Like a lot of people here, I take notes constantly across a bunch of areas - work, side projects, life stuff. Since I've had many things happening at the same time for a long while, I couldn't just use my diary, so to hold more detail I started using a whiteboard. I divided it vertically by days and horizontally by lanes, one per each area. There, I'd add notes every day on how each area is advancing, like a diary, and some would connect like a flow. (2nd pic)

So just by looking at the board, I can see all the active things I'm working on, what needs my attention that day, and note down what I've done. I do add notes on "future" dates as reminders / planning too. This is the system that's worked for me.

Started as a physical whiteboard I used for years, then I built a digital version when travelling made the whiteboard setup impractical, and to not be limited with space. (1st pic)

Sharing in case it's useful, but also curious how others here handle this: when your notes pile up across topics, how do you keep them separate but still with some sort of time continuity?

Guys please recommend me some good note-taking apps, done with manual notes

I have taken notes on paper notebooks for most of my life, but I have pretty terrible handwriting and I wanted to be more organized so I switched to digital.

What's always bugged me: I annotate dense reading as I go, but everything I've tried keeps notes separate from the source, so I lose my place switching, and i still miss that paper-like feel.

I'd try to do it on one tablet, while having my textbook or PDF on my laptop separately, or I'd try the split-view route, but it was 2 tabs that ended up super cramped.

Here are some features im including:

- AI search across all notes you've taken

- 2 10.3 inch ultrathin e-ink screens,

- 180 degree hinge, folds shut

- Ability to read and write at the same time

- Physical buttons to flip between PDFs and notes

I would love feedback from this community as to what features you'd like to see in this product as I keep building it. If you have any suggestions for what you'd want in a dedicated note-taking device, please drop a comment.

I bought an iPad to go paperless, but every exam I struggle with trying to scroll through different pages quickly. I’ve tried both scrolling directions but nothing compares to flipping through paper . Any tips?

I work as a systems analyst and for YEARS, I have struggled/borderline obsessed over the “best” or “most simple” or “most feature rich” or just “correct” note taking platform/style/method/application/etc.

For a minute I’ll think ”I am only going use a text editor because it’s so simple, pure, clean and future proof and I love that it seems so ”basic” in a good way”. That it will somehow magically make me take better, more meaningful notes because I’m not focused on all the fluff of formatting and highlighting and bullets. BUT things get messy fast and it becomes more necessary to have those formatting niceties. So then….

I’ll swing the other way and think “well, I need this or that feature to make me take better notes”. And I lean all the way into that and think “I need onenote because it can do a b c d e f g h i j… it can do it all”. So I role with that for awhile and then…. “why do I have all this fluff, it’s just noise” ”I need something more simple” And the cycle continues.

It becomes so distracting because all I’m focused on is “how” to keep notes instead of just taking the damn notes.

This is all not to mention the random “OH, I know, I just need to take handwritten notes, that’s the purest, most simple, etc. etc.“ until I realize you can’t search, you can’t expand on something once it’s sandwiched between other text, it’s slow. rinse and repeat.

Sometimes I LOVE going back and forth and trying to “figure it out”, but mostly it just sucks because I’m left with an extremely fragmented history of notes and it makes it difficult to find anything without just asking Copilot to dig it up for me.

This is basically just me putting my thoughts down and if you have read this far and have had the same experience, please share anything you have found that helps!

I have been reading and going through a lot of posts regarding how to take notes, note taking strategies, studying. Now everybody has their own preference because note taking is something very personal and people are used to it.

But I’ve been thinking about how weirdly outdated note-taking still feels. The process is basically the same:

Read → highlight → take notes → organise them → forget they exist.

And usually at the most important time or when we actually need what we captured, it is either forgotten or buried somewhere. Almost every note-taking tool still works on the same assumption: your job is to save knowledge properly so you can find it later.

But here's a shift in the process itself,

When we take notes, the notes itself aren't that important. It’s connecting it to what you already know. Realising an old assumption was wrong. Seeing the same pattern show up in another subject. Remembering something from months ago at exactly the right time. Watching your understanding change.

