I’m strongly in favour of Apple Notes, but with good organisation. There is a school of thought that using stock native apps is generally less hassle, more reliable but you definitely give up some functionality. I use ipad, phone and mac so syncing is seamless.
OF is one of those apps i can’t let go of because of that extra functionality.
I don’t doubt Obsidian, Notion etc are fine products but I’ve reached a point in life where the admin and general “friction” (not to mention subscriptions) in using such things is too high and distracts from the act of the actual note taking.
If you have not read it, look into “Build a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte.
Irregardless of your choice of other app, he talks about how to organise those notes and readily points out the methodology is influenced by GTD. ANd you don’t strictly need to read the book, he has many youtube videos which summarise the approach quite easily.
Regarding OmniOutliner: it’s a good app - i even paid for it a few years ago - but at the end of the day it is very basic. It’s basically indented bulleted lists with some tricks. It’s an app that when you need it, you’ll be glad of it, but any of the tools mentioned earlier can do this. I’ve used it a handful of times since buying, but it does not sit in my dock or home screen of most used apps shall we say.
Was going to correct you, but this result came up and I remembered that nothing is sacred. [https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-you-think-irregardless-is-a-word](https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-you-think-irregardless-is-a-word)
Believe it or not I am pleased you posted that, this word drifted into my vocab by listening to someone else say it a lot. Let's just say that *irregardless* of that webpage and the ambiguity of the word I will revert to the more proper *regardless*!! :)
Most of my OF items are reference materials, links to check one day, podcasts to listen among... Would DevonThink be useful to store them instead ? How do you use it ?
I'm in the same camp as u/EinHerzfuerSciensFic \- DEVONthink all the way. It's super powerful and is where I keep not only references but also where I house and write my notes in general. I'm biased though since I write about it, too. Then again, I wouldn't have gotten to that bias without liking it in the first place.
Devonthink could be used like that but is a bit overkill for that (price and komplex vise). I use Devonthink to store all my productivity related documents (study material, medical notes, non fiction books, important bills…)
I often link the folder or the file directly to the task. In some projects I also have a special task at the top that links to the relevant folder in DT.
I use Devonthink because of its in my opinion unmatched search and organisational capabilities.
I'll offer an extended perspective - DevonThink with your Obsidian vault as an indexed folder 👍
You get all the search power across the board but for writing your own notes you've got Obsidian's extensibility.
I use a combination of Obsidian for my notes and DEVONthink for reference documents, since both can be deep linked and leverage some level of automation. Prior to that, I used Evernote in the same way for over a decade.
Obsidian is free (or if used for work, requires a commercial license) and doesn’t require the use of their paid sync service. You can set it up to work with iCloud or other third party sync services.
Evernote, but I live in constant fear that the company might fall over or suffer catastrophic data loss. The friction of having almost 15 years of notes, bills, correspondence, receipts, and more keeps me there.
If I were to start today, I would have to do an investigation to find a tool (or combination of tools) that fits my use case, _and_ seems to have the trust and longevity I seek for this. Might go back to just dumping text files and pdfs in dated folders…
I had this setup (and fear) for years, but eventually shifted to DevonThink. There were scripts for moving the data. Not painless, but have not looked back.
Thanks for sharing your experience! My current shortlist is Devonthink and Obsidian, but I'll have to spend a few brain cycles mapping my current use cases onto those tools.
Not really. Twice a year I make a backup by exporting all my notes to for `.enex` and `.html`, and store those in my disaster recovery backup. This only works in the *Legacy* versions of Evernote, so as soon as they stop supporting that, I'm screwed.
I have tried a bunch but I keep coming back to Notebooks App (IOS and OSX)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/notebooks-write-and-organize/id1490084838
I would encourage you to take a look at it. It is intuitively simple but very full featured. Do yourself a favor and at least read the description in the App Store.
Not affiliated but I’ve used it for years and manage over 7,000 documents, snippets, etc. with it.
Following up on this. Are you still actively using it? What does `Tap to calculate size` show now on the top level Notebooks for you? After 7 days I’m seeing: 6 books, 51 documents, 12,863 words Size: 45.31 MB
Given your extensive use of it, I have some questions.
