After GitHub.dev was released (hit “.” on any GitHub repo, to open it in browser-based VS Code), I immediately saw the notetaking workflow that I wanted: a GitHub repo, storing markdown that I can own/control, but editable in the browser, using my existing VS Code preferences (theme, keybindings, etc.).
Unfortunately, VS Code doesn’t natively support wiki links, so I created an extension that simply adds that feature on top of the core VS Code markdown editor: https://GitHub.com/lostintangent/wikilens.
Over the last week, this experience has really transformed my writing workflow. I can simply open https://GitHub.dev/lostintangent/wiki (my personal notes repo) and begin editing and navigating, without too much ceremony. As the extension ecosystem begins creating more extensions for GitHub.dev, this experience will only get better.
https://obsidian.md/ is close to this, although a different editor with much better linking. The notes are just markdown files in a folder so you can also save it as a git repo and edit through Codespaces or VSC's remote editing extensions.
Absolutely! If you end up checking out WikiLens w/GitHub.dev, don’t hesitate to let me know any feedback you might have. I’ll be iterating on the experience based on my own usage, but I’m keen to ensure this works well for others as well!
I guess all your missing is offline capabilities (obviously you can have a local repo as well, but if your doing all your editing online, you might not be backing it up for when you actually need that offline capability) and mobile editing (which shockingly still isn't a thing for even basic github)
I keep seeing apps like these, and what they almost never have is sharing notes between multiple people.
I use Apple Notes, and I constantly share notes with my wife — and entire folder structures, too. We use it for grocery lists, dinner planning, travel planning, and many other things. It's not quite as elegantly real-time as Google Docs, but we don't need that as much, since we tend to edit at different times.
I also like that Notes is rich text all the way. My heart sinks when a new note-taking app boasts of Markdown support, as if that's a good thing. I think Markdown is fine for technical docs, where no good standard for rich text editing exists. But Markdown is a compromise — things like asterisks and underlines are less legible than the bold and italics they represent (especially across more than one word), and links become nigh unreadable, not to mention things like inline images and tables.
I previously used Evernote, and I've tried Notion (slow, awful for organizing, "block model" gets in the way of writing). I've yet to find anything that matches Apple Notes.
Apple Notes takes the crown for being the most unobstructive when it comes to taking notes.
1. Drag and Drop images, screenshots, annotate them in place. I cannot live without this anymore. Forcing me to first upload an image somewhere, and then use ()[] syntax to correctly load the file in MarkDown is the opposite of what I want my Notes application to be.
2. Sync - I write my notes on my Mac while working. I needed to look something up while I am waiting in queue somewhere? iPhone provides an excellent interface with usable Search while on the Go. Had a thought while I am traveling, want to put it down? Notes on iPhone. This thing is super convenient.
3. Shared Notes. My wife and I share a few notes with purposes - "Things to Know" - for the important tidbits that we end up sharing via Messages/email. Now they are in one place and recorded forever. "To buy" is our commonly used shopping list. "Household todo" - is our shared todo list for stuff around the house.
Now, the con is that deep lock-in to the Apple ecosystem. I am still waiting for an alternative that gives me the ability and ease to do #1 and #2 above. So far, none met my needs.
My eager bet is on https://www.serenity.re/en/notes
The dev has image drag and drop support on the roadmap. If it comes out, I will give it a serious shot.
Evernote...? Windows support, and Linux support in the browser. The Linux apps are bad. But I hate the new design and still use the legacy version on macOS. I'm looking for a replacement, but I have thousands of notes in Evernote, and it won't be an easy move.
One good reason to not use Apple’s software offerings is to be able to keep eggs in more than one basket. Treat Apple like the hardware seller they should be? They’re below average at best at software anyway. Other than the upper layer polish.
Apple is famously a forerunner of personal computing. They invented most of the mobile UI design language used today. Every OS they’ve built is extremely premium. Their natural language processing is best-in-class.
Why I moved away from Apple notes: export options require AppleScript, or paid Mac app (lost some images). no Linux client (there’s a web client) Code has no syntax highlighting. Linking between notes wasn't possible, this might have changed since.
I've jumped between note-taking Apps, Evernote, Bear, Typora, Notion, Obsidian, ..., you name it. Finally settled down with Obsidian as I can manage note files directly such as using Syncthing for backing up and syncing. This one does seem interesting and possible to integrate into my workflow, gotta give it a try.
I went through the same process and got stuck on GoodNotes on the iPad. Once I got used to using the Pencil for sketching, marking up other documents, and handwriting notes (when that makes sense), I was hooked.
Obsidian is pretty cool and is progressing rapidly. If their iPad client gets Pencil support then I will probably end up there as well.
