What App/System You Use For A General Journal?

[sarah11918]

Does anyone use the default OS X Notes app? :/

Not me. I have an Android phone & tablet, so I usually find third-party solutions for everything for compatibility. Is it any good?

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Sharing our thoughts and solutions can help others form theirs.

That was my hope! No one had mentioned Simplenote yet, and it works really well for me. Maybe it's a good solution for someone else, or maybe by looking into Simplenote, they'll end up finding the thing that eventually does work for them.

Notesy, WriteRoom, PlainText, etc. on iOS all can sync with Dropbox... They do the syncing from within the app...

Good to know, thanks! I'm sure there must be apps on Android that do that, too. With the number of people who do sync text files through Dropbox, I figured it couldn't have been as clunky as I was making it.

 

[Traverse]

Not me. I have an Android phone & tablet, so I usually find third-party solutions for everything for compatibility. Is it any good?

It's just a dumbed down text editor with iCloud sync, but it gets the job done for basic notes.

 

[sracer]

Good to know, thanks! I'm sure there must be apps on Android that do that, too. With the number of people who do sync text files through Dropbox, I figured it couldn't have been as clunky as I was making it.

There is. I use Draft on my Android devices.

 

[Traverse]

There is. I use Draft on my Android devices.

Have you ever tired Byword?

 

[sracer]

Have you ever tired Byword?

No because it didn't support Dropbox at the time that I decided on PlainText -> WriteRoom -> Notesy

 

[ardchoille50]

I use Day One. It has iCloud sync and apps for iOS and OS X. It's been good to me so far.

 

[exegete77]

I had been using Tinderbox (overkill for this purpose but worked well), and I use it for many other projects much more demanding. But there is no iPhone complement to it.

I had Day One app on the computer, but never really explored it until recently. But now that I have, the synch with iMac, MBP, and iPhone is superb. So I have just this last week begun using it. Very satisfied. Instantaneous updates on all three. And with a trip coming up next week, it will give me a chance to explore even more.

 

[windowpain]

I am another user of simplenote. I think it is great and does exactly what I need it to do.
I was having issues with the apple notes app, as I always had duplicate notes of somethings but not of others..could never figure out why or how to fix it and I lost confidence in it. If it had worked as well as simplenote I may never have switched.

I was using evernote, but I found it got too slow and feature rich..I just wanted a simple place to jot notes.. wasn't for me.

Also check out Ulysses. (Assuming you are on an iPad or a mac, there isn't an iPhone app iirc.)
It is primarily designed as a writing app, but allows you to organise snippets and things into folders, supports markdown, and adding photos and the like.
It might be what you are looking for.

edit - I totally forgot about notability. A very nice app, which also has a OS X companion. Has (obviously) a lot more features than simplenote, but it is certainly worth looking at too.

 

[sracer]

Here is the reason why OneNote is not very helpful for me. It seems that OneNote has quite a bit of intelligence and knows exactly when I most need it to work and decides to exert some independence by NOT working.

If it isn't this issue, it's another. Unreliable in an unpredictable sort of way. Perhaps it is more reliable when using a single device, or single OS across different devices.

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I haven't checked to see if there are new editors out there that support markdown and either native DropBox support or can specify a particular folder location where the files are stored.

What are some of the markdown editors that you use?

 

[Traverse]

Here is the reason why OneNote is not very helpful for me. It seems that OneNote has quite a bit of intelligence and knows exactly when I most need it to work and decides to exert some independence by NOT working.

Meh, Microsoft annoys me because they offer some amazing services, and then ruin others. For example, OneNotes looks great and the new Office seems (mostly) promising, but the OneDrive client is sub-par.

After trying the trial on my Yosemite partition, I really think the new Ulysses might be what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, that would require upgrade to Yosemite, but Office was pushing me there anyway.

 

[ewout]

I used the default notes app for a short time and then switched to MacJournal, it does a better job

 

[Traverse]

Might be to much of a diary but what about Day One?

I have used Day one but not a regular daily user. But the iCloud sync across devices works well.

I am experimenting with Day One (not for the same journal for which this thread was created). Do you enter one large entry at the end of the day or multiple smaller entries throughout the day?

 

[aliiien]

I am experimenting with Day One (not for the same journal for which this thread was created). Do you enter one large entry at the end of the day or multiple smaller entries throughout the day?

I've had Day One for ages (years?) and am actually a pretty crappy journal-entry writer, but I love that I can jot down feelings/thoughts from the menu bar extension. Multiple entries per day are allowed, yes. Tags make it easily searchable, and I like the ability to add photos to entries.

Additional note: I asked Day One support via Twitter if they would support multiple journals in the future, and they did confirm that v2 would have that feature. Something to keep in mind.

 

[highlystrange]

Be careful with MacJournal! I used it for years on my desktop Mac and had no problems--it was incredibly useful, and my journal grew to about 1200 pages. After installing the iPad version and syncing several times with the desktop, I noticed major corruption in files. I'm a writer, so that corruption (I'm pretty sure syncing was at fault) nearly gave me a heart attack.

 

[industrie13]

Does anyone have experiences with TextNut ? It looks very similar with Ulysses but slightly differs in its feature set (e.g. Syntax highlighting, fenced code blocks, WYSIWYG Markdown Editing).

Looking at their blog the app seams to be relatively new.