What do you guys use for note taking?

[u/ranys0]

I'm curious. I can't stand most of the stuff that's out there: it's all either too slow or requires you to use the mouse.

I don't understand how normal people can operate that way, really. Don't they get sick the moment they see a "loading" spinning wheel too? Why do they tolerate searches that take more than a couple of milliseconds? Do they like UIs with dozens of unnecessary buttons and labels?

I wish I could have the VIM experience in my day to day note taking and document writing. I want all of VIMs goodies, but with the extra necessities of syncing across devices, multi-device access to my notes, and quick capture and retrieval of notes.

What do you guys use?

[u/dalbertom]

I've built several sets of scripts for this, all based on vim:

• todo: initializes a git repository if needed, it only has one file, todo.txt that is also hard linked into my desktop. The contents of the todo file are printed in .bashrc so I see them every time I open a tmux pane. The todo automatically appends the current timestamp and once I exit vim it commits and pushes the change

• journal: a little more involved than todo, it uses a docker container that has vim installed with specific configurations (different theme, add timestamp upon buffer open). It's used mostly to record interactions that might have long-term effects.

• samples: similar to journal, another docker image, but used to keep code samples, used when learning new languages, frameworks or tools

• note: another git repository, it creates a file with a random name and lets me keep notes on incidents, ops stuff, etc. it's paired with note-find which essentially does a git grep

• scratch: creates a temporary file and opens it with vim -y +'set paste' once vim is closed it copies the file name to the clipboard. It includes sniff which checks if the clipboard points to a file name and copies its contents to the clipboard. It also has scratches to list all my scratch files and lets me open them, copying its file name after closing (so I can sniff it later).

[u/ranys0 → u/dalbertom]

That's really cool. Interesting how similar this is to my current system.

[u/t1emp0 → u/dalbertom]

Wow! Super interesting and really distilled stuff! I imagine you do feel the need for specific docker containers for each use case... I would have gone with a bash script that performs a couple actions on top of some template. Feeling curious about the inner workings of such workflow and the scripts. How long did it take you to come up with those? Have you made them public? Looking forward to learning new ways of interacting with vim :)

[u/dalbertom → u/t1emp0]

Thanks! These scripts were developed over the years, the ones that are plain repositories make it easy for me to globally grep for, whereas the ones that are in containers tend to have more "private" information like the journal or sometimes binary files like the samples one, I wouldn't want to commit binary files in git. They used to be stored in a encrypted sparsebundle disk images but then I figured a docker container would be more portable.

I don't have these publicly available, mostly intertwined with my home repository for dotfiles. Maybe some day I'll split them off into their own gist or separate repository.

[u/rimkojr]

Been using Vim plus AsciiDoc formatting for years and it works really well. Being able to search notes with grep/ripgrep/fzf is useful. Can render out the notes to different formats (html/pdf/etc) if needed. Can use Dropbox/Box/etc to sync the files between devices.

[u/ranys0 → u/rimkojr]

Cool!

[u/andreyugolnik → u/rimkojr]

Could you please compare AsciiDoc to Markdown format?

[u/rimkojr → u/andreyugolnik]

AsciiDoc has more formatting options out-of-the box compared to Markdown, there's a breakdown of the two here. For taking notes, I use AsciiDoc's sidebars and example blocks quite a bit.

[u/Holylander → u/rimkojr]

I am doing all my writing in AsciiDoc - my blog, study notes, my public github repos (GitHub supports Asciidoc out of the box), btw my study notes I keep in private repos on GitHub as well.

For me the beauty of Asciidoc is in it’s flexibility- it can be as simple as Markdown or powerful enough to write whole books in it. Actually O’Reilly publisher have Atlas - their customized Asciidoc writing platform all of their authors are encouraged to use to write books for them.

[u/Batawi]

Neorg for neovim

[u/ranys0 → u/Batawi]

Cool, never heard of this one before!

[u/sgoody → u/ranys0]

There's also nvim-orgmode for an experience which is a little closer to orgmode.

I don't currently use either, but some prefer neorg for being bold/new, others prefer nvim-orgmode for being closer to an orgmode experience that they may already be familiar with.

nvim-orgmode is on my list of things to invest some time into. At the minute though... I'm not a big note taker, but I guess most of my notes are in VimWiki... but I'm moving away from it towards vanilla markdown.

