Paper in big binder.

I've tried for very long to find a good electronic solution. Up to and including writing my own wiki with various extensions customised to my diting style, and hunting around for every note taking app under the sun.

The problem, I find, is that nothing beats the flexibility of being able to take out multiple sheets of paper and move them around, annotate them, put them back in. It creates a flexibility in workflow no tool I've tried have managed to match.

The physical presence of the paper also makes it much easier to avoid forgetting a page exists.

I'm not happy with it, but I keep coming back to it after each desperate attempt at making something else work better.

Somebody's going to mention org-mode and it may as well be me. HTML export with syntax highlighting is a nice thing to have, and images linked to the document work like they should. Having code blocks be executable is a bonus, especially for showing technically minded clients or higher-ups exactly how their intentions were translated into reality.

Evernote it is not: The sharing story is pretty BYOB, in that what you get out is an HTML (or whatever other format) document, and sharing it, whether readonly or not, is on you. There's document publishing functionality, but it requires some setup and an upstream host that can take files via FTP/SFTP/etc. Same goes for syncing, if that's something you want; Dropbox works for me, and there are many alternatives.

Your use case sounds like it would require some tooling around org-mode to achieve. If you want something that does what you need straight out of the box, it probably won't make you happy. But you asked what we use to take notes, and for me that's org-mode; the things it does well are many, some of them unique in my experience, and that makes it worth my while to invest effort in adding the occasional capability I want which doesn't exist by default.

(And for meetings where people are touchy about laptops, or realtime capture on a call, I have a clipboard and a paper tablet. But it's ephemeral; anything needing kept goes straight into an org file at the earliest opportunity.)

Workflowy. It's the lowest-friction tool I have used for notes and ideas. Using tags, it can be used as a great hierarchical project/task management system.

I still use Evernote for quick storage and access of images, pdfs and long-form notes as the search is great. However, their tag/notebook organisation system has annoying redundencies and is clunky in places. I would love to bin it but can't find a suitable alternative. Bear is promising but not quite there. Apple notes doesn't allow linking between notes.

To answer the question in the title, much as I love computers, nothing beats the flexibility and carefree nature of paper. I can draw diagrams, block out pseudocode, etc.

I've thought about maybe a Surface would be nice for that, but haven't really tried it.

I think you'll have best luck with multiple tools like you're doing now.

Disclaimer: I'm the creator but I use Wall of Text: http://walloftext.co

It's an infinite blank space of text in 2D. Also see the beta: https://beta.walloftext.co

I use Google Keep. It's simple and has an acceptable Android app and web interface. It also accomodates image notes.

I don't think you'll find a notes application that has code highlighting, but perhaps I'm wrong...

I've been a fan of the concept of Quiver (http://happenapps.com/#quiver) for a long time, but unable to use it daily as it is Mac only.

I love the idea of having different notebooks, being able to easily merge text, code, mathematics and images into one note, and make 'cookbooks' out of them.

Someone make it for Windows please.

Tried many different ways, usually falling back to using pen and paper. However, it limited me in the way that I couldn't search and sometimes I forgot my notebook, leading to me not finding what I wanted.

So in the end I wrote my own static wiki generator (QuickWiki: https://github.com/VictorBjelkholm/quickwiki). It basically takes a folder full of markdown files, automatic links to other pages and generates a static website (that looks something like this: https://victorbjelkholm.github.io/quickwiki/home/ )

I have an action point from a meeting I'll borrow a scrap of paper and a pen off someone else, do it as soon as I'm out of the meeting, then bin it.

Apart from that I haven't taken a note for the last 3 or 4 years. I had stacks of unsearchable notebooks with near-unintelligible scrawl in them, and rather than improving/indexing my note-taking I just gave up on it, reasoning that if I had gotten away with bad note-taking for 15 years then I could probably get away with none at all.

Turned out I was right. Without having notes as a crutch I end up concentrating harder on understanding and remembering on what people are saying. YMMV but it works well for me

PAPER!!! I have tried lots of electronic things, and programs. And there is still one unbeatable: paper. With pen, pencils, and fountain pens.

Bullet journal is also worth checking,however I don't feel like we love each other.

Vimwiki + your fav' git hosting with markdown/html-pages support.

Git + Vimwiki setup:

https://jarvistmoorefrost.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/snippet-c...

