I have tried it. It’s more for project based writing - like authors of book and all. However when it comes to sync I found it pretty abysmal. I tried Dropbox, Webdav and both were clunky and slow to load. So didn’t want to try any further.
Yes. There are many other apps that support flat plaintext files as first class citizens 
There’s FS Notes but it is still “kinda” unstable and minor and major clunks are faced so regularly that I decided to look for an alternative. There’s Simplenote but neither implement encryption, nor they let you sue a sync of your choice (not anymore) - on top of that they routinely lose your notes.
Never tried DevonThink. Looks like a writers’ app really.
My biggest problem with database notes are - I can’t edit them in other apps as well and I can’t have a clear and transparent backup and version history of my own (which is something I definitely want for my notes).
Also, not only the plaintext files themselves. The folder structure needs to be the same! Some apps organize the text files in their own optimized (hashed) folder structure and the original folder information becomes metadata. That’s the approach followed by DEVONthink if you happen to import instead of indexing the files. And, if memory serves, Joplin.
That’s a bit of an understatement, it is a powerful tool. It’s not cheap and requires some learning curve but it’s a bit of rabbit hole in itself in terms of the things it can achieve, perhaps only surpassed by Obsidian in flexibility.
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Re DEVONthink, yes, writers can exploit DEVONthink, as well as people with other occupations and interests. It’s a place to store and interrogate documents. Writers would use it most for storing and handling research. I would not try to actually “write” anything substantial. Other tools for that. I use Scrivener for the big writing projects. I’ve been using DEVONthink for years and still finding new things to get from it.
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With DEVONthink:
- You can edit documents externally.
- Versioning edits made in DEVONthink are supported in DEVONthink 4.
- Not sure what you mean by “clear and transparent backup”.
I meant literally seeing the flat text files on the disk with my bare eyes and back them up, sync them, copy them and what not. As opposed to backing up a db file which is “supposed to” contain those notes. Got it?
And it was not a comment on devonthink just in case.
No offense detected or taken
The files in DEVONthink are “flat text files”, not just bits of CoreData or stored as SQL entries. However, by default they are stored in the internals of a database package, making for a self-contained, portable library of documents. Actually getting to them in the filesystem is rarely actually needed. You access them just as you do in the Finder (which is also just a convenient wrapper over the actual filesystem).
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No, I get it. Devonthink actually seems like a fine piece of software with a lot of good old world ideas of interoperable and open data and formats. However it seems to be much more than a simple note taking app (say Simplenote, bear etc) which is what I need. I will try it someday when I finally sit down to write (if ever that happens :))
Cheers.
True. [20 character filler ______]
Indeed, that is very true and I’m glad you make the distinction. Document creation is a function complementary to the core focus of document and information management.
I hope you find time to get those thoughts “on paper”, analog or digital.
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I use it for work for client projects. Each client has a book, and within that, each project has a separate book. I like that you throw a lot of of different files types into a ‘book’ and the can be read in the app.
I have never had a problem with synching with Dropbox (I use Maestral on the desktop), although I gave up with icloud which was terrible.
I has however got quite expensive recently - fortunately I bought it quite a while ago - although I notice it would appear you need to buy in the App store and not on their site
I’m pretty happy with Obsidian but I do miss browser access.
For me I want
- Folders
- Tags
- Markdown
- Inline images
- Not tied to an Apple Id because I use several of those
- Powerful Search
- Browser access
- Spotlight indexable
I’m now totally on Apple Notes after 14 years of Evernote. I archived all my literally thousands of Evernote notes on my mac - converting them all in batch using MacUncle Evernote Pro Converter to html. I search them with Spotlight when desirable. The ios26 Spotlight filters will be very useful.
I imported select notes into Apple Notes and every now and then still do. By my request Evernote deleted my account and data.
I’m completely satisfied with Apple Notes.
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I really wanted to like Bear. But unlike Evernote, there’s no feature in Bear for quick access of certain notes. I tried using the untagged quick search, I tried putting a checkbox at the bottom of the current daily note so that it would show up in the todo quick search. Bear is just not designed to do that.
By accident?, I tapped on Agenda in the App Store and the developers offered me a discount for the first year because I hadn’t used Agenda in about a year. I instantly bought it.
One of the attractors for Agenda for me is the “on the agenda“ feature. “On the agenda” is on the very top of the sidebar. I have my projects named so my journal project is at the very top of the on the agenda screen, then I have my business and personal notes and notes for clients which have outstanding jobs. I make sure I do not have very many notes on the agenda. Last time I tried, I put too many items there.
Export considerations: There is a dot at the upper left of every title which is a control panel for the note. You can mark the note as being “on the agenda“ or you can say that this note is “done” or you can move it to the trash or any of a number of other actions. The only difficulty in having that dot there is when you try to export the note - there’s that dot. Notes by the very nature of Agenda can be assigned to a certain date. They can also be assigned to calendar or reminder entries. The assigned date also shows up to the right of the title when you export the note.
For a while, I was using Bear kind of like Evernote and Bear responded well to that kind of usage. (I did not try to upload all 9000 of my past few years of receipts into Bear!) I wouldn’t use Agenda that way.
What I have found is selecting the content of a webpage and then using the Service provided by Nisus Writer Pro works just as well to dump a document off the web and into a new document. I have found I don’t necessarily need all of my web clippings in my Notes app. It works better if I have them on the file system. I started doing that with Bear along with when I went back to Nisus Writer Pro. And with Agenda exporting the notes (see above) isn’t the best way.
As for using strictly text notes on the file system, too many of my notes need assets in the note itself for me to be comfortable using a system where the media assets are in a “assets” folder with an association to the note made by the backing metadata database. On the other hand, I’m constantly stripping unneeded photographs out of my web clipped articles. If there’s a graph or something that’s meaningful I’ll keep it, otherwise it gets thrown away.
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I remember liking agenda, but I think the organization didn’t quite work for me.
I’m curious, what limitation did you find with the pin note/tag feature in Bear? I’m still navigating using Bear and moving on from obsidian.
Even Quick Open is not what you want?
I never really found any limitation with the tagging format, once I got used to the concept of tags. I compromised a little bit by only using one tag per note which equals folders. My real problem is I’m visual. I want to see the notes I’m looking for on the screen.
Thank you. I never really knew that existed.
But as I said in the previous post, what I was looking for is a screen showing all of the quick open notes I wanted to look at and then I would pick.
I’m very very visual. Before I started using travelers’s company notebooks for scheduling, I used a digital calendar. At the time, there was too much overhead writing everything down for every calendar entry and with the paper planner it’s just writing an appointment in a certain spot on the vertical weekly planner page.
But I wanted a bit of a change, so I went to horizontal weekly with a memo. I can see it’s not working out as well as I thought it would. I’ve also been experimenting this last week using a digital calendar because it works so well with agenda. I just have to make sure I don’t put a lot of information down for each entry, if I’m going to do that. But I still need a place to put money I receive from customers and receipts and deposit slips and stuff like that so - “shrug”. The jury is still in deliberation.
A few ideas:
- pinning notes
- having a “flagged” (or something similar) tag—I use this for notes I want to quickly access.
- as @alvinc pointed out, there’s a handy Quick Open feature
- finally, I think the fastest way to get to a note in Bear, and the way I do so most often, is to use the Alfred plugin for Bear.