{"id":59,"date":"2025-03-15T11:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T18:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hackopus.com\/?p=59"},"modified":"2025-09-14T23:13:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T06:13:27","slug":"i-tried-finding-the-best-note-taking-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/15\/i-tried-finding-the-best-note-taking-app\/","title":{"rendered":"I Tried Finding The Best Note-Taking App"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The bottom line up front, I went with the most basic method for this; notepad or some text editor and saving individual text files. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or a markdown editor for more flexibility and flavor to the text like Obsidian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What I am trying to achieve<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>My memory is terrible. I have to write down EVERYTHING in order to remember it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I need a way to make every detail accessible, and quickly, so that if I forget something I can look it up and have my own second-brain think for me. But I don&#8217;t need the added complications of learning a new app only to forget how to use some of the &#8220;features&#8221; when all I need is simple text to remember when and what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The quest has been daunting. And I really wish I knew how to code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>None of these text editors in the world do well at the one thing they are built to do, which is to simply edit text, and make it accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In today&#8217;s world, we all have multiple devices, or at the very least, your phone. But how do you get notes from your phone to your computer? Or if you work in a place you can&#8217;t have your phone? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I tried finding seamless ways to connect all of my devices without losing my notes, or my mind. I found a few apps that claim to do this, but they either weren&#8217;t free, or they were too complicated, or they flat out didn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These apps were: Obsidian (sync), Evernote, Office 365, plain-text files and SyncThing, and even self-hosted web apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1. Obsidian (Winner)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Simplicity: <\/strong>Obsidian stores the notes as plain-text Markdown files, which can be synced using third-party services like Dropbox, Syncthing, or you have the option to pay for Obsidian Sync if you have the need.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Security: <\/strong>Local-first storage ensures control over your data, and less likely that someone goes snooping around your files.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Accessibility: <\/strong>Works offline and on all operating systems. There are apps for your phone, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Organization: <\/strong>You can use any organization method you want, as it works with YAML, tags, categories, file structure, mind-maps, you name it. Media is saved as an individual file and &#8220;called&#8221; into your note, so that needs to be considered when building your structure. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2. Evernote<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Simplicity: <\/strong>It operates in the cloud, but the free version only syncs two devices. It is a little daunting at first and tries to do too much. It&#8217;s great for users that want all of those, but I have my home lab! I have other services for those purposes. So it loses points for being too much, but might be nice for some.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Security: <\/strong>Your data is stored and &#8220;owned&#8221; by Evernote. Meaning if Evernote goes down, so does your data. I don&#8217;t like that. I want to know that when I am 100+ years old I will still have my memories.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Accessibility: <\/strong>It&#8217;s also available on all platforms, but not usable at (my) work. So I can&#8217;t get to my files between home and work.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Organization: <\/strong>Chronological or tagged, but not a file structure. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">3. Office 365 (Word)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Simplicity: <\/strong>We&#8217;ve all used word at some point or another. But it, too, is overly complicated for this purpose.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Security: <\/strong>It&#8217;s funny to think that Microsoft hasn&#8217;t tried everything to inject itself into your life to get your data. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Accessibility: <\/strong>Actually, the better option here. You can download off the cloud and use Word locally, or log in on any device, and it&#8217;s even socially acceptable to use at work! So&#8230; top marks here.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Organization: <\/strong>You can save the document anywhere, and is familiar file structure organization. Searchability though, is lacking here. We all know how crap Microsoft search is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">4. Office 365 (OneNote)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Simplicity: <\/strong>Still a little bulky, but there are hotkeys for quick notes that are overly simple. But the open-canvas is something I love and I can even use my phone&#8217;s pen to draw next to my text, or make full hand-written notes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Security: <\/strong>Same as Word, I&#8217;ve even been served ads on things I wrote down, never spoke about, and never searched outside of the note. So I don&#8217;t write anything sensitive here.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Accessibility: <\/strong>Same as Word, if you can access the web, you can get to your notes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Organization: <\/strong>Some people bag on this, but I love OneNote&#8217;s organization. It&#8217;s like a file\/folder structure so it helps me categorize the notes, and the search is actually decent but not great.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">5. Syncthing and plain-text<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Simplicity: <\/strong>A little more complicated outside of just using a text editor. Syncthing is finicky at best and I&#8217;ve lost notes because of sync errors with versioning between devices. It thought the version I had on my phone that I hadn&#8217;t touched in a week was the most recent and just deleted all newer files that I had no way to retrieve.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Security: <\/strong>Very secure, even from yourself, for the reason above. But Syncthing is end-to-end encrypted and doesn&#8217;t particularly store anything itself, so it&#8217;s still local to you.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Accessibility: <\/strong>As long as you have the latest sync, you can always have your files. Syncthing can be installed on every device I&#8217;ve ever seen, and can even be self-hosted as an always-on sync server.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Organization: <\/strong>You can use any app, and use any structure you&#8217;d like within that app. The files themselves are what gets synced so it&#8217;s however you decide to divide them up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">6. Self-Hosting a web app<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Options: <\/strong>I used FlatNotes, NoteMark, Trilium, WikiJS, MediaWiki, BookStack, SilverBullet, and more. I liked and used FlatNotes for a good while, but what started turning me away is trying to link files to each other, and some features I didn&#8217;t really like.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Simplicity: <\/strong>Self-hosting is never easy, but if you have a virtual machine or some cheap device to run as a server, then you already know how to do most of this. Installing some of these apps had complications, but some made it easy with single-line commands.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Accessibility: <\/strong>You can either use methods to assign a domain to your server, or keep it local, so accessibility is an option here. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Organization: <\/strong>FlatNotes forced me into a KISS method. No file structure as a rule! So I got used to using tags and keywords, which actually aligned with my needs much more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Of these options that I tried, I went FULL CIRCLE back to the simplest way to keep information, which is: <strong>SIMPLE TEXT NOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I now have a VPN that I can access my home file server. So, in order to access my notes outside of home I do have to have this VPN installed and set up and working. But apps like TwinGate make this super easy. Though I cannot access these files at work. What I can do is set up Syncthing whenever I need to pull these files, or have a cronjob throw the files into a self-hosted app like FlatNotes. However, just like forcing myself to get used to no file structure, I can force myself to separate work and home notes. But using simple text editors, I can zip them up and email them to myself if I need to, or some other cloud service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This did lead me back to using <strong>Obsidian<\/strong>, though. The search function is unmatched and I now throw everything into a single folder. I stage things with tags and each file is named with the date and a topic. So I can organize by date if I need to, or filter out certain tags. I also needed an app that was quick to open so I didn&#8217;t forget what I was going to write down waiting for the app to load (looking at you, Microsoft&#8230;). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent WAY TOO LONG trying to find the best app. And it turns out the best is the simplest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I guess the journey to find the best note taking app was the self-discovery of how one takes notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The bottom line up front, I went with the most basic method for this; notepad or some text editor and saving individual text files. Or a markdown editor for more flexibility and flavor to the text like Obsidian. What I am trying to achieve My memory is terrible. I have to write down EVERYTHING in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":61,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-life","category-productivity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/notetaking.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4686,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/4686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dabbleden.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}