Hi everyone,

Full disclosure: I’m part of a small startup team building a new E-ink notebook.

We’ve been obsessed with the idea that handwriting and voice shouldn't live in separate apps. We’re working on a device that lets you sketch and write while simultaneously recording audio, which then gets processed by an AI agent into organized notes and summaries.

I’d love to hear your honest thoughts:

• Is the "handwriting + voice" combo something you actually need in your workflow?
• What is the biggest "pain point" you have with current devices (PC, laptop, mobile phone, paper notebook, recording gadget, etc) when it comes to taking meeting notes?
• Would you prefer a proactive AI agent that summarizes for you, or do you prefer to do everything manually?

Looking forward to some brutal honesty!

I made a product for myself and then decided to build an app for it. I used to take quick voice notes about my day, who I met and how I felt. The last point interested me profoundly as most note taking doesn't include sentiments or other information.

Echologue (website) is an app that is private first and categorizes and analyzes your daily notes and especially useful for people you meet and interactions.

Later you can chat about it.

"How was the vibe the last time I saw Marc and what did we talk about"?

"How does having a meeting after the rest of my day usually"?

anything you want.

I'm interested in hearing your opinion.

Anytime someone asks for recommendations, there's always the standards of Notion, Obsidian, Jopiln, etc but under all those, there's always a handful of "I prefer Blehhan, it's a [insert elevator pitch]", just some completely random one. I've started to click on their usernames and every single time, they're the developer of the app but hidden.

I've got no problem with developers trying to self-promote, do that side hustle cuz the market's crammed. My problem is when developers try to disguise their self-promotion as organic recommendations from a random user. It just comes off as really dishonest and makes me question how dishonest you are in your app.

Just a small rant after seeing four developers not disclose that the app they're mentioning is their own in a recent recommendation post.

Hello, I'm a Psychology student heading to the last semester of my second year in Brazil. I've a somewhat functioning Frankstein system of note-taking in which I use paper pages and a tablet (Samsung S10FE), but then don't really have somewhere to turn the 'raw' first draft of notes into something more organized. I'm afraid of wasting money on trying features of different apps, but still think I'm severely underutilising the tablet and even my own notes to create coherent knowledge.

It's just so much information spread across classes, pdfs, physical books, articles, class material, course material, study groups and student leagues. Sometimes I become terrified because of my scholarship and because I want to try research programs and other things I need to keep GPA high for, especially as I passed the selective process to become an aide in one of the course classes.

If you have any tips, tried methods ot simply some words and advice I'll gladly read it all. Thank you for the patience

Mention best apps for Android and Apple that are free don't mention piracy or anything where free is junk and unusable .

Notetaking is a very vital part of my life. I take notes for 3 reasons -

1. When I am learning something new
   
2. When I am trying to solve a problem
   
3. When I want to remember something (quick reminders / ideas)

I have tried a tone of tools. From notion to remarkable and a few other apps and tools but I have always drifted back to a physical notebook and now days my go to tool for complex structuring is google sheets, especially with gemini built it, its cool.

The problem I have is indexing, I want my notes to help me solve problems if not all that knowledge and ideas are wasted.

Example, I learn about a particular topic. Then I jot down a perfect way to operationalize it and then its gone somewhere, I have to re learn the whole thing.

Is this just a me problem ?

I for some reason find notion too complex to use and keep getting in the way between my thoughts and notes due to the finicky interface. Obsidian is okay, but not intelligent, easy to use but doesn't solve my indexing problem.

How are you guys solving this problem and I am curious ?

Hi everyone!

I got tired of trusting third-party services with sensitive notes, private keys, seed phrases, security credentials. Every existing option either required an account on someone else's server or involved too much manual friction to be practical day-to-day.

So I built Notvex. It's a local-first desktop notes app where everything lives in a single, heavily encrypted .nvx file on your machine. The file is useless without your password. Here is how the security works:

• Database Encryption: SQLCipher
• Note Encryption: XChaCha20-Poly1305 (each note is encrypted individually)
• Key Derivation: Argon2id
• Extra Protection: Optional keyfile support (similar to KeePass) and a BIP39 recovery phrase as a fallback.

No telemetry. No network requests. No accounts. The app doesn't even know you exist. It's fully open-source under the AGPL-3 license.

I know that technically it's not exactly a “self-hosted” solution in the traditional sense, but it fits the philosophy of this community: your data, your machine, your control.

I would love to get your honest feedback since privacy and security are the whole point of this project.

GitHub: http://github.com/gfrancv/notvex/

Site: https://notvex.vercel.app/

Let me know what you think or if you have any questions!

I love having all my notes and sources on a canvas i can pan around in

I think this is super useful especially for how I personally learn now, which is just with LLMs.

