Personal Notes Tooling
I love keeping notes. Everything from meeting summaries to packing lists to books I’ve read and more. And these days, I tend to favor digital notes. I’m faster at typing than writing, and I love being able to search them. And with my phone, I don’t have to carry around a notebook.
I’ve gone through a few different systems/tools as I continue the search for my perfect setup. I figured I’d share what I am looking for and what I currently use.
To be explicit, this is for personal notes. When I’m writing shared notes, I use different tools. For example, at work I’ll often use a wiki or project management system, and with family and friends, something like Google Docs.
But for my personal notes, here is what I’m looking for in my ideal setup:
Good mobile support
I want to be able to rely on my phone when I’m not at my computer. It’s ok if the mobile experience is more limited, but I need the basics of adding and editing notes, and ideally searching.
Offline support
I travel a lot, and I want to be able to add and edit notes when my phone or laptop is in airplane mode. Or when I have spotty cell/wifi coverage.
Ideally, I should be able to edit normally, and then when I’m back in service, the notes should sync in the background.
As an example of something I don’t like, the iPhone Dropbox app allows me to edit notes without service, but then when I try to save, it can hang and refuse to persist. I don’t want to fear losing updates when I’m offline.
Open format
I’ve gone through various tools in the past, and I don’t want to get locked into a tool that I can’t easily get out of. Concretely, I would prefer the files be plain text (e.g. markdown). Plain text files are universal, and I can use many different tools to edit or convert them. Here’s a good summary of this argument: Write plain text files
If plain text isn’t an option, the next best thing would be a different open format, such as sqlite.
With open formats, even if the tool I’m using doesn’t support a good export, I can write my own. Or if the new tool wants a different format, I can easily convert the files.
If all else fails, I’m ok using a proprietary format as long as there’s good export functionality to an open format.
Vim support
I’m a big vim fan (or rather neovim these days). When I’m at my computer, I would like to be able to type notes with vim. Vim mode on another tool can work, but I prefer real vim when possible.
Image support
This isn’t a strict must have for me, but it’s nice if I can embed images in docs (such as recipes).
Versioning
Another nice to have is some kind of versioning or point in time backup. Worst case, I can backup periodic exports, but ideally, the system would have a better solution for this.
Current Tooling
So with this list of requirements and desires, here’s the set of current tools I’m using:
The crux of my current setup is directories of plain text markdown files stored in iCloud Drive. iCloud Drive handles the syncing between my laptop and my phone.
I also made this directory a git repository, and I periodically commit and push changes to a hosted git repo. This gives me both versioning and backups, in case something goes wrong with the iCloud Drive (e.g. it gets accidentally deleted or corrupted).
On desktop, I add/edit these files mostly in neovim. I also occasionally use Obsidian, especially for more complex things like adding images (it automatically copies in the image and makes the markdown links to it).
On my phone, I use the Obsidian mobile app. The main reason I chose iCloud Drive over another syncing method is because that’s what the Obsidian app supports outside of their proprietary sync: https://help.obsidian.md/getting-started/sync-your-notes-across-devices.
Downsides
While iCloud Drive syncing mostly works, it’s definitely not the smoothest. I frequently see sync issues, where changes on one device don’t show up on another for a long time. And it doesn’t handle conflicts well, just blowing away changes on one of the devices rather than trying to merge files, or asking me to resolve conflicts. Thankfully at least, iCloud finally supports the ability to keep a folder downloaded on a device: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/26/icloud-keep-downloaded-option-ios-18-macos-sequoia/.
Even though I set the entire Obsidian directory in iCloud to Keep Downloaded, Obsidian will often pop up a message that it’s synchronizing my files and I need to wait. I’m afraid if I skip I will somehow edit an old version and blow away newer changes. I don’t know if the issue is with Obsidian or with iCloud, but they are trying to push me towards their proprietary sync:
My current tooling is Mac only. This isn’t currently an issue for me, as I have a Mac laptop and iPhone. I do have linux devices, but I don’t currently use them for notes. I still don’t love being tied to the Apple ecosystem, though, so I would prefer something that is cross platform instead.
Summary
I’ve been using this setup for the last 6 months or so, and all in all, it’s working pretty well for me. The Obsidian mobile app is good, and it’s easy to edit and search. I do hope that iCloud syncing improves over time. But since it’s all just text files and I don’t use the advanced Obsidian features, I don’t feel too locked in, and I could switch to different apps easily.
If you have suggestions on other approaches or tools I should try, please let me know!