Google Keep matches most of your requirements and it's what I use personally.

It makes it really easy to tag, organize, share and with the archive feature you can get todo list functionality.

Meetings and information I will need to reference: One Note backed up to a network drive. It's got a nice integration with Outlook meetings, lets me start a note with info about time, date, subject of meeting, location of meeting and participants present. I also keep a password-protected file with non critical passwords here, but don't tell anyone.

Day-to-day sketches and TODO's and little note lists: I keep a spiral note book next to my keyboard. I'm a leftie so it's upside down. I use the blue Pilot Drawing pens in various thicknesses. They dry instantly, so no ink smudges. Nice.

In addition to these I keep a day-to-day diary in .txt documents on my computer, I just open them in Sublime text or vim and make a new one every month. I try to just write four or five lines about what I've done every day as well as what I need to do tomorrow.

I recently built a ultra-simple tool for exactly this: https://github.com/pimterry/notes

Keeps notes as markdown organised by folder on disk, delegates syncing to whatever you're already using for everything else (Dropbox, Seafile), and just provides a minimal flexible command-line interface over the top to search them, explore through them, and edit them with any editor you like.

The tool itself is tiny, but with this I get everything that EverNote used to give me, none of the lock-in or painful web UI, and I can get at it from any other device too (by just editing them in Dropbox from anywhere).

Note sharing: Dropbox already does that. Code highlighting: your editor (probably) already does that. Image uploads = putting an image in a folder. Keep it simple.

This sounds absurd, but hear me out: I start with paper, and then type them in.

I've tried almost everything to automate paper->computer (typing rather than writing, Livescribe pen, iPad pro + apple pencil, many many devices that are now dead) and none have been as good as just a decent (not super special) pen and a notepad. I prefer an engineering pad or quadrille or in a pinch dot-grid, but really anything works as long as you don't lose it.

The trick I learned was every day or so to move them into the computer, which I do by typing them in (and simply taking a photo of drawings). I usually type in Emacs or right into Evernote. I try to do it every evening as one of my last tasks, as part of reviewing my day & looking at the next day. If it's a multi-day sketch-it-out effort I wait until the few days are over. Dictation has become good enough that I can actually read aloud the relevant parts of a bunch of sheets of paper (in the order I care about) and then quickly fix them up. This is actually the only use case for dictation I've found on my computer.

The benefits: First of all, typing them over forces you to review them, organize them slightly, and skip over the irrelevant stuff. This is really important after a design effort since you throw away what you think are truly dead paths, and all your cross-out go away. If I need one, this typing is often the base of my design document. Second: I've seen meeting notes I've taken that don't justify being typed in. In which case, why did I even go to that meeting?

Interestingly, when I was a kid my mum told me she used this technique both in school and in work, which I dismissed as a ludicrous waste of time. Only decades later when I evolved the same approach did I remember her advice.

I've started using Laverna(http://Laverna.cc) recently. Its a note management app built completely in Javascript and is serverless(except for storage, which is via your own dropbox), so I can host it on github pages/ AWS S3.

It has a convenient Markdown editor with live previews, sorting notes by notebooks, and has web and mobile versions. The notes are stored in dropbox and your browser's local storage, also they have imports and exports for backup.

Also its completely opensource and I can be sure that theres no snooping on my notes.

When I used to use Windows, I used OneNote[0] a lot! (I had over 20 notebooks with multiple sections and pages in each section).

I loved it!

However, recently I've moved to linux for my daily computing needs and I have yet to find something to fill a void.

I'm using notion.so[1] for most notes and paper for hand written stuff.

It's sad that in 2016, there's no nexus type tablet running android (with updates) that has pen support :/

[0] - https://www.onenote.com/

[1] - https://www.notion.so/

For formal meetings I use pen and paper. For some specific activities I do where I can't take notes during the activity I use a voice recorder to take notes immediately afterwords. If I'm sitting at my computer (like on a phone call) I use org-capture. If I'm out and about and I just need to jot something down I use the google inbox reminder on my phone. I did have a livescribe (a pen that records audio while writing, synchronized to the place in your paper notes), it was really neat, especially if I was both conducting a meeting and taking action items. The downside was it was a little awkward to tell people every time the meeting ran that you were recording it. But it did that job well. I have used One Note for a while, it's pretty neat but the lack of a clean way to archive notes like org mode has was really a show stopper for me. For me at least having a couple of different ways works best. The small hand held voice recorder is surprisingly handy. The pain is transcribing them although recently I simply copy the files to my computer and link to them in org-mode. For group meetings I also liked used to use a white board and the camera on my phone, although I don't have need for this myself anymore. I would really recommend not getting stuck on one technique for all situations, but use different things that work better in different situations. The key is having one system to put it all together, and for me at least that's org mode.

