Comment by seansh
19 hours ago
I've gone through this too and came to the same conclusion except for phone.
While on laptop/desktop nothing beats txt (or md or org), it's just so uncomfortable using a text file like that on the phone and relying on dropbox or something.
And I get it, all the note taking apps on the phone have issues: not local first, proprietary, subscriptions, or no encryption, or a thousand features before making sure the full text search works even offline.
Last year I finally sat down and wrote my own PWA out of frustration [1]. There was a SHOW HN too [2]. Yes, shameless plug. There are only a handful of other people using it (and probably never more than that) but I really wrote it for myself and it's been such a relief the past year knowing I always have my notes whenever wherever and works exactly the way I want.
I probably spent <5h fixing a few issues in the past year. As far as I'm concerned, my problem is solved once and for all.
This right here is, something that probably goes over a lot of peoples heads in here. Understandably so as we are on HackerNews people arr most likely IT people and simialar they view the PC as the prime Working environment. And while i personally concur and think the PC is much more productive than a Phone. One of these two devices you always have in your pocket.
Which is why for jotting done some quick note, or some oh remember to do this later when i am back home is just best done on a phone.
I tackled this years ago but found that having a todo list was too limiting.
I ended up building a very simple scratchpad [1] (initially iOS and MacOS, then of late, a PWA version for everyone else...).
[1] https://klipped.com
this is really nice. Really as simple as it gets.