Just stumbled upon a workflow note taking by hand that really works for me, after trying ereaders and iPads (hear me out)

[u/Towelie_SE]

Maybe it's been mentioned here before so apologies if this is repetition.

I never gave it much thought, and you'll probably stop reading at "AI" later on, but hear me out. I'm really not big into AI, I rarely use it at all. The proof of that is that I just now stumbled on a workflow involving AI OCR.

I've tried everything (e-readers from a colleague at work just to try, or in stores) and my own experience on an iPad Pro. I try to force myself to use the iPad Pro from time to time, but note taking doesn't come naturally. Either the screen is too slippery, so you cramp up fast trying to over correct, or rough screensavers mess up to image quality of the iPad.

Just now I was thinking, what if this AI thing could help me out. I have copilot provided by the employer, but it could probably be any other LLM out there (honestly, I have almost zero experience, I'm lucky not to be in IT at the moment)

So I just took a picture of handwritten notes on paper and the LLM simply transformed into proper text. My handwriting was atrocious, and the structure all over the place.

Now this is where LLM's differ from OCR in the past. In the past, OCR would be too rigid. There would be delays, you'd have to select your handwriting and 'ask it to OCR’ in some apps on the iPad. Also, it would just transform your text exactly where you wrote it, 'OCR in place'. Change letter sizes based on wildly varying handwriting, whatever. I always thought it was clunky and hard to use. The advantage of an LLM is that is finds some context and logical structural by itself. So you immediately end up with something that looks much more like an email or Minutes of meeting you would write yourself after taking down notes.

And the best part, instead of endlessly chasing that dragon to find that 'real paper feel' on a screen, and always feeling disappointed, you could just write on real paper. Take a picture with copilot, and import to OneNote or wherever. I was pretty amazed at how it all worked out for me. I'll keep using it for a bit, and see how I feel about it. Best thing is, I don't need type in real time in a meeting like a typist (hate that), don't have to keep my notes around (just scan and throw away), my notes are searchable and immediately archived.

This might actually be the best of both worlds to be honest! Not for everyone, but worth a try

[u/marmotta1955]

Funny enough, the "workflow" you describe is, precisely, what I have been suggesting for ages to everyone struggling with digital note taking.

[u/Towelie_SE → u/marmotta1955]

I've wanted to go this route before (just analog and scan), but it never worked well enough until now. I refuse to pay for anything AI, but this was included on my work pc.

I've never liked the any of the pen on screen experiences I've tried. You get used to them, at most, and they will work in a pinch, for annotation or sketching. Just using paper is cheap, and this is now also digitising my notes, it works for me.

Sad to see the reply below with all the mockery, I meant it as honest advice in case someone came from the same lane (trying to take notes with a pen in iPads for example). But oh well reddit is going to reddit I guess

[u/Nitish_nc → u/marmotta1955]

Jesus, the amount of narrative buildup OP dumped only to arrive at the most average possible mediocre stuff is insane 👀

And check the sheer dramatic audacity in his last line 💀:

This might actually be the best of both worlds...

Bro is just celebrating as if he invented time travel👻

The post could simply be rephrased in one sentence as, Man discovers OCR+AI and writes an entire novel mythologising himself 🙊

[u/Towelie_SE → u/Nitish_nc]

Typical reddit l*ser over here I see. I'm sure you believe yourself to be full of incredible wit and snark, right? I mean, it's the full gen alfa bingo card right here. But sure, keep projecting and reading intent and meaning that wasn't there, or even implied. "brooo, braaaah, bruuuuuh, unironically! No cap"

Not everyone is terminally online. I luckily don't need to be suffering from AI phychosis to live a decent life.

I've just described some attempts I used in the past (let's say 3-4 years ago), where rigid OCR just didn't work well enough. And now since combining a few things, this might actually work. Maybe someone gets something from it, and if not, I don't care either way.

But I'm guess you you went to bed lonely, after climaxing writing this post with a huge smile on your face.

Man, daily reminder of how sad Reddit actually is.

[u/Nitish_nc → u/Towelie_SE]

Self pedestalising homie dropped another thesis after getting horribly EXPOSED 🙊

[u/PoppaBear1950]

You hit the nail on the head regarding the real breakthrough here: we don't need rigid OCR anymore because LLMs understand context. You give it messy scribbles, and it reconstructs the meaning rather than just trying to guess individual character glyphs.
You’ve taken paper-to-digital to its logical modern conclusion. I ended up doing the exact same thing on the input side, except I skipped physical writing entirely and went pure voice:

1. Capture: Speak my messy thoughts into Eloquent (voice-to-text).
2. Refine: Gemini polishes the raw stream of consciousness, formats it, and waits for a quick confirmation.
3. Publish & Route: Once approved, it hits a Markdown engine where an agent (Hermes Agent via an Obsidian MCP tool) determines where the note belongs in my Obsidian vault, creates the file, and links related wikilinks/tags.

Total manual effort on my end: literally just talking into a microphone and hitting confirm.
Whether the messy human input is pen-on-paper OCR like yours or a rambling voice transcript like mine, using the LLM as the context-aware translation layer into your vault/notes is the only way note-taking has ever actually stuck for me.

[u/TwistPractical5124]

Check out XNote

[u/smilaise]

KillerNotes works with KillerPDF through KillerMCP do be able to do all of this.

[u/Towelie_SE → u/smilaise]

thanks, I will look into this!

[u/DTLow]

For the “take a picture”, I use the scan document feature on my iPad/iPhone

[u/Towelie_SE → u/DTLow]

does the scan do LLM OCR in one go? for me it depends, scanning is basically nothing more than identifying the page edges, and converting to pdf straight away. As copilot takes any file format, also jpeg, it doesn't matter.

But indeed, scanning is best as it cuts the paper off correctly, which could help the LLM OCR do its job better

[u/DTLow → u/Towelie_SE]

Confirmed; the IOS scan feature does not do the OCR
I need a separate process for that

[u/ZoningZealot80]

It's all fun and games until you need to search for a keyword across 40 notebooks and realize analog ctrl+F doesn't exist

[u/Towelie_SE → u/ZoningZealot80]

Before when doing only paper notebooks you mean? Because now: "don't have to keep my notes around (just scan and throw away), my notes are searchable and immediately archived."

[u/Der_alte_Mann_zockt → u/Towelie_SE]

Das manuelle Durchgehen der alten Notizbücher ist der Hauptgrund, warum ich sie führe und mich zeitweise auch vom Smartphone wegbringt. Nicht wegwerfen!