The endless quest for a great notes-taking tool
What I've been wanting for a long time for my tech notes:
- taking notes easily, preferably markdown (love its simplicity and I seem to remember it pretty well, maybe from stackoverflow's training) - must be available everywhere, I don't want to sync folders over dropbox or stuff like that across my computers, tablets and phones... it should be hosted maybe on AWS and be available as soon as I type my domain (even public would be fine) - must be simple to edit (with a password at this point, no public editing :P) to add pages - must be simple to add images (cut/paste and/or drag and drop) on the document - there must be a quicksearch (something like I start typing and immediately full-text search into the documents appear below with a small preview of the paragraph where my text was found)
I tried text markdown files + grep -> good but no sync across devices, no images (markdown files can't display that directly, I have to store the images somewhere and link to them, that's a lot of work without a 3rd party program) I tried google docs -> good but search is terrible, plus a lot of formatting complexity since it wasn't created for tech notes (text + images/graphs) I tried dropbox -> same issues as above, plus install stuff everywhere. Hate it.
So here I am asking again, maybe I'll be more lucky this time: is there a preferably opensource software (or combination of softwares) that will allow me to have simple tech notes in markdown with fulltext responsive search + extremely quick edit of whatever I'm seeing + web access from any device + paste images directly in those rendered MD files?
It's a VERY simple tool but since my memory is gradually failing (getting old), I'm looking for a way to have my knowledge, coding tips and snippets, programming guides, graphs, linux commands and stuff like that all at a glance at my fingertips.
Sorry for asking again something that has probably been asked a thousand times. As I said: I'm getting old :P
For super quick notes that are password managed, and markdown supported, I've been using https://nnote.io. Simple, no-ads, and might be OSS sometime soon.
However with nnote, I do end up with a lot of links, and since those notes live everywhere and are hard to manage, I end up making a task in Amna (https://getamna.com) [disclaimer I built it], and use nnote as a tab inside of the browser it provides.
Sounds too simple but you could just create a personal wordpress install + strong search plugin. Seems to do everything you asked for since you are ok with public.
If you're on the Apple ecosystem, I really like the simplicity of Bear. You do have to pay a very small fee for it (like maybe $1/mo?) but I've found their interface and tags system to be the best combination of power and simplicity. Apps always work and sync with iCloud.
$1.49 a month or $14.99 annually.
And I agree, Bear is awesome. It's fast, it's simple yet powerful (eg. x-callback-url fun), and it stays out of your way. Sync is rock-solid and reliable and requires no effort on my part. It's great for programmers, too.
I've even been using the todo feature more regularly these days to capture action items from meetings. Anytime you do the markdown checkbox (- [ ]), it bubbles up into a nav item for "Todo". I like that they haven't tried to overcomplicate things.
Bear uses a SQLite database to store notes, a layer which I don’t want or need. Notes are not simply text files.
A self-hosted TiddlyWiki instance (the nodejs-based version, not the single html file approach) might satisfy many of your requirements, albeit not the search preview. https://tiddlywiki.com/
I wonder if you could hack that in with https://github.com/danielo515/TW5-contextPlugin ? I use it for this for backlinks.
ETA: https://tiddlywiki.com/static/Customising%2520search%2520res...
Yup, totally doable
I'm waiting for this to be released: https://nvultra.com/ (I think it's limited to Mac/iOS, though)
I think https://simplenote.com fits all your requirements except images. I streamlined images by using services that allows pasting images into the browser (Trello, Glitch, Imgur), then get a link to the image with a single click. (If you abuse StackOverflow's question editor, they even give you the markdown for the image.)
Recently, I have been considering switching to Apple Notes after discovering you can access your notes from a browser. It fits all your requirements except markdown.
Standard Notes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mobitar
Mo Bitar is the author. Just figured you could check SN/him out, if you wanted.
Not sponsored, just a very happy user.
I really simpathise. I have tried all sorts of notes app, and they all suck in some way it another.
So far I have found Evernote to be the least sucky of them all.
I tried several tools but the only thing that worked for me is just plain text.
standardnotes.com ticks a lot of those boxes.
apps for most devices and os flavors, syncs across them all
end to end encryption
add-on editors which allow note taking in markdown and attaching / embedding files
basic search functionality built-in
gEdit + cloud storage of your choice to share markdown files. Done.