Notes, Notes and More Notes

I’ve tried a lot of apps in my time, always searching for that perfect tool to help with productivity. This week, found me on the hunt AGAIN for that perfect note taking app.

This is sadly something I’ve done too many times because I tend to be very unique in my specifications when it comes to most things, and this includes notes.

So what are some of these specifications I hear you ask? Well, let’s see if I can sum them up in understandable English, without writing an essay:

• It takes notes. Not everything else under the sun, just notes – If I want other things, I’d prefer to add them as I want, or get them in different apps.
• Simple people, simple! I don’t want to read a manual every time I want to use it.
• I don’t like handwriting my notes, I type faster then I can write!
• Pretty!!! It must have a beautiful UI AND app icon!! Obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
• I really don’t like subscriptions and try to avoid them at all costs. But when it comes to notes this is VERY hard to avoid, so I put this specification in the maybe pile; meaning I would consider a subscription for the right app. Why not pay? I find, as an artist, subscriptions are just too hard, I don’t have a consistent cash flow, so I prefer to buy outright or go for a very low-cost subscription worst case.
• Trial option, I’ve got to see if I like it after all.
• Cross platform. I want to have it on my Mac, iPad and iPhone because I use all three a LOT and it MUST look and work great on ALL.
• Folders within folders for organisation, and it must be easy to keep organised.
• Copy/paste from outside sources and back again without complications.
• NO blocks within a note (this refers back to the previous specification)
• Spellcheck toggle
• Export for backups and some type of import for all my previous notes
• At the end of the day this is not just about notes, it needs to be friendly to everything I like to put in it, which is notes, manuals, stories, poetry and other random thoughts.
• A quick notes icon/app in the menu bar of my MacBook, and long press quick note on IOS would certainly be a plus.

My journey into notes and documents started way back in about 1999.

I was a teenager who fell in love with the mammoth amount of information that the internet put at my fingertips, this led me to seeing a computer as an awesome asset. I then started writing my stories and poetry in the then simple MS Word and organising them in folders.

This was my go-to method of larger notes, and many other writings for many years. That and handwritten notebooks for journals and scattered notepads for other random notes. It wasn’t until my mid 20’s when I got my first MacBook that I started seeing other ways of doing things. By this time I’d started mixing my journaling between my MacBook and my notebooks.

It wasn’t until the whole syncing between devices became a thing that I saw the power of a good notes app. To have the ability to write on my MacBook and then switch to my iPhone while I was out and about, really appealed to me. However, because it was still relatively new not a lot of apps were available that could do it and do it well.

The first and obvious choice was Apple Notes, but it didn’t sync well and the UI design never really appealed to me. So going on my first big hunt led me to Simplenote, Day One and Scrivener. I fell in love with Day One’s simplicity for journaling, and interestingly started using it for larger notes and some of my other writings as well.

I didn’t take to Simplenote in the same way, I just wasn’t sure about it and at the time thinking perhaps it was too simple. But I found myself using it instead of Apple Notes for all my simple note taking needs, then I’d copy it over to Day One later if I planned on developing the note into any writings.

Scrivener, Scrivener, Scrivener, what can I say. At the time this robust app was highly recommended for novel writing, and it really didn’t have much competition, if at all. So taking the plunge I paid for it and planned to use it solely for story development. MS Word had still been my go-to for story development, but it was just getting too complicated for story development especially when I had a few on the go. I never took to this app, in any shape or form, while I could see the potential I just found it too complicated and a displeasing messy UI that never appealed to me.

Being that I never took to Scrivener, I ended up on another app hunt and came across Evernote (back when it’s free version didn’t have any device limits). This I took to much better for story development. Being much more simple, easy to use, and a beautiful UI I found myself enjoying the Evernote experience.

Sadly Day One ended up moving to a subscription base which had me instantly annoyed, I stuck with the ‘Classic’ for a little while, but I knew it wasn’t going to last, so my use of it waned. I even checked out the new Day One to see if it would be worth the money, but it had changed enough that I no longer liked it.

This saw me copying everything out of Day One and over to Evernote. But this didn’t last too long because Evernote brought in the device limit on their free plan. At the time, their subscription was way out of the question. I tried keeping Evernote on my MacBook and iPad while using Simplenote on my iPhone, but this made it impossible to work on something in development. In the end, I went back to the drawing board and started the hunt for an Evernote replacement.

I think I tried quite a few note apps on this particular hunt, such as Notejoy, Milanote, Agenda, Joplin, Google Keep and Zoho Notebooks. I can’t remember much from back then, but none of them came close to meeting all the requirements I had.

