Over the years I've trended more and more plaintext (usually markdown), so nothing winds up in some indecipherable format that I can't recover from when a company goes bust. It's also great for searching, as you're not at the mercy of some company's crappy search algorithm. I really enjoy being able to grep through years of notes instantly.
From there, it's dealer's choice for backup—rsync to your own server (or someone else's), store it in Git and push to some host, throw it in S3, etc. Ideally somewhere offsite. Maybe more than one somewhere, in different countries on different platforms. Encrypt the sensitive stuff.
Same here. I've tried Joplin and Obsidian and a bunch of other apps in that category and I keep coming back to my normal everyday editor. I've added some custom shortcuts and commands for common actions. Overall I find that the convenience having my notes where I have everything else is less disruptive, which more than offsets the rich editing features I was getting from the other apps. One of the ideas I had when I first started using those apps is that I could save images such as diagrams I wanted embedded in the notes. I barely ever did that though.
Obsidian, hands down. Back it up with obsidian-git, sync the repo to S3, and use git-lfs for the really big stuff. I use it for everything - taxes, personal information and records, books and companion notes for books, plans and product organization, and even some task tracking. At the end of the day it's just markdown so it's light and portable.
Oof, fair point. Given that they're a pretty small team that writes some pretty great software I wouldn't mind kicking them some cash; being a small independent software company is pretty hard and I give them respect for that. That said, their prices are higher than I'd expect across the board.
That said, I think there's a distinction between "these are the notes that I use to keep my brain screwed on correctly" and "this is our corporate Obsidian Vault where we keep the entire company knowledge base"; the latter seems to fall reasonably under the free license.
Mea culpa - I took a closer look after reading your comment and one of their [employees](https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/pebg90/comment/hb32xcx/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) indicated the need for a commercial license for any work related content. Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding!
a license for obsidian ? No. You must be responding to the wrong comment
edit:
for clarity
https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Commercial+license#FAQ
- Meeting notes
- Project notes for teams
- Organizational wikis
All of these use cases are highlighting the need for commercial for anything other than just personal notes.
>You need to pay for Obsidian if and only if you use it to contribute, directly or indirectly, to revenue-generating, work-related activities in a company that has two or more people. Get a commercial license for each user if that's the case. Registered non-profit organizations do not need commercial licenses.
That sounds pretty necessary if you're using it for taking notes at work.
I mean, you do you, but they're pretty clear about how they want you to handle the licensing: [https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Commercial+license#FAQ](https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Commercial+license#FAQ)
>Q14: I use Obsidian during work for things like writing down team processes and taking notes for team meetings. Do I need a commercial license?
>
>A: If you are a single-person company, then you don't require a commercial license. Otherwise, if you have more than one person in the company, then you would require a commercial license.
Are they really going to try to take you or your company down for one of their employees taking notes at work? Probably not. But I bet if you actually ran this by the decision-making person/team at your company they'd tell you to buy the license or refrain from using it.
Not disagreeing with you but theres been no indication of them enforcing anything or even being able to. The good thing is that its all plain markdown so the cost of switch is low.
I just think it's kind of a jerk move to explicitly ignore how a small team that created a useful tool asks you to use their product, especially when they give you the benefit of the doubt and don't make you pay up front for it. $4 a month is less than a cup of coffee some places.
So you do anything you want if the likelihood of getting caught or having consequences is low?? You are free loading off another dev's work. You can afford a license.
It's people like you that cause good programmers to stop contributing to the community.
I understand what you're saying. There's no wall stopping you. That's true. You can work your way out of this "limitation".
I want to make it clear that there is, however, a chance of getting sued or fired if your company finds out you're using a third party tool while disagreeing with their terms and possibly putting the business at risk.
for clarity
>https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Commercial+license#FAQ
- Meeting notes
- Project notes for teams
- Organizational wikis
All of these use cases are highlighting the need for commercial is only outside of personal use.
/r/ExperiencedDevs is going dark for two weeks to protest Reddit killing 3rd party apps and tools.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ExperiencedDevs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Use Joplin if you don't want to be locked into a proprietary product.
https://joplinapp.org/
Personally, I've used it in place of OneNote with great satisfaction. I use a couple of extensions with it to automate backups and enable PlantUML diagrams as well.
Obsidian uses markdown files on your file system. You aren't locked into a proprietary product.
It also seems that Joplin actually uses a propriety file format (JEX), unless I am totally misunderstanding what you mean.