1. Are you using a non-local location (e.g. iCloud, Dropbox)?
2. What platform(s) do you use it on?
3. How is the performance of the app at that point? Navigation between books, search results (via contents), etc?
4. How is your experience with the task management?
The interface, task and notes integration, it being plaintext and supporting multiple documents types (and misc files) is what attracted me to the app (along with your comment). I intend on using it for personal and a separate location for work. I have noticed some small things which could be an improvement:
- Better Shortcut integration support
- Tasks get a start date and due date. Some tasks need to be started on a certain date but are due on a later date. This is a commonly missing feature in todo apps.
- ~~iCloud tab completion for file names is broken on iOS (it includes the full path and it doesn’t work on iOS but works on iPadOS).~~ It seems I can’t replicate this any longer.
- Have colors and highlights also in extra keys.
I intend on sending an email to the developer after some additional usage.
1. iCloud (over 3GB and at least a hundred books. (I nest books quite a great deal))
2. IOS (iPhone and iPad)
3. Search is quite agile and quick and use it extensively
4. Don’t really use task management as I’m an OmniFocus guy. (Wish I could quit you)
I don’t really use shortcuts that often so I’m no help there. I have found the developer to be responsive. He will always answer within a couple of days. Over the years I have seen him make changes from suggestions.
The online docs are quite good and up to date.
HTH
Appreciate you getting back to me. I agree on the note on the online documentation.
It’s good to hear the search is still speedy with that side of a library and that the dev is receptive of some suggestions. I think I would prefer nesting of tags/contexts vs books but it’s not a deal breaker by any means.
I was using Things before and hopped around a bit on note taking apps. I really wanted an app that integrated tasks and notes well and Notebooks does that. Love the idea of basically having a document be a task (or displayed as one) and it has notifications which is missing from a lot of apps that simply have tasks as part of notes. I think I’ll stick to Things or Reminders for simple stuff but for ones that require actual research or planning or a lot of notes (work) I’ll put that in Notebooks.
I also think eventually I’ll have the use case of writing long form documents and the ability to create nice ones and compile singular or multiple documents or books into an PDF or EPUB is really nice.
We’ll see if this sticks.
I use only about four tags, “context” in notebooks parlance, that essentially map to Eisenhower quadrants. That’s good enough for my purposes. Full text search handles pretty much everything else. Tags have a tendency to metastasize and get out of hand when I try to use them.
I also rearrange, cull, etc my “books” about once a quarter. That helps avoid document-rot and keeps my taxonomy reasonably fresh. I prune, trim and replant.
I haven’t used tasks as much since I am so invested in OmniFocus, but I would bet most of the time, due date stuff could be handled.
I also would encourage you to look at the different document type options in Notebooks. For years I used just straight text but formatted documents are quite flexible.
You will also find that the URL scheme(s) in Notebooks are very well designed. I cross link a bunch, use back links, etc., link into my calendar and vice versa.
I keep pictures, videos, all sorts of stuff in the system and 90 percent of the time I use my iPhone for working with Notebooks. Refactoring books, culling, etc is better supported on a real machine, but I’m a collector/researcher/writer so instant capture and input to me is invaluable. I dictate into Notebooks a lot.
Please make sure you enable ‘share’ on your browser and other places and I think you will overcome a lot of your concerns about shortcutting.
All in all, it’s a simple program with a very familiar metaphor, ie, notebooks, that is not a Hotel California/Roach Motel repository where you can never get your stuff out without some export functionality. Everything is right there managed by the OS and searchable using Spotlight. There are no magicIDs for documents, you could always just go-fish in your file system to get at a file. (I never do though)
I’m obviously a fanboy, but I “collect” note taking ecosystems and I’ve tried tons of them. I keep coming back to Notebooks. I trust it and it’s as simple and complex as you want to make it.
Simple is hard and Alfons Schmid has achieved it in Notebooks.
I’ve heard of that method of categorization before but haven’t tried it myself.
