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    Review of Note-Taking Apps 2023 September

    By Derek | September 29, 2023

    AI Generated Image of a MacBook Pro, then slightly blurred.

    Summary

    I’m switching from storing notes in three different apps.

    For me, personally, Evernote has been my go-to for nearly a decade. I’m switching away from it due to recent issues like slowness, especially with search, (very) occasional sync issues and of course, they are going to nearly double the price of it this coming year. For years Evernote’s Pro subscription was $60-75/yr, with small increases over time, but this coming year, they have increased prices by over 100%. Apparently Everrnote feels like people are locked in and will just accept it and stick around. Nope. Especially as I was already looking to switch for other reasons, before they announced the pricing changes.

    I’m migrating everything all-in to Obsidian. Give me a year or two with it, and I’ll determine if that was the right place after all.

    Currently I’m simply syncing Obsidian’s content with iCloud, but plan to pay for Obsidian’s Cloud sync within the next couple of months, as my annual Evernote subscription gets closer to expiration. I’m also still working on migrating my notes from Evernote. I’m choosing to do a more manual migration, rather than an export and import, as I’m finding a bunch of notes that I no longer need, but also due to the fact that Obsidian allows me to organize things in a far better manner (for me) than Evernote did. Evernote relied on “notebooks” and “tags” with search to find stuff, but that doesn’t make your data very discoverable or “organizable”. Obsidian seems to be far better in that regard.

    For the record, while researching this article, I discovered NotesNook, which I hadn’t heard of. If, for whatever reason, Obsidian doesn’t work out for me, NotesNook looks pretty nice, and I think I will give that a try.

    Some of the apps listed in this review were excluded by me right away, as I need multi-platform (Windows/Linux/Mac/iOS) support, and I need it to work well, but included here as they may fit your needs.

    If I’ve missed an app you know of, or are interested in, let me know, and I’ll add it to the list. If I’ve missed a favorite feature of yours in one of the apps I’ve already listed, let me know, and I’ll add it.

    Apple Notes

    https://www.icloud.com/notes

    Pros

    Cons

    Bear

    https://bear.app/

    Pros

    Cons

    Evernote

    https://evernote.com/

    Pros

    Cons

    Google Keep

    https://keep.google.com/

    Pros

    Cons

    Joplin

    https://joplinapp.org/

    Pros

    Cons

    Microsoft OneNote

    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/onenote/digital-note-taking-app

    Pros

    Cons

    Notational / NVAlt

    https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

    Pros

    Cons

    NotesNook

    https://notesnook.com/downloads/

    Pros

    Cons

    Notion

    https://www.notion.so/

    Pros

    Cons

    Obsidian

    https://obsidian.md/download

    Pros

    Cons

    Standard Notes

    https://standardnotes.com/

    Pros

    Cons


    Version 1.4

    Additional clarifications, URL additions, and other corrections

    Version 1.3

    Added Notion

    Version 1.2

    Added Apple Notes

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    Topics: Apple, Linux, Me, Microsoft, Reviews, Technology, Work | No Comments »

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