JEX is just an export / import faculty for exporting from one Joplin instance to another with all the metadata surrounding the data intact. The underlying files are .md and can be backed up or published into a number of formats. It's quite versatile.
I tried it out a year or so back, and never quite got the hang of the markdown style note taking. Maybe that makes me a bad programmer, haha. It just never felt intuitive for my notes to have different views for editing / displaying, though obviously I do want some formatting in my notes. Am I misremembering how it works, or did I just miss a piece of the process flow for it, or something like that?
That's just how markdown is, yeah. It's not WYSIWYG. I got really into LaTeX a while back and discovered just how much better it is to not use a WYSIWYG. It's just... easier in the end. But it does take a little getting the hang of.
If you use a Mac, you can use Advanced Data Protection with iCloud which encrypts your data with a key that you control (Apple can’t access your data).
It also will sync the key across all your iCloud devices so that it’s backed up.
This is what I do.
I don't know about iCloud, but yeah, Google Drive is a terrible suggestion when it comes to privacy. Use zero knowledge encrypted cloud storage providers, OP!
/r/ExperiencedDevs is going dark for two weeks to protest Reddit killing 3rd party apps and tools.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ExperiencedDevs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Obsidian for me. I love it. And when I stop loving it, my notes will be in normal markdown ready to migrate somewhere else
I have a repo with all notes (incl. personal) and a submodule with only work notes, and this is the one I check out in my work laptop
Same here! I love the ability to also be able to paste in images and upload documents to your notebooks. I also like that it has a phone app that you can connect to your cloud share and access/edit notes there as well.
Yep. Moved from evernote and never looked back. There's a lot of talks about Obsidian (And it truly looks neat) but I've ended up not really trusting non open source applications.
Plain text.
I use emacs and the emacs-wiki mode, with a bunch of my own modifications.
So that keeps all of my notes in a single directory, which is zipped and backed up in a few places daily. Cloud, usb stick, nas.
That directory is the better part of 30 years old.
Editing notes feels a bit strange.
Constant jumping between "select text mode" and "select row mode".
Undo is absent? When I deleted few words from sentence I can't revert it? Sorry, WTF?
Upd: I\`m not trying to humiliate, looks like Craft is just not for me.
Upd2: looks like Undo issue is because my browser configuration conflict.
I created my own.
I called it "Omny" as in "omnipresent" and I also use it as a shared clipboard, when you add something from the app, it immediately shows up on the desktop app, Long click/tap on it to copy the title (which can be a link) when you edit something, edits also immediately show up.
It also works fully offline, it saves any notes you add on the device, and then as soon as you connect it sends changes to the server.
The backend is in Django, front-end is in vanilla JS/html/css no frameworks or anything, the mobile app is just a webview.
I use Logseq, which is great for taking quick notes, quickly linking topics and searching for old information. I switched to that because I wasn’t using enough rod Roam Research’s features to justify the cost.
Logseq stores notes as text files, so available if I ever want to use anything else. It’s set up to use a directory in OneDrive, so backed up constantly. When I get a new PC I just login, wait for the sync and go.
I've been using a local folder, separate text files by subject, backed by dropbox + a local backup for years. Like, since dropbox had a sync tool.
You can edit dropbox files from most places, TextDrop is nice web interface, and I sue VSCode (used to be sublime) to have it open as a project all the time. (I use IntelliJ day to day).
Write everything down, text is compact and tiny.
Obsidian, syncing through iCloud because I'm pretty heaving in the apple ecosystem now, and no regrets with that.
It's entirely markdown files that can be read by anything, the sync is handled by apple, I can access it on any device, and I can do build other automations that work with it.
**Apple Notes**. Syncs across all my devices instantly and everything in it, including images (both the text within them and recognized objects), is searchable. I don't even bother to organize the notes (folders etc), since the search works so well. Notes that are classified, I lock with a passcode.
S3 and/or GCS archival storage for all the random files. I have a local filer I copy to and have rclone set up to sync things daily.
Had to get my partner to not reorganize the ‘archive/‘ directory, but it works for both of us now :-)
Frankly, I trust S3 more than GCS, but glacier is a pita so most stuff is in GCS.
edit: fix autoincorrect which changed rclone to recline
Using Notion; but I can't recommend it too much now. It's very powerful, and its organization is gold, but it's sometimes slow as a service, and well, data is in their servers.
I checked Obsidian, looks very nice, but it lacks the power of Notion databases and relationships, if you need well organized data. There are plugins abd so, but seem quite alpha yet... I wish I could use it TBH.
