For the past few days I’ve been thinking about some note-taking app, as I was reading Pragmatic Programmer and realise that I have no other mind backup than browser bookmarks, some books and pile of PDF’s or EPUB’s. The only thing that was certain at first: NO paper! But what other features do I want?

  • simple to use
  • searchable
  • TAG’s
  • syntax highlighting
  • easy backup and synchronization

So my first old-school thought was immediately rejected - LibreOffice and other text editors with folders full of separate files it’s not an answer. Maybe something base on database?..

Cherrytree might be the perfect fit. Unfortunately before I found this feature rich beauty, whole pack of markdown editors was revealed to me and that was it.

Easy and simple Notable is one of my favorites, all files are simple markdown and there is a promisse of built-in synchronization in the future. Only one thing is bothering me: all files are automaticaly renamed acording to the first line in the file. Why? I don’t know, but there is no option setting and it makes VCS a bit weird, like new files apearing and the old ones are gone.

As for now, I’m trying to find my way with Obsidian. It’s little heavier, but full of useful features and with huge active community. Plenty of built-in features and dozens of community plugins. It has its own auto-synchronization, but you need to have an account and you have less control over your files. I’m all good with Github private repository and if I’ll get lazy, there is a community plugin to do all commits automatically.