With the new Quick Capture stuff I'm all in on Apple Notes. Drafts was a bit more slick when it comes to just capturing and acting on text, sure. But all the nerd-favorite apps like Drafts and Obsidian are heavily text focused. So am I! But I also really like taking handwritten notes.
the thing that really soured me on apple notes is that, not only did they remove precise drawing and zoom, but they flattened all of the previously vector-based drawings i had on my ipad pro. they did this without any forewarning at all via an ordinary ios/ipados update (no popup, no release notes, nothing at all). before that, it was poised to replace all of my paper notetaking and drawing, especially with the handwriting recognition stuff coming to fruition that they promised with the debut of the original 2015 ipad pro.
I'm in a similar spot, recently started using Obsidian and am enjoying it. It's far from perfect, but it is better than the others imo. And the fact that it is all markdown based means no lock-in which is fantastic.
This is one thing I've been keeping an eye on. I cannot find a way of doing that now; I don't think I can make the Möbius Sync the other commenter mentioned work either since it can only access files under its own App directory.
I appreciate the suggestion. I checked it out at the same time as Standard Notes.
It seems to break the Simple + Plain criteria. For example on the main nav, pressing "+" prompts to either New Note or New To Do. And all the references to "notebooks". Too much for me.
I have Joplin also, and yes it’s good, and it syncs well these days (not so in past I found) and there’s no good reason I have not be using it full time, but I’m not, something there niggles me in use, maybe it’s just a shade slower, hard to define, but moving from ios to OS X works great for me In FSNotes so I’ll probably be sticking with it for a while, I stuck on notational velocity for a long time and have only moved for the ability to add photos easily (improvement in Joplin only) and apply some security levels applicable on individual record levels
It's what I've settled on, not liking the lock-in (bad export options) of Notes.app, paying for increasingly crappier Evernote (I used in the past), cloud-sync-based note apps, very barebones FOSS apps, half-arsed stuff like Agenda, and Electron crap.
what I like about the notes app is that it can use imap to store notes. So they’re in-sync without iCloud and accessible from any imap client.
The app itself is a bit annoying though with forced auto-spelling and a clunky feeling. Would love to find another app that relies on imap, but haven’t found any (admit to not looking too much)
You didn’t bring up a lot of apps that are similar. Is it because open source is a requirement? Not sure because you bring up obviously non open source app issues.
For a quick look at quite a few apps would be all the Zettelkasten notes apps. Taio is recently out for iOS and Mac too.
I also don’t look at any of the options you listed. There’s still a handful of apps left over.
I’ve been using the native Apple notes for years now. At first it was convenience, but at some point I thought about it and decided there was no reason to switch. It has shockingly reliable sync (for Apple), and the right number of formatting options for me. I wish it could syntax-highlight code blocks, but that’s not a universal use case.
Export is fine if you’re only moving a single note—it just strips formatting and shares it as plain text. Similarly, I don’t know if there’s a bulk import option. If you have a text file, you might need to copy-paste it into notes.
Apple’s “Quicknote” feature in iOS 15 is great, being able to highlight and link to specific text on any webpage in Safari, and other apps as well. I guess a lot of people will stick to the stock Notes app just because of this feature [1]
Unfortunately no 3th-party Notes app can implement such a feature due to Apple’s walled garden :’(
Anyway to change the storage backend from iCloud to something self-hosted that has all the Apple Notes features? In my experience syncing works fine with IMAP as backend storage, regretfully without most of the rich-text features.
Lot's of discussion about other apps but none cover the main selling point for me. FSNotes was created initially as an open source Notational Velocity / NVAlt replacement when NVAlt broke on one of the MacOS version upgrades. It can be configured to replicate the amazing modal search / create interface from those apps.
There is also NVUltra [0] from Brett Terpstra, his successor to NVAlt. It is still in beta after quite a while. From memory it seemed more powerful and a bit slicker overall, but right now I don't need to do anything too complicated and prefer the cleaner native look of FSNotes.
FSNotes has no dropbox integration for the iOS app, but you can still use dropbox as a store and use any other plain text / markdown iOS note app. I use 1Writer.
I have to say I am really loving it so far. All based on Markdown or org mode format. I have a folder stored on OneDrive and it is synced across all my devices.
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Unfortunately, VS Code doesn’t natively support wiki links, so I created an extension that simply adds that feature on top of the core VS Code markdown editor: https://GitHub.com/lostintangent/wikilens.
Over the last week, this experience has really transformed my writing workflow. I can simply open https://GitHub.dev/lostintangent/wiki (my personal notes repo) and begin editing and navigating, without too much ceremony. As the extension ecosystem begins creating more extensions for GitHub.dev, this experience will only get better.
I use Apple Notes, and I constantly share notes with my wife — and entire folder structures, too. We use it for grocery lists, dinner planning, travel planning, and many other things. It's not quite as elegantly real-time as Google Docs, but we don't need that as much, since we tend to edit at different times.
I also like that Notes is rich text all the way. My heart sinks when a new note-taking app boasts of Markdown support, as if that's a good thing. I think Markdown is fine for technical docs, where no good standard for rich text editing exists. But Markdown is a compromise — things like asterisks and underlines are less legible than the bold and italics they represent (especially across more than one word), and links become nigh unreadable, not to mention things like inline images and tables.