It has been a slow courting, but by this time I had completely fell in love with Simplenote and had started to really rely on it for all my notes. So I found myself wanting an app that was almost a hybrid between Simplenote and Evernote. I didn’t find that, what I did find was Notion.

Notion is a very different take on notes (for me anyway), using a database system really was a big learning curve, but I couldn’t find anything else that could do what I wanted. To start with I was not a fan of the UI, but I changed the theme to dark and found that it was appealing enough that I thought I could live with it.

It’s probably good to note here that if I don’t use something frequently, I forget all I’ve learned and end up having to re-read manuals and tutorials to refresh my memory. This is what happened with Notion. I persisted for 2 years but found myself avoiding it because it just wasn’t easy. And then an update would happen! I’d have to re-login and by then I’d forgotten what I was going to write. So again, I found myself avoiding it and just using Simplenote.

Another issue I faced with Notion uses blocks when writing. I don’t like my paragraphs put in blocks, it means ‘copy and paste’ is a nightmare. Currently after I’ve written up a post, I copy it into MS Word which is put into the family Dropbox for my partner to edit (Yes, I’m very lucky to have a partner who is an editor, among her many talents). While I’m not a fan of the process she loves Word for editing and just about everything because of ‘track changes’ etc. But blocks make it hard to copy to Word then into my WordPress and back into Notion. At some point in the process, I find myself having to go through and re-space my paragraphs. Not friendly at all, and let’s not mention this copy/paste issue on an iOS. Since I do a LOT of copy/paste blocks are a hard NO.

This whole time I just decided my perfect note taking app was not out there. So, I just made do with what I had, until a couple of days ago when I decided perhaps it was time to go on the hunt again, but this time I would seriously consider a subscription since I was now in the position to. Mind you I didn’t particularly want to if I didn’t have to, so it would have to be darn worth it!

So I find the best way to search for note apps is using the term ‘Evernote alternative’. Being one of the most popular notes app, there is a LOT of articles out there of people trying to replace Evernote. Sifting through all the results, throwing out all teams and collaboration suggestions, one of the biggest alternatives is Notejoy.

Notejoy does actually tick all the boxes except for one very vital thing. It is not well designed for the iPad. Since I’m currently writing this post on my iPad, one can assume this is very important for me. At the time of writing this post, when you’re writing a note in Notejoy the text goes from one side of the screen to the other side, and since I have the 12inch iPad Pro that is a LOT of screen to cross. It feels like you’re writing a whole paragraph on one line and that makes me feel like I’m getting nowhere.

This leads to Joplin, I really felt like this could have been my app and that I could overlook the fact that I wasn’t a huge fan of the app icon. However, it had the exact same vital flaw as Notejoy, but at least it didn’t cost anything, so I put it in the ‘if I can’t find anything else’ box.

Bear felt more like a Simplenote alternative, and since I’m super happy with Simplenote I didn’t see the point in Bear. Having said that, it’s a nice looking app with a great simple design that doesn’t cost a fortune.

On a similar note (look at me joking), Standard Notes was a similar experience. I liked it a lot, but it didn’t have folders. So no matter how much I liked Standard Notes, it was not going to do anything more than what Simplenote was doing for me.

Agenda came up in my searches a few times, so I gave it another go, and again discarded it real quick because it’s not really anything of what I’m needing. In fact it felt like a serious learning curve just to figure out what it could do.

Considering I’m a creative it’s interesting how I’ve never been able to come at a more visual note taking app like Milanote. I’ve downloaded it, I’ve stared at it, I’ve tried to do a couple things, but for some reason this type of visual notes on a board doesn’t fit with me.

Interestingly enough it’s still on my computer simply because I feel like it’s a good app and I’d like to use it, but I never do. While on the visual side of things that means GoodNotes and Notability were opened and deleted just as quickly.

Google Keep, just like the Google eco system is just too ‘colourful’ for me, and I’m not a huge fan of my notes being more like sticky notes. I thought I could work with Zoho Notebooks which also has a similar feel so I downloaded it again to give it a serious go. After migrating everything I had in Evernote to it, I soon found that it was way too messy for me. I couldn’t have a notebook inside a folder or another notebook. I then ended up with SO many notebooks that couldn’t be organised that I found myself avoiding opening it.

Dropbox Paper I thought could be possible since my partner and I have a family account with them, but it’s not so much a notes app, or at least that’s how it felt to me. It seemed to be mostly designed just to work on the documents you have within your Dropbox, good idea, but not for me.

In my searching, I did come across two apps no one was talking about, SpringNotes and MWeb. Both got a big thumbs up because they were a one-time in-app purchase, so I downloaded them both to try the limited versions. If you like your markdown notes then I do think both are a good option to look into. SpringNotes felt like it could be a good option but I couldn’t figure out if it had folders. I felt MWeb looked more my style so this is the one I decided to buy and seriously trial.