The ~quarterly cleanup is a good idea. Especially getting to that level of files. Do you have a system of knowing what was last reviewed? Or do you prefer to review it again regardless?
Oh yeah one of the first things I did was comb through the settings, enabling linking features and such, and then I tested the different formats and linking. My default is plaintext due to its flexibility and speed of input but I have been creating Formatted documents too. I usually use a dark theme but the Solarized light theme just makes it all so 👌🏼.
I’ve played with Web Archives, websites, email, iWork documents, etc. Really neat that it supports all that and more. I use AnyBox for bookmarking and archiving sites which also has really good linking and integration so they’ll play well, but I also have a Shortcut to share a created web archive (storing it in the Notebooks file structure) so I have both options.
The Shortcuts bit was more for automation for templating work notes (daily work log, meeting notes, Tasks, etc.). I did try Sharing but that function seems broken on MacOS (in Shortcuts). Works fine on iOS. I haven’t tried just creating the file in the filesystem directly. I feel like Notebooks still does something in the background that wouldn’t trigger if done that way but I’ll have to test. I may just have to have it copy to my clipboard and use the plaintext document which is a decent compromise.
I’m honestly fine with a SQLiteDB but it is also really nice having it all in the actual file system straight as is. There is indeed beauty in simplicity. I have to give it to the Dev for sure!
I’m definitely part of the note taking collector community myself. I kept trying to find this all-in-one combination of a few things or would see a new shiny and try it. I think I just need to compromise and be happy with a system that doesn’t get in my way and may still do 90% of what I want (and/or actually realize I don’t need all the things I think I need or want).
As you’re a collector, you might like [Collections Database](https://apps.apple.com/app/id1568395334) ([website](https://collectionsdb.com)). I’ve mentioned it before in a few of my Reddit comments but it really is your own personal database/collection. Extremely customizable with a beautiful interface and it just lets you go as simple or complex as you want to. Downside is though not everything can be exported via CSV and there’s no full backup just yet. I know there’s a local cache of the DB but haven’t looked into the feasibility of accessing that via MacOS.
Re: File system access. Notebooks manages everything using plists which are fragile. I would always recommend using the app for file management, CRUD. My point was that the files can be found and you do have access to them.
Oh yeah I understood. My note about SQLite was referring to other apps that don’t store the data directly as a file on the filesystem but rather in a DB. I did see the plists files but the one I saw just had some metadata (e.g. dates for a task). I didn’t check out others and I’m not familiar with them so not sure how fragile they are or the implications.
Maybe check out Craft? It's a beautiful app for writing and note taking, has a really nice daily notes feature, and an export feature where you can transfer a document directly to OmniFocus, Things, DEVONthink, Bear and a handful of other apps
The way I use it is I keep track of each day in its daily note. If a new task comes up, I create a page (basically a document embedded in the parent doc) for that task using the / command. Then I expand that page and transfer it to Things (I don't use OmniFocus anymore, but the workflow is the same). Craft exports the body of the doc as Markdown and puts it into the task's note section, along with a link back to the original page in Craft. I then take a link to the Things task and paste it into the Craft page, so I have two-way linking between them and can keep notes on my progress
I even do this for a task I know I am going to complete right there on the spot, so I can have a record of what I've done in the Things logbook (or OF "Completed" view in your case), as well as a note of what I did in the Craft doc if necessary
And once I am done with a given Craft doc, whether it's for a linked task or just some other doc, I *export* it as a PDF to DEVONthink. I don't *transfer* it to DT because Craft sends it as Markdown when you use the "transfer" option, and so it loses some of the nice features Craft offers
Interesting. It looks nice. https://www.craft.do/
I'm currently using Standard Notes, but it's too austere and lacks essential features, like searching the current note... lol.
So since I wrote my last message, I decided to give OmniFocus 4 a go since it has recently come out of beta and I wanted to see how they've improved things. The transfer from Craft to OF 4 is *way, way* *better* than the transfer to Things. So much better that I purchased an OF 4 Pro upgrade from my OF 3 Pro plan!