I previously used Evernote, and I've tried Notion (slow, awful for organizing, "block model" gets in the way of writing). I've yet to find anything that matches Apple Notes.
Apple Notes takes the crown for being the most unobstructive when it comes to taking notes.
1. Drag and Drop images, screenshots, annotate them in place. I cannot live without this anymore. Forcing me to first upload an image somewhere, and then use ()[] syntax to correctly load the file in MarkDown is the opposite of what I want my Notes application to be.
2. Sync - I write my notes on my Mac while working. I needed to look something up while I am waiting in queue somewhere? iPhone provides an excellent interface with usable Search while on the Go. Had a thought while I am traveling, want to put it down? Notes on iPhone. This thing is super convenient.
3. Shared Notes. My wife and I share a few notes with purposes - "Things to Know" - for the important tidbits that we end up sharing via Messages/email. Now they are in one place and recorded forever. "To buy" is our commonly used shopping list. "Household todo" - is our shared todo list for stuff around the house.
Now, the con is that deep lock-in to the Apple ecosystem. I am still waiting for an alternative that gives me the ability and ease to do #1 and #2 above. So far, none met my needs.
My eager bet is on https://www.serenity.re/en/notes The dev has image drag and drop support on the roadmap. If it comes out, I will give it a serious shot.
Is it that hard to create an open source hosted version? Just get out of the way and let me take a note!
As I posted in this thread, I will pay $100/year for this solution. The closest I've found is Standard Notes, but it's missing a few things.
(I’m aware there are legit reasons, but I’m curious about your scenario.)
Apple is famously a forerunner of personal computing. They invented most of the mobile UI design language used today. Every OS they’ve built is extremely premium. Their natural language processing is best-in-class.
How are they possibly “below average at best”
If one of us buys something, then we delete it from the list. This prevents duplicate purchases and reminds us both of what remains to be bought.
Obsidian is pretty cool and is progressing rapidly. If their iPad client gets Pencil support then I will probably end up there as well.
1. Secure - E2E encrypted on cloud storage, vendor cannot read it
2. Accessible - standalone native app on desktop and mobile on all platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac/iOS, Android)
3. Simple - love how Apple doesn't even make you "title" notes, it just takes the first line
4. Shareable - with others with editing privs eg a grocery list for family
5. Paid - that way I know it's sustainable and not some data scam
6. Plain - Base version has no ability to publish to a blog or any junk like that.
7. Open source
I just subscribed to Standard Notes:https://standardnotes.com/
Standard Notes has #1, #2, #5, and#7. But UI is more cluttered than iOS. And not shareable with editing privs.
It seems to break the Simple + Plain criteria. For example on the main nav, pressing "+" prompts to either New Note or New To Do. And all the references to "notebooks". Too much for me.
It's what I've settled on, not liking the lock-in (bad export options) of Notes.app, paying for increasingly crappier Evernote (I used in the past), cloud-sync-based note apps, very barebones FOSS apps, half-arsed stuff like Agenda, and Electron crap.
The app itself is a bit annoying though with forced auto-spelling and a clunky feeling. Would love to find another app that relies on imap, but haven’t found any (admit to not looking too much)
For a quick look at quite a few apps would be all the Zettelkasten notes apps. Taio is recently out for iOS and Mac too.
I also don’t look at any of the options you listed. There’s still a handful of apps left over.
i am seriously considering migrating my hundreds of notes and recipes to notes.app because i have been having a bad feeling about keep.
you are saying the grass isn't greener on that side either? what's bad about notes.app besides lock-in and export?
Export is fine if you’re only moving a single note—it just strips formatting and shares it as plain text. Similarly, I don’t know if there’s a bulk import option. If you have a text file, you might need to copy-paste it into notes.
I don’t like it because I find it clunky and restrictive. However I wouldn’t tell someone to not try it if it seems fine to them.
What I especially like is the simplicity overall and good sync between mac/iphone/ipad.
And that it works great offline.
So if you have 1000s of notes in different folders, you're made to look through tons of irrelevant matches in different folders.
It's also somewhat clunky in syncing sometimes.
Unfortunately no 3th-party Notes app can implement such a feature due to Apple’s walled garden :’(
[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/22/quick-note-may-be...
There is also NVUltra [0] from Brett Terpstra, his successor to NVAlt. It is still in beta after quite a while. From memory it seemed more powerful and a bit slicker overall, but right now I don't need to do anything too complicated and prefer the cleaner native look of FSNotes.
FSNotes has no dropbox integration for the iOS app, but you can still use dropbox as a store and use any other plain text / markdown iOS note app. I use 1Writer.
[0] https://nvultra.com
[1] https://1writerapp.com
I have to say I am really loving it so far. All based on Markdown or org mode format. I have a folder stored on OneDrive and it is synced across all my devices.