I don’t mind the Markdown notes, in fact since enjoying Simplenote for so long, moving to Markdown wasn’t that different. I’ve done website design in the past, so it’s a somewhat familiar space and therefore not overly complicated.

While MWeb gave me a lot of features, I was still finding it wasn’t quite hitting the love button. One gripe I had was the subfolders don’t quite work the way I’d like. Say you have a story development folder called ‘Story’, in this folder you have subfolders called ‘Characters’, ‘Ideas’, ‘Research’, etc. Now I write up a character description of my main character and throw it in the Characters folder, as you do. But that subfolder acts more like a filter, you still see ALL your Story notes within the ’Story’ folder. This isn’t a huge issue, but I felt I would lose things on occasion. For example, say I quickly open my phone to write a quick note in the ’Story’ folder because I don’t quite know which folder, I want it in yet, and as it often happens, I forget about it. I feel it would easily just get lost in the mass of notes. While there is a search function, you need to know what you’re searching for. I already have a habit of writing quick notes, coming across them ages later and going ‘did I write that?’. Needless to say I put the app in the ‘if there isn’t anything else’ box.

Since I was considering markdown I decided that perhaps Ulysses would be a good option, it comes up in searches for notes and for novel writing, so that could make it the perfect app. However, I found it was quite similar to MWeb, and while it has some extra ‘author’ specific features such as publishing directly to WordPress or exporting as PDFs etc, I just couldn’t see myself using them. So that put me back in the MWeb corner, especially since it was already bought and paid for with no further coin required!

By this stage I was starting to think I needed to revisit some past apps. I re-opened Apple Notes and tried to make this work for me, but the only way I found myself maybe liking it was by putting it in dark mode. But then you have to put your whole computer into dark mode which I don’t particularly like. Plus the sync function just doesn’t feel quite right for me. I don’t know why, but it made me uneasy, maybe from past experiences (shrugs).

Back to Evernote, perhaps I should just bite the bullet and enter a subscription with them, but $99 AUD a year seems an awful lot when all I want is the devices, and maybe in a few years’ time some extra storage. Opening the app up after two years absence confirmed my hesitation, I don’t want to pay for a bunch of features such as task management and so on when I ONLY want notes. So Evernote got crossed off the list for the umpteenth time.

So one final search left me with two options to try, the first was Nimbus Notes. I really thought this was going to be the app, it ticked so many boxes that I was seriously considering the cost and if it was worth it when I realised it used blocks, as mentioned above this was an instant delete.

So what did that leave me with? It left me with an app I’d discarded many times because I’d misunderstood the website. Obsidian. Yes, back to markdown, which I’m not surprised because of how much I liked MWeb. This app didn’t come up frequently in my search, but I always looked at it when it did because it was a cool name with a cool UI. But every time I went to their website I got confused about the syncing. Yes they say you can sync across all devices but on the ‘pricing’ page it doesn’t say anything about the sync just that Obsidian Sync is $8 a month. This lead me to believe that Obsidian only synced if you paid for it, but since I was now considering paying, I figured I’d get the free version and if I liked it on all devices I’d pay for the sync.

After downloading and opening I totally fell head over heels for this app, it was like MWeb but with all this extra stuff that made it totally awesome, and plugins, omg, plugins so I could customise it heaps. Then I discovered that I could sync it all using my iCloud, all my files were kept in my iCloud in .md format with nothing being stored in the app. Suddenly I realise that I have everything I wanted without having to pay for a subscription.

Because of the way the files are stored, the app becomes more like a viewer/editor for my files. Meaning I can access it from other apps if need be. The iCloud sync worked great; however, I don’t have a lot of confidence in iCloud and would prefer DropBox syncing on iOS in the future.

The ‘Live View’ means that while I work in markdown, I don’t see the markdown, making it so much sleeker to view. I could turn off ‘Import HTML’ so it copies anything from the web into plain and simple text, I’ve always used Simplenote for this particular feature because I only ever want the text without all the dressing so I can then organise it how I want or need.

I think at this point I could go on and on about this app, but basically all my requirements were met, except for the ‘quick notes’ in the menu bar/long hold, but I’ve not had that for a long time anyway. I feel like I have full control of my app and files, which is something I’ve not felt since moving away from the old school MS Word approach. But I still have a lot to learn about Obsidian too, for something so beautifully simple, she can also be beautifully robust depending on my needs.

Now will it be an everlasting love? Unfortunately only time will tell. But I have just typed this whole post within Obsidian on my iPad, and have been super happy with the process so far. If the romance falls apart, I’m sure I’ll give you another lengthy post with all the gritty details.