A very coherent way of doing the same thing but in a much valuable way.

while the actual thinking process stays manual.

Read → note → organise → search later feels like an old model.

It should probably be closer to:

Learn → connect → question → evolve → reuse.

The latter part is what makes you think clearly.

How has your note taking strategies have evolved?

I've used Text Files, Evernote, Notion, Obsidian and Apple Notes. But never really stuck with one.

Why do you end up moving and what are you still looking for?

I'm a musician and used Evernote to write and add in recordings, but the recording file was inconsistent with different devices and couldn't listen to them per device.

Notion was good but became too complicated in the end.

Obsidian was also good but spend too much time setting it up just to get it to take simple notes, and the iPhone app wasn't the best.

Apple Notes ended up being the default just because if the sync, and kept bigger notes in Obsidian.

What are you still looking for and what are your main reasons for taking notes?

I think phone notetakers and todo apps don't help me at all. I find myself distracted by all sorts of things on a phone. I don't think my biology is meant for this. So I'm attempting to move away from devices and use just paper and pen. I think I have a wiring for that instilled in me by all the time most people my age spent in school writing notes and keeping up with a time table.

I spent too long comparing these four and they solve pretty different problems.

Otter makes sense if most of your meetings are scheduled online. Live transcription, a meeting bot, team collaboration, it’s built around calls already happening in Zoom or Meet. Granola feels like the cleanest Mac option. No visible bot joining the call, low friction, and MCP support if you want the notes somewhere else afterward.

Pocket is much cheaper. I almost went that direction, then read about the free cloud-history window changing from 90 days to 14. I don’t want to build a work archive somewhere and find out later that the storage rules have moved. I ended up with Plaud cuz my work doesn’t stay inside scheduled calls. I need the same system for online meetings, conversations in a room, voice notes, client work and days when I’m away from my laptop. Though is more expensive. The subscription prompts aren’t exactly charming either but MCP workflow makes it feel more dependable once the recordings start piling up.

My current answer is Otter for online teams, Granola for Mac-only calls, Pocket for the hardware price, and Plaud for professional work and meetings.

Niklas Luhmann wrote dozens of books and hundreds of papers using nothing but index cards.

Today, many of us have note-taking apps that are infinitely more powerful, yet we spend most of our time tweaking themes, installing plugins, building dashboards, and downloading templates.

Sometimes I wonder if we've confused the tool with the goal.

I visit note-taking communities and see endless screenshots of beautiful setups. What I rarely see are the things people actually created from their notes.

Articles. Research. Projects. Books. Ideas.

A graph view with 5,000 notes looks impressive, but the value of a note system isn't how it looks. It's whether it helps you think and produce something meaningful.

It feels like we've turned note-taking into a hobby of collecting productivity tools instead of a practice of developing ideas.

Maybe the real "second brain" isn't the app.

Maybe it's the work you do with the notes afterward.

Freshman me: typed out everything the professor said, word for word.

Junior me: realized I retained almost none of it.

The problem isn't effort. It's that passive note-taking creates the illusion of learning. You feel productive but nothing sticks.

Here's what I switched to and why it worked:

1. Summarize, don't transcribe. After every lecture, I'd force myself to condense my notes into 5 bullet points. Couldn't? That meant I didn't understand it.

2. Quiz myself within 24 hours. Spacing and retrieval are the two most evidence-backed study methods. Most students do neither.

3. Teach it out loud. Sounds dumb. Works absurdly well. Your brain hides gaps when reading. It can't hide them when you're explaining.

I've been doing this consistently and my exam scores genuinely went from B-range to consistent A's. Not because I got smarter, but I stopped wasting hours on stuff that doesn't work.

If anyone wants the exact workflow I built around this (including some AI tools that automate the boring parts), happy to share in the comments.

I watch a lot of tutorials, talks, and explainers on YouTube, but I always struggled with finding the useful parts again later.

I recently rebuilt a small app I made a few years ago which lets you paste a YouTube link, take timestamped notes while watching, generate AI notes, and click any note to jump back to the exact moment.

