What are
/r/Zettelkasten's
favorite Products & Services?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The most popular Products mentioned in /r/Zettelkasten:
The most popular Services mentioned in /r/Zettelkasten:
Obsidian
Notion
RemNote
Roam Research
Logseq
Hypothes.is
NotePlan
Trilium Notes
Asciinema
Miro
Zettlr
The Archive
Notable
Foam
Org mode
The most popular Android Apps mentioned in /r/Zettelkasten:
FolderSync
Orgzly: Notes & To-Do Lists
The most popular reviews in /r/Zettelkasten:
Powerful but simple, text based and multiplatform: Simplenote.
It just added internal links in a beautiful way: https://simplenote.com/2020/11/03/introducing-internal-links/ and it had backlinks too. :)
Best...
:)
The biggest difference seems to be how they store their data.
Hypernotes stores your data in their database, Obsidian is purely markdown files, so you can feel responsible for your own data. There's no feeling of being in a locked ecosystem.
Hypernotes has a limit of 10,000 notes for the free tier, Obsidian has no limit (the only limit being the amount of storage space on your system).
Hypernotes has limited functionality, Obsidian will have more functionality due to its age and the amount of free community plug-ins available.
I love their website though and I think it's a step in the right direction for Zenkit, I'm just fully invested into the markdown ecosystem at this point and I like having easy, safe, offline access to my data.
In case you find it interesting, this is my Zettelkasten extension that I use with my text editor: https://github.com/alefore/edge/blob/master/rc/editor_commands/lib/zk.cc
You can see some of that at work here: https://asciinema.org/a/314506
I've built something similar, although I use the metaphor of a forest to classify my notes as seeds, saplings, trees and oaks. It's kinda my own take on the system, but I've been using it for a year now. https://www.notion.so/818782f2ff0f44ccbc5941e3fd4d0cd0?v=3badd8762a2f424189dc13c6f4f11539
Vanilla org-mode has links. You could easily use Helm to grep through your org directory (helm-projectile-grep automatically greps your project with the thing-at-point) for a particular tag, and insert a file as org-link.
What advantages does org-roam provide?
Honestly, I think people overthink tooling for Zettelkasten.
Just think about this... Luhmann used pen and paper. :) If I could / would have the space to have an actual slip-box, by all the Gods, I would use it. Why? Because walking to it, taking out the notes and such, gives it extra strength in your memory. You are using more senses to access knowledge. Not to mention the fact that spatial knowledge, the fact WHERE the zettel is, gives it even more power. ( as demonstrated by the power of method of loci knowledge tied to spatial awareness is always better and more powerful than plain remembering. ).
Furthermore, the more complex the tooling is, the more you have to keep in mind. As opposed to something like, flat files with links and numbers, or even Zettlr if you want SOME extra features.
Also, as said many times here, don't vendor lock yourself. Just use text. :)
That's my 2 cents anyways.
to clarify , aliases are something like, u are referencing 'earth' in different document as 'the 3rd planet' , it is so smooth to do something like this with RemNote.
do try RemNote by going to https://www.producthunt.com/posts/remnote-2 and "Get It"
Emacs is a free text editor that is extremely customizable. It's available for all major operating systems, including Windows.
It can be a little overwhelming to learn, but "A Beginner's Guide to Emacs" is a pretty good introduction. /r/emacs is also a good place to learn more.
Well, it depends very much on many other contextual factors like other tools and workflow each person uses. I've seen and heard very good things about Obsidian but in my case, since I use Emacs, there is nothing better than org-roam (https://www.orgroam.com/).
It:
- integrates with org-mode and emacs, using all it's power,
- is text based, so future proof,
- incredibly powerful and configurable.
- And it also has a great community.
What more can I ask? :)
HTH.
Best...
Thank you! It makes me very happy to hear that people find it useful.
My individual notes correspond to each section in the longer articles. They look something like this:
# Title of the section
Some optional text.
Perhaps a few paragraphs.
Related: * [Some link](05r.md) * [Other link](04b.md)
That's it. Sometimes the text has links also (and other markdown markup).
