I’ve been experimenting with CherryTree, a cross-platform (macOS, Linux, Windows) note taking app whose history seems to go back to at least 2014.
It’s a hierarchical notetaking app. Notes are called nodes, and nodes can have subnodes (sub-notes). Notes can be rich text, plain text, or source code. Within rich text notes, you can insert blocks for source code, LaTeX, etc. Also supports images, tables, etc.
It also supports syntax highlighting for many languages, running code in notes with output in the terminal below. Each language can be configured to run as you wish, for example, I assigned mysql < <tmp_src_path> to run my SQL code.
Notes are saved either in your choice of a SQLite database, or in XML files. These may also be encrypted, although notes exist on disk unencrypted while being edited.
Also supports tags, [[wiki links]], creating anchor points within a note, then wiki linking to the anchor point, links to files, websites, etc.
I’m giving it a trial (still something about Obsidian that doesn’t jive with me), so thought others might be interested in it.
Pros
- Fast
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Cross-platform
- Built-in terminal
- Can execute code
- I like the icon
Cons
- No mobile apps
- Files aren’t saved as plain text
- Documentation needs an update
- No native syncing (use Dropbox, Nextcloud, etc.)
- No collaboration features (not a con for me)
Here’s a note with a block of SQL code which I ran, and whose output is at the bottom of the window. There’s also a block of Python I could run. And some notes and images I copied from a real note.
This YouTube video by dungeon master ‘Squinto’ demonstrates some of the note taking capabilities. Still looking for good videos of the other capabilities.
