This is the personal website of John Watson: father, software developer, artist, guitar player. Follow me on Mastodon or Twitter or Twitch or itch.io or GitHub.

Can anyone suggest a good desktop note-taking application?

<img src="/images/uploads/2007/12/notes.jpg’ alt=‘Notes’ class=“alignright” />For a long while I was using Tadalist which I absolutely adored because of its simplicity. It made lists and you checked things off and it was wonderful. I migrated to Remember The Milk and liked it much better, presumably because my list making was getting more complicated. In particular, I liked the ability to tag list items which allowed me to organize things more. This should have been a warning sign. I now feel that if you’re doing too much organizing of your to-do lists then you’re doing something wrong.

I also have a need for taking notes and keeping my notes organized, searchable, and visible. I was using text files for this but was finding it difficult to maintain a useful naming convention and enable easy searching across files. Maybe it’s a lack of discipline, but these files would find themselves all over my system rather than being in one place. And because they’re tucked away in a folder someplace they’re not visible and they tend to become forgotten and lost just when I need them.

“Aha!” you’re thinking. “He should use Backpack.” I do think Backpack is a worthy application and I tried to use it for a while. But I actually preferred the simpler to-do list management of Tadalist to Backpack. Also, I need to keep track of server passwords and registration information and the like and I just don’t feel comfortable storing that online. Also, I’d need hundreds of pages and I’m cheap.

Onlineness used to outweigh the need for 100% uptime, but now that I do all of my computing in one location it’s not a factor anymore. Earlier this year Remember The Milk was down for hours and I couldn’t access any of my lists. That sucked.

Most recently, I’ve been using BasKet Notepads. It’s fairly nice with a rich user interface that allows you to tag and put meaningful icons next to items. You can organize all of your information in an outline view on the left and view free form or multi-column pages on the right. Pages can consist of to-do lists, free form notes, web links, pictures, etc. A few warts but very nice overall. Except that every once in a while, for no apparent reason, it deletes some of my notes.

So, I’m searching for a new note-taking application.

I’m looking for a desktop application that allows me to create text notes and to-do lists. Ideally I’d like it to create an outline view of all of my pages. I need to be able to search all of my notes and lists. It’d be nice if it could store images and formatted text. It needs to be able to export all of the information in its database to a human readable format like plain text or HTML. I’m not particularly keen on the Wiki concept but I’ll allow you to convince me. Free or very cheap would be nice.

It doesn’t all have to be one application. Maybe you have a great system for storing all of this in a hundred text files and use a separate application for searching—I’d love to hear about it. I’m looking for solutions for Linux but share whatever you’ve got. It may be something I could adapt.

Please share your suggestions. Please share how you are managing your notes and lists. Help!

Comments

  1. JGjones on 2007-12-20 13:02:55 wrote: I’ve very recently come across an app that might fit your needs, but as stated, I’ve only just started using it myself, about 2 days ago, but give it a shot. They do have packages for Ubuntu which I think you are using? The app is called Incollector (short for Information Collector), does have tagging, listing, with various type of input such as source codes, conversations, notes, serial numbers etc. Hope that helps? The site for it is here

  2. JGjones on 2007-12-20 13:04:38 wrote: Forgot to mention - it exports to XML (human readable at least) if that’s of any use.

  3. chris on 2007-12-20 18:10:27 wrote: I know you said no wikis, and it might be too simplistic for your needs, but it suites me pretty well. Have you tried tiddlywiki (http://www.tiddlywiki.com/)? I prefer the flavour of it at http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/, for the way it does tagging.

  4. bee on 2007-12-21 03:26:59 wrote: http://www.gnome.org/projects/tomboy/ i’m not sure it it will have everything you want, but i just use tomboy notes. it’s a sticky-note-like gnome toolbar application that links together its notes wherever it finds a note title in the body of one, and comes with a built in search function and support for synchronisation services. it’s also got a plugin system, which covers things like viewing backlinks (what links to current note), simple exporting to html, and a 3rd-party plugin for turning link structure into a graph (i haven’t tried this one). http://www.gnome.org/projects/tomboy/plugins.html http://live.gnome.org/Tomboy/PluginList like i said, might be a bit simple, but it should be pretty easy to install and try out.

  5. bee on 2007-12-21 03:35:08 wrote: just checked back and noticed you said you use kde instead of gnome, so i’m not sure how easy it is to integrate, but it has its own package so it should be possible to install at least!