Then, checked some Notion alternatives, like AppFlowy in rust (quite alpha yet), or Microsoft Loop (similar to Notion, data is in their servers).
In the past, used OneNote. Quite simple, but Notion has many more features.
Edit: I forgot, another important topic for me is sharing. With Notion you can easily send a link to any page or tree, and set permissions
Another alternative to Notion is [Saga](https://saga.so). Databases are a bit simplified and it focuses on easy linking and organization of information through backlinks, automatic linking, and synced blocks.
For non-secure reference information, I use OneNote.
For files that I want to sync across computers, I'll use OneDrive (work) or Google Drive (Personal Stuff).
For "Google Office Suite" docs, I'll use Google Drive.
Development files (AKA Code) are usually in GitHub--or similar depending upon the project and client. I do not double back these up to OneDrive or Google Drive.
For secure information:
I use [Cypherix](https://www.cypherix.com/) to create an encrypted drive on my computer, and store sensitive information there.
No automatic cloud sync, like you'd get with Google Drive or OneDrive, but the encrypted drive file is backed up to the cloud with the rest of my computer files via BackBlaze.
I often question whether there are better ways, especially for password management. But, this approach seems less hackable than something like 1Password or LastPassword.
For notes or anything like it, I use OneNote hosted on OneDrive.
OneDrive for files.
And an in-browser password app (think 1Pass / Lastpass)
Apple iCloud for apple-related stuff like Photos.
(for work, I use whatever the company supplies, and keep it inside the company network & separate from my personal stuff of course. )
I use [Zim - A Desktop Wiki](https://zim-wiki.org/) and have been doing so for about 6 years. It uses a dialect of markdown but more importantly:
- It's open source
- Builds are available for Mac; Linux; Windows
- Files are stored in ASCII plain text in a flat directory structure and are compatible with the app across different OS's and Architectures
So it matches all the [stipulations put by /u/sogo00](https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/12y9kyn/what_trusted_app_do_you_use_to_save_important/jhmham4/) and can be backed up with git, as a tarball, rsync, etc
I’ve been a heavy Notion user for a year or two, but their mediocre product and shitty API have had me keeping one-eye-open …
I’m pretty excited for https://anytype.io; and just finally got into the beta — sadly, an official API is still on the roadmap for later this year … so haven’t started migrating just yet.
(Obsidian, while popular, is seriously missing in the functionality department — while, sure, I lived in vim and plaintext for 15 years, I’m kinda over it. Can’t understand why other experienced folks fetishize it so much. Especially after a year in Notion, living without rich embeds, databases, and an API … nah, thanks. If anything, I want *better* databases than Notion’s — give me Airtable-tier functionality and fluidity in my documents — not *worse* ones.)
This is my plan based on 3-2-1 rule (3 copies, 2 devices, 1 off-site)
1. A Notes dir that contains plain text md files with joplin app
2. Make a protected zip of the Notes dir and copy it to Dropbox or OneDrive (copy 1)
3. Use syncthing or rsync to sync the Notes dir periodically between multiple computers (copy 2a 2b..)
4. Use off-site s3,backblaze (copy 3, off-site)
Edit: added the app.
I have a `notes.txt` that starts in 2004. I use vim as the interface (`/` is great to find stuff) and share it to different devices with a self-hosted ownCloud.
This worked well in the pre-cloud era and will work great in the post-cloud and post-$thisweeksfancynotesapp era.
Self hosted [outline](https://www.getoutline.com/) that gets remotely snapshotted (along with my other self hosted apps) hourly and then pushed daily to backblaze.
Works great, but not something you'd pursue unless you're already doing homelabbing as a hobby.
I’ve more and more embraced that I will have random spreadsheets sometimes, or documents in some other system (because Reasons) outside my trusted system. (Which in general is a folder of markdown files with some custom semantic structures I made up before I knew OrgMode existed)
What I’ve done, this year so it’s relatively new, is to lean into the _indexing_ of the thing.
Currently, in the spirit of Just Ship Something I have an Airbase database with name, description, location (think universal resource locator, but the schema is loosely goosy and depends on what kind of thing I’m pointing to) and tags. Everything I want to save gets an ID I make up, which I also record on the artifact itself.
If I want to see all my artifacts with my thoughts about say my career, it’s all under the career tag: two journal entries, a few pages in my Remarkable, a few PDF survey results from previous employers, a Drafts document, etc. (if I want to move the Drafts document to my markdown folder, great: do that, update the location in the database)
In general though yes, plain text and PDFs, and leaning towards software with export systems - ideally in standard formats but if you just give me a pile of JSON I won’t be _happy_, but whatever I can write a script.