I'm quite a techno geek but when it comes to notes I've never given up good old paper and pen.

Good old pen and paper!

I keep a paper based day planner and a notebook with my ideas, thoughts, etc in it. Recently I have been also trying to keep track using an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil using an app called Nebo. I'm not ready to switch yet. (And for that matter I have never been able to switch in 40 years).

Paper to me is long lasting. I can start something in a notebook, shelve it and then pick it up again. No need to update the OS or the app I used to create it (if it still exists).

Zim - A Desktop Wiki

http://www.zim-wiki.org/

Mostly because it just creates a bunch of .txt files, which are easy to handle (sync, backup, read via ssh, ...), and by placing them in subdirs you get a hierarchy. It is mostly for text, but it supports links, links between notes, links to files, pictures, code, lists, checkboxes, latex, gnuplot, ... and if you really need something you can create your own tool.

In addition to a simple binder with blank papers and a good pen for when I'm in "thinking mode", I have actually been happy with the following solution, for text note-taking on the computer (which I use almost daily as a journal, for meetings etc etc):

Simple markdown files, with a script to create a new date-stamped document for each day [1], opens it in vim, and then commits the change and pushes to a bitbucket private repo for backup, after I close vim [2].

It also includes a script for converting all documents to a nice epub ebook, for offline reading, browsing, searching etc in calibre e-reader.

Some benefits that made me go this direction, instead of, say evernote or the like:

- Offline storage

- Syncable via git (I'm keeping a backup in a private bitbucket repo)

- Easily convert to any format via pandoc

- Can edit effortlessly in my terminal-based environment (bash, tmux, vim)

- Really automateable

- ...

[1] https://github.com/samuell/mdnote

[2] https://github.com/samuell/mdnote/blob/master/edit.sh

I tend to switch between Field Notes and Moleskine books, I use a Japenese Kuru Toga pencil (mechanical pencil that sharpens itself while you write) and a Uni JetStream Prime 0.7mm.

On the digital side I use OneNote.

If anyone is interested, this guys instagram says it all: https://www.instagram.com/desk_of_jules/

Pen, paper. Hopefully there's an agenda, for a conference or meeting, so take notes on that.

Take photo with phone. Send to whoever else needs to know, e.g. meeting minutes.

My notepad is A4 paper cut in half (yeah, A5, but company only stocks A4) with a big bull-clip in the top. When notes are no longer needed, just shred them.

For those who use paper, I strongly recommend the LiveScribe pen. It records what you write and the audio. Then you can click text and it plays what was being said when the text you clicked on was written. Makes for fast, stress free note taking.

Like others already mentioned, Quiver (http://happenapps.com/#quiver), but it is Mac-only. Your a Mac-user, but I don't know how often you work with clients using another platform. That could be a problem.

For Windows and Linux, there's Cherrytree (http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/). I'm not using it myself, it's just something that I found when looking for Evernote alternatives. It has syntax highlighting and can handle images.

Good luck with finding a solution.

[Turtl](https://turtlapp.com/) has been my Evernote replacement for a few months now. I like having everything encrypted and I love writing in Markdown.

0. Leuchtturm (or Moleskine if I can't get a Leuchtturm) notebook, blank pages, the middle size.

1. vimwiki in a tmux session in an XMonad scratch buffer. Pandoc for occasional PDF output.

2. Some screenshot / screencast gif scripts around byzanz and scrot.

SimpleNote for most things. Workflowy for more structured things. And I have a Huawei Watch that runs Audio Recorder so I can take little notes to myself when I don't have time or hands to write something down.

Has anyone tried Bear yet?

http://www.bear-writer.com/

I just recently started using it, finding it rather nice, though it still feels rather 'beta'.

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Simplenote!! Works on everything: Desktop app, browser, android or iphone

I use https://www.notebooksapp.com/. It works with plain files, txt, markdown and WYSIWYG (HTML). It also allows you to write your own stylesheet and JS. So I have a custom template (CSS) and I write almost everything in WYSIWYG (ie HTML). Works really well for code too, as I get syntax highlighting.