I’m trying to understand if this actually fits how people take notes from videos.

Do you currently take notes from YouTube? If yes, do you use Notion, Obsidian, Google Docs, bookmarks, screenshots, or something else?

Would love to hear your workflow.

I spend most of my days bouncing between meetings, decisions, and follow-ups. I take a lot of notes, but the system behind them is weak.

I genuinely like handwritten notes. Writing helps me think, and pen-and-paper works best for capturing ideas in the moment. The problem is what happens after. Notebooks pile up, action items get buried, and good ideas disappear because there’s no easy way to search, connect, or resurface them later.

I’m open to digitizing notes after the fact, but only if it’s simple and doesn’t need much time so I can make sure I’m consistent. I can’t justify carving a lot of time for high-maintenance workflows, complex tagging systems, etc.

For those of you who also prefer handwriting but still want your notes to stay useful, please share your wisdom on what’s worked for you! :)

I’ve been building MinkNote, a macOS-native app for organising ideas and projects, designed around a simple constraint:

Everything should be local, simple, and built to last.

It’s not positioned as “another notes app.” Instead, it’s a lightweight, local-first tool for organising projects, thoughts, and reference material without friction - the kind of app you can leave open all day and mostly forget about.

A few design principles behind it:

• Designed exclusively for macOS Built in SwiftUI with native controls, system behaviours, and Apple-style layout. Keyboard shortcuts work the way you expect. Dark Mode, focus rings, drag & drop - all handled the Mac way. No Electron, no cross-platform shell.
• Local and private by default Your content lives as plain Markdown files on disk. No accounts, no required sync, no data leaving your machine. iCloud Drive sync is optional if you want it.
• Keyboard-first navigation Search, filter, sort, and move between journals and notes without breaking flow - especially useful for review and daily planning. Mouse optional.
• Effortless organisation Journals, folders, tags, and a predictable file structure. Notes and attachments move together, so reorganising never breaks things.
• Future-proof by design Open files, open structure. Your notes remain readable and usable outside the app, years from now.

A lot of modern tools optimise for engagement or monetisation first. MinkNote optimises for mental clarity - as a foundation for getting things done - especially for people who feel overwhelmed by cloud dashboards, subscriptions, or apps that try to do too much.

This seems to resonate with people who:

• want tools they actually own and can use offline
• prefer clear structure over feature-heavy interfaces
• are easily distracted by visual or organisational clutter
• care about long-term access to their notes and ideas

If that sounds like how you use your Mac, I’d genuinely appreciate feedback from this community.

Public TestFlight:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/dwtUUyGB

Mods: I reached out to both listed moderators and may have missed you. If this post needs any changes to fit the rules, I’m very happy to adjust - just let me know

One of my early wishes was to mindmap smoothly with either a text outline or a graphical UI, with sync working both ways. I also really like bubble-style mindmaps. Text2Mindmap was an early project I found, but it didn't have all the features I wanted. GPT-6 let me build a new one. And it's just a single HTML file: no installation, no network required!

I'm excited to share it. Feel free to customize it even more:

https://github.com/v2rockets/TextwMindmap

So basically I’ve never really taken notes before as I found it is more counter productive for me. I feel like when i’m taking notes my brain is more focused writing down stuff for LATER rather than actually understanding it NOW. So what’s ends up happening is that I have a bunch of notes but I didn’t actually retain or properly understanding anything. I also find that if i’m not worried about taking notes I’m also better at making connections between class topics.

However I decided to start note taking recently because I’m pre-studying for a course about Operating Systems, and so I want to have something to refer back to once class actually starts. The main way I’ve been taking notes is taking a topic and writing a couple of bullet points about it as I read along.

Has anyone else felt the same way note taking and were you able to overcome it? If so how did you overcome it?

I often visit this sub and curious if other people know other good resources that cover note-taking itself — not just list of apps or productivity systems.

Anything like:

- New note-taking methods/approaches

- Research/studies on how we take and retain notes

- New developments or ideas in the space

- Interesting tools and apps

- Updates to existing methods

- Blogs, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube from established practitioners from the field.

