Ask HN: What note taking app do you guys using as a developer?
As a developer building my own product, I take a lot of notes—code snippets, Linux commands, and general technical info. I've tried many apps, but none feel just right.
Here’s what I think a good note-taking app must have:
A note section where I can add text and images Easy organization with sections A quick search to find related notes A bonus would be the ability to retrieve answers from my notes.
Right now, I'm using MS OneNote, which works well for the first two. But as my notes grow, finding the right one becomes a challenge. Do you guys face the same issue? What methods or apps do you use?
On Windows I have notepad++ for me and on Linux Kate is the best. I know, this just text editors but in a couple with Visual Code and annotation plugin to this is a scalable way to find needed Linux commands that works, categorize important notes :
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Artifici...
Previously I used OneNotes, but git is better to works from 5 my workstations with collisions.
Obsidian.
All markdown files that you control. You can always sync it with Dropbox or any other if you choose to. Markdown files will be readable forever, and it is free.
I will try Obisidian for sure. But can we interactively do something with taken notes, like dragging them etc?
Late to the party, but there's a "canvas mode" in Obsidian where you can sort of group notes together and drag them around. Other than that, it's also got a graph view, so provided you tag and link notes properly, it will show you related notes in the graph.
It is based on markdown files and you can link them by writing "[[my new note]]". It also supports tags etc, all text-based.
What is the purpose of the "dragging notes" flow you mention? I am sure it can be done in the text-first way that Obsidian uses.
I evolved from pencil and paper, to text files, to minder. I stick to text and it works good for me. It is simple, fast to use, search works good, basic organization is there. Files are local and xml, so data is easy to extract if needed, backups and distribution are just file copy operations. https://github.com/phase1geo/Minder
I think it easy to get trapped by formatting and publishing. IMHO: Notes are fast and not pretty. If/when I come to the situation where I want to share, then formats like markdown or latex etc are a better fit. When I have to start 'coding' my notes, it becomes a time burden and I end up skipping it. In complicated situations, I will go the other extreme and fire up inkscape.
I have used deft on Emacs for years. It saves notes locally as text files (I use Markdown). I keep my notebook directory as a git repository, so that I can use my notes on any of my machines. Search and filtering is whole-text--no need to set tags. Not a problem until you have years of notes on a modest machine ;) That's as simple as it gets, and yet it has served me very well over the years. QOwnNotes is a non-Emacs solution that works in a very similar way, except that it does expect Markdown files and gives you HTML previews; in fact it can use my Deft directories unchanged.
Deft Mode: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DeftMode QOwnNotes: https://www.qownnotes.org/
I really like the idea that taking notes in markdown format and putting them into the github. In this way we can be independent from the device. But on the other hand it might be overkill for taking little notes. For example I took wsl2 installation steps for the team members I work with. It's just 10 lines of text. I need to commit and push my notes into my repository. On the other hand, I can make my notes public and everybody can visit them. It's surely is a plus. It was a great advice, thanks for sharing. I will try it out to see if it will be working for me
I realized there is little that deserves preservation.
- Business logic/knowledge changes every time I switched company/industry. And I want to be as far away from business as possible, provided I still get hired;
- Technical knowledge is best preserved in code, or design documents in Markdown or whatever.
I use obsidian with live-sync for journal taking and personal knowledge base
Have tried onenote, it works pretty well but it’s a lock-in solution and the search isn’t very good.
The really awesome thing with onenote is when you add a task and it shows up i outlook
I like the idea that "Personal Knowledge Base". I like the styling of MS one note on the other hand. I think perfect app would be combine of those two.
How about Vscode or whatever editor you use (which you're trusting already, and know all the shortcut keys for) editing Markdown files with descriptive names organized into folders that are backed up via Google Drive or Dropbox? What's the benefits of Obsidian over this? I've seen Obsidian lets you add link between files, but I find all I really need is separate files for different notes and todo lists, I'd rather limit my trust given to third parties, and I'm not that bothered about mobile support.
This is mentioned, I liked the idea but it might be overkill to take simple notes. On the other hand interactivity while structuring the notes might be beneficial time to time. Like dragging them and observe them etc.
Can you explain more on "But as my notes grow, finding the right one becomes a challenge"?
For me, I mostly have a file for each project/topic, and if a file gets too big, I'll split it into multiple files with the project/topic name + some tag names in the filename. And to open/find files, Vscode gives you a folder/file viewer sidebar to browse, the command palette lets you search for and open files via partial filenames, and you can search files for keywords too, all via shortcut keys. That's enough for me.
A bunch of arbitrarily nested folders with somewhat ambiguous names, a simple text editor, plain text files, and cynicism.
And grep?
I've got a lot of notes in WikidPad, which seems to be a dead open source project.
90% of the time I usually end up writing to myself in Slack
For more long-formed note-taking I try to use Obsidian.
Yeah, I'm using whatsapp desktop for quick notes or links too. Later on I can reach them from my phone or I can take them within my PC. But on the other hand I want to structured notes to be accessible too. I will try Obsidian, it looks promising. Does it has any semantic note searching cababilities tho?
What’s your take on Notion?
I've never used it, but it seems mostly like a planning and productivity tool rather than note taking tool. I want to easily structure my notes like MS One Note, reach them with different devices and be able to semantically search through notes. Sometimes I forget how I took that note and couldn't find where did I put it.
Reflect Notes
Pen and paper. Walls, palms. Sometimes just pen. Most of the time I revist the same place which gave me the idea.
Notion
I dont even bother. I never end up looking back at anything and futzing with different programs and file formats and workflows isn’t a hobby of mine.
Easy come easy go.
Confluence. VSCode Readmes. Google docs.