Other apps I have tried and used over the years:

- http://www.mweb.im/ (markdown) - https://ulyssesapp.com/ (markdown) - http://lightpaper.42squares.in/ (markdown) - http://alternoteapp.com/ (Evernote GUI) - Many, many others

Notebooks really stands out because it has a great iOS app, syncs via Dropbox (plain files), and handles TXT/MD/HTML + Custom CSS&JS.

The Mac app is not great, but it's adequate. I frequently talk to the author and they are rewriting it to be more "Mac friendly", but that's a bit away (1 year maybe?).

For the longest time, I tried to stay true to Markdown, but as I get older, I just want things to be easier, and to look nicer, and I now prefer writing everything in WYSIWYG. Since I have custom styles, I can stick to standard structure (ie H1, p, ul, ..), which is in spirit close to Markdown (ie structure only). And I can still customize when I want complicated things (I wrote a couple special classes for some use cases).

Plus, it works with the filesystem, so you get folders, which I personally prefer to all this tagging BS. It makes it easier to have everything in one place: work stuff and personal stuff, and to keep it all neat and tidy. Also, because it's files, it's always available offline (iOS app too).

The iOS app is like a small file manager, so I also keep pictures, PDFs, and some other docs. So I always have all my important stuff on hand, no matter where I am.

Overall, I think it's a great app, which still has room to grow (better GUI on desktop, encryption, ...)

Sublime Text. I find taking notes for me to be more about slowing my thought process down in order to zero in on issues I'm thinking through. At work we use Teamwork to organize our projects, so usually if there's something I'm working on for a client or a coworker, I'll transcribe parts of my notes into our teamwork project. Teamwork also lets you add tasks, notes, files, links, etc. We can one off people to each project, so that they can review anything we've added for their review.

I'd like to mention Ideaflip, btw: http://ideaflip.com

It's intended for collaboration rather than specifically for note-taking, but it looks like it addresses some of my issues with respect to flexibility for note-taking. I'm not convinced they've got the pricing and market fit perfect yet, but it looks quite interesting.

(Disclaimer: I'm having some conversations with the founder, but we've not done business)

We're building Nuclino (https://www.nuclino.com/), which is inspired by Notational Velocity / nvALT. You can upload images via drag and drop and embed code blocks. Syntax highlighting for the code blocks is on the roadmap. You can either share individual pages with a client (via a public URL) or invite someone to share several pages and collaborate on them in real-time.

Paper

Quiver[1]: suports markdown and syncs via Dropbox

Mindful[2]: chrome extension

[1]http://happenapps.com/#quiver [2]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mindful-beta/cieek...

I have horrible handwriting. It is really bad.

But OneNote and ten-finger-typing makes up for that. If I need to share it, I can easily copy it in to an email, everyone can receive these without needing another account.

You might want to look into http://www.codefoster.com/codeinonenote/, a code highlighter for OneNote

In the order from brainstorming to real project it's:

- piece of paper and pen

- Clear https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clear-tasks-reminders-to-do/... (not only as Todo App, but also to make outlines for topics)

- Sublime Editor + Markdown + (private) GitHub repository

I've ended up going from applications like Evernote to a simple Dropbox folder with markdown files for my personal notes. For me, the main draws are easy access from terminal and using my own text editor. And of course code blocks with syntax highlighting (and LaTeX with MathJax). I haven't played around with sharing, but it's easy to render an HTML page.

I use Todoist for notes that are potential tasks. Some times the line can be blurry so I have to regularly clean my Todoist tasks.

For the rest I use Google Keep which I've found to be quite handy. Nice UI and it's available everywhere. I've already sold my soul to Google so why not let them get my notes as well.

While I use zimWiki for personal notes, there are some things it lacks, like interactivity.

I started a blog, using Nikola. Not perfect, but it can support markdown, rst, ipy etc, plus pretty much anything else the web can.

Not exactly a TODO list, but for publishable things, it's pretty flexible if the thought isn't private.

The good old physical post it notes work best for me if I need to note something quickly.

If there's something that I need to copy/paste later then I just have "Clipboard.txt" on my desktop. Not prettiest but it's fastest and easiest.

If I need to plan something bigger then I use Trello.

