works the same on everything Agenda works on.
If anybody from Agenda is reading, here’s my workflow and what I’d like:
Get calendar invite for meeting. Create calendar event.
Open Agenda. Create new note with first thoughts about that meeting. Link to calendar event.
Get PDF notes/meeting agenda. Link that document to my Agenda note. (I’d be ok keeping that note in Agenda so long as I can edit it in my favorite PDF editor or other 3rd party app for other files and that I can find the file in some easy way. I don’t want it locked into some database that I can’t see my file.)
Go to meeting. Add more notes to my Agenda note and my document(s).
Have all of it searchable later so I can find my stuff.
It’s nasty to suggest working out a problem with one application with another, but just to mention it, the Hook app is a good choice for solving integration issues on macOS. Including the link-Agenda-to-a-file question. But of course Hook has no value on iOS/iPadOS.
Please add open source Joplin to this list for part 2.
I know the show is called Mac Power Users, but what’s cool about Joplin is that it is truly cross platform. There are client abs for all of the major operating systems and platforms: macOS, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, Android, Windows, etc.
It uses encrypted sync via dropbox. Meaning, that your notes are encrypted before they are uploaded to the dropbox app folder.
Because it uses dropbox, it is a little wonky when you first open the app because it needs time to sync the notes. In other words no background sit can.
You can even host your notes on your own server in the cloud, on your local NAS and more.
These features are attractive to me, but I’m not using the app as my daily driver. It’s got a long way to go to beat out Drafts, Agenda, and Apple Notes.
I have no affiliation with Joplin, but I feel that it’s worth a mention because just about every single one of the notes apps that were talked about require some kind of cloud-based subscription service, and that always makes me wonder about security of the notes.
I know Drafts, Agenda & Apple Notes encrypt the notes so they are unreadable outside of the client app that you’re logged into.
When I played with Joplin a year ago(?) I found it be be fairly rudimentary - you could only search one tag at a time, and you couldn’t tag in the iOS app, sync was only with Nextcloud (they’ve since added Dropbox). On the Mac it’s a 100+Mb Electron app with all that entails - bloated, relatively slow, sucks up RAM and CPU.
Like I just said elsewhere: I started using Noteplan, abandoned it, and picked it up again.
I find it scratches one particular itch for me very well as a daily notes app. I use it to jot down quick notes from meetings, or anything else that comes up during the day that doesn’t have a home elsewhere.
with all that entails - bloated, relatively slow, sucks up RAM and CPU.
. Registered recently and 1st post with that statement, suspicious 