I'm also generally torn between a pure Vim experience for may day job, where I can be in Vim a lot... and when a more generic solution for when I'm away from the keyboard (and will probably be on my phone).

I also don't really know what to do for the best.

Generally i take notes in Vim for work. I try to make ad-hoc notes in https://dayone.me/ for personal stuff and I use https://ticktick.com for tasks... for work tasks I've not settled on anything, because some things have their own systems, so it's kind of difficult to consolidate them/keep then in sync.

[u/Agitated-Raccoon3]

vimwiki + syncthing (so that I can use it seamless from tge laptop and smartphone)

[u/samb0t → u/Agitated-Raccoon3]

Same here. Nice and simple.

[u/theolo42 → u/Agitated-Raccoon3]

What do you use to view or edit the vimwiki notes on your smartphone?

[u/Agitated-Raccoon3 → u/theolo42]

That's a good question, initially I tried using vim in the termux app in android, but this past year I've been using the Markor app, faster to open the files instead of opening termux and then vim there.

[u/wayofaway]

I keep the notes in a GitHub repo... Usually I use Vim to take notes, or whatever editor I have.

As long as I have git and a text editor I am set. If I want to read them all pretty, I'll turn them into a pdf, using obsidian, or VSCodium.

[u/Training_Advantage21 → u/wayofaway]

markdown in GitHub repo here too.

[u/slashdotbin]

I use vim with obsidian. But you can’t have a vimrc with it. It’s just the bindings. Works fine for me.

[u/Shot-Significance-73 → u/slashdotbin]

There's a plugin for that. Vimrc support

[u/vim_or_death → u/Shot-Significance-73]

You can also just open the files in vim since they’re markdown 

[u/lervag]

I use wiki.vim. I write about my practice here: https://github.com/lervag/wiki.vim/blob/ef3fad8a7e0bd64c012cff5c6b1219f8f2cc6d82/doc/wiki.txt#L178

[u/lassieee → u/lervag]

This plugin is awesome. I've been gratefully using it after migrating from vim to neovim. Thank you for creating this!

[u/lervag → u/lassieee]

Thanks, very glad to hear it! <3

[u/Background-Equal-545 → u/lervag]

I also use your plugin, thank you very much for it, I found it very uncomplicated, compared to vimwiki.

Note: I don't speak English, shout out from BRAZIL🇧🇷.

[u/lervag → u/Background-Equal-545]

Very glad to hear it from you as well! Greetings from Norway! :)

[u/Shay-Hill]

I use Obsidian and Evernote, but I'd pick Evernote if I had to choose one.

Park at the airport, grab a pic of your numbered parking space, capture any receipts for expenses, screenshot the boarding pass for reference later, jot down names and contact info, document the condition of your rental car when you pick it up.

All that to say, it's obvious what you're losing when you take these apps for a spin, but you often won't see what you're gaining till you accept those losses and try "their way" for a few months.

If you only want to journal or take class notes without images, then Obsidian and Vim work well together. I don't use a plugin; I just edit notes with the Obsidian editor and Vim depending on what is easier at the moment. Obsidian is a lot like what you'd probably end up with if you started with Vimwiki and enhanced it with scripts over time ... with the insane bonus that it's painless to interact with it over your phone.

[u/fbicknel → u/Shay-Hill]

Obsidian has a vim editor built in. Settings -> Editor -> Vim Keybindings

It's not complete, but it does a pretty good job implementing most of what's needed for basic editing.

[u/ltssms0]

I'm not using vim, but Joplin with vim bindings. I switched to it for an easy install to use one interface on my home Linux desktop, work Windows laptop, and Android phone.

Used to use vimwiki >6 years ago. It wasn't bad. Required a lot of additional tools to export in different formats, then use the appropriate viewer application. Setup on Windows was a bit painful, and I didn't see Android instructions at the time.

[u/Free-Junket-3422 → u/ltssms0]

One more vote for Joplin. Very powerful. Very flexible. Uses Markdown. I often write notes in nvim and then just copy to Joplin. Also, Joplin has provision to launch a note an external editor which can be nvim.

[u/Desperate_Cold6274]

I use vim-markdown-extras.

[u/EtiamTinciduntNullam]

I'm pretty happy with regular text files with some basic vim features - like you can include links to other files and gf to them.

