hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3929.txt

Episode: 3929
Title: HPR3929: Some experiences with different notes apps
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3929/hpr3929.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:32:14

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3929 for Thursday the 24th of August 2023.
Today's show is entitled Some Experiences with Different Notes Apps.
It is hosted by Lee and is about 10 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is about apps that store notes as marked down.
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Hi, welcome to Episode of Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Lee but I'm going to talk about some of my experiences with different notes apps.
So for quite a few years I'd just be filling up directries with random files.
Either word documents or text files or noting things down in the notes app that comes preinstalled on an iPad.
But a few years ago I realised I needed something a bit more structured,
which would work across different platforms and devices via Windows, Linux, Mac, Android or iOS.
The notes should be for study or work or just things I was interested in.
My main requirement was that the notes would be in plain text so that they could easily contain code snippets.
About this time I was also discovering Markdown,
which lets you have some rich elements such as headings, emphasis, lists and tables,
yet at the same time it remains plain text and is easily readable as such.
My first proper notes app that fulfilled these requirements was simple note,
and this got me started keeping notes in Markdown.
Later I moved on to standard notes because I wanted something I could host myself in a server.
I most stayed with standard notes had it not been fulfilled update that caused it to break.
I'm a little bit more confident using containers now,
but at the time I was flumminced and decided to go back to something where someone else would maintain the back end.
So then I came across a similar app called Inkdrop.
For me this was and still is the best notes app I've used,
and I stuck with it for a number of years.
It is proprietary, but the author was happy to make improvements to the app that I suggested to him.
However, eventually I decided I did not want to be paying quite so much per month
for something that essentially I could do for free with pen and paper if I really needed to.
I toyed with Q own notes for a short time, which I really liked,
but I think did not quite mean my particular needs in terms of working on every platform
and being seamlessly synced across devices,
then maybe I did not fully give it the effort it deserved.
So my final compromise has been to go with an open source application called Joplin.
While I could host the back end myself, I decided it suits me better to pay the small monthly fee
and have them manage it for me.
This is really nice, the only small issue I have
is on some devices needing to be sure to synchronize before turning off the computer,
otherwise recent notes may not appear on my other devices.
So how have I found using these various apps?
And in particular using Markdown as a format for writing notes?
Well firstly it's worth saying it's not for everyone.
There are some rabbit holes you can go down that can make the process massively complicated
to the extent that you're spending a lot of time on the process of note taking
rather than spending time working on or studying the subject in question.
I'd happily refer people to other apps I'm aware of,
although I've not used them extensively myself.
Note for example, on the Outliner a never note,
which depending on the use case may be a whole lot simpler.
The first big issue with a Markdown Notes app is when you want to include images,
which Markdown can manage using the exclamation marks,
where brackets then normal bracket syntax.
It's usually fine if they're hosted on a major website
that aims to have long-term links to images.
But if not, or if it's your own image, it needs to be stored somewhere.
Some of the apps I've mentioned have a facility for storing images,
and turnatively storing on a cloud storage account such as Dropbox
on your own next cloud is an option.
The second problem is not everything can be easily brought across
from the original source.
I've had some success using a variety of tools,
even ones I've coded myself, converting web pages and PDFs.
But sometimes it's a real effort and not necessarily worth it
when other types of notes app are much more suited for grabbing
clippings from these sort of sources.
Of course, depending on whether the purpose is academic or some other purpose,
if you're making notes properly, then it's good practice to condense
and paraphrase rather than copy of the verbatim.
I will say I prefer good notes on the iPad
if I'm working with PDFs, especially if wanting to scribble
and highlight passages in an academic article, for example.
But let's say I'm determined to grab something off the web
and put it in my Markdown Notes app.
Some of the notes apps have web clippers.
It also came across a web service which is called
in its polite version, Heck yeah, Markdown.
But this seemed not always to be available when I tried to use it for some reason.
So I ended up writing my own, which is online that URL to Markdown.com.
This is very far from perfect, but the code is at github.com
forward slash max split.
And I have it set up, so when I discover a website that gives it problems,
I can hack in some extra filters specific to that site.
So for example, it now does a reasonable job at translating
Wikipedia and medium pages.
I hope that if anyone else happens to use it and finds it doesn't work well on a particular site,
they'll raise issues on the github repository.
So I can look into tailoring it for that site.
Because so many sites nowadays use JavaScript as part of the rendering process,
the converter I wrote works better if it's run directly as a browser extension.
And so far, there's a version for Firefox and a version for Safari on iOS,
both of these communicate with a backend running on Heroku.
The iOS Safari extension allows itself hosted back in to be specified for anyone
who is particularly privacy conscious.
A couple of Linux command line tools I've used together to convert stuff
on PDF to HTML and HTML to MD.
They do a fairly good job.
The conversion process is used in my experience a little tidying up is often needed.
So I've highlighted some of the drawbacks of these apps, but what about the advantages?
Well, I've heard already argued more than once that text files are future proof.
There's next to no chance a map you're using now will still exist in 20 years,
but a very good chance there will be apps that can process and display UTF and coded text files.
And in terms of portability, all the apps I've mentioned have good import and export facilities.
Generally, you get out a bunch of plain text files with the extension.md and can import
these same files into the next app.
A minor issue though, if you change app is you may lose your image attachments.
Saying that, they're probably always to export attachments from one app
and have them come seamlessly into another app, but I'm pretty sure it takes some work.
Other elements, particular to one app such as internal links or metadata, may also pose a problem.
But talking of metadata, this brings me onto something I like about these apps,
which is categorisation and tagging.
In general, there's usually a hierarchical structure to notes.
An example might be having a work folder than a folder inside that for each client.
At the same time, these apps often let you tag notes in various ways.
So, for example, marking them as draft or urgent or completed.
Something I like is when you can give the categories or tags their own colour or emoji.
And list of things to do, also often incorporated in these apps.
Joplin, for example, has a separate type of notes specifically for tasks.
InkDropDris has one type of note, but you can insert tickboxes easily.
Another aspect of these apps that you can either ignore or have fun with is theming.
They're often settings or plugins that leave pick a dark or light theme,
and a particular colour scheme in front.
They're also often two modes, one for editing and one for reading or previewing.
The editing mode will use a monospace font,
whereas the preview mode will have everything nicely rendered and formatted.
Or they'll be a split screen mode, we can both edit and see the preview at the same time.
I haven't run into detail about all the features of the different apps I've mentioned,
and my list is not exhaustive.
I've tried them, but I'm no expert, and have based this on my recollections.
Some I've found easy to get started with, like simple note.
Some like Joplin were very customisable.
I was like standard notes had a good plug-in ecosystem,
or some like Q-owned notes worked really well on a desktop,
and several of them are open source,
with some like standard notes again being geared to self-hosting.
So in conclusion these have been my experiences.
I'm not recommending anyone to go change to something different.
Whatever works for you is good.
After all, these are only tools used to meet a purpose,
and everyone's purposes will be slightly different.
I hope it's been of interest, and thank you for listening.
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