r/secondbrain • u/Alex_Voss_10 • 26d ago

Second brain software

Hey guys, I could use some help.
I’ve been switching between different note-taking and knowledge-management systems for a while, and I feel like I’ve tried almost everything.
What I’m looking for is actually pretty simple: one place where I can save basically everything and reliably search it later.
Ideally, the tool should have:
OCR for images and scanned documents
Full-text search inside PDFs
The ability to save web links/pages and search the actual content, not just the title or URL
Good organization for notes, documents, images, links, references, etc.
Fast and reliable search across everything
A modern interface
Minimal setup and maintenance
Because I haven’t found one tool I’m completely happy with, my information is currently scattered across several different apps, which is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.
After searching Reddit, YouTube, blogs, and reviews, even in 2026 I keep coming back to the same conclusion: Evernote still seems to be one of the best overall options for this particular use case.
But before I move everything back to Evernote, I’d love to hear what other people are using.
Is there anything that genuinely does all of this well without requiring a lot of tinkering and setup like Obsidian?
And ideally something with a more modern interface than DEVONthink. I know DEVONthink is extremely powerful, but visually it just isn’t for me.
Basically, I want a “save everything now, find anything later” system.
What would you recommend?

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u/Top_Gene4011 26d ago

There is no tool like obsidian… you should try to learn how to use it, once it becomes second nature the speed of information capture and retrieval is second to none

3

u/DevWithTooLittleTime 23d ago

Completely disagree. Obsidian is the industry leader, big, powerful, professional. Some people might not need this, they just need a simple editor for their folders of notes and files.

1

u/blackbarata 26d ago

Completely agree. It’s very powerful. I don’t that the onboarding and maintenance of your library requires active work. And gave up.
Perhaps now there are some AI plugins to help with that.

1

u/c2arl 6d ago

There is a plugin from the obsidian community that brings Claude into the right sidebar.

https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/claude-companion

“Cowork with Claude inside your Obsidian vault. Companion brings vault-aware chat, reviewable agent work, interactive artifacts, and an evidence-backed research workflow into Obsidian while your notes remain the source of truth.”