The endless quest for a great notes-taking tool

[etergri]

What I've been wanting for a long time for my tech notes:

- taking notes easily, preferably markdown (love its simplicity and I seem to remember it pretty well, maybe from stackoverflow's training) - must be available everywhere, I don't want to sync folders over dropbox or stuff like that across my computers, tablets and phones... it should be hosted maybe on AWS and be available as soon as I type my domain (even public would be fine) - must be simple to edit (with a password at this point, no public editing :P) to add pages - must be simple to add images (cut/paste and/or drag and drop) on the document - there must be a quicksearch (something like I start typing and immediately full-text search into the documents appear below with a small preview of the paragraph where my text was found)

I tried text markdown files + grep -> good but no sync across devices, no images (markdown files can't display that directly, I have to store the images somewhere and link to them, that's a lot of work without a 3rd party program) I tried google docs -> good but search is terrible, plus a lot of formatting complexity since it wasn't created for tech notes (text + images/graphs) I tried dropbox -> same issues as above, plus install stuff everywhere. Hate it.

So here I am asking again, maybe I'll be more lucky this time: is there a preferably opensource software (or combination of softwares) that will allow me to have simple tech notes in markdown with fulltext responsive search + extremely quick edit of whatever I'm seeing + web access from any device + paste images directly in those rendered MD files?

It's a VERY simple tool but since my memory is gradually failing (getting old), I'm looking for a way to have my knowledge, coding tips and snippets, programming guides, graphs, linux commands and stuff like that all at a glance at my fingertips.

Sorry for asking again something that has probably been asked a thousand times. As I said: I'm getting old :P

[catchmeifyoucan]

For super quick notes that are password managed, and markdown supported, I've been using https://nnote.io. Simple, no-ads, and might be OSS sometime soon.

However with nnote, I do end up with a lot of links, and since those notes live everywhere and are hard to manage, I end up making a task in Amna (https://getamna.com) [disclaimer I built it], and use nnote as a tab inside of the browser it provides.

[ApolloRising]

Sounds too simple but you could just create a personal wordpress install + strong search plugin. Seems to do everything you asked for since you are ok with public.

[adamhp]

If you're on the Apple ecosystem, I really like the simplicity of Bear. You do have to pay a very small fee for it (like maybe $1/mo?) but I've found their interface and tags system to be the best combination of power and simplicity. Apps always work and sync with iCloud.

[runjake]

$1.49 a month or $14.99 annually.

And I agree, Bear is awesome. It's fast, it's simple yet powerful (eg. x-callback-url fun), and it stays out of your way. Sync is rock-solid and reliable and requires no effort on my part. It's great for programmers, too.

https://bear.app/

[adamhp]

I've even been using the todo feature more regularly these days to capture action items from meetings. Anytime you do the markdown checkbox (- [ ]), it bubbles up into a nav item for "Todo". I like that they haven't tried to overcomplicate things.

[stakkur]

Bear uses a SQLite database to store notes, a layer which I don’t want or need. Notes are not simply text files.

[fabianholzer]

A self-hosted TiddlyWiki instance (the nodejs-based version, not the single html file approach) might satisfy many of your requirements, albeit not the search preview. https://tiddlywiki.com/

[kixiQu]

I wonder if you could hack that in with https://github.com/danielo515/TW5-contextPlugin ? I use it for this for backlinks.

ETA: https://tiddlywiki.com/static/Customising%2520search%2520res...

Yup, totally doable

[Leftium]

I'm waiting for this to be released: https://nvultra.com/ (I think it's limited to Mac/iOS, though)

I think https://simplenote.com fits all your requirements except images. I streamlined images by using services that allows pasting images into the browser (Trello, Glitch, Imgur), then get a link to the image with a single click. (If you abuse StackOverflow's question editor, they even give you the markdown for the image.)

Recently, I have been considering switching to Apple Notes after discovering you can access your notes from a browser. It fits all your requirements except markdown.

[akulbe]

Standard Notes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mobitar

Mo Bitar is the author. Just figured you could check SN/him out, if you wanted.

Not sponsored, just a very happy user.

[toby_tw]

I really simpathise. I have tried all sorts of notes app, and they all suck in some way it another.

So far I have found Evernote to be the least sucky of them all.

[jp42]

I tried several tools but the only thing that worked for me is just plain text.

[mikeodds]

standardnotes.com ticks a lot of those boxes.

apps for most devices and os flavors, syncs across them all

end to end encryption

add-on editors which allow note taking in markdown and attaching / embedding files

basic search functionality built-in

[stakkur]

gEdit + cloud storage of your choice to share markdown files. Done.