So i’m back on the trail again with this. Been using Bear happily for months on the iPhone and iPad.
But I cant seem to get by without Drafts on the iPhone and the iPad. It is the fastest and most convenient way for me to enter text. Bear is too slow with this and it doesn’t scroll to the bottom automatically wanting to append to a new note. Drafts does this and it lightening fast.
So now I’m thinking about porting all my notes to Drafts and only use that app for all my writing and note-taking needs. I store long stretches of text in there that I write on for months, and I’m thinking Drafts might be able to work for me in that way as well, as a dedicated writing, note-taking app with the ability to append to drafts in a fast way.
I just don’t have much need for the rest of the app. I need to be able to use the tags as I do in Bear to nest everything correctly, and Bear does that in much more attractive way. It is overall a more attractive app, and I don’t at all use all the capabilities of Drafts.
Does anyone use Drafts for everything like I’m intending to?
I use Dynalist for a few, simple reusable lists — shopping, movies I want to see, and packing for business trips. Never occurred to me to use it as a writing environment, and I like that you are doing so.
The New York Times tech reporter Farhad Manjoo used Workflowy for note-taking and writing for some time — I don’t know if he still does. Workflowy is the app that Dynalist is based on.
I’m a tech journalist. I write in Markdown and switch apps regularly. I used Ulysses for a long time. MultiMarkdown Composer is an app I’ve been coming back to often in my switches.
I’m now using DevonThink to organize research, and I write my articles in DevonThink too, using MultiMarkdown Composer as an external editor.
I tend to agree. I use Drafts to “launch” writing/text (especially emails to avoid opening my mail app per @MacSparky’s good advice. But I use Ulysses for all short to long form writing, even if some text begins in Drafts. I use Apple Notes for handwriting notes and to sketch out the outlines of a talk or writing project… If/when I think helpful, I use OmniOutliner to outline major presentations and writing projects.
I do all things as well. Although I never launch another app, like Drafts, if I need to send an email. I’ve never quite understood the idea of doing work in another app and then sending it to the app, where it actually needs to be.
I think Drafts has evolved beyond that to a fully-fledged note-taking app, which is why I don’t like the “Inbox” label at the top. An inbox means that one needs to send it somewhere else, and Drafts5 is beyond that in my opinion.
But you use a lot of different apps where you could use one, wouldn’t that be better to have just one app for all your needs?
Drafts is lightning fast to open, so you can start working on thoughts quicker. It also lets you massage text in ways some destination apps don’t. But for me the killer feature has always been the big editing space compared to iMessage, where not only is it truncated but one can easily send by accident before one is ready.
@bowline provided a good response but I’ll had a few comments.
In general, I agree that fewer apps are better; accordingly, I tend to use fewer than more apps.
Notwithstanding the above, apps are like tools in a tool box. I could make one tool do several things but it is best to use the tool designed for a task. As my Air Force father used to say, “if the tool isn’t right, the mechanic isn’t bright.” Applying this to apps, I use Apple Notes because the neuroscience is clear that handwriting is better for understanding, thinking and retention than typing notes. This is one reason why I take notes with the Pencil and sketch out articles and presentations with the Apple Pencil. You cannot do this in Drafts or Ulysses.
I use Ulysses for more complex writing, e.g., book projects. Drafts is not designed for this. It can be forced to be a long-form writing tool but it is not optimized for it.
I hope this helps some. But, at the end of the day everyone has his or her own preferences and style. Use the app or app(s) that work best for you. My only real advice is not to spend too much time focused on just he right app. I’ve tried to stay focused on the job more than the tools, thought like most in this Forum, it is easy to focus on the cool tools!
I agree that it’s not the founding principle of Drafts, which is capturing text quickly. But Drafts has evolved, and I do think it would be possible to use I t for that purposes
I agree, it is possible. In fact, most note taking apps are capable. However, those apps have not been designed and optimized for complex longform writing projects. Again, you could make them work but that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily the ideal tool for doing so.
I tend to do that a lot with Scrivener being my start and the final output is usually something else. Several reasons for that but the major ones are I can organize my writing better and faster in Scrivener and I have a built in archive.
I agree on trying to minimize the number of apps you use. But there is the use case where your preferred app isn’t used by the recipient. In that case you have to do the conversion or they do. In my cases the recipient is usually a governmental agency, so I have to convert to LibreOffice then save as MS Word. (I don’t have and won’t get Word) The more enlightened offices are able to take my LibreOffice files directly. When we were doing our USDA research I routinely sent documents back and forth with no problem.
I will also use Scrivener for some forum posts when I describe something that I want to keep to refer to myself.
I will do quick notes in DEVONThink but sometimes they end up moving over to Scrivener when they become longer or need more editing.
As a plus, you can then “file” your writings with different tags in Drafts to achieve a certain amount of order (should you wish to keep the original text).
Cool. Have been thinking about this myself. Sounds like a good way to keep it all in one place.
The collapsible bullets of dynalist keep me coming back to start writing and planning there. The plan is to collect everything in Evernote, but this is barely an idea up until now.
The only bothering thing for me is the mediocre export options and missing MD support. Apart from that, it’s stellar for organization of thoughts, drafting, writing in meetings etc. I even have special textexpander snippets for it😍.
@andreasl, agree with all @Bmosbacker advice. I too use Scrivener its great for putting all your research material in one place when writing, However, my digital brain is now Ulysses, which is part of Setapp which is briliant value for money. Still go back to Scrivener for certain writing projects though.
Applying this to apps, I use Apple Notes because the neuroscience is clear that handwriting is better for understanding, thinking and retention than typing notes. This is one reason why I take notes with the Pencil and sketch out articles and presentations with the Apple Pencil. You cannot do this in Drafts or Ulysses.