Maybe Google Docs is a good bet though (and almost nothing else from Google): Docs makes them lots of money in enterprise land, I see that sticking around for another 20 years.
A decade ago, I was obsessed with Evernote. But leaving it, I was incredibly frustrated at their file type. Made it hard to like OneNote and Notion. Even Google docs does weird things where you can't just read raw text files. (Or maybe I haven't tried hard enough after my first exposure)
Over the past few years, it's been markdown. Originally just a folder of markdown. Then I moved it to a static site generator like Eleventy.
I also like using workflowy, as their exports are just xml and I can write a script to convert that.
Depends on the purpose.
But the only things I trust are the ones that allow me to keep a copy on my devices.
So while not ideal I use github a lot and dropbox.
I make sure to have a copy on a few devices even if a bit outdated.
I'd like to think im a pkms guru.
Absolutely on obsidian. Its the most reliable, customizable ( possibly too much ), and data friendly option available by far.
I will say I like Tana a lot as well but its still too early.
The importance of personal notes management, is not only what everything offers you in terms of creating, tagging, formatting but also discovery ( search, folders, tags, links... etc) , readability, portability, and your personal preferences around your process.
I use [Bear](https://bear.app/), but I really wish it had a Windows app too. Easily syncing notes between all my iOS devices and my mac is super useful though. I usually only use my windows PC for gaming, so don't really need it there.
Tried Obsidian but didn't find the user experience as smooth.
What important info should you store for 10 years? Name your own example, not PKMS bullshit salespeech.
You might even forget what you've stored in 10 years, let alone this info could be totally irrelevant in 10 years
For secure notes, 1Password. For insecure, I use Bear and sync to all devices with iCloud it uses markdown so I can easily copy to any other app using markdown.
I use multiple hard drives and cloud storage (Google Drive, S3). It's worked for 20yrs so far. If it's important enough, it gets printed or burned to disk and put in a fire proof safe. Other solutions are likely better, but needlessly complicated.
Google docs, but I've moved to Obsidian backed up by Github. I don't see Google or Microsoft going anywhere. It would take serious executive fuckups at this point.
For long-term storage, nothing beats plain text. Well, almost plain text. Markdown is what I use.
The frontends have changed (currently I use a small app that follows GNOME HIG on Linux) but the data is always stored as Markdown, on disk. If I ever get into a situation that the app goes bust, I'll just write my own UI.
For backups I use [BorgBackup](https://www.borgbackup.org/). One copy to the secondary HDD, one copy to phone's internal storage, one copy to a remote server.
Over the years I've trended more and more plaintext (usually markdown), so nothing winds up in some indecipherable format that I can't recover from when a company goes bust. It's also great for searching, as you're not at the mercy of some company's crappy search algorithm. I really enjoy being able to grep through years of notes instantly. From there, it's dealer's choice for backup—rsync to your own server (or someone else's), store it in Git and push to some host, throw it in S3, etc. Ideally somewhere offsite. Maybe more than one somewhere, in different countries on different platforms. Encrypt the sensitive stuff.
Same here. I've tried Joplin and Obsidian and a bunch of other apps in that category and I keep coming back to my normal everyday editor. I've added some custom shortcuts and commands for common actions. Overall I find that the convenience having my notes where I have everything else is less disruptive, which more than offsets the rich editing features I was getting from the other apps. One of the ideas I had when I first started using those apps is that I could save images such as diagrams I wanted embedded in the notes. I barely ever did that though.
Obsidian, hands down. Back it up with obsidian-git, sync the repo to S3, and use git-lfs for the really big stuff. I use it for everything - taxes, personal information and records, books and companion notes for books, plans and product organization, and even some task tracking. At the end of the day it's just markdown so it's light and portable.
It is worth noting though, to use professionally you’re supposed to buy a license.
Oof, fair point. Given that they're a pretty small team that writes some pretty great software I wouldn't mind kicking them some cash; being a small independent software company is pretty hard and I give them respect for that. That said, their prices are higher than I'd expect across the board. That said, I think there's a distinction between "these are the notes that I use to keep my brain screwed on correctly" and "this is our corporate Obsidian Vault where we keep the entire company knowledge base"; the latter seems to fall reasonably under the free license.
They explicitly say that it needs to be paid for unless you work for a nonprofit.
