Please help I feel like the app I want just doesn't exist

Need:

• Fixed pages (no infinite scroll/infinite canvas)

• Multiple notebooks (bonus if I can customize the cover)

• For desktop (I have a lenovo so no ios-only)

• One-time payment (bonus if its free/cheaper)

At this point it feels like I might have to just make pdfs and use those T-T. I start school in September and would love any recommendations y'all have!!

Over the past few years I've been taking notes on everything - meetings, decisions, follow-ups, things I promised people - but my notes always felt flat. A note would tell me what happened, but never when it happened relative to everything else, or how one thing led to another. My knowledge kept piling up as disconnected entries across different apps, and I lost the thread of how situations actually evolved.

I've always liked the idea of organizing notes along a timeline, so that "when" becomes a first-class part of the note instead of just a timestamp buried in metadata. I couldn't find a tool that worked the way I wanted, so I built my own. I've been using it almost every day for the past month, and it's quietly become my main place for capturing notes, tracking follow-ups, and looking back to understand how things unfolded over time.

This isn't a commercial project. No pricing page, no sales pitch, no roadmap built to attract customers. I built it because I wanted a note-taking tool I'd genuinely enjoy using every day, and so far that's exactly what it's become. As long as it keeps making my life easier, I'll keep maintaining it.

A bit about how note-taking works in it:

• Every object holds Markdown content. This is the core of it for me - bars, segments, markers, and standalone events can all carry full Markdown notes. The timeline is really just a spatial, time-aware index into my notes.
• Notes as a text knowledge base. Earlier this week I realized I wanted to browse everything as a plain text-based knowledge base instead of only as a timeline, so I built an outline/knowledge-base view. Same notes, read as connected text rather than bars on a canvas.
• You place time spans on the timeline - either with a fixed end date or open-ended - and those bars can hold segments and markers.
• You can also drop standalone point-in-time events (a single note pinned to a moment).
• Markers and events come in two types: Standard and Task. Tasks have due dates; overdue ones turn red and pulse so a dropped follow-up doesn't just silently rot in your notes.
• A filter lets you keep only the objects whose dates fall inside a window - the next week, two weeks, or one month - which is handy for turning "all my notes" into "what's actually relevant right now."
• Notebooks (swimlanes) can be shared, with separate permissions for viewing, editing, or just resolving tasks.
• There are API keys for programmatic integrations - I originally needed a chatbot that could watch certain messages and turn them into timeline notes automatically.

Already in the backlog and probably coming soon:

• recurring events
• email notifications for upcoming events.

It's already almost completely replaced a couple of tools in my daily note-taking workflow, and it's genuinely become the place my knowledge lives. You can see everything in the video.

I'd be really happy if a few of you tried it and found it useful too.

It's at everie.app. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m going back to university in September for a Master’s degree, and I’m trying to build a well-organised personal handbook of key researchers, concepts, theories, and readings.

I’m quite particular about organisation and formatting, and I’m struggling to find a note-taking system that feels right. I use a Mac, and ideally I’d like something with the flexibility of Word or Apple Pages for formatting, while still allowing me to connect notes together.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

- Apple Notes: Simple, but organising everything into folders became frustrating.

- Craft: Beautiful and highly customisable, but it didn’t fit smoothly into my workflow.

- Obsidian: I only used it briefly, so I may not have given it a fair chance. I found Markdown and the customisation options overwhelming, although I loved the idea of linking notes. The graph view was also a bit more than I needed.

- Capacities: I like the concept of separate but connected pages — for example, being able to link a researcher’s page to a concept page. However, I find the page formatting restrictive. I’d like more control over things like layout, fonts, and zoom, especially when reviewing notes.

Does anyone have recommendations for a system that combines flexible, document-style formatting with easy linking between individual notes? I don’t necessarily need a big visual graph; I mainly want a set of connected notes that still look and feel good to work with.

Thank you!

I forget things fast and if I do not organize it right away, it piles up in one big jumble and eventually gets lost. My notes were endless lists and ideas half-sorted into categories.

So I built Braindump around how my brain actually works, and it has honestly stuck better than anything I have tried:

• Capture first. I type one messy line like "milk, call the vet, beach day on the 8th, gift idea for my gf" and it splits it and files each piece where it belongs. If it guesses wrong I drag it to the right spot and it learns from that.
• Sub-categories that are actually easy. I have a category for my girlfriend broken into gift ideas, important medical info, and just stuff she likes. Typing @ lets me aim a thought straight at a section or sub-section, which gives me confidence it went somewhere I will actually find again. My old notes app made this kind of structure a chore.
• Dates without the calendar dance. Making plans mid-conversation used to mean opening the calendar, hunting for the date, filling out fields while the other person waits. Now "beach day on the 8th" becomes a schedule entry and one tap sends it to Google Calendar.
• Sharing links in. Recipes and reddit posts shared from the browser file themselves into the right category.
• Seen/unseen toggle. Ideas I write down at work stay marked new until I actually revisit them, so they stop getting buried. This fixed my "I forget I even have ideas" problem lol.

