Note Taking Apps
Evernote
I used to use Evernote quit a bit for several years. I had near 500 notes stored there until I decided to close my account a few years ago.
I cannot remember exactly what caused me to even close the account now but possibly due to the increasing costs associated with the platform. I mostly used the free tier but they started restricting that more over time. I tried to get my wife to use it and paid for a year of premium for her. She never really took to it though. Another possible reason was I also use Apple Notes with my iPhone and having notes spread over two apps got tiring.
I exported all my Evernote notes and imported them to Apple Notes. The import wasn’t perfect but probably good enough for my use case.
Apple Notes
Since I use an iPhone, and have from the beginning in 2007, I have been using the notes app as well. It is pretty easy to open notes and save a quick note and have it appear in all Apple devices. After my import from Evernote, however, there were too many notes and notebooks to sort through which made the app less inviting.
MacOS and Windows
I had been using an iMac since shortly after getting an iPhone. I used a 20 inch iMac for several years and then upgrade to a 27 inch in 2017. I used that for a few years but it started getting slow to do an intense tasks like photo or video editing. It was still usable for web browsing and email but I need a solution for content creation.
I purchased a Mac Mini M1 Pro and an Asus ProArt display but I had to return it due to the lack of memory and the kids saying the screen was ‘blurry.’ My boys also play video games and the Mac platform stinks for that.
I built a computer with new parts and installed Windows 11. Now my boys could play PC games together as we already had another PC I had previously built.
Now that we are using PC’s with Windows using Apple Notes was less convenient. In addition to that I wanted to move the previously imported Evernote notes out of Apple Notes to clean things up a bit when using my iPhone.
Obsidian and UpNote
After some reading and research I came across many apps for note taking. I had recently started using Markdown for making blog posts with Hugo so Obsidian caught my eye being that it uses Markdown as well. I am a Markdown beginner so I thought this would be a nice oppurtunity to get more experience with it.
Some other apps I considered:
- Evernote once again but the free tier is more limited and the yearly cost even more. At the time of writing $130/year.
- Microsoft OneNote was a cosideration and I have been using a ThinkPad for some work since the boys kind of took over the other two PC’s. I honestly think this would be a pretty good option but the interface is pretty busy similar to Word.
- Joplin is an open source app that also supports MarkDown but stores files in a database. Not as many plugins and Obsidian which is easier to use.
- Notion is another app that probably has even more options than OneNote but all I need is a simple note taking app. I didn’t give this one a lot of time due to choice overload.
Back to Obsidian and UpNote
I am currently using Obsidian and UpNote to see which one works best for me.
I use a free community plugin for Obsidian that supports syncing called Remotely Save. I didn’t want to pay for syncing Obsidian since I’m trying it out so using the plugin with PC and iPhone works great.
Obsidian has a lot of community support and pretty big subreddit so I want to give it a shot. The mobile app is kind of clunky for me though but that’s probably just me.
UpNote also supports Markdown and the interface on PC and mobile is excellent. Also has excellent documentation and was the best app I tried that imported notes from Evernote’s enex format. They have a lifetime sync option of $30 lifetime or $1/month. I am currently using the $1/month option to try it out. The app is really nice but doesn’t have near as much support or plugins as Obsidian. I believe it also stores notes in a database but can be easily exported to Markdown.
Summing Up
Apple Notes on iPhone
I still use Apple Notes on my iPhone for many things but I wanted to keep some notes somewhere else. I like to keep track of workouts, a Costco list, personal quick notes, and other family shared notes here.
Markdown Notes
This is where I like to store homelab type notes, topics for research, recipes, etc.