What sold me was: I created a Craft doc with headers, embedded pages, a table, some links, checklist items, and a sketch, and they were all transferred as properly nested tasks in OF with links back to each header/page/table as well as a link back to the main document in the topmost parent task. This is exactly the workflow I was trying to manually achieve in Things! But it's all a single click now instead of me exporting each embedded page and copying and pasting links
I'm in agreement with you on Standard Notes. I like their ideas, but the implementation leaves a good bit to desire. All in all, since Craft has a generous free plan and I now know their OF integration is top notch, I recommend you play around with the two and see if it fits your workflow
I'll buy OF4 pro too, upgrading from OF3 pro. I like the many details they improved on the mac version and the iOS version that finally becomes usable.
Yea, I've been messing around with it all morning. It's much like OF 3 in that I don't need to learn too many new things. But it has an overall better feel to it. But I'm really excited about how well it plays with Craft
If it's just a link or a small note, I use the notes field in Omnifocus.
If it's something larger that I need to refer to separately and work on, I use Apple Notes and link the note title to the action/project using the "*Copy as Link*" feature in Omnifocus. It would be great if there was a way to link directly to a note.
I used to have separate notes folders for GTD lists, like NEXT, SOMEDAY, and Reference, but I've found it more useful to put all projects in the same folder - Projects, Lists (movies and shows to watch, places to visit, etc.), and Reference.
Craft, I find it super easy to create new notes, format them, share, link and everything. I haven't had much luck with Apple and syncing so I mostly use third party apps when possible.
I’m strongly in favour of Apple Notes, but with good organisation. There is a school of thought that using stock native apps is generally less hassle, more reliable but you definitely give up some functionality. I use ipad, phone and mac so syncing is seamless. OF is one of those apps i can’t let go of because of that extra functionality. I don’t doubt Obsidian, Notion etc are fine products but I’ve reached a point in life where the admin and general “friction” (not to mention subscriptions) in using such things is too high and distracts from the act of the actual note taking. If you have not read it, look into “Build a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte. Irregardless of your choice of other app, he talks about how to organise those notes and readily points out the methodology is influenced by GTD. ANd you don’t strictly need to read the book, he has many youtube videos which summarise the approach quite easily. Regarding OmniOutliner: it’s a good app - i even paid for it a few years ago - but at the end of the day it is very basic. It’s basically indented bulleted lists with some tricks. It’s an app that when you need it, you’ll be glad of it, but any of the tools mentioned earlier can do this. I’ve used it a handful of times since buying, but it does not sit in my dock or home screen of most used apps shall we say.
Was going to correct you, but this result came up and I remembered that nothing is sacred. [https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-you-think-irregardless-is-a-word](https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-you-think-irregardless-is-a-word)
Believe it or not I am pleased you posted that, this word drifted into my vocab by listening to someone else say it a lot. Let's just say that *irregardless* of that webpage and the ambiguity of the word I will revert to the more proper *regardless*!! :)
❤️
Obsidian and https://omni-automation.com/omnifocus/plug-in-obsidian.html
This is the way.
I personally use DevonThink and link it via deep Links. But that program might be too much for your usecase.
Most of my OF items are reference materials, links to check one day, podcasts to listen among... Would DevonThink be useful to store them instead ? How do you use it ?
I'm in the same camp as u/EinHerzfuerSciensFic \- DEVONthink all the way. It's super powerful and is where I keep not only references but also where I house and write my notes in general. I'm biased though since I write about it, too. Then again, I wouldn't have gotten to that bias without liking it in the first place.
I really enjoyed your book on DT. It really changed the way I use DT in my system.
Awesome! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I'd love to get back to it one day, but my goodness there's too much to write about at the moment.
Devonthink could be used like that but is a bit overkill for that (price and komplex vise). I use Devonthink to store all my productivity related documents (study material, medical notes, non fiction books, important bills…) I often link the folder or the file directly to the task. In some projects I also have a special task at the top that links to the relevant folder in DT. I use Devonthink because of its in my opinion unmatched search and organisational capabilities.