The articles that in generating are just based on navigating this structure, following the links (and not directly including the "related" bullets, just using that for subsections). Each title just becomes the name of a section.
You can see a few actual examples in the various notes I navigate through and edit here: https://asciinema.org/a/w02l3Yx2OGMLtvkVNbvbExOMS (that also shows how I use my text editor, but that's probably less interesting to you).
Hope that helps!
I haven't used it myself, but I think that Roam Research does that kind of thing with backlinking.
If I understand it correctly, It sort of automatically makes you link things together. I definitely need to play around with it.
Fellow chromebook user reporting in; also ex Zim. I feel you.
I can suggest:
- <strong>WORKFLOWY</strong>; which has "mirrors" (transclusion) and backlinks (in beta). Also a board view (really, columns) which are nest-able. It was superfast on a CB, but mirrors seem to slow it down. Also, the way they're testing backlinks doesn't quite fit how my mind works, so I'm waiting for development to slow before I jump back in.
- <strong>NIMBUS</strong>; which feels to me like a "notion-lite". It runs a lot faster than notion, has as-you-type "@" backlinking, plus the ability to create a new note from the "@" prompt on the fly. I've been able to replicate the sort of workflow I had on Zim with this, and it has a really useful Android app.
Good luck!
(ps - they both use that light ice blue colour that's so in right now...)
Yes, it's new: https://simplenote.com/2020/11/03/introducing-internal-links/
It seems like a good note editor, but I'm a bit concerned about a completely free cloud service. What's the EULA regarding the note's contents?
Also, I like to keep my notes local, but of course that makes it more difficult to work on multiple devices.
Hi, I am reading this very interesting post and thread and I have a few questions. For my part, I have tested doom emacs with org-roam, vim (still learning) and I am using logseq for 4 months. I love logseq but I am pushed away by the electron thing, and the fact that I am not allowed to use it at work. Vim is allowed, as is VScode.
If I switch to vim, I will miss 2 important features: - embedding images in preview - pdf annotations : logseq does the most perfect job with pdf that I have ever experienced.
How could I compensate or mimic these 2 very important features? Does anyone take book notes in vim or neovim linked with its pdf preview?
Thanks for your insights!
If this is of interest, then Earle Haven's introduction to the history of commonplaces may be up your alley too: https://www.amazon.com/COMMONPLACE-BOOKS-MANUSCRIPTS-ANTIQUITY-TWENTIETH/dp/B001OW87EO/
My main site something I built with Next.js but the notes section specifically is Obsidian Publish. I have a custom theme that I use for obsidian as well for the styling and stuff.
Generally in these areas, having a preexisting model to imitate is far better/easier than trying to innovate something from scratch. Try something minimal and easy and evolve it as your needs dictate.
See also notes from Annie Murphy Paul's The Extended Mind.
hmmm they might be deprecating this, i remember reading something like that and its not really featured anymore, but if you click "Live Demo" (or go https://logseq.com/?spa=true) you can either open a local folder or clone a github repo containing .md or .org files and edit it there. Really useful
You can find something else in this german site https://zettelkasten.de/posts/eco-how-to-write-thesis/
Ok fair enough. Notejoy should be perfect, if you don’t mind paying $4 a month. I’ve tested it with real-time collaboration and it works amazingly well. It’s free for up to 100MB of storage, more than enough to try it out. Links between notes work, but are nowhere near as intuitive to use. They talk about team wikis here: https://notejoy.com/help/building-a-team-wiki
I personally do not because I don't really come across others notes on the same subjects. The only one I've stumbled upon is Andy's Working Notes, which I've created some notes based off of because I found his writing on Knowledge Work useful.
I do believe you though because I've had people message me telling me that they occasionally revisit the public notes I've made on the Obsidian.md forum. I think the difficulty is that often times your notes will serve as a retrieval cue and activate knowledge in your brain that adds extra context to the note, which others will not have when looking at the same note. If you are very thorough with your public notes (e.g. writing in your own words, full sentences, including sources) than I could see it being useful to others.
You're not being graded, or at least I hope you're not. I'd give the ZK method a try for a month or so using whatever's closest to your current workflow.
