The two things about Emacs I would love if I used it (tried twice, bounced HARD off the keyboard controls both times. I hate modifer+key control schemes — give me modal editing any day — and I don't even have RSI!) are magit and org-mode. I've never tried magit so I don't know if lazygit is a decent substitute. But for org-mode in Neovim, there's https://github.com/nvim-neorg/neorg. I'm sure it's only a partial, half-broken implementation of the real org-mode, but it covers the parts that I need most, structured note taking.
If you're a diehard modal-editing aficionado like me and think that Emacs is a great IDE but it's a shame about its editor (and its keyboard scheme), maybe give neorg a try. Might well make you shift away from notes.txt files.
And yes, I know I could just use `evil` in Emacs. Maybe someday I'll overcome my decades of learned resistance to running Emacs, but every time I see the Emacs control scheme, I wince and I'm reminded why I don't use it. Having some key combos be "hold down the Control key while you press two keys" (like `C-x C-s` to save a file) while other key combos are "hold down the Control key while you press one key, then release it before pressing the second key" (like `C-x s` to save all files) is just not going to fit into my brain. Maybe that's intuitive for some people, but it just doesn't work for me. And so I bounce off Emacs before ever giving it a real chance.
I’ve had an odd amount of difficulty finding a “perfect” notes app.
For me, mobile and desktop apps plus easy family sharing of individual notes are important.
Apple Notes is really the best I’ve got.
The other solutions I’ve found mother cost too much or have some odd dealbreaker features, or they’re over-complicated, or they’re ugly.
Zoho Notebook is on the ugly side but it’s cheap and has apps on all platforms.
Craft is pretty good but if you hit the need for the paid tier it’s a bit pricey.
I think it’s possible that vibecoding an Apple Notes clone is actually the best solution for me.
A lot of people like Obsidian but I think it’s a bit crazy, and I think it’s unacceptable how difficult it is to self-host the sync functionality, especially since again the paid tier is too expensive.
I'm working on Totem [0], feel free to give it a try! I try to post about it in the "What are you working on" thread monthly but haven't mustered the courage to do a "launch" yet.
It's cross-platform, Rust core with native UIs (Rust UI for Desktop, I'm using Iced [1]). I built it due to similar problems, and because I got tired of waiting on nvUltra [2].
Totem is meant to be more of a team/collaboration app in truth, but it turns out that realtime sync is also immensely helpful when working by yourself on multiple devices.
Everything is stored in SQLite and Markdown as well, but in a bit of an obscure location in a thin wrapper format (I might build in an escape hatch later on). The reason to do it this way is largely because allowing people to externally edit Markdown in a live sync context is tricky and I didn't want to make it super easy to screw yourself over.
P.S.: With consideration to the time that I am posting this...the iOS/iPadOS offering is currently restricted to a few countries. If you're not in those countries and are interested, let me know and I can add you to Testflight, or you can use the web version.
I just started using Obsidian with Word-Smith plugin [1]. And when I say "just started", I literally mean a few days ago, so I can't really give a verdict yet. Sync is handled by Dropbox.
my deepest darkest secret is that i secretly really like macOS Stickies.app to jot things down with just enough WYSIWYG markup to capture an idea (before I immediately shuffle the idea somewhere else, e.g. emacs).
the application itself is relatively hideous, and I kinda see that as a feature (because the app is not particularly fit-for-use for just about anything else besides a quick "tmp" buffer with RTF).
The breakthrough on this for me is just using plaintext files. Talk about liberation. You can get as simple or as complicated as you want with those and also sync them anywhere, to basically anything, now and in the indefinite future.
I've settled on markdown with optional linking semantics. I've bounced around between the various popular apps, but having plain text files at the end of the day is important to me. I was quite happy with logseq and abandoned them as soon as they decided to invest in a database first model. Fortunately all of my notes were mostly just markdown and migration is relatively easy. In the era of LLMs I'm not really using a dedicated notes front end. I've got a notes system which includes the ability to add things to Family Apple Notes and Apple Reminders under various categories. My "LLM Assistants" can read my Apple Notes and Reminders so that's the way I stay in sync on most devices I own.
