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Comment by distortednet | Hacker News Reader

I think a note app should be designed around the idea that the first action you take by default is always taking a note, and that actions should be made available where appropriate as a reaction. Shockingly, not many apps do this that I am aware of. Taking notes in an expeditious manner isn't always a design priority, and I don't think that's a needed sacrifice to make in a note taking app. That's why I never used evernote, anyways.

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I find myself using the plain old "Notes" on Mac for nearly all of my note taking. It's just so much simpler than dealing with sections and pages and organization.

Most of my notes are relatively ephemeral, perhaps lasting for a task or project. Rarely to I need to reference things that aren't in relatively recent history. When I do, I'll just scroll back or do a universal search.

I feel like Bear[0] comes pretty close. I’ve been using it for the last few months and it’s one of the few apps I’ve found that actually allows me to just go in and take a note/jot down a quick blurb as needed.

I tried to use Evernote and it just never stuck with me. It felt like it was too much overhead just for capturing quick ideas.

[0]https://bear.app/

+1 for Bear. I used Evernote for years but it finally became too slow and bloated with several thousand notes and tons of features I never use. I need a lightweight note app, if it takes more than a second or two to fire up the app and jot down a note then that’s a fail.

Bear is working well for me. The only thing I don’t like is no audio notes and weird formatting which makes copy pasting bulleted notes into other editors somewhat painful. Still my default note app and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future (or until I have thousands of notes again causing performance to degrade...)

I like bear, it’s my current note app besides .git. I wish they’d improve their code formatting.

I liked and used bear when it just came out, but it is moving at a glacial pace when it comes to adding certain important features, such as adding support for tables and equations.

Bear has a very good story when it comes to sync with the iPhone. But if you need cross-platform support, tables, equations, and such features org-mode, Typora, etc. are much better options.

>such as adding support for tables and equations.

If tables and equations are "crucial" it's not just about a notes app anymore...

why can't a note have tables and equations? Both seem quite useful (equations especially as that's just a compressed sentence in a way)

We can, but they introduce tons of challenges in rendering and display, change the serialization format (whereas basic stuff can just be edited and viewed as plain text) etc.

Besides where does one stop in a note taking app? One could also ask for footnotes, bibliography management, graphs and plots, handwriting recognition, PDF management, and so on...

Bear supports Latex. You can try writing your equations and tables in a Latex code block.

This is why I switched to keep.

Not a fan of its looks but the functionality is just the right mix of usefulness and function over form.

Notational Velocity (and clones) always seemed to do well with that. Very light, very plaintext, but great as a sort of reactionary "Open and start typing and ask questions later" platform.

Drafts[1] for iOS is the note app of your dreams.

It does exactly what you mention.

It is expected that it will be released in Beta for macOS in the next few months.

[1] - https://getdrafts.com/

You have to pay a subscription for dark mode (“don’t hurt my eyes” mode)? No thank you

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