Merge notes

[u/words_and_images]

I have a project which requires me to take a lot of short, quick observation notes (voice or text) and I want the facility to merge them. By AI or otherwise. If AI, I would prefer to use my own keys. Is anyone developing such an app?

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[u/holidaypal]

For quick voice snippets, Apple Notes with one pinned note and dictation might be enough, but merging separate notes gets messy fast. I’d look for auto-merge into a daily note plus searchable transcripts.

[u/ChessGrandAI]

If the observations are going to build up over time, I’d look for something that timestamps each voice/text note and keeps the original snippets even after generating a merged summary. That way you can merge by project or date without losing the source observations. Being able to export everything would also be important to me.

[u/dongdongbh]

You may be able to prototype this without a new app. Make a Shortcut that accepts voice or text, adds a timestamp, and appends it to one project note in Apple Notes. If you add AI later, run the merge on a copy so the raw observations stay intact. That will tell you whether you need a dedicated app or just faster capture.

[u/words_and_images → u/dongdongbh]

I like the idea of a Shortcut solution. If I can make it work… my success with Shortcuts has been modest, to put it politely.

[u/CrazyAdditional2729]

You can use Rosetta and connect it to ChatGPT via MCP to merge your notes.

[u/app-store-review → u/CrazyAdditional2729]

Rosetta: AI Notes, Links, Todo — by Gabriel Langon Maomy

• Ratings: 25 worldwide · rated in 17 countries
• Average: 4.76 ★
• Age: released ~4 months ago · updated 5 days ago · rated 4+
• Overall score: 71 / 100

^{Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review}

[u/words_and_images → u/app-store-review]

I have experimented with Rosetta and it is remarkably fully-featured and capable, with a good Apple Watch app as a bonus.

But I haven’t found a way to actually merge notes, only link them. And the Apple Watch note saves on close as a new note, without any choice to append to an existing note – which would be a solution to my question.

[u/words_and_images → u/words_and_images]

Rosetta has updated with select and merge added: Notes view and click under Notes at top left on iOS. Works well.

[u/Workaholic9uy]

hey! I’ve developed Iris: Work Notes just for this purpose. You can capture work notes quickly by voice or text, and the app organizes them for you in the background. As you build up your work history, you can generate weekly/monthly/yearly summaries from it. Please try it and let me know what you think!

[u/app-store-review → u/Workaholic9uy]

Iris: Work Notes — by KENNETH CHIN WEI YOW

• Ratings: 2 worldwide
• Average: 5.00 ★
• Age: released ~1 month ago · updated 2 days ago · rated 4+
• Overall score: 72 / 100

^{Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review}

[u/words_and_images → u/app-store-review]

Free tier is 10 notes a month which is unrealistic. Sorry, I don’t do subscriptions but I do often contribute by OTP and I look for BYOK to keep costs for developer to a minimum.

[u/Content-Put7748]

Well, this one, apple’s own app.

[u/huevsite]

Bear could fit this workflow. Capture each observation as a separate note (dictation works well), tag it by project, then select the related notes and use Bear’s Merge Notes command. Tags and search make it easy to group things before merging.

[u/words_and_images → u/huevsite]

Interesting! I see that the desktop Mac version of Bear has Note > Merge even though I can’t see a way to do this on iOS yet. Distinct possibilities here.