It uses an SQLite database, which doesn't bother me. Databases are great at this stuff.
A Database is great.
Two databases are a migration.
Org-mode plus a file system is a database.
All databases are not relational; relational databases are the tool you want when you want algebraic operations; you might not need algebraic operations for your operations but relational databases are a hammer.
I went from notes.txt in vim to notes.org in emacs for a while (didn't use much org stuff beyond bullet points), back to vim with the same notes.org file but I basically treat it like notes.txt again. Synced with SyncThing, so I could edit it on my phone but in practice I don't think I ever do.
It is 2026... You can't complain about other people's software anymore. Spend about 30 minutes vibe coding your perfect app and you'll never go back. I've basically done that, remade every utility on my phone, on my computer, hyper customized everything that bothered me about all those other software. All local and connected to my private server for sync and backup. And I barely know how to code... I even included in every one of my apps a button that sends me to a session in my custom made ai agent app to change/update/debug any complaints I have about my own apps, on the spot. "Hey codex, that button doesn't do exactly what I wanted quite as fast as I wanted please make it better and faster" wait 5 minutes - done. It's the future... Take advantage of it
If you're a diehard modal-editing aficionado like me and think that Emacs is a great IDE but it's a shame about its editor (and its keyboard scheme), maybe give neorg a try. Might well make you shift away from notes.txt files.
And yes, I know I could just use `evil` in Emacs. Maybe someday I'll overcome my decades of learned resistance to running Emacs, but every time I see the Emacs control scheme, I wince and I'm reminded why I don't use it. Having some key combos be "hold down the Control key while you press two keys" (like `C-x C-s` to save a file) while other key combos are "hold down the Control key while you press one key, then release it before pressing the second key" (like `C-x s` to save all files) is just not going to fit into my brain. Maybe that's intuitive for some people, but it just doesn't work for me. And so I bounce off Emacs before ever giving it a real chance.
For me, mobile and desktop apps plus easy family sharing of individual notes are important.
Apple Notes is really the best I’ve got.
The other solutions I’ve found mother cost too much or have some odd dealbreaker features, or they’re over-complicated, or they’re ugly.
Zoho Notebook is on the ugly side but it’s cheap and has apps on all platforms.
Craft is pretty good but if you hit the need for the paid tier it’s a bit pricey.
I think it’s possible that vibecoding an Apple Notes clone is actually the best solution for me.
A lot of people like Obsidian but I think it’s a bit crazy, and I think it’s unacceptable how difficult it is to self-host the sync functionality, especially since again the paid tier is too expensive.
It's cross-platform, Rust core with native UIs (Rust UI for Desktop, I'm using Iced [1]). I built it due to similar problems, and because I got tired of waiting on nvUltra [2].
Totem is meant to be more of a team/collaboration app in truth, but it turns out that realtime sync is also immensely helpful when working by yourself on multiple devices.
Everything is stored in SQLite and Markdown as well, but in a bit of an obscure location in a thin wrapper format (I might build in an escape hatch later on). The reason to do it this way is largely because allowing people to externally edit Markdown in a live sync context is tricky and I didn't want to make it super easy to screw yourself over.
[0] https://thinktotem.com
[1] https://iced.rs/
[2] https://nvultra.com/
P.S.: With consideration to the time that I am posting this...the iOS/iPadOS offering is currently restricted to a few countries. If you're not in those countries and are interested, let me know and I can add you to Testflight, or you can use the web version.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLq91cDWx0s
the application itself is relatively hideous, and I kinda see that as a feature (because the app is not particularly fit-for-use for just about anything else besides a quick "tmp" buffer with RTF).
A Database is great.
Two databases are a migration.
Org-mode plus a file system is a database.
All databases are not relational; relational databases are the tool you want when you want algebraic operations; you might not need algebraic operations for your operations but relational databases are a hammer.
I now await my fate.
The rub of using emacs is that you really can't complain about anybody else's software, because it's 100% your fault :grin:.