Ask HN: What tool you use for notes and to organise thoughts?

I’m in university so I use OneNote for hand drawn diagrams. I eventually want an Apple Pencil and upgraded iPad and use good notes, but I don’t have the dollars right now haha. OneNote is great because of the expandable canvas and the handwriting recognition. I do like auto shapes feature of preview though.

I annotate PowerPoint slides directly with Preview.

For other notes, I use FSNotes which is like nvALT and it’s easily searchable and quick to use.

I sometimes edit those MD notes in Typora.

I also like to curate ideas in a Gitbook, which I have public but it’s kinda messy right now. (https://index.kalispera.xyz/)

For some writing projects, I love Scrivener.

I kinda feel like I’m addicted to trying tools though oops.

Apple Notes for quick stuff at work.

Had a stint with Microsoft OneNote, but I don't trust it to hold my data reliably.

Ended up with Notes folder with Markdown files. It's very logical (filesystem), easy to backup, version and transfer.

Visual Studio Code is my editor of choice. I'm using custom workspace settings which changes my theme to lighter one, bigger fonts etc whenever I open any note.

It's not perfect. Everytime I want to create note I need to create new file, choose its name and add ".md" extension. It takes 3 seconds, but simple CMD+N would be easier.

I use Zim Wiki [1]. I like the hierarchical structure plus the ability to link to any other page internally. It does a good job of staying out of your way and has support for check boxes, searching, and various plugins. It also saves to disk in plaintext so I can version control it.

[1] https://zim-wiki.org/

It's small, simple, unobtrusive, free and portable- It is also old and unmaintained, but I love it. Just unzip and run. No installation required. http://theguide.sourceforge.net/

For notes, I use Apple Notes. For organizing thoughts, I created an app called ZenJournal that was showcased here last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876939

I use Dynalist (https://dynalist.io/), which is a cross platform infinitely nested list tool that has a ton of features.

Depends on where I am, and who the notes are for.

Random location, I use my MobiScribe.

At my computer, either the MobiScribe, or Tomboy Notes, sorry of a personal wiki.

At work, possibly needing to be read by others, our group's Knowledge Base, managed by Confluence.

Good old Notepad.