Ask HN: Do you have a visual note taking app you enjoy? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you have a visual note taking app you enjoy?

17 pointsdinkleberg15 comments

Have you found a visual note taking app that you actually enjoy using?

There are a ton of tools like Notion, Obsidian, Logseq, etc. that are all focused on primarily text/document first.

I've been spending a lot of time doing both design work and doing more creative/artistic fun stuff, but I also do a lot of reading and note taking and am hoping to find a tool that can bring all of this into one tool.

There are a lot of visual infinite canvas type tools like Miro, Milanote, Muse, etc. that are great for dumping images, doodling on the canvas, and organizing things however you want.

And there seem to be some tools somewhere in the middle, like Scrintal (terrible name lol) and Heptabase. There are some others, though they seem fairly anemic in terms of features and are more just another notion-like tool but you can put the notes on a canvas.

I guess the short of it is that I don't know exactly what I'm looking for and I'm hoping that some others here have found a nice solution for their own note taking/knowledge dumping which works in a visual way.

You could try to use e-ink tablet for that purpose instead app. I am using one and it aggregates many activities like reading, taking notes and drawing in one device. I noticed productivity boost when using such a device. I am also using Obsidian a bit, but only to be able to synchronize some notes between laptop and smartphone.

I'm curious, do you connect the contents of the e-ink tablet with obsidian or just use them separately?

I like using my iPad with the concept app for doodling but it is pretty much an info dump as finding anything again is a pain.

I could try to convert handwritten notes to text and then move it to Obsidian but my notes are often more like a mindmap and it is easier for me to open tablet and just read straight from there. So I use them separately: Obsidian for really short notes like 1-2 sentences to transfer from laptop which I would like to have accessible on the phone and vice-versa: to write something really short on the phone. Handwritten notes are my main source of data. This approach might not be optimal for everyone of course.

I've tried several over the years, most recently Molasses (Obsidian...), and because I want the files to be easily accessible across time and computers I've settled on just using .txt files with explicit titles.

Edit, as that didn't really answer the question: no, I don't have any digital visual note taking app I prefer. I use a paper notebook for that, because handwriting and sketching is engaging and I find I remember better what I was thinking at the time.

I’ve tried most things, honestly the Freeform app built into apple os, is good enough for solo note taking, mind mapping. I used it today on a train journey to plan my week ahead. On iPad with Apple Pencil it works great.

When I need to collaborate I usually set up a Figjam board though.

I've been using Curio[1] for more than 10 years. The app is Mac-only but it is very reliable and regularly updated.

[1] https://www.zengobi.com/curio

I have an iPad Mini with Notability. I'm quite happy with it as I bought it before the switch to a subscription model.

Notability is very nice, at least before the subscription pricing. They even put iCloud sync behind the subscription, that's not using their servers or datacenters. Freeform covers a lot of my use-cases for Notability, but last I tried it wasn't as good for some things.

A specific use I had was with importing PDFs (like, say, a textbook chapter) and marking up the chapter, tossing blank pages after exercise sections and writing out my solutions/answers or directly marking the pages. IIRC, Freeform would let you import a document like a PDF but not display it (or specific pages from it) within the Freeform document itself, instead it was a linked file. I'll have to try again but haven't had much need for this recently.

EDIT: At least on iPhone, it's the same behavior. It's attached so I can open the PDF but not embedded in a way where I can directly mark it up within the larger Freeform document. I have to open the attached file to mark it up and can't just display (and then markup) selected pages.

I highly recommend and used Kinopio (hope I spelled that right) for quite sometime. There really isn’t anything like it.

But to keep a similar system between work and personal I used Obsidan + Excalidraw (inside obsidian). IMO it gives the best of both worlds.

I'd say kinopio is really good for planning and problem solving while Obsidan is like your local library , so far as i can tell it's even better then notion when it comes to the issue of keeping your files and saving them rather then relying on company servers that can have a data leak any coming day.

I loved both of your recommendations thank you! xD

After some more playing around I think I’m going to use Muse for the time being. Out of everything I’ve tried it has the slickest UX. It’s missing a lot that I’d like but at least it is pleasant to use for what it is good at.

I like Google Keep and One Note. Nothing fancy, but lets me quickly jot notes down or sketch plans with my pen with infinite canvas capabilities.

What about Trillium? It is no longer under active development but seems feature complete for many cases...

kinopio is great.

Obsidian on Mac

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