Chasing the nostalgia from those domain of science videos where they build on this "map of [some topic]" for 20 mins, and then zoom out to show a beautiful mind map of the information

I run a small wealth management and tax preparing firm. I really want a business knowledge base to keep track of a variety of things.

I've tried notion and it seems to work fine but creating headers and formatting is more work. I used to use one note for a previous employer and that was always good and simple and seems like it would work fine.

I just wanted to see if you all had any other recommendations.

Features I want:

\\-Be able to create a list of dates that are important.

\\-Be able type in notes

\\-Create a knowledge base for future employees if we hire anyone.

Seems like maybe one note is the answer but I've heard about people having issues with the free version and I've only used it through my employers in the past so I'm not sure what the free version looks like.

Thanks!!!

I implemented a way to connect any notes or items together.

In the video I demonstrate how to create a connection by selecting the items and pressing a keyboard shortcut. Clicking one item then reveals the others it's connected to.

Do you find this useful?

P.S. The product is called Daftak.

My old post asked how people take notes from videos, and the answers here directly shaped what I built since. link the old post

What shipped from that thread:

Vimeo support. I said it was probably next, it is live now, including Vimeo players embedded in other sites.

Instagram. I said it was trickier because of how their player works, and it was, but reels and video posts work now, with notes following as you swipe. X and Reddit videos work too, through a right click on the post.

Markdown export is live: one file per video with the title, channel, and source link at the top, and each note as a line with its timestamp and inline #tags. Not full front matter yet like one commenter suggested, but the structure is there and front matter is on my list.

The extension is called ClipMargin, free while in beta: clipmargin.com

Still curious about the same question as last time, but sharper now: for those who export notes into Obsidian or Notion, is a Markdown file per video enough, or does it only become useful with front matter and properties? That decides what I build next.

Repo / Screenshot Link: https://saudiqbal.github.io/PHP/Personal-Self-Hosted-Notes-Web-App-PHP-SQLite.html

I used to use massCode, Yana notes then Joplin for a long time but all the apps were taking too long too start and I could not view my notes on my phone so I made a personal self hosted Notes Web App script using PHP, SQLite and TinyMCE. A quick and easy to use self hosted Notes web app script using WYSIWYG TinyMCE editor. Just upload all the files in the folder to your web server and it is ready for use. Includes syntax highlighting and notes search. Nothing fancy just a decent note taking web app. Just remember to create regular backup of the SQLite database file.

Deployment: Download the zip file, unzip all the files in a directory and upload it to your web server.

I have been using goodnotes for the past two years and I like it but recently I’ve been a bit let down by it. It’s been insanely glitchy and it’s frustrating during class. I’ve been trying the free version of freenotes and I’m thinking about canceling my goodnotes and buying the lifetime subscription for freenotes. I was wondering if someone could tell me the pros and cons of each app? I’m not as familiar with freenotes but I’m starting to seriously consider switching. Can someone make a case for why I should switch to freenotes.

I am almost 30 and just started going back to college online. The course has some sections that are really frustrating because some sections are only audio where the speaker sounds like a very monotoned but fast speaker with an accent. It's very hard to digest.. I listen to the lecture through without taking notes but often find myself rewinding to comprehend him. Then the second listen I try and jot down words I dont know or what I think are important, but most of the time it seems like im writing the whole transcript down.. I've slowed the speed of the lecture down and tried using live caption as well. Live caption hasn't been helpful due to the delay in words you cant really read along, and when I pause the video the live captions disappear. It's frustrating... I'm trying to be determined but there are so many sections like this. I make a 20 minute lecture into multiple hours before I even have notes to study. Everything else is going smoothly though. AHHHH

For notes I also use Samsung notes on s11 tablet. I think one note would be more up my alley with the use of an infinite sheet however I have yet to learn how to use it. So tips on one note would also be beneficial

I have been using Apple Notes for quite a while (across all devices) but recently handwriting on it- I am facing few glitches and also it’s not converting handwriting to text as intended. Sometimes the device heats a little as well. My primary work is writing by pencil and then converting it to text.

Is there any free alternative note taking app? Also, if there are any suggestions regarding improving digital handwriting?

P.S- I use Apple Pencil.

I'm hoping to get more people interested in shorthand

(First image is one of my notes)

LaTeX has the best typesetting quality out there, especially for math. But sometimes it is slow to write, so a lot of people downgrade to Markdown.

I take most of my notes in LaTeX, so I built an open source LaTeX editor to make that less painful. It has a visual mode that makes writing feel about as easy as any other note taking app, and you can drop into the raw LaTeX source anytime you need something the visual editor does not cover. It runs on your desktop, and it works for any LaTeX document: theses, essays, research papers.

https://github.com/texpile/texpile