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The endless quest for a great notes-taking tool
What I've been wanting for a long time for my tech notes:
- taking notes easily, preferably markdown (love its simplicity and I seem to remember it pretty well, maybe from stackoverflow's training)
- must be available everywhere, I don't want to sync folders over dropbox or stuff like that across my computers, tablets and phones... it should be hosted maybe on AWS and be available as soon as I type my domain (even public would be fine)
- must be simple to edit (with a password at this point, no public editing :P) to add pages
- must be simple to add images (cut/paste and/or drag and drop) on the document
- there must be a quicksearch (something like I start typing and immediately full-text search into the documents appear below with a small preview of the paragraph where my text was found)
I tried text markdown files + grep -> good but no sync across devices, no images (markdown files can't display that directly, I have to store the images somewhere and link to them, that's a lot of work without a 3rd party program)
I tried google docs -> good but search is terrible, plus a lot of formatting complexity since it wasn't created for tech notes (text + images/graphs)
I tried dropbox -> same issues as above, plus install stuff everywhere. Hate it.
So here I am asking again, maybe I'll be more lucky this time: is there a preferably opensource software (or combination of softwares) that will allow me to have simple tech notes in markdown with fulltext responsive search + extremely quick edit of whatever I'm seeing + web access from any device + paste images directly in those rendered MD files?
It's a VERY simple tool but since my memory is gradually failing (getting old), I'm looking for a way to have my knowledge, coding tips and snippets, programming guides, graphs, linux commands and stuff like that all at a glance at my fingertips.
Sorry for asking again something that has probably been asked a thousand times. As I said: I'm getting old :P
- fabianholzer 5y agoA self-hosted TiddlyWiki instance (the nodejs-based version, not the single html file approach) might satisfy many of your requirements, albeit not the search preview. https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/
- kixiQu 5y agoI wonder if you could hack that in with https://github.com/danielo515/TW5-contextPlugin https://github.com/danielo515/TW5-contextPlugin ? I use it for this for backlinks. ETA: https://tiddlywiki.com/static/Customising%2520search%2520results.html https://tiddlywiki.com/static/Customising%2520search%2520res... Yup, totally doable
- akulbe 5y agoStandard Notes. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mobitar https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mobitar Mo Bitar is the author. Just figured you could check SN/him out, if you wanted. Not sponsored, just a very happy user.
- Leftium 5y agoI'm waiting for this to be released: https://nvultra.com/ https://nvultra.com/ (I think it's limited to Mac/iOS, though) I think https://simplenote.com https://simplenote.com fits all your requirements except images. I streamlined images by using services that allows pasting images into the browser (Trello, Glitch, Imgur), then get a link to the image with a single click. (If you abuse StackOverflow's question editor, they even give you the markdown for the image.) Recently, I have been considering switching to Apple Notes after discovering you can access your notes from a browser. It fits all your requirements except markdown.
- stakkur 5y agogEdit + cloud storage of your choice to share markdown files. Done.
- toby_tw 5y agoI really simpathise. I have tried all sorts of notes app, and they all suck in some way it another. So far I have found Evernote to be the least sucky of them all.
- catchmeifyoucan 5y agoFor super quick notes that are password managed, and markdown supported, I've been using https://nnote.io https://nnote.io. Simple, no-ads, and might be OSS sometime soon. However with nnote, I do end up with a lot of links, and since those notes live everywhere and are hard to manage, I end up making a task in Amna (https://getamna.com https://getamna.com) [disclaimer I built it], and use nnote as a tab inside of the browser it provides.
- ApolloRising 5y agoSounds too simple but you could just create a personal wordpress install + strong search plugin. Seems to do everything you asked for since you are ok with public.
- adamhp 5y agoIf you're on the Apple ecosystem, I really like the simplicity of Bear. You do have to pay a very small fee for it (like maybe $1/mo?) but I've found their interface and tags system to be the best combination of power and simplicity. Apps always work and sync with iCloud.
- runjake 5y ago$1.49 a month or $14.99 annually. And I agree, Bear is awesome. It's fast, it's simple yet powerful (eg. x-callback-url fun), and it stays out of your way. Sync is rock-solid and reliable and requires no effort on my part. It's great for programmers, too. https://bear.app/ https://bear.app/
- adamhp 5y agoI've even been using the todo feature more regularly these days to capture action items from meetings. Anytime you do the markdown checkbox (- [ ]), it bubbles up into a nav item for "Todo". I like that they haven't tried to overcomplicate things.
- stakkur 5y agoBear uses a SQLite database to store notes, a layer which I don’t want or need. Notes are not simply text files.
- mikeodds 5y agostandardnotes.com ticks a lot of those boxes. apps for most devices and os flavors, syncs across them all end to end encryption add-on editors which allow note taking in markdown and attaching / embedding files basic search functionality built-in
- jp42 5y agoI tried several tools but the only thing that worked for me is just plain text.