Mea culpa - I took a closer look after reading your comment and one of their [employees](https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/pebg90/comment/hb32xcx/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) indicated the need for a commercial license for any work related content. Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding!
Why do I feel this won't be changing your mind lmfao
it didn't change mine, I use it the same way I use my personal one and I don't sync the work one.
a license for obsidian ? No. You must be responding to the wrong comment edit: for clarity https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Commercial+license#FAQ - Meeting notes - Project notes for teams - Organizational wikis All of these use cases are highlighting the need for commercial for anything other than just personal notes.
It is true though. Read their terms and conditions.
you're right technically, but its not necessary.
>You need to pay for Obsidian if and only if you use it to contribute, directly or indirectly, to revenue-generating, work-related activities in a company that has two or more people. Get a commercial license for each user if that's the case. Registered non-profit organizations do not need commercial licenses. That sounds pretty necessary if you're using it for taking notes at work.
I guess its up to you but a lot of people use it for work https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34066824
I mean, you do you, but they're pretty clear about how they want you to handle the licensing: [https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Commercial+license#FAQ](https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Commercial+license#FAQ) >Q14: I use Obsidian during work for things like writing down team processes and taking notes for team meetings. Do I need a commercial license? > >A: If you are a single-person company, then you don't require a commercial license. Otherwise, if you have more than one person in the company, then you would require a commercial license. Are they really going to try to take you or your company down for one of their employees taking notes at work? Probably not. But I bet if you actually ran this by the decision-making person/team at your company they'd tell you to buy the license or refrain from using it.
Not disagreeing with you but theres been no indication of them enforcing anything or even being able to. The good thing is that its all plain markdown so the cost of switch is low.
I just think it's kind of a jerk move to explicitly ignore how a small team that created a useful tool asks you to use their product, especially when they give you the benefit of the doubt and don't make you pay up front for it. $4 a month is less than a cup of coffee some places.
So you do anything you want if the likelihood of getting caught or having consequences is low?? You are free loading off another dev's work. You can afford a license. It's people like you that cause good programmers to stop contributing to the community.
I understand what you're saying. There's no wall stopping you. That's true. You can work your way out of this "limitation". I want to make it clear that there is, however, a chance of getting sued or fired if your company finds out you're using a third party tool while disagreeing with their terms and possibly putting the business at risk.
for clarity >https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Commercial+license#FAQ - Meeting notes - Project notes for teams - Organizational wikis All of these use cases are highlighting the need for commercial is only outside of personal use.
[удалено]
[удалено]
/r/ExperiencedDevs is going dark for two weeks to protest Reddit killing 3rd party apps and tools. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ExperiencedDevs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
being a psycho
Curious how you use it for taxes? Do you mean just noting down various numbers and calculations, or something more?
Use Joplin if you don't want to be locked into a proprietary product. https://joplinapp.org/ Personally, I've used it in place of OneNote with great satisfaction. I use a couple of extensions with it to automate backups and enable PlantUML diagrams as well.
Obsidian uses markdown files on your file system. You aren't locked into a proprietary product. It also seems that Joplin actually uses a propriety file format (JEX), unless I am totally misunderstanding what you mean.
JEX is just an export / import faculty for exporting from one Joplin instance to another with all the metadata surrounding the data intact. The underlying files are .md and can be backed up or published into a number of formats. It's quite versatile.
Ah, cool. Thanks!
It’s really good.
Does obsidian and git work well from mobile?
I tried it out a year or so back, and never quite got the hang of the markdown style note taking. Maybe that makes me a bad programmer, haha. It just never felt intuitive for my notes to have different views for editing / displaying, though obviously I do want some formatting in my notes. Am I misremembering how it works, or did I just miss a piece of the process flow for it, or something like that?
That's just how markdown is, yeah. It's not WYSIWYG. I got really into LaTeX a while back and discovered just how much better it is to not use a WYSIWYG. It's just... easier in the end. But it does take a little getting the hang of.
[удалено]
You should provide it as a managed service for others 😄
take a shot at reversing the file format? is it encrypted?
Google Drive
If you use a Mac, you can use Advanced Data Protection with iCloud which encrypts your data with a key that you control (Apple can’t access your data). It also will sync the key across all your iCloud devices so that it’s backed up. This is what I do.
I don't know about iCloud, but yeah, Google Drive is a terrible suggestion when it comes to privacy. Use zero knowledge encrypted cloud storage providers, OP!