If it solves more problems than it causes, tune it and make it your own; if not, broom it without a second thought and keep an open mind for some other method that does help.
You might want to grab a book or two about PIM and see if anything mentioned might scratch your itch better than ZK. The best book I've ever read on this subject:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0123708664/ Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management (Interactive Technologies) 1st Edition by William Jones (Author)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (November 15, 2007) Language: English Paperback: 448 pages ISBN-10: 0123708664 ISBN-13: 978-0123708663
Good luck!
Such bits of information fit into Anki (or other spaced repetition systems) if you want to remember them. This is especially helpful if you get into a new discipline. You need a solid foundation to build more advanced stuff on it. For example, I'm currently learning about Kalman filters but my Linear Algebra is lacking.
If you don't want to remember it but only store it for future reference, I don't know either. I'm torn between "let it be and look it up again later" and "create a zettel and try hard to anticipate future uses". The later sounds like too much work though.
> A search engine that takes into account the meaning of the text?
What you want is text analysis. Tools that do fuzzy matching, synonym matching, and ranked results.
I dump my ZK into Elasticsearch and use the text analyzer. It works pretty well. I created a couple of simple tools that take a word or phrase, package it up into a basic text query, and return the results. When I need a more nuanced search I go to Kibana and construct it on the spot.
Edit: When I say "dump", I mean I have a tool I wrote that generates structured data for a pre-defined Elasticsearch index.
I'm partial to The Archive. It's a Mac native program built specifically with ZK in mind. Everything is stored in plaintext/markdown in a folder on your computer. I've tried Obsidian, Roam, Zettlr... probably a few others that I'm not remembering off the top of my head. I always end up back with The Archive.
Ever thought of using P.A.R.A https://www.notion.so/sxhx/How-to-set-up-PARA-System-in-Notion-77c253ba41fb4b5689eb79b25643bc90
I am on a tradeoff between notion and Obsidian for setting up zettlekasten .
Though MuKul Khanna's notion template
is good with its ability to create relation between the reference box and the zettle box.
my problem with notion is its security
With Obsidian many features that are available with notion are not available
I see, so I could do the encryption on the client. Actually, I found a tool I didn't know about called RClone which can apparently automatically encrypt or decrypt files and store them on the cloud.
I just noticed that you can actually implement Base62 encoding if you use this character set in my code (https://codesandbox.io/s/great-moore-b8q2t). :D
/* charSets */ [
charRange("0", "9").concat(charRange("a", "z")).concat(charRange("A", "Z"))
].reverse()
Sorry to interfere again and nit pick on technicalities. But I think it is important to understand, what „markdown“ actually is, before using it: markdown
None of those „markdown“ editors do sth special. There is probably a language server running in the background, interpreting the markdown syntax and adding interactivity on the fly.
I have automation. I go to an existing note, enter the brackets around some text (to mark it as a link), and type :zkln followed by enter. That finds the smallest unused ID and fills in boilerplate there (the title, and a link back to the original note). You can see it at work here, in second 0:59: https://asciinema.org/a/w02l3Yx2OGMLtvkVNbvbExOMS
I type [Paul Klee: Timeline] and when I used :zkln, that finds the ID, generates the skeleton, inserts the ID in the original note, and saves the original note.
mdnotes is zotero-mdnotes, yes
appstore is mac? if so, you can get mac zotero here: https://www.zotero.org/download/
there are other similar tools, so depending on your bibliography collection app, you may want to google an annotation/highlights extractor for it, if possible, as i know that others also have this.
Reminds me of Apple’s long-dead HyperCard. Have you looked at LiveCode? It’s the closest thing to it that is around today.
You might save yourself some time by doing your project in LiveCode and compiling to an app.
Shared this a few times - until I can write more in length...
https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lcx-i1Q=/
This is the visual representation of a Zettelkasten process in action.
So I think you could easily work with a Zettelkasten for your needs and use Zotero for a Biblio.
The difference with your writing is that you'd likely expand much more at the end when you "fill in the gaps" of the Zettelkasten notes.
