Was listening to the Bookworms podcast the other day and came across a quote that I thought was quite good- “A man convinced against his will, will be of the same opinion still”. I opened up Drafts and recorded it.
Got me thinking, what is a good way to organise little bits of information like this to make it easy to browse/look over at a later date.
Was thinking along the lines of Mindnote or something similar - any good apps/software you can think of?
I have quotes pages in a folder in Ulysses, related to a project I’m working on. And I have years’ worth of collected quotes I have in my shoebox app EagleFiler. But if I were starting from scratch to add a quotes page - especially if I was iOS/macOS cross-platform, I wouldn’t see much reason to go beyond Apple Notes unless there was anything specifically missing from it for my needs.
It seems like so much software is unstainable by using improper business models and yet I have seen so many people complaining about 0.99 software. Software Engineers have a tough road to row.
How many quotes do you expect to collect? For a couple hundred quotes, Apple Notes, Bear, Evernote all work well. The more quotes you collect, then search becomes a major factor. If you want a large collection and search is important, then DevonThink may work best.
I have 2000+ quotes archived in DevonThink on Mac, which syncs with DEVONthink To Go on iOS. You can organize into one-collect-all folder, or individual folders, or tags, or both.
On the Mac, I often use PopClip with the DevonThink extension. When you select a quote, a small popup appears, and then click on the DT button. The text is automatically sent to the DT inbox. If copying from a webpage, the PopClip extension saves the URL with the note’s meta data.
On the iPhone/iPad, I tend to use Drafts. There is a Draft action that sends the quote to DT-to-Go. I believe there is a share sheet for copying from a browser to DT-to-Go but I have not used it. The Files app can also access your quotes within DT.
The power of DT and DT-to-Go is search. It is fast and far ahead anything other apps can do. There is a little learning curve with DT but a quotes collection is one of the easiest ways to learn DT. You can save as plain text, rich text, markdown, HTML, pdf’s, and even images.
I was thinking about using DT/DTTG as a replacement for Quotebook. Thanks for the post. I think the “see also” function might find interesting connections between the quotes. How has it worked for you?
@NiranS To be honest, I forget to use the “See also” function in DT. Thanks for reminding me.
The search is so good in DT, I can usually find what I need quickly with a couple words or the author’s name. (My rule is to always include the author, and hopefully its source.)
You can knock yourself out organizing with folders and/or tags. If you do, you can train DT to sort for you. I found the sorting feature inconsistent for one or two sentence quotes. Sorting works better with more text, paragraph or more in length. The more you sort, the better it gets at predicting for you.
Since DT search is so good, I am a lazy tagger and archive all my quotes into one folder. I use only 3 or 4 tags: favorite, plus Latin, German, Greek, etc. for a few foreign language quotes.
I have used DEVONthink Pro for years to save quotes and “pithy” sayings. DTP is my long-term memory. nvALT is my short-term memory. Without them, I would be lost.
Actually, I have recently replaced nvALT with The Archive as my short-term memory.
I use DEVONthink for this purpose. I have nearly a 1,000 papers in Papers 3 which, as I access them I transfer selected text to DT. I also read all books in digital format using the Kindle app., highlighting key points or quotes as I read. After finishing the book (or a PDF if it is a research article)I then go to the highlights section of Amazon, create a PDF of the highlights from the book and then add the PDF to DT. DT OCRs the PDF so I can find any quote from any book nearly instantly. I also use tags extensively to group quotes by topics, e.g., leadership, which also helps in the search.
Your suggestion about PopClip is a great suggestion. I had not used PopClip before but the ability to send selected text directly to DT or Ulysses is fantastic–thanks!
I too have the same concern with saving quotes. Today I am into a couple thousand. Started with Notes, then switched over to Drafts with the idea that I would forward them to somewhere else. Stuck there. I work 100% IOS now. I am enjoying listing to the options!
I’d be tempted to keep the quotes in Drafts. Why move them when you can send them where/when you want?
Workspaces, a title, and a tag or three will make them gather so you can find them.
Currently, I’m using Ulysses for historical reasons. Moved a bunch of quotes out of Evernote and scattered miscellaneous documents.
Thinking out loud —
There it’s no reason to use Drafts as a temporary home. Use Drafts as home for stuff. From this central location send a copies where you want.
Caveat —
That said, I’ll go and try it out.
Does it work?
How does it feel?
Railroad roundhouse analogy
Wiki — A roundhouse is a building with a circular or semicircular shape used by railroads for servicing and storing locomotives, and traditionally surrounds, or is adjacent to, a turntable. … needs a cloning device to work.
I keep all those snippets of info and quotes in DEVONThink Pro Office (the verison I use)
It’s my go to place to put all short form electronic data. Long form electronic info stays in Finder in my Filing Cabinet system. I tend to add keywords right into the note that could be converted to tags if I was a tagger. Things like how I think I will look for the item if I’m looking for one specific quote.
I even have a recurring action in Omnifocus to read one of my quotes every couple of days. I’ve been toyying with some sort of script/Hazel/something to pop one up as an e-mail from myself after extracting a random one out of DT but the project to figure out how to do that is on hold in someday/maybe.