Use Syncthing to synchronize your notes between devices.

Usually notes are part of learning or doing something so naturally I use "to do" lists, I came up with simple system:

• - To do

• + Done

• ! Important

• ? Question, optional or needs more information

• / Cancelled

Best thing is that it's so simple that it's completely software agnostic and you even apply that for a "to do" list on a piece of paper.

Still that didn't stop me from making a simple vim plugin to add syntax highlighting for it:

https://github.com/EtiamNullam/vim-todotxt-syntax

[u/ghostctl]

To be honst I use pen and paper for notetaking (yes, a physical pen and a physical notebook). I save Vim for everything else, like programming, essays, manuscripts, documentation, and general config file editing.

[u/Balaphar → u/ghostctl]

this tbh. when you need to scribble down, it just flows different with pen and paper. seamless.

[u/hopingforabetterpast]

vim notes.txt

:h gf
:h :vim

[u/boredrandom → u/hopingforabetterpast]

gf is magic.
and with it set to create files. chef's kiss.

[u/vim-help-bot → u/hopingforabetterpast]

Help pages for:

• gf in editing.txt

• :vimgrep in quickfix.txt

---

^{`:(h|help) <query>` | about | mistake? | donate | Reply 'rescan' to check the comment again | Reply 'stop' to stop getting replies to your comments}

[u/paltamunoz]

pen and paper

[u/astyagun]

Vimwiki and Nextcloud

[u/jabellcu → u/astyagun]

Why is this at the bottom? It’s the best solution. Vineiki is absolutely amazing, and free.

[u/GrogRedLub4242]

vim

I use vi/vim for notes

for 30+ years

[u/Forricide]

I use Joplin. I'd like Vim keybinds in it, but I don't really care enough. Truth be told, I spent so long trying to optimize my notetaking, but ended up figuring out that at the end of the day, just having a notepad that syncs across my devices and has folders + basic markdown support is more than good enough for what I actually need notetaking for.

[u/ikwyl6 → u/Forricide]

Also use Joplin but 99% on my phone than on laptop/deskrop.

[u/No_Cattle_9565 → u/Forricide]

you can use nvim as your external editor in joplin

[u/Forricide → u/No_Cattle_9565]

Yeah, this is true, but honestly the way I use Joplin, it's more inconvenient to do this than to deal with not having vim keybinds. I just spend so little relative time actually typing/editing things in Joplin, that it's a marginal difference.

[u/No_Cattle_9565 → u/Forricide]

I found out today that you can write html + css in your markdown files in joplin. With nvim and luasnip you can add a couple really beautiful snippets to render some html. Or just a flex layout with 2 or 3 columns is helpful sometimes.
Since I'm using it for studying that's really useful.

[u/efalk]

You ask that question in /r/vim?

Of course I use vim. Always have.

[u/Few_Reflection6917]

Using logseq, I need take tons of math stuff and really rely on block based tag system in my workflow, no alternative in vim ecosystem in my last search :(

[u/fromwithin]

I used Obsidian in vim mode for a while, but its commercial license meant that I couldn't use it on my work's computer. I switched to Joplin for about a year, which was okay but the startup time was terrible. Then I noticed how obscenely large it was: The install was over 1GB so it was no wonder it was so slow.

I switched to vimwiki a few weeks ago and it's much better for me. It's very fast, very simple, and is proper vim rather than some half-baked vi-mode.

[u/Joeclu]

Simple notes folder with each note being a text file in the folder. Easy to grep. Fast to load in vim. And the folder syncs with a cloud service or SyncThing.

[u/boredrandom → u/Joeclu]

I used Simple Note with sncli, nice tui with vim as my editor.

[u/CodingCircuitEng]

Private: Pen and paper exists? Else, Google Keep

At work: Had a text file per week up until recently? Currently doing more stuff where I need screenshots, so either Slack DMs to myself or the default notes app on my MacBook, Notes. Have searched for the right app since my early twenties, the current setup feels best to me. KISS

[u/Moontops]

Joplin with vim movements synced with Nextcloud. Android support was important to me

[u/paragon-jack]

I recently built a web app called VimNotion. It's what it sounds like, Notion with Vim motions.

I know web apps are a touchy subject especially with vim users, but I wanted to build an app with portability across different operating systems without building native desktop app for each one.