Paper during meetings with customers. A5 or even A6. Faster than anything else. Big bonus for drawing diagrams quickly.

The default notes app on my Samsung until I changed phone, Private Notepad now. This is for short random notes.

Several markdown files on my laptop especially for work related stuff.

Evernote. My Evernote is the only valuable digital asset I have. Everything else is exchangeable.

Xournal on my x86 tablet running Ubuntu.

Love having the xournal files go to my personal server that I can browse through with my laptop or desktop later on, anywhere, anytime, without having to bring around binders and notebooks.

I also like that you can erase and move blocks of ink around.

I use Google Keep for short notes and TOTOs. It's handy and you can access on any device.

I like paper and notebooks the best, but I'm using OneNote for work. OneNote is one of those annoying but "good enough" software products that I don't really like, but I'm using it because it's free.

Short lived notes? Anything that can take text input. vim, text edit, stickies (the mac app), pen & paper, whatever is on hand.

Long term notes? Evernote - though I'm not happy with them. Just haven't found a replacement yet.

[GoodNotes](http://www.goodnotesapp.com) on an iPad Pro (12.9 inch) and Apple Pencil. Haven't touched paper since getting it.

Dropbox Paper currently: syncs automatically with everyone who I want to share the notes with, saves automatically, has an advanced and simple to use editor, keeps track of changes, has comments and so on.

I use pen and paper. Well actually write everything in a sketch book and keep an index of themes on the cover and number all the pages so if I need to refer back I find the theme and page number.

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Quiver is like Evernote if Evernote didn't suck. All it's missing is encryption. http://happenapps.com

One Note : I'm an "avoid mouse" person & one note is the only application that provides all the features. Plus sharing is a breeze - especially in a company.

OneNote on a surface. I sprung for the office suite which includes a different version of OneNote with a better UI and more features. It is worth it if you take a lot of notes.

This works for me: https://github.com/galfarragem/hamster-gtd

I use the note station app by synology. Granted, you need a synology NAS to use it, but it works offline, mobile, and desktop. And all your data lives on your own device.

Paper. I tried laptops, ultrabooks, iPad, cellphones, for note taking but nothing beats paper so far.

But I ordered Surface Pro 4 this week. So going to try OneNote on SP4 soon.

In the past, I used Evernote but recently switch to Quiver and Unclutter.

I also have a real notebook in my desk to sketch diagram and flow, I find it very effective.

Pen and notepad. Way faster than farting about typing on a tocuh screen or desktop and drawing diagrams is orders of magnitude faster and easier.

OneNote on a Surface (for handwritten notes) and Google Keep for quick notes and reminders on phone. OneNote is quite slow to sync on Phones

I used to use Apple notes but lost so much data I try not to anymore. Evernote is my main notepad these days but I still use apple notes...

As a Mac User, I use nvALT for my notes and monosnap for screenshots and image uploads plus sharing. ToDo List I use Any.Do for a while.

OneNote. I use it on all my devices, work laptop (ThinkPad), Surface Pro 3, and Galaxy Note 5. I prefer to take notes using a stylus.

Atom and Markdown. You can even see real time previews with "Markdown preview plus" plugin, upload it to git if need be.

Visual Studio Code and type out notes as Markdown.

This gives me some formatting as I go without being distracting.

Usually though I find a pen and paper works best.

I use Jupyter notebooks and write in markdown.

I use OneNote and I'm very happy with it.

You should check out www.breakdown-notes.com. (disclaimer: my project). Only feature missing is code highlighting.

Came to know about Remarkable (getremarkable.com) which ships next Aug. Sounds interesting for paper lovers.

i'm a mess but i use gmail. primarily because i can easily open it on any device, any time, any where. i make use of labels and also add keywords while i write so i can easily search. google gets my complete trust here.

Simplenote. Use it everyday.

flat txt file + Gedit for view and edition + Cloudstation for sync with NAS and other computers or mobiles.

Honestly, I keep a spiral notebook.

infinity book it's available on Amazon. Imagine whiteboard + notebook.

plain text file + dropbox for accessing on multiple devices

Zim wiki

Alternote

In the order from brainstorming to real project it's:

- piece of paper and pen - Clear https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clear-tasks-reminders-to-do/... (not only as Todo App, but also to make outlines for topics) - GitHub repository

ZimWiki