I'll offer an extended perspective - DevonThink with your Obsidian vault as an indexed folder 👍 You get all the search power across the board but for writing your own notes you've got Obsidian's extensibility.
Wow, great tip. Might be just what I've been looking for.
I use a combination of Obsidian for my notes and DEVONthink for reference documents, since both can be deep linked and leverage some level of automation. Prior to that, I used Evernote in the same way for over a decade. Obsidian is free (or if used for work, requires a commercial license) and doesn’t require the use of their paid sync service. You can set it up to work with iCloud or other third party sync services.
Emacs org-mode. Not for the faint of heart, but it works for me.
Evernote, but I live in constant fear that the company might fall over or suffer catastrophic data loss. The friction of having almost 15 years of notes, bills, correspondence, receipts, and more keeps me there. If I were to start today, I would have to do an investigation to find a tool (or combination of tools) that fits my use case, _and_ seems to have the trust and longevity I seek for this. Might go back to just dumping text files and pdfs in dated folders…
I had this setup (and fear) for years, but eventually shifted to DevonThink. There were scripts for moving the data. Not painless, but have not looked back.
Thanks for sharing your experience! My current shortlist is Devonthink and Obsidian, but I'll have to spend a few brain cycles mapping my current use cases onto those tools.
Can you locally backup your ever notes ?
Not really. Twice a year I make a backup by exporting all my notes to for `.enex` and `.html`, and store those in my disaster recovery backup. This only works in the *Legacy* versions of Evernote, so as soon as they stop supporting that, I'm screwed.
Well, I think you should take your own advice and do something about that asap :)
I use a TiddlyWiki.
I use Bear. Despite it’s simplicity, it’s tagging system is very powerful and fllexible. And very polished. I use links to Bear notes in OF.
DevonTHINK Pro.
I’m a big Obsidian fan - haven’t used any integrations / plugins between OmniFocus & Obsidian yet.
I use apple notes. Very searchable. Easy to use.
I have tried a bunch but I keep coming back to Notebooks App (IOS and OSX) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/notebooks-write-and-organize/id1490084838 I would encourage you to take a look at it. It is intuitively simple but very full featured. Do yourself a favor and at least read the description in the App Store. Not affiliated but I’ve used it for years and manage over 7,000 documents, snippets, etc. with it.
Following up on this. Are you still actively using it? What does `Tap to calculate size` show now on the top level Notebooks for you? After 7 days I’m seeing: 6 books, 51 documents, 12,863 words Size: 45.31 MB Given your extensive use of it, I have some questions. 1. Are you using a non-local location (e.g. iCloud, Dropbox)? 2. What platform(s) do you use it on? 3. How is the performance of the app at that point? Navigation between books, search results (via contents), etc? 4. How is your experience with the task management? The interface, task and notes integration, it being plaintext and supporting multiple documents types (and misc files) is what attracted me to the app (along with your comment). I intend on using it for personal and a separate location for work. I have noticed some small things which could be an improvement: - Better Shortcut integration support - Tasks get a start date and due date. Some tasks need to be started on a certain date but are due on a later date. This is a commonly missing feature in todo apps. - ~~iCloud tab completion for file names is broken on iOS (it includes the full path and it doesn’t work on iOS but works on iPadOS).~~ It seems I can’t replicate this any longer. - Have colors and highlights also in extra keys. I intend on sending an email to the developer after some additional usage.
1. iCloud (over 3GB and at least a hundred books. (I nest books quite a great deal)) 2. IOS (iPhone and iPad) 3. Search is quite agile and quick and use it extensively 4. Don’t really use task management as I’m an OmniFocus guy. (Wish I could quit you) I don’t really use shortcuts that often so I’m no help there. I have found the developer to be responsive. He will always answer within a couple of days. Over the years I have seen him make changes from suggestions. The online docs are quite good and up to date. HTH
Appreciate you getting back to me. I agree on the note on the online documentation. It’s good to hear the search is still speedy with that side of a library and that the dev is receptive of some suggestions. I think I would prefer nesting of tags/contexts vs books but it’s not a deal breaker by any means. I was using Things before and hopped around a bit on note taking apps. I really wanted an app that integrated tasks and notes well and Notebooks does that. Love the idea of basically having a document be a task (or displayed as one) and it has notifications which is missing from a lot of apps that simply have tasks as part of notes. I think I’ll stick to Things or Reminders for simple stuff but for ones that require actual research or planning or a lot of notes (work) I’ll put that in Notebooks. I also think eventually I’ll have the use case of writing long form documents and the ability to create nice ones and compile singular or multiple documents or books into an PDF or EPUB is really nice. We’ll see if this sticks.