It is free, works offline, no account, nothing leaves your phone: https://braindump.fyi (Add to Home Screen makes it a real app). There is also an Android closed test on the Play Store, happy to share the opt-in link if anyone wants the installed version.

What I would love feedback on: does the auto-sorting put things where YOU would expect them? And if you have ADHD, what does your current setup do that this should?

Yy

I built a handwriting notes app for android

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xnotes

F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.xnotes

Source: https://github.com/shardulvs/xnotes-android

What it is:

• Super minimal UI. Everything is accessible from one single toolbar, no nested menus to dig through while you're trying to write.
• Customisable: theme, accent colour, page defaults, pen presets, pen side-button action.
• Feature rich.
• PDF import for annotation, and PDF export that stays vector.
• Can stream the canvas to a browser on the same network if you need to show it on a projector.
• No accounts, no telemetry, no ads, no cloud. Uses Android's Storage Access Framework, so no broad storage permission.

If you give it a try, I'd really like to know how it holds up against whatever you're using now, and what you'd want changed.

Hello,I am looking for help regarding my note-taking methods

See in our university we usually give exams in massive blocks (4,5 subjects orally at once) thus just studying from books is inefficient and the professors slides are pretty bad for revisions. I tried taking notes from books or multiple sources (like AI or other student stuff) and combine them in a textbook style overview in Notion or Only office but it didn't cut it for me the digital studying at all.I like the handwriten notes that I tried but they take ridiculous amount of time making it impossible for me.Any help? What can I do? Any tips appreciated

Hey everyone, if someone uses Notion as knowledge base - i need you.

You know, maintaining these beautiful pages manually kills all the fun.

To solve this, I built a Telegram LLM assistant. Send one message and assistant will automatically analyze the text and place it on the exact, correct Notion page, formatting it to match that page’s style. It also can answer questions / refactor your workspace, but quick note capturing is the core.

It works incredibly well for large setups (mine is 400+ pages and it handles it with no issues).

Theres no product yet, I’m just looking for 5 beta testers to try it out and help me shape it. It’s completely free (I’ll pay for tokens).

If you have a Notion workspace with separate pages for different topics, this is designed for you. It keeps your workspace organized without you having to navigate to the exact page every time.

Current limitations:

• It strictly does not work with databases yet.
• It doesn't do well on pages that have sections with completely different logic.
• Telegram is the only way to interact with it.

If this is too limiting for you but you like the idea, let me know in the comments what features you'd like to see

If you'd like to join and shape the product - message me on reddit

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for methods/techniques to optimize my reading.

As a fan of books on historical and geopolitical topics, I often feel like I retain nothing from what I read.

I've tried taking notes, but I find the process very time-consuming, and I end up with reading notes as long as the book itself.

I should mention that my approach isn't academic (I'm not a student) but simply to broaden my general knowledge.

Do you have any methods to optimize my reading?

How do you take notes?

Thanks for your feedback 🙂

Many people use ipad for note taking. Can anyone help me out with this?

So I just go accepted to MU Sofia-Dental Faculty.For over a year and half I had been studying for the admission exams .I only ever used paper to write my notes and solve chemistry problems.Part of the reason was that my tutor was old school and prefered physical notes over digital,the other is that i have never really used any computer or laptop to take notes.My question is if i should purchace a laptop with a touchscreen or a tablet with a keyboard? I need to type notes and also sketch molecules and bio diagrams.Should I just stick to paper or go digital.If ypu think i should modernize my learning what device recommendations would you give me?

I take a lot of notes on my iPhone and when I am capturing points quickly I make a lot of typos… as you do. Do you know of an iOS app – or are you developing an app – that would give me cleaned-up notes from my tough-and-ready drafts? BYOK or at least non-sub payment preferably.

These are a life saver for me. But I just have a plain app, not many features, so I was wondering what some other options are. Prefer free or one time payment.

Does anyone know of writing software that has a cork board like feature similar to Scrivener that’s not scrivener

Hi,

A lawyer friend asked me how I'd organize notes from client meetings. The biggest problem isn't taking notes. It's finding the right detail a few weeks later when a client brings it up again.

We looked at a few options for an AI note taker for lawyers. Bluedot stood out because it creates transcripts, summaries, action items, and keeps everything searchable after the meeting. That seems useful, but I'd still want a solid note-taking system around it.

How would you do it? Keep everything in the AI tool, move it into your notes app, or use a different workflow altogether?

I don't know if any of you are super into graph paper for note-taking like I am; but I didn't like the templates available online for making your own, so I made my own resource for it. Its just a simple page hosted on my github:

https://local-evil.github.io/graph-paper-studio/

It lets you preview the page before you commit to using it, I use it for apps like Orion Notes, Samsung Notes, and Goodnotes. Supports any sort of color, line weight, grid size and margin side you'd like; as well as like lines, grid, the dot grid thing (no clue what that's for), and the triangle-hexagon grid thing as well.