nvALT 2 (2021)

Love NV and nvAlt! Still use multiple times daily. Set to keep things as individual files, Syncthing between machines, and to my iPhone (where I use 1Writer) via iCloud. Works great, shared notes is the only thing I miss from my prior nv/Simplenote setup.

I got both to compile for Apple Silicon and made an issue somewhere linking to my forks. May have been under the main scrot/nv repo.

Unfortunately, while I prefer nvAlt, it has continued to be intermittently buggy in other ways, so I've switched back to NV for the time being. Not good enough at C++ to debug things myself.

EDIT:

- https://github.com/scrod/nv/issues/392

- https://github.com/n8henrie/nv

I used to use nvALT quite a bit. These days I use The Archive[1] instead.

[1]: https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/

Probably worth noting the actual project page: https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

For (neo)vim users, there's notational fzf [1], which also requires fzf to be installed [2]. For Emacs, there's Deft [3]. They all what to me are nvalt's core functionality which is fuzzy search into quick note creation/editing. They can also be used in conjunction with nvalt or other markdown based applications since all of them use plaintext. For Deft, you can also choose to create .org files.

[1] https://github.com/Alok/notational-fzf-vim

[2] https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

[3] https://jblevins.org/projects/deft/

Development continued as https://nvultra.com/ the successor of nvALT

At one point I was so used to Notational Velocity that I needed it on Windows and didnt want to adopt other available solutions. So I built a barebones clone in Java: https://github.com/vinodkd/jNV.

One of the "fast" slim note taking software. Love the modeless operations. https://notational.net/ Still works on MacOS 12.6

nvALT was one of my "gateway" apps into really finding my happy place. Before nvALT I thought Apple Notes was sufficient for me. It really revealed to me what things I wanted to be using notes for that I wasn't. But I also wanted more structure and a better mobile app than the Simplenote app.

Today Drafts fills the "easy entry" portion of nvALT, while a combination of Bear and Obsidian serve as the primary ways I organize information after that. But nvALT opened the door for me.

One notable mention should also be nvPY: https://github.com/cpbotha/nvpy

Mentioned in this trending post:

Fast Software, the Best Software

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33584958 -> https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/

I adore nvALT. so much so i took a stab at making a clone in JavaScript to revel in all the subtle details you take for granted as a user but take a considerable amount of concentration to orchestrate all together as code.

https://github.com/bkeating/nakedNV

I used it for a very long time and I loved it. Switched to Bear then to craft a few months ago. craft.do is the best app I’ve ever used. Kind of a different concept but really amazing once used for a few days

I replaced it with fsnotes, when you disable the sidebar and tweak some settings you get the same thing.

https://fsnot.es

My new love is neovim with fzf, binding fzf to CTRL+O (replicating Obsidian perfectly). All the power of vim, and much faster than Obsidian to start-up.

Lots of note taking apps mentioned here. FSNotes (for Mac and iOS) is another alternative that works pretty well for keeping plain-text Markdown notes.

Bear app is super fast. Supports Markdown. And is beautiful to look at. Bear 2 is looking even better.

Thanks for positing this, I was using nvALT, I love this app.

Daily user of nvAlt for years!

I switched to LogSeq about 3 months ago.

I get why this is a driver. What about Obsidian[1]?

[1]: https://obsidian.md/