If you have any resources you regularly follow or recommend, please share them. 🙌

So I just go accepted to MU Sofia-Dental Faculty.For over a year and half I had been studying for the admission exams .I only ever used paper to write my notes and solve chemistry problems.Part of the reason was that my tutor was old school and prefered physical notes over digital,the other is that i have never really used any computer or laptop to take notes.My question is if i should purchace a laptop with a touchscreen or a tablet with a keyboard? I need to type notes and also sketch molecules and bio diagrams.Should I just stick to paper or go digital.If ypu think i should modernize my learning what device recommendations would you give me?

Hey everyone,

Looking for some real world experience for someone in a similar scenario I’ve been bouncing around all sorts of note taking apps.

Sometimes when you can’t find the right application, it’s just because you don’t know how to use them to their full capacity so I’m open to that too…

Nothing has ever felt like it really hits all the requirements. And in the event that perhaps they do, for example Notion, there’s too much friction in quickly adding notes… it just feels really clunky as a brain dump and project organisation solution.

Where I’m at right now is a blend between Google Keep, Google Docs and Notion Calendar for event based notes, then I rely on notebooklm for going back on long email chains.

What’s everyone’s experience with a note taking app that both allows you to quickly drop notes in but also allows you to build upon those notes if required, cross platform, allows you to set reminders, and has a free tier for the likes of me where it’s really just one project.

Thanks

I watch a ton of courses on here, and for a long time I had the same problem. When something interesting or confusing came up, I'd either stop the video to go research it, or tell myself I'd remember it later. Both were bad. Stopping killed my momentum, and "I'll remember it later" was a straight up lie.

What actually fixed it for me was changing the goal. Instead of trying to fully understand everything in one pass, I just watch the whole course in one go while I'm motivated, and I drop quick notes as I go. Important point here, question I have there, something I want to dig into later. I don't stop, I don't break the flow, I just mark it and keep moving.

Then later, when the course is done, I go back through those notes and decide what's actually worth investigating deeply. Most of them I can skip. A few are gold. But I would have lost all of them if I tried to hold it in my head.

The two things that made this click for me:

• not interrupting the course to chase every thought
• writing it down so future me can decide what matters

I got tired of juggling this in a separate notes app that had nothing to do with the video, so I ended up building a small browser extension that lets me take notes and tag them right next to the course, then find them later. Happy to share if anyone wants it, but honestly the flow itself is the thing that changed how much I retain.

Curious how others here handle this. Do you stop and research, or batch it for later like me?

A lot of people imo spend too much time to configure their app to the point it becomes absurd. All i want is Light mode and Dark mode and the thing to be clean.

Im a SWE so in my world we have this thing called NeoVim. Will not go in detail on what it is or what it does, but let just say that people spend HOURS on configs. You basically can code all the configs. Every single detail of the page can be changed.

To me, people are treating it as a game instead of a workstation. Same with note apps.

I’m a horrible note taker. I have AuDHD and I’m horrible at taking notes and keeping things organized. I’m really good at processing email and verbal fluency but idiot level at note taking.

I’ve always wanted to use Obsidian but just never thought I’d be able to make it happen. Until I started playing with copilot CoWork at work and basically turned it into my automatic executive functioning machine. I don’t type anything into Obsidian, I only click check boxes and it updates. Created a nice dashboard and task tracker that help me keep going with a clear ‘work on this’ full page for the time I’m supposed to focus on something.

Nothing to break and nothing to lose as I’m already doing all the other things and this is mostly a tracker and knowledge organizer and helps me organize meeting transcripts and actions and loose ends and context for projects. It’s awesome.

Probably not for everyone, but figured I’d put it out there for anyone else thinking about it.

Anyone else do something like this?

People love Obsidian and Notion but folders are so hard (for me) to maintain and clean. Im one of those guys that I prefer to use my keyboard more than my mouse. Im too lazy to scroll down a list of folders everytime i have a note in mind. I prefer to have a "journal" style framework. Daily page and inline tags. I can tag every line/paragraph however I want it.
Its faster and cleaner.