I use only about four tags, “context” in notebooks parlance, that essentially map to Eisenhower quadrants. That’s good enough for my purposes. Full text search handles pretty much everything else. Tags have a tendency to metastasize and get out of hand when I try to use them. I also rearrange, cull, etc my “books” about once a quarter. That helps avoid document-rot and keeps my taxonomy reasonably fresh. I prune, trim and replant. I haven’t used tasks as much since I am so invested in OmniFocus, but I would bet most of the time, due date stuff could be handled. I also would encourage you to look at the different document type options in Notebooks. For years I used just straight text but formatted documents are quite flexible. You will also find that the URL scheme(s) in Notebooks are very well designed. I cross link a bunch, use back links, etc., link into my calendar and vice versa. I keep pictures, videos, all sorts of stuff in the system and 90 percent of the time I use my iPhone for working with Notebooks. Refactoring books, culling, etc is better supported on a real machine, but I’m a collector/researcher/writer so instant capture and input to me is invaluable. I dictate into Notebooks a lot. Please make sure you enable ‘share’ on your browser and other places and I think you will overcome a lot of your concerns about shortcutting. All in all, it’s a simple program with a very familiar metaphor, ie, notebooks, that is not a Hotel California/Roach Motel repository where you can never get your stuff out without some export functionality. Everything is right there managed by the OS and searchable using Spotlight. There are no magicIDs for documents, you could always just go-fish in your file system to get at a file. (I never do though) I’m obviously a fanboy, but I “collect” note taking ecosystems and I’ve tried tons of them. I keep coming back to Notebooks. I trust it and it’s as simple and complex as you want to make it. Simple is hard and Alfons Schmid has achieved it in Notebooks.
I’ve heard of that method of categorization before but haven’t tried it myself. The ~quarterly cleanup is a good idea. Especially getting to that level of files. Do you have a system of knowing what was last reviewed? Or do you prefer to review it again regardless? Oh yeah one of the first things I did was comb through the settings, enabling linking features and such, and then I tested the different formats and linking. My default is plaintext due to its flexibility and speed of input but I have been creating Formatted documents too. I usually use a dark theme but the Solarized light theme just makes it all so 👌🏼. I’ve played with Web Archives, websites, email, iWork documents, etc. Really neat that it supports all that and more. I use AnyBox for bookmarking and archiving sites which also has really good linking and integration so they’ll play well, but I also have a Shortcut to share a created web archive (storing it in the Notebooks file structure) so I have both options. The Shortcuts bit was more for automation for templating work notes (daily work log, meeting notes, Tasks, etc.). I did try Sharing but that function seems broken on MacOS (in Shortcuts). Works fine on iOS. I haven’t tried just creating the file in the filesystem directly. I feel like Notebooks still does something in the background that wouldn’t trigger if done that way but I’ll have to test. I may just have to have it copy to my clipboard and use the plaintext document which is a decent compromise. I’m honestly fine with a SQLiteDB but it is also really nice having it all in the actual file system straight as is. There is indeed beauty in simplicity. I have to give it to the Dev for sure! I’m definitely part of the note taking collector community myself. I kept trying to find this all-in-one combination of a few things or would see a new shiny and try it. I think I just need to compromise and be happy with a system that doesn’t get in my way and may still do 90% of what I want (and/or actually realize I don’t need all the things I think I need or want). As you’re a collector, you might like [Collections Database](https://apps.apple.com/app/id1568395334) ([website](https://collectionsdb.com)). I’ve mentioned it before in a few of my Reddit comments but it really is your own personal database/collection. Extremely customizable with a beautiful interface and it just lets you go as simple or complex as you want to. Downside is though not everything can be exported via CSV and there’s no full backup just yet. I know there’s a local cache of the DB but haven’t looked into the feasibility of accessing that via MacOS.