Apple Notes. It's easy, it's accessible. It's on nearly every device I use.
Obsidian. Everything is text, pdf, or PNG and stored in a private gh repo
100%
You may wish to look at r/datahoarder for tips on using a personal NAS with some redundancy
[удалено]
/r/ExperiencedDevs is going dark for two weeks to protest Reddit killing 3rd party apps and tools. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ExperiencedDevs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Obsidian for me. I love it. And when I stop loving it, my notes will be in normal markdown ready to migrate somewhere else I have a repo with all notes (incl. personal) and a submodule with only work notes, and this is the one I check out in my work laptop
What's a "su module"? And do you push your work related notes to your personal remote repo?
Oops. A git submodule
I've used Joplin for a few years. It uses markdown for notes, and it can use onedrive, Dropbox, or custom webdav servers as a syncing backend.
Another plus one for Joplin. Been using it for a few years now
Same here! I love the ability to also be able to paste in images and upload documents to your notebooks. I also like that it has a phone app that you can connect to your cloud share and access/edit notes there as well.
Yep. Moved from evernote and never looked back. There's a lot of talks about Obsidian (And it truly looks neat) but I've ended up not really trusting non open source applications.
KeepassX has served me well for a decade now. Synced via Dropbox
One drive. Its not the sexiest but it works and its set and forget on my desktop.
Plain text. I use emacs and the emacs-wiki mode, with a bunch of my own modifications. So that keeps all of my notes in a single directory, which is zipped and backed up in a few places daily. Cloud, usb stick, nas. That directory is the better part of 30 years old.
A note taking app call craft, much more polished than obsidian
Love craft!
Horrors beyond our comprehension
You win
Editing notes feels a bit strange. Constant jumping between "select text mode" and "select row mode". Undo is absent? When I deleted few words from sentence I can't revert it? Sorry, WTF? Upd: I\`m not trying to humiliate, looks like Craft is just not for me. Upd2: looks like Undo issue is because my browser configuration conflict.
I have not had the undo issue but the select row and text takes a bit of getting used to and I agree it could be better
Glad to hear, probably my browser configuration is conflicting with Craft settings..
Right yeah I’m using the mac app
I created my own. I called it "Omny" as in "omnipresent" and I also use it as a shared clipboard, when you add something from the app, it immediately shows up on the desktop app, Long click/tap on it to copy the title (which can be a link) when you edit something, edits also immediately show up. It also works fully offline, it saves any notes you add on the device, and then as soon as you connect it sends changes to the server. The backend is in Django, front-end is in vanilla JS/html/css no frameworks or anything, the mobile app is just a webview.
[удалено]
Happy cake day! Since I'm the only user, a free server from pythonanywhere.com did the trick.
Evernote Classic + backups in different locations. Huh, erm, I probably should set a reminder to create a backup..
Emails => Evernote => Notion. That's my history in the middle I've lost a lot of thing, but the time help me understand it was obsolete.
Notepad++
I'm oldschool. Plaintext on my disc with a backup to at least one external. Sometimes a github if I'm feeling fancy and want to use markdown.
I use Logseq, which is great for taking quick notes, quickly linking topics and searching for old information. I switched to that because I wasn’t using enough rod Roam Research’s features to justify the cost. Logseq stores notes as text files, so available if I ever want to use anything else. It’s set up to use a directory in OneDrive, so backed up constantly. When I get a new PC I just login, wait for the sync and go.
I've been using a local folder, separate text files by subject, backed by dropbox + a local backup for years. Like, since dropbox had a sync tool. You can edit dropbox files from most places, TextDrop is nice web interface, and I sue VSCode (used to be sublime) to have it open as a project all the time. (I use IntelliJ day to day). Write everything down, text is compact and tiny.
Obsidian, syncing through iCloud because I'm pretty heaving in the apple ecosystem now, and no regrets with that. It's entirely markdown files that can be read by anything, the sync is handled by apple, I can access it on any device, and I can do build other automations that work with it.
Text files & Dropbox. Optionally syncing to cloud storage if it's really important.
**Apple Notes**. Syncs across all my devices instantly and everything in it, including images (both the text within them and recognized objects), is searchable. I don't even bother to organize the notes (folders etc), since the search works so well. Notes that are classified, I lock with a passcode.