  6. eliZZZa on 2007-12-21 06:02:04 wrote: Hi John, we should found a self-support group “idea mess fighters” >;o) Okay, I was addicted for almost a decade to InControl by Attain which was available for Mac (OS9) only and it´s the only reason I still have a G3 aside my notebook. It was a dream (and became one, when Attain vanished from the software market). Later I tried WhizFolders, quite content with it, but as goes with many software, it wanted to accomplish more and more features and started sucking. At the Moment I´m using the simple but still powerful “TheGuide” http://theguide.sourceforge.net/ I can really recommend this, hope they are wise and keep it simple! My 5 Cents from Austria eliZZZa P.S.: Stumbled upon your question by using that great LetterPro (or at least I try to >;o))

  7. Asha on 2007-12-23 10:05:49 wrote: If you want to stick to working with your to-dos and notes via email (and stay away from having to “move in” to another application), try Sandy (iwantsandy.com). Lightweight, little or nothing new to learn, searchable, taggable, viewable via RSS, and more. I can’t believe how much Sandy has become a part of my minute-to-minute “keep it all straight” protocol. (Disclosure: My husband Rael is the CEO of Values of n, the company behind Sandy.) For keeping stuff organized on your desktop how about OmniOutliner? http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/

  8. Jean Breddens on 2007-12-24 01:10:22 wrote: As for me I prefer to use web-based tools, so that I can access my information anywhere. For notes and projects I use Wrike.com. It’s not a to-do list, it’s a tool for managing projects, but this is what I like about Wrike - you can use it for different purposes. And it’s connected with your inbox! Here is the link http://www.wrike.com/

  9. Andrew Barbour on 2007-12-26 22:05:41 wrote: My needs seem similar to yours: flexible, expandable, and accessible. My current systems is: - a USB key for text files and applications to create or work with the files - all files stored as text files (I store minutes from every meeting I attend with the action items, personal notes from the meetings, notes on informal meetings or discussions with individuals) - a number of USB installed applications: TextPad (http://www.textpad.com/) to create the files and perform simple searches across ALL files at one time with the results in context and links to the resulting files; possibly a GREP tool for more advanced searches (http://www.powergrep.com/grep.html)and/or some macros/automation to make stuff happen. - the automation I have built so far will perform the following key tasks: - show all open action items - draft an email to all my staff on their open action items requesting a status update I would be interested in hearing of this would work for you or if the idea resonates with anyone else. THanks Andrew

  10. John on 2007-12-31 12:26:18 wrote: Thanks for all the suggestions. For now I’ve switched away from BasKet and started using Tomboy. I started to explain why in comments but it turned into a blog post instead. :-)

  11. Note taking with Tomboy | flagrantdisregard on 2007-12-31 12:27:09 wrote: […] week I asked for some help finding a new note taking application. I was becoming frustrated with BasKet Note Pads because, […]

  12. scott hodson on 2008-01-05 18:23:54 wrote: On the Mac I use OmniFocus. On Windows I abuse Outlook 2007.

  13. Carol Teach on 2008-01-11 20:11:47 wrote: I use Google Notebook to keep track of all my research on the website. I can highlight just a line of a webpage, use my downloaded browser notebook icon to clip what I’ve highlighted, and it goes into a new note with the web address. I can then annotate the note. I can also create a note field and add my own notes. It is not dependent on grabbing a webpage. I have several different notebooks going on different educational topics. They are all available to me, and I can click easily between notebooks. The free Google tool as been a life saver for me as an educator.

  14. Andrew W on 2008-01-13 05:37:43 wrote: Have you looked at EverNote ? (it’s free - so I like it too). It does all the clips from email, word, excel etc. I can do many lists types or free form notes (I use it for meeting notes) I also use it for task management, reminders. It has some few flaws, but in the whole, it’s lasted me for upwards of five years now and three different jobs - and if something doesn’t work I drop it quickly. This has some staying power for me. Give it a go. Oh, and it fits onto a USB stick, so it can travel. Rgds, -Andrew

  15. RahulMax on 2008-01-29 03:39:58 wrote: If you frequently use word processors like MSWord/OpenOffice Writer, and XL sheets, google docs is real good place to make them. you can even upload your docs from PC. url : www.docs.google.com