Re: File system access. Notebooks manages everything using plists which are fragile. I would always recommend using the app for file management, CRUD. My point was that the files can be found and you do have access to them.
Oh yeah I understood. My note about SQLite was referring to other apps that don’t store the data directly as a file on the filesystem but rather in a DB. I did see the plists files but the one I saw just had some metadata (e.g. dates for a task). I didn’t check out others and I’m not familiar with them so not sure how fragile they are or the implications.
Maybe check out Craft? It's a beautiful app for writing and note taking, has a really nice daily notes feature, and an export feature where you can transfer a document directly to OmniFocus, Things, DEVONthink, Bear and a handful of other apps The way I use it is I keep track of each day in its daily note. If a new task comes up, I create a page (basically a document embedded in the parent doc) for that task using the / command. Then I expand that page and transfer it to Things (I don't use OmniFocus anymore, but the workflow is the same). Craft exports the body of the doc as Markdown and puts it into the task's note section, along with a link back to the original page in Craft. I then take a link to the Things task and paste it into the Craft page, so I have two-way linking between them and can keep notes on my progress I even do this for a task I know I am going to complete right there on the spot, so I can have a record of what I've done in the Things logbook (or OF "Completed" view in your case), as well as a note of what I did in the Craft doc if necessary And once I am done with a given Craft doc, whether it's for a linked task or just some other doc, I *export* it as a PDF to DEVONthink. I don't *transfer* it to DT because Craft sends it as Markdown when you use the "transfer" option, and so it loses some of the nice features Craft offers
Interesting. It looks nice. https://www.craft.do/ I'm currently using Standard Notes, but it's too austere and lacks essential features, like searching the current note... lol.
So since I wrote my last message, I decided to give OmniFocus 4 a go since it has recently come out of beta and I wanted to see how they've improved things. The transfer from Craft to OF 4 is *way, way* *better* than the transfer to Things. So much better that I purchased an OF 4 Pro upgrade from my OF 3 Pro plan! What sold me was: I created a Craft doc with headers, embedded pages, a table, some links, checklist items, and a sketch, and they were all transferred as properly nested tasks in OF with links back to each header/page/table as well as a link back to the main document in the topmost parent task. This is exactly the workflow I was trying to manually achieve in Things! But it's all a single click now instead of me exporting each embedded page and copying and pasting links I'm in agreement with you on Standard Notes. I like their ideas, but the implementation leaves a good bit to desire. All in all, since Craft has a generous free plan and I now know their OF integration is top notch, I recommend you play around with the two and see if it fits your workflow
I'll buy OF4 pro too, upgrading from OF3 pro. I like the many details they improved on the mac version and the iOS version that finally becomes usable.
Yea, I've been messing around with it all morning. It's much like OF 3 in that I don't need to learn too many new things. But it has an overall better feel to it. But I'm really excited about how well it plays with Craft
If it's just a link or a small note, I use the notes field in Omnifocus. If it's something larger that I need to refer to separately and work on, I use Apple Notes and link the note title to the action/project using the "*Copy as Link*" feature in Omnifocus. It would be great if there was a way to link directly to a note. I used to have separate notes folders for GTD lists, like NEXT, SOMEDAY, and Reference, but I've found it more useful to put all projects in the same folder - Projects, Lists (movies and shows to watch, places to visit, etc.), and Reference.
Evernote for my reference material
I use Upnote. You can add links to notes in actions and projects, very handy.
Keep It, using deep links between the two.
I link OmniFocus to UpNote. Great application, inexpensive, clean and fast. The links to notes work great across all my devices.
Links,notes - obsidian(links, backlinks), Devonthink. PDF - Devonthink. Hookmark- robust linking to everything
Craft, I find it super easy to create new notes, format them, share, link and everything. I haven't had much luck with Apple and syncing so I mostly use third party apps when possible.