Ask HN: Where do you save links, notes and random useful stuff? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where do you save links, notes and random useful stuff?

17 pointsa_protsyuk43 comments

I have 2,600+ notes in Apple Notes and can barely find anything.

My kid just dumps everything into Telegram saved messages. Running a small research - curious what systems people actually use (not aspire to use).

Do you have a setup that works or is everything scattered across 5 apps like mine?

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The real issue isn't where you store notes — it's whether you find them when you actually need them.

I've gone through Notion, Confluence, and plain markdown. The pattern is always the same: I diligently save everything, then never look at it again because the moment I need it, I'm in a completely different context (a ticket, a chat, a meeting).

The "low friction = actually use it" point resonates. I've started thinking the answer isn't a better note-taking app, but surfacing the right information where the work happens, rather than making people go find it.

This is actually the truth, we all have tens or hundreds of priceless saved links. However, I claim that 90% are forgotten after a day or two, maybe that's actually something that small language models can fix ?

Spot on — the "90% forgotten" problem is real. I think the fix isn't really about the model size, though; it's about surfacing the right thing at the right moment. If the system can detect what you're working on and push relevant saved knowledge to you proactively, you don't need to remember what you saved in the first place. The hard part is getting the context matching precise enough to be helpful without being noisy.

It's hard to keep it all together.

I use Obsidian for journaling across devices. My work notes are in a Markdown folder under the project. My personal notes are in a paper notebook and scanned when I run out of pages. Links are bookmarked.

The paper notebook solves the recall problem; it's just a few pages back. Most things I write down are only useful for a few months, then they become a mere artifact of my life at that point in time.

My only friction with hierarchy-type store of bookmarks is the orthogonal labeling scheme remains poorly or unsupported.

Slapping a tag or two (or many) is bandaid.

Need a way to navigate a tree for a bookmark that is repeatedly tagged and filed across hierarchy.

Perfect example: retirement, budget, investment firms, reviewed

Each day has a focus, and it often arrives differently to a same bookmark.

Handcrafted Wikipedia category tree is a good start but still no navigation panel and a search box thereof.

This is the fundamental problem with hierarchies - knowledge is multi-dimensional but folders are one-dimensional. You shouldn't have to decide if "Vanguard 2026 review" lives under /retirement or /budget or /investments. What if you could just search "retirement investment options I reviewed" and find it regardless of where it was filed - by meaning, not by path?

Tools: Zettlr for notes. user?weird_tentacles explained the concept of zellelkasten. These are synced to a cloud folder so I have access to them on the move.

Blog: Compiling notes into 'new' knowledge is challenging and interesting. I try to keep on doing what I did in postgrad research.

Zettlr is underrated. When you're compiling notes into something new - how do you find the right notes to pull together? Do you browse, search, or does the linking do the work?

Memory, notes hierarchy and filename (I tend to keep notes conceptually atomic and not just the date/time as a filename), tag search, free text search, citation backsearch; I have a bibtex library linked but that's mainly focused on maintaining references to published work- I use JabRef but IMHO that's really too heavy for what I use it for.

LogSeq, with the "brain" shared across devices using Koofr over webdav

  LogSeq with WebDAV - nice setup. Do you use it mostly for linked notes/graph, or more as a daily journal?

Google Keep CherryTree - which is much nicer than the web site portrays https://www.giuspen.net/cherrytree/

CherryTree looks interesting - hierarchical nodes. Do you split notes between Keep and CherryTree by type, or is there a different logic?

I sue Keep for personal stuff and CherryTree for my tech work Once you get used to CherryTree you might love it. Linux and Win versions too

I’m also a “text myself” kind of person. I’m using my own chat-based notes app called tetrify, which is now adopting the Matrix protocol for sync.

ooh, that's cool - come tell us about it in matrix.to/#/#twim:matrix.org when it's ready :)

I pin "Note To Self" in Signal and drop important stuff there. For less important stuff I have a Matrix room on my own server.

using obsidian for notes raindrop.io for bookmarks and have my own jekyll template just for public links

https://github.com/umtksa/links (repo)

https://umtksa.github.io/links/ (demo)

I used to keep everything in Obsidian, but I recently switched to keeping notes in Obsidian and links and articles in Karakeep (self-hosted).

https://karakeep.app/

One of many things that I like about Karakeep is that when you save a link it captures both a screenshot and text from the page, and uses AI to create tags and a summary for the link. Basically it automatically categorizes everything that you save.

I use a selfhosted flatnotes install with a cronjob commiting the changes to a private github repository.

Works pretty well

I'm lazy, so I use Google Keep and will probably regret it someday.

"Will probably regret it someday" - what's the thing you're most worried about losing?

Google isn't exactly famous for maintaining their products. They'll kill it eventually, just a question of when.

I keep all that stuff on a Wiki that I run in my house.

Self-hosted wiki - what software? And do you access it on mobile when you're out, or is it strictly home network?

I use Dokuwiki: https://www.dokuwiki.org/

I access it when I'm out and about, but do so through a VPN that I also run from my home. The wiki is not accessible except through the VPN.

Organizationally, I have a different section for general aspects of my life (household, programming, and hardware projects as well as hobbies such as camping, etc.). The front page is a general catch-all where I temporarily drop things that don't already have a home. I then organize them more formally later.

I make pretty heavy use of inter-page links to help organization of related things that aren't in the same "world". A lot like note-taking apps.

I use chrome bookmarks and sublime app

Also, whatsapping myself

Chrome bookmarks + WhatsApp to self - classic combo. When you need to find a bookmark from months ago, do you actually find it or just google the thing again?

Actually i create sub folders with topics where i save them. So i mostly go through those folders to see

in md files in the file system.

Do you organize into folders, or just dump everything flat and rely on search?

Matter!

...sending myself an email

Email as inbox - do you ever actually process it, or does it just pile up with everything else?

if it's worth i extract the core value out of the "conversation" with myself. could be a page in any knowledge base, a snippet in my ide, or whatever suits well... then the email thread goes either into archive or into data nirvanah.

The core idea of Zettelkasten:

1. ONE (shared) dump-pile of all new notes. Your 2,600 pile should do fine

2. REGULAR 'cleaning' of the new notes: a) Each note gets one or many tags (#urban-decay #gaming #assets) b) Each note is trimmed down to its essence, ready to be used for reasonable purposes. (e.g further writing)

3. 'cleaned' notes are moved to your golden store, ready to be found by searching (search "#urban-decay")

You have 1. You need 2. It's slightly work-y, but interesting and ... fun. Rediscovering and polishing forgotten dust-rubies.

That's a solid workflow. The "cleaning" step is where most people fall off though - how long does it take you to process a batch, and how often do you actually sit down to do it?

My system is basically a 'digital graveyard' if I don't use full-text search. I moved everything to Obsidian because it's just Markdown files on my drive. For links, I use a simple Telegram bot I wrote that dumps everything into a CSV. Low tech, but it’s the only thing I’ve actually stuck with for more than a year.

Notion — good for linking related notes

Does the linking actually pay off when you need to find something, or do you mostly just search?

I do just search.

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