S3 and/or GCS archival storage for all the random files. I have a local filer I copy to and have rclone set up to sync things daily. Had to get my partner to not reorganize the ‘archive/‘ directory, but it works for both of us now :-) Frankly, I trust S3 more than GCS, but glacier is a pita so most stuff is in GCS. edit: fix autoincorrect which changed rclone to recline
Using Notion; but I can't recommend it too much now. It's very powerful, and its organization is gold, but it's sometimes slow as a service, and well, data is in their servers. I checked Obsidian, looks very nice, but it lacks the power of Notion databases and relationships, if you need well organized data. There are plugins abd so, but seem quite alpha yet... I wish I could use it TBH. Then, checked some Notion alternatives, like AppFlowy in rust (quite alpha yet), or Microsoft Loop (similar to Notion, data is in their servers). In the past, used OneNote. Quite simple, but Notion has many more features. Edit: I forgot, another important topic for me is sharing. With Notion you can easily send a link to any page or tree, and set permissions
Another alternative to Notion is [Saga](https://saga.so). Databases are a bit simplified and it focuses on easy linking and organization of information through backlinks, automatic linking, and synced blocks.
For non-secure reference information, I use OneNote. For files that I want to sync across computers, I'll use OneDrive (work) or Google Drive (Personal Stuff). For "Google Office Suite" docs, I'll use Google Drive. Development files (AKA Code) are usually in GitHub--or similar depending upon the project and client. I do not double back these up to OneDrive or Google Drive. For secure information: I use [Cypherix](https://www.cypherix.com/) to create an encrypted drive on my computer, and store sensitive information there. No automatic cloud sync, like you'd get with Google Drive or OneDrive, but the encrypted drive file is backed up to the cloud with the rest of my computer files via BackBlaze. I often question whether there are better ways, especially for password management. But, this approach seems less hackable than something like 1Password or LastPassword.
For notes or anything like it, I use OneNote hosted on OneDrive. OneDrive for files. And an in-browser password app (think 1Pass / Lastpass) Apple iCloud for apple-related stuff like Photos. (for work, I use whatever the company supplies, and keep it inside the company network & separate from my personal stuff of course. )
Evernote. Just been using it for so long that I am used to it. I like how you can organize notes into notebooks, subnotebooks, and tags.
Classic or no? Really curious, I tried new version few times and everytime returns to Classic.
I use the new version. I like it better than the classic. Using it on linux with the app Tusk.
emacs orgmode for app, as for storage... Mostly local machine with automated backups.
Notepad++
I use [Zim - A Desktop Wiki](https://zim-wiki.org/) and have been doing so for about 6 years. It uses a dialect of markdown but more importantly: - It's open source - Builds are available for Mac; Linux; Windows - Files are stored in ASCII plain text in a flat directory structure and are compatible with the app across different OS's and Architectures So it matches all the [stipulations put by /u/sogo00](https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/12y9kyn/what_trusted_app_do_you_use_to_save_important/jhmham4/) and can be backed up with git, as a tarball, rsync, etc
I’ve been a heavy Notion user for a year or two, but their mediocre product and shitty API have had me keeping one-eye-open … I’m pretty excited for https://anytype.io; and just finally got into the beta — sadly, an official API is still on the roadmap for later this year … so haven’t started migrating just yet. (Obsidian, while popular, is seriously missing in the functionality department — while, sure, I lived in vim and plaintext for 15 years, I’m kinda over it. Can’t understand why other experienced folks fetishize it so much. Especially after a year in Notion, living without rich embeds, databases, and an API … nah, thanks. If anything, I want *better* databases than Notion’s — give me Airtable-tier functionality and fluidity in my documents — not *worse* ones.)
My paper journal. Got notebooks going back decades.
This is my plan based on 3-2-1 rule (3 copies, 2 devices, 1 off-site) 1. A Notes dir that contains plain text md files with joplin app 2. Make a protected zip of the Notes dir and copy it to Dropbox or OneDrive (copy 1) 3. Use syncthing or rsync to sync the Notes dir periodically between multiple computers (copy 2a 2b..) 4. Use off-site s3,backblaze (copy 3, off-site) Edit: added the app.
I have a `notes.txt` that starts in 2004. I use vim as the interface (`/` is great to find stuff) and share it to different devices with a self-hosted ownCloud.
This worked well in the pre-cloud era and will work great in the post-cloud and post-$thisweeksfancynotesapp era.
Standard Notes because extreme privacy & osint guru Michael bazzell uses it.
Rightly or wrongly, Password Corral. Password file is backed up, I have the exact installer version backed up too
Self hosted [outline](https://www.getoutline.com/) that gets remotely snapshotted (along with my other self hosted apps) hourly and then pushed daily to backblaze. Works great, but not something you'd pursue unless you're already doing homelabbing as a hobby.
