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Comment by hosh | Hacker News Reader

Encryption is nice, but what I really want is local-first, multi-device, and a very short time between when I launch the app and when I start being able to type. When I want to capture an idea or want to spend my limited time journalling, I want it fast. Hyperlinking and adding photos are nice.

Evernote has been focusing on collaborative features I don’t care about. Startup time to when I can start typing have been getting worse over the years. I’ve been seriously looking for a good replacement that lets me import from Evernote.

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Joplin is significantly better than Evernote for being quick to start typing. Sync runs in the background without preventing you from editing which is why I moved over. Has a decent ability to import notes from Evernote to Joplin as well.

The thing that bothered me with joplin is that you can only import/export plain md files and not just use it to work with already existing folders and files (at least when I used it the last time).

Standard notes fits those criteria and as a bonus is encrypted

Because @hosh is looking for something to quickly take notes, I must caution against Standard Notes due to it's lack of Android sharing integration. A user cannot simply share from an app into SN. The problem has existed for several years and requests to have this feature restored have been consistently ignored. The only option for Android users is to copy text, switch to the app, and paste it in - this requires more effort than most other competing note apps.

Apple Notes is my go to.

Plenty of great new features, but the core is still snappy and easy to use.

Same, ever since Apple FINALLY added categories. It took years and years for them to learn that this is essential.

Mainly I rely on Notes because they're synced through iCloud. I can add stuff to my grocery list as I think of it throughout the day while working on my computer, and it's on my phone when I roll to the grocery store.

I don't like that they're not in a standard format, however.

Oh, and the incredibly ill-conceived "share" function. In any other Apple application, "share" means (essentially): E-mail or text-message a copy of this. But if you "share" a note, the other person HAS REMOTE EDITING CAPABILITY ON YOUR NOTE. I discovered this by accident when I sent a recipe to my sister, then opened it months later to find stuff she had typed into it. The privacy failure here is just appalling. WTF, Apple?

Then there are the mysterious deletions. I've looked for notes that I knew were in there, only to find them under Deleted... fortunately before they were purged. In those cases, the iCloud syncing would've meant they were gone forever. Again, WTF Apple.

Have you found a good way to export a backup, instead of only cloud sync? Too to lose content by deleting by accident and then syncing.

Apple Notes keep all deleted notes in a trash bin for 30 days, you won't lose anything unless you manually go and remove them.

Deleted notes are easy to recover; deleted text not so much.

This is the real problem I have. If I delete content, move to a different note, and return to the first note, I lose the undo history and any possibility of regaining the deleted text.

Any idea how to export apple notes? Last I tried I went on the official apple note discord and their response was basically "lol you shouldn't use apple notes for more than like 10 notes so you're out of luck". I have like 1500 notes that I want to export

Google Keep, everyday (till they kill it)

“till they kill it”

How sad, that we are dependent on third parties like this… I have seen people openly hoping and begging Twitter to add an Edit button. Really? This is why we need open source.

This is seriously sad (not just Google keep, but also why other note taking software like Evernote, apple notes, etc) that there is a worry that companies may shut any one of these down, or that they aren't encrypted and secure, or that they're not FOSS. There's good options that fit these criteria, such as obsidian on a LAN with syncthing.

Was a Keep fan until I got a few thousand notes into it, and now my iOS start time is on the order of 10 seconds or so before I can type anything. Mostly use it in iOS with the Share functionality, then use the browser version otherwise.

Now for iOS I use Drafts for quick note-taking, then resolve the note later.

I use sublime text for that. It launches super fast, and after I capture whatever idea I have I usually copy the doc over to notion. Sometimes, all I need is to just capture whatever thought I have and not worry at all about copying them to notion or other tools (especially common when coding / debugging, I will just have an idea and then either excute on it or create a github issue)

Somebody showed me this, which looks like everything you want but it also looks experimental:

https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems

drafts optimizes for startup time, I use that for on-the-go and then review it later to be put into a long-term system

looking for one-tool to do it all is a mistake

Noteplan

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