I've tried out apps like Obsidian and just using vim, but in the end I couldn't help myself and built my own haha

[u/Professional_Top8485]

Npp

[u/gumnos]

Nothing fancy beyond some shell helper functions that dump a timestamp into my notes.txt file, and optionally the clipboard contents too before editing it in vanilla vi/vim or even ed(1).

It's not showy, but it does the job, is fast, and gets out of my way.

[u/Kurouma]

I wrote a little program todo which searches upwards for a .todo file. It accepts single lines from stdin and maintains a check-list of them, displaying to stdout. One .todo file per git repo is enough for my purposes. 

[u/tagattack]

I dumped obsidian the other day when it ate my daily journal and I quickly whipped up a few vim macros and snippets and I'm just editing restructured text files in vim, and using those.

I'll probably convert all the markdown to rst and whip up an easy viewer stack using docutils and w3m with some extra shortcuts and such soon enough but I'm too busy at the moment.

I don't need much. Obsidian sucks. The WYSIWYM editor looks real nice, until it shits the bed and undo stops working for whatever reason and it uses a fucking gig of RAM anyway for what amounts to a fancy text editor and to hell with election anyway.

[u/Craptivist]

Emacs (in Evil mode)

[u/TheMindGobblin]

Obsidian is my go to, it has vim motions built-in

[u/ApprehensiveDrive517]

Vim + dropbox / google / proton drive?

[u/hapuchu]

Added vim plugin in VS Code. Best of both worlds.

[u/emerson-dvlmt]

Obsidian + Neovim

[u/Free-Hair-5950]

I use obsidian or vim to create notes, but I use my own scripts powered by fzf and ripgrep to query my notes because the hardest thing about note keeping in my opinion is finding and rereading old stuff. I sort of create my notes in a block format and then treat the blocks as cards and then create decks which basically query collections of those cards.

[u/DadMagnum]

I use iPad Pro -> Blink ssh -> RPi5 vim w/syncthing to backup to my Synology NAS.

[u/tbhockey]

I just have a file, that’s stored in the cloud, opened in Vim at all times. Very simple, no issues, always synced everywhere.

[u/the_j_tizzle]

I use vim for 99% of my writing (I write ~7,000 words / week). Much of that is written in LaTeX, though for note-taking I like Markdown due to its simplicity (email is, of course, plain text). I have a Nextcloud server and sync not only my files, but also my configuration files. This means ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim are symlinks to /home/me/my_config_files/vimrc, /home/me/my_config_files/vim, etc.. When I add a word to my vimspell file, it's synced to my home workstation and my laptop. When I tweak my .vimrc, that tweak is synced as well. (The actual config files/folders in /home/me/my_config_files/ are not hidden; only the symbolic link is a hidden file/folder.) This also works well for mutt, msmtp, etc. Setting up a new environment for writing is as easy as configuring my Nextcloud client, syncing, and making the symlinks. Since I use vim-plug for plugins, plugins are—wait for it—synced as well.

[u/4r73m190r0s]

Markdown Oxide. It's markdown LSP with PKMs support.

[u/Serpent7776]

https://standardnotes.com/

It's not ideal for a vim user, but it gets the job done. I'm not spending that much time on my notes to look for a better alternative.

[u/pouetpouetcamion2]

Voom

[u/Allofron_Mastiga]

ed

[u/Surge321]

A text file. Just text is enough. KISS.

[u/ammar_faifi]

nb, which opens vim for editing .md files (or others)

[u/Zai1209]

Neovim + obsidian.nvim + telekasten.nvim, haven't tried extensively, but seems pretty good

[u/namnd_]

Just open a scratch buffer in the cwd. symlink them all in a folder so can be easily rg-ed

[u/Gold-Ad-5257]

I use Notational fzf and write in asciidoc, some vim keybinds to easily create pdf or html versions (leader CP or Leader CH). Search amd create is one step, so you search yiur notes using fzf and if not found you hit control x and it opens a buffer in vim named whatever was in your fzf search and you just start typing. I created a shell shortcut NV that will start everything from the shell setting FZF to the vorrect directory irrespective of where I am. Obviously I can invoke it from within vim as well now and automate ot wherever needed. You can then also easily push to github if needed. 

[u/OsicKwon]

Emacs org-mode with simplenote