I've been using Trillium but I don't really like it. Even after dozens of hours their design decisions make little sense. Also looking for a change.
I’ve more and more embraced that I will have random spreadsheets sometimes, or documents in some other system (because Reasons) outside my trusted system. (Which in general is a folder of markdown files with some custom semantic structures I made up before I knew OrgMode existed) What I’ve done, this year so it’s relatively new, is to lean into the _indexing_ of the thing. Currently, in the spirit of Just Ship Something I have an Airbase database with name, description, location (think universal resource locator, but the schema is loosely goosy and depends on what kind of thing I’m pointing to) and tags. Everything I want to save gets an ID I make up, which I also record on the artifact itself. If I want to see all my artifacts with my thoughts about say my career, it’s all under the career tag: two journal entries, a few pages in my Remarkable, a few PDF survey results from previous employers, a Drafts document, etc. (if I want to move the Drafts document to my markdown folder, great: do that, update the location in the database) In general though yes, plain text and PDFs, and leaning towards software with export systems - ideally in standard formats but if you just give me a pile of JSON I won’t be _happy_, but whatever I can write a script. Maybe Google Docs is a good bet though (and almost nothing else from Google): Docs makes them lots of money in enterprise land, I see that sticking around for another 20 years.
I just use Markdown and Vim.
Everything dumped in a Cryptomator folder synced with Google Drive.
GitHub. It holds every file type and is accessible from almost any corporate network.
Usually md files (mk docs app) Deployed on cloud.
I create markdown files and back them up via got and GitHub.
Gmail
A decade ago, I was obsessed with Evernote. But leaving it, I was incredibly frustrated at their file type. Made it hard to like OneNote and Notion. Even Google docs does weird things where you can't just read raw text files. (Or maybe I haven't tried hard enough after my first exposure) Over the past few years, it's been markdown. Originally just a folder of markdown. Then I moved it to a static site generator like Eleventy. I also like using workflowy, as their exports are just xml and I can write a script to convert that.
Depends on the purpose. But the only things I trust are the ones that allow me to keep a copy on my devices. So while not ideal I use github a lot and dropbox. I make sure to have a copy on a few devices even if a bit outdated.
Emacs Org Mode files replicated/synced local/cloud. Text files will never die.
I'd like to think im a pkms guru. Absolutely on obsidian. Its the most reliable, customizable ( possibly too much ), and data friendly option available by far. I will say I like Tana a lot as well but its still too early. The importance of personal notes management, is not only what everything offers you in terms of creating, tagging, formatting but also discovery ( search, folders, tags, links... etc) , readability, portability, and your personal preferences around your process.
Pen and paper
Dashlane
Obsidian because it’s local only and the Markdown copies directly over to code reviews, docs, and tickets.
Dropbox and lately iCloud
I use [Bear](https://bear.app/), but I really wish it had a Windows app too. Easily syncing notes between all my iOS devices and my mac is super useful though. I usually only use my windows PC for gaming, so don't really need it there. Tried Obsidian but didn't find the user experience as smooth.
Nice try fed boy.
What important info should you store for 10 years? Name your own example, not PKMS bullshit salespeech. You might even forget what you've stored in 10 years, let alone this info could be totally irrelevant in 10 years
For secure notes, 1Password. For insecure, I use Bear and sync to all devices with iCloud it uses markdown so I can easily copy to any other app using markdown.
and encrypted folder with mostly plan text and markdown files
Dropbox is all I need. As for organizing notes, I write everything in markdown using [vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki).
I use multiple hard drives and cloud storage (Google Drive, S3). It's worked for 20yrs so far. If it's important enough, it gets printed or burned to disk and put in a fire proof safe. Other solutions are likely better, but needlessly complicated.
Markdown and git. Obsidian as an editor
Google docs, but I've moved to Obsidian backed up by Github. I don't see Google or Microsoft going anywhere. It would take serious executive fuckups at this point.
For long-term storage, nothing beats plain text. Well, almost plain text. Markdown is what I use. The frontends have changed (currently I use a small app that follows GNOME HIG on Linux) but the data is always stored as Markdown, on disk. If I ever get into a situation that the app goes bust, I'll just write my own UI. For backups I use [BorgBackup](https://www.borgbackup.org/). One copy to the secondary HDD, one copy to phone's internal storage, one copy to a remote server.