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I have spoken in the past about my experiences with Evernote and OneNote, and I found these applications clunky for simple note taking with too many bloated features. I don’t mind OneNote for my academia, but for light personal use, it was just too much for what I need it for.
SimpleNote and UpNote
For a while, I was using SimpleNote for, well, simple notes. I jotted down quick lists, films to watch, sizes and dimensions of area I needed to know and keep for the next hour or so, and random things which popped into my head to check up on later - are ear buds really worth it?
But as I was migrating away from Day One, I encountered UpNote, and while not suitable for journal entries, I liked it more than SimpleNote, and decided to migrate my small assorted notes over.
Times Change
In a matter of weeks though, I began to delve further into self hosting and having full ownership of your files. I liked how iA Writer had an interface where you could easily organise files and folders, and this be mirrored in the actual filesystem. It made it simple for backing up, and I felt better knowing my data didn’t need exporting or converting to be accessed elsewhere. As such, it dawned on me that UpNote may not suit me anymore, already.
Clouds
Initially, I decided whatever platform I was to use, the data would either have to be self hosted or in a cloud. It was during this time I also began to give Nextcloud a go, as described in a previous post. Liking what I saw, I moved my notes to Nextcloud Notes, but I soon realised this would not last.
The biggest issue was the editing and preview modes. I like the Markdown to not be visible whilst I am typing, instead preferring a “Seamless Live Preview” as Typora calls it on their homepage. With Nextcloud Notes, I had either full Markdown while typing or an uneditable ‘rendered’ version with the Markdown hidden.
I also tried QOwnNotes, but found it overly complex for my needs, and it featured a split-screen design with one window presenting the raw Markdown, and another with the Live Preview. Again, as I wanted these merged seamlessly, this application wasn’t for me. However, it is free and cross-platform, as well as quite powerful, so I suggest giving it a go.
Nota
I stumbled across Nota on a Reddit thread one day, and signed up for their BETA waiting list. I was near automatically accepted, and promptly downloaded the application. It’s a nice mixture between the Obsidians and Logseqs of the world, and more simpler interface you would usually find in note taking software. It’s fully functional, without being overbearing, which seemed to suit me perfectly. I pointed its directory at my notes folder, and they all perfectly rendered in its three column system, the furthest left showing me all the folders and subfolders, the next one along with the content inside the folder, and then the larger pane displaying the document’s content. Nota also has a tabbed system where one can quickly jump between notes at the top.
Although I find its dark mode too dark, much preferring something along the lines of Dracula, and unable to toggle it into a light mode, I decided to put up with it, knowing the application is still in developmental stages, and theming will likely come in the future.
Old Hardware
I have an old second-hand MacBook Air that I had to patch to force it to upgrade to Catalina, as compatible software was becoming increasing difficult to find when stuck on High Sierra, despite being a fully functional laptop with very minimal issues. Occasionally, after a few hours of use, it can get ‘overwhelmed’ and needs a reboot, and I can’t run any intensive pieces of software on it, but for web browsing, word processing and note taking, it’s perfectly suited.
After being stuck in bed one day, I decided to grab it and install the new pieces of software I had discovered over the past few weeks, and all managed to work fine. Except Nota. Confused, as I am running Catalina on my iMac as well, I then reviewed the version dates and saw an update had occurred a couple of days before, and now Nota seemed to only run on Big Sur or above.
I was incredibly frustrated as I realised Nota was effectively dead to me now. I wouldn’t be able to use any future versions and access any of the new features or bug fixes as Apple have decided my iMac will forever be stuck on Catalina - again, despite it working perfectly fine.
And so, although Nota was still running on my iMac, I knew I had to find another note app for my desktop.
Standard Notes
I had heard a lot of good things about Standard Notes, and saw its server could be self hosted. I naively thought this would mean I wouldn’t have to pay the subscription fees to gain access to features I would deem as basic, such as Markdown support and being able to choose between a dark and light mode, but no. Annoyed, I immediately looked elsewhere.
Laverna, turtl and Trilium Notes
Laverna looked alright, but before I could start trying to work out the syncing, I had issues with how the Markdown was being rendered.
I want lists to look like this:
- Alarm is being discontinued
- However, the alarm is still on sale in certain stores
- Places which have the alarm:
- Local Hardware Store
But they ended up looking like this:
- Alarm is being discontinued
- However, the alarm is still on sale in certain stores
- Places which have the alarm:
- Local Hardware Store
I couldn’t work out why as the Markdown was appearing correctly in Nota. As I use lists a lot for my notes, this was a dealbreaker, and I uninstalled it, and tried turtl. However, I couldn’t get it to work. Whenever I try to sign up to an account, I get the error: relation "users" does not exist
, and web searching didn’t provide me with any answers as to what I am doing wrong. So, I uninstalled it and tried Trilium Notes, but quickly saw there was not an application for Macs.
Zettlr and Notenik
I believe I found both of these programmes while browsing Reddit again looking for suggestions. While both appear to be great applications, they’re also too much for what I am looking for. Zettlr appears to be more focused towards academia than simple note taking, and Notenik proudly states it is to do “more than just record your notes”.
FSNotes
Realising I was now set on having notes in Markdown, I then browsed though the Tools page of the Markdown Guide website, trying to find any Mac note taking application I had not yet tried. A few caught my eye, with deepdwn in particular seeming quite interesting, but with no demo or trial, I didn’t want to purchase without trying it out first, not sure if it would be what I’m looking for.
What I landed on was FSNotes, but then faced a similar issue as with Laverna, where it rendered the Markdown weirdly. This time, it had no paragraphs at all:
- Alarm is being discontinued
- However, the alarm is still on sale in certain stores
- Places which have the alarm:
- Local Hardware Store
There was probably a way to change my inputs to make it work correctly, as the demo content which came preloaded in FSNotes had paragraphs, but I needed somewhere I could jot down quickly and it just work.
Joplin
Of course, there was Joplin. I was already using it for journal entries, and didn’t like the idea of merging the two worlds together, but was running out of options at this point. However, and you won’t be surprised to hear this, but I faced the same issue as before:
- Alarm is being discontinued
- However, the alarm is still on sale in certain stores
- Places which have the alarm:
- Local Hardware Store
Though the idea of repurposing an application I already used made me rethink some things.
Obsidian
Having spent plenty of time in Obsidian, I knew what it was capable of. Obsidian would render the Markdown how I wanted, and although heavily full of features, many can be turned off, and the application could become pretty simple for holding basic notes.
So I created a new vault and began playing around with themes and plugins, in order to mould it into the simple note taking application I wanted it to be.
After some tweaking, I ended up only having the following plugins:
- File Explorer
- Search
- Starred
- File Recovery
- Style Settings
For the theme, I chose Dracula Slim.
I understood dumbing down Obsidian to a mere simplistic note application would be doing the software a disservice. However, at the time, it was the best I could find to do what I wanted it to do. I put the vault inside Nextcloud, used FolderSync to get the files onto my Android phone (still having this set up from when I last tried Obsidian on my phone), and then have the Obsidian app looking at the folder.
However, I had not considered the difficulty in running two vaults at the same time on my phone, and found switching between the tedious. I realised I needed separate applications.
Where Now?
Frustrated, I have currently returned back to UpNote, which would be a perfect application, if it only it let me self host my files rather than be on their servers. I have extensively reviewed the awesome-selfhosted list, and am struggling to find anything that just works as I want it to, with there being various issues regardless of which application I choose. I can only hope the future either gives me a self hosted UpNote, either as part of a new update or as an alternative application to compete.
Tags: Applications Setup Productivity Mac