Information Management - Best Notetaking App?

Cool Workflows
83

I think it depends on what you’re saving and how you work with what you’ve saved.

My administrative archives live in DEVONthink and each broad area of responsibility gets its own database. (By “live in” I mean that I import them into DT.) Although I could store them in a hierarchy of Finder folders and use tools like Finder’s smart folders, Finder tags, Spotlight, Alfred/Raycast, or Claude Cowork to search for what I need, I find DT a nimbler and more cohesive workspace for big jobs—the kind where you need to retrieve a dozen documents of different types spanning a decade and probe the links between them for the better part of a day. DT makes it trivial to jump between viewing documents organized by folders to documents organized by tags to documents organized by type to documents organized by complex saved searches. You can archive email in DT in its native format, which means you can organize and search it with DT’s tools AND you can do email things with it too, like forward it to someone who needs to see it. I like having all the documents related to a particular matter—be they legal agreements, official documents, memos, notes, invoices, emails, whatever—ready to be configured for query and review however the task might warrant.

Simpler things that I might need access to for the short term don’t need anything more complicated than Finder folders on my desktop.

My research and learning material are stored in Finder folders in an Obsidian vault, which I also index in DT. I work with them in a very different way than I do the admin stuff, and Obsidian is better suited to that task. DT is a good place for document retrieval and review, but I don’t find it a congenial place for document creation and refinement—for that I prefer Obsidian.

1 Like
84

Agreed re. Obsidian, and the Omnisearch plugin is also a nice upgrade for finding things in your notes.

1 Like
85

For me, the ease of using “replication” is enough to be much better than finder.

I don’t want to mess with finder or *nix level aliases which may or may not survive backup/restore and os updates.

Replication answers my itch of using hierarchical structures without the storage overhead or file duplication and without the confusing mess (for me) of a tag-based alternative.

5 Likes
86

True! The official feature is already great, especially the file names which are not trimmed is very important to me (that’s why I found inconvenient on Apple Notes and Bear). I also love how search displays all the results without opening individual notes.

I use only Minimal themes with related plugins, and the official map base. I recently wrote about my experience of Obsidian these months: On Obsidian - after almost half a year using - alvin in the room

1 Like
87

There are interesting mechanisms behind the scenes in DT.

Tags are groups with a little extra logic applied. Let’s say you tag a file with “EyesOnly”. If that’s the first time you’ve used EyesOnly, a group (file folder) called EyesOnly will be created as a group under Tags in Devonthink.

Each time a document or group is tagged with EyesOnly, a replicant is created in Tags/EyesOnly.

Groups and tags are basically the same thing. Removing a tag from something removes its replicant from the tag’s group.

In other words, tags are dynamic groups.

You can also uncheck the database properties option, Exclude Groups from Tagging.

That way, you can have tags appear under the groups where they are relevant instead of all your tags in the main, top level Tags group. Some details apply. Experimentation will reveal all.

You can even tag your tags, since tags are just groups. I once had a use case for that. Unfortunately, I was overwhelmed by a wretched case of sobriety and can’t remember why I would want to do such a crazy thing. But it works.

1 Like
88

Interesting, not sure it would simplify my own mental model of how I work, but I probably should set aside some time to experiment with it a bit.

89

How do you find your notes, I have thousands and the search that is in Apple Notes Sucks. I enter the exact title of the note that I just created and it comes up somewhere in the list of 500 notes

90

Add “note titled” before the keywords:

Note titled [search keywords]

7 Likes
91

I keep my Notes database lean, and actively archive notes when a project is complete and I don’t need the notes anymore. I find results much better without too many notes (I have pruned it to around 700 in total, but have thousands in my archive).

2 Likes
92

I do the same thing. I export to DEVONthink to archive notes that I no longer need.

3 Likes
93

I need multi media. I know that you can link in obsidian but I worry about breaking links

94

Why? If everything is in Obsidian it’s really hard to break a link if it’s made properly in the first place. I have all sorts of media and files in my vault and all link just fine.

1 Like
96

I genuinely miss WordPerfect, sometimes.

I haven’t used it since ms word came out (in ms dos) in approximately 1989. Things went downhill after that.

7 Likes
97

Amen! And a keyboard with functions keys down the left side – it made bold (F6) and underline (F8) so easy.

And how often do you wish you could “Reveal Codes” :rofl:.

7 Likes
98

I think of Markdown as a spiritual s successor of “Reveal Codes.”

4 Likes
99

Yeah, I guess my go to on this would be Obsidian. I’ve. tried a number of different ones and my two favorite for just pure note taking have been obsidan and reflect.app

I have my own app that I created as a visual library, but admittedly it’s not great for note-taking as that was never meant to be its primary purpose.

2 Likes
100

How do you archive them

101

I have dabbled with emacs over the years. With AI fixing any problems I’ve had it has become my favourite app for all my writing. I use the Doom version, but am learning enough that at some point I may switch to vanilla.

I find emacs pretty amazing and have no issues. It’s made me drop Craft, which I’ve used for a few years.

1 Like
102

Intresting - what sort of fixes or modifications have you done to Emacs? Why did you choose Doom over the standard version?

Do you use it only for technica/coding work or do you use it as a full word processor replacement?

103

Full word processor replacement. I don’t use it for much tech stuff although having a play at it for editing web pages.

One of my issues is that I’ve switched back to working from paper files in meetings. I often need large print that goes into an A5 display book. AI helped set up 4 different templates that create booklet style so with a keyboard shortcut the pdf is produced and I print. Works every time. On word processors I have had issues printing booklet mode and it needed fixing often.

Spelling seems a small thing, but MS Word always goes to American English no matter how many times I set up the default to British English. I also find correcting spelling is a faff. In emacs it’s set to British English and I can either click on misspelt words or keyboard shortcut through. It automatically brings up a list of words it could be and I press the number next to the right word. It’s normally always number 1. Seems a small thing, but it has been an annoyance in many apps.

Doom comes with many useful plugins. For example evil mode is a plugin that separates editing text to navigating settings. So I can edit my text, exit out of insert, them press SPC m e l p (press space key followed by the other keys) and my pdf is created.

I’ve set up pdf viewer so I can view my current file being edited as a pdf, then edit my text file hit my keyboard shortcut and my open pdf updates.

There are so many things that I’ve tweaked making it work for me. The theme goes from light to dark mode based on my location sunrise and sunset, Bible verses are formatted one way and blockquotes another, all with simple keyboard shortcuts. Search finds anything across all my folders, I can create a new file or duplicate, all within emacs, I hardly use Finder.

Here’s an interesting one for me. I have to track birthdays. I’ve added them all to a file and setup a table at the top that when I press CTRL C C it updates the table at the top of the file (plain text table) and another keyboard shortcut creates a nicely formatted A4/A5 document of that table that I can print if I need to.

I also use orgmode that shows me any entries linked to today. It also shows birthdays, but automatically shows, “Bob turns x today” the x being replaced by their age this year. I never have to edit the file and it changes the age every year automatically.

Sorry for writing so much, but I find it so helpful in one app than runs fast, has no subscription and if I need to do something new, there’s 99.9% chance it can be done. AI has really helped sorting issues that would take me a while to investigate.

3 Likes