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 order to remember it.
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’t need the added complications of learning a new app only to forget how to use some of the “features” when all I need is simple text to remember when and what.
The quest has been daunting. And I really wish I knew how to code.
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.
In today’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’t have your phone?
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’t free, or they were too complicated, or they flat out didn’t work.
These apps were: Obsidian (sync), Evernote, Office 365, plain-text files and SyncThing, and even self-hosted web apps.
1. Obsidian (Winner)
- Simplicity: 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.
- Security: Local-first storage ensures control over your data, and less likely that someone goes snooping around your files.
- Accessibility: Works offline and on all operating systems. There are apps for your phone, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.
- Organization: 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 “called” into your note, so that needs to be considered when building your structure.
2. Evernote
- Simplicity: 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’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.
- Security: Your data is stored and “owned” by Evernote. Meaning if Evernote goes down, so does your data. I don’t like that. I want to know that when I am 100+ years old I will still have my memories.
- Accessibility: It’s also available on all platforms, but not usable at (my) work. So I can’t get to my files between home and work.
- Organization: Chronological or tagged, but not a file structure.
3. Office 365 (Word)
- Simplicity: We’ve all used word at some point or another. But it, too, is overly complicated for this purpose.
- Security: It’s funny to think that Microsoft hasn’t tried everything to inject itself into your life to get your data.
- Accessibility: Actually, the better option here. You can download off the cloud and use Word locally, or log in on any device, and it’s even socially acceptable to use at work! So… top marks here.
- Organization: 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.
4. Office 365 (OneNote)
- Simplicity: 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’s pen to draw next to my text, or make full hand-written notes.
- Security: Same as Word, I’ve even been served ads on things I wrote down, never spoke about, and never searched outside of the note. So I don’t write anything sensitive here.
- Accessibility: Same as Word, if you can access the web, you can get to your notes.
- Organization: Some people bag on this, but I love OneNote’s organization. It’s like a file/folder structure so it helps me categorize the notes, and the search is actually decent but not great.
5. Syncthing and plain-text
- Simplicity: A little more complicated outside of just using a text editor. Syncthing is finicky at best and I’ve lost notes because of sync errors with versioning between devices. It thought the version I had on my phone that I hadn’t touched in a week was the most recent and just deleted all newer files that I had no way to retrieve.
- Security: Very secure, even from yourself, for the reason above. But Syncthing is end-to-end encrypted and doesn’t particularly store anything itself, so it’s still local to you.
- Accessibility: As long as you have the latest sync, you can always have your files. Syncthing can be installed on every device I’ve ever seen, and can even be self-hosted as an always-on sync server.
- Organization: You can use any app, and use any structure you’d like within that app. The files themselves are what gets synced so it’s however you decide to divide them up.
6. Self-Hosting a web app
- Options: 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’t really like.
- Simplicity: 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.
- Accessibility: You can either use methods to assign a domain to your server, or keep it local, so accessibility is an option here.
- Organization: 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.
Final Thoughts
Of these options that I tried, I went FULL CIRCLE back to the simplest way to keep information, which is: SIMPLE TEXT NOTES
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.
This did lead me back to using Obsidian, 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’t forget what I was going to write down waiting for the app to load (looking at you, Microsoft…).
I spent WAY TOO LONG trying to find the best app. And it turns out the best is the simplest.
I guess the journey to find the best note taking app was the self-discovery of how one takes notes.
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