I just made a diagram showing the entire process for reference to show others as well.
https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lcr9sKc=/
As you can see in the later stage...
Once you have formed a strong thesis with a cluster of notes written with reference material, but in your own words... line them up.
Create a project folder, copy the notes in order onto a new file/paper.
Put the cards back into your card file or close the files.
Now you're working in an enclosed project environment. You can always go back to your zettelkasten to dig around for extras if needed.
Next, look for gaps and things that could be written better.
Then once you have a solid foundation, and have a good chronological order to your thesis, start to write some filler that will make the content easier to digest.
Make sure to reference material that you didn't transform into your own ideas, and are based on hard facts from others. And how easy is this? Well, you have a simple chain of notes going right back to each reference material, and page! If you use a digital zettelkasten this step is beyond easy.
Then review your work as normal, publish, and then close the project out to start working on something else.
You're turning paper writing upside down.
Instead of writing 20-50 pages of garbage, filtering it down to quality writing, and then filling it back up... you've already got the good bits spread out nice and evenly, with a bit of padding to make it friendly to read.
Beyond that - it gets down to what your purpose is. But what I have above is the intended use of a zettelkasten. You can bend it to your needs, but there gets to be a point where you're using the wrong tool for the wrong job.
Can you eat pudding with a ruler? Sure! Should you? Not unless you like the taste of graphite.
It's actually super easy if you use GitHub Desktop.
You don't need to learn any of the command line stuff, the idea is you create a new "repository" (a folder) which contains your notes. When those notes are updated, you can "commit" (save) your notes, and then you "push" them to be stored in the cloud.
There's some solid getting started documentation here.
Craft. It’s a game changer! Just come out of beta. Is being actively developed and updated with new features. It’s beautiful! Easy to use! Wiki-links, backlinks, markdown, content customization. It’s the Evernote for markdown, similar to Roam and Notion. Try it free but worth the subscription! IMO better than every other Zettelkasten app out there (and I’ve tried them all!) as I can easily create and access work on either iOS or Mac.
I use [NotePlan](https://noteplan.co), and my scrap notes go on the Calendar notes, while my long term ideas and notes go in proper notes. The beauty of this system is can keep track of tasks and stuff in progress while simultaneously having access (and linking to) my valuable notes, without mixing them (NotePlan has backlink support, which makes it really easy to go from one type to another)
You can try NotePlan, if you in the Apple ecosystem. It saves your notes as plain text markdown and syncs them with CloudKit (whatever you choose) across your devices. It has backlinking and daily notes integrated with your calendar and reminders.
I'm the dev, ask me anything (and I'm using it for my own Zettelkasten) :)
I'm using https://noteplan.co. It's compatible with Obsidian and runs on Markdown plain text files, so you never get locked out of your data. Since I'm the developer, I'm making it even better for Zettelkasten.
It's a Notational Velocity clone written in Python and available cross-platform, and for free, and open sourcE: https://github.com/cpbotha/nvpy
You have to love their honesty:
> Simplenote syncing note-taking application, inspired by Notational Velocity and ResophNotes, but uglier and cross-platformerer.
:)
Yeah of course sorry, so:
term=$(xclip -selection-clipboard) | xargs basename | cut -f 1 -d ‘.’)
Will take whats in the clipboard (which should be the path to your note), take only the file name and then cut off the extension so you just have the file name (which should also not have whitespace in the name)
rg —pcre2
Is just a call to ripgrep, the magic is in the regex:
“(?<=\]\)).+$term\.md(?=\))”- This will basically find anything that like
[.........](.........$term.md)where$termis the name of the file, the question marks mean that the preceeding stuff isn’t matched, but are necessary for a result
- This will basically find anything that like
\[\[$term\]\]- This is just the
[[wiki-links]]but I probably should have used look around here as well
- This is just the
\[\[$term.*\]\]same as a above but will also match[[wiki-links | with display text]]
Next ripgrep is told only to look in markdown files:
-t markdown
then told to only spit back only what matched (i.e. the link)
-o
The results are essentially unformatted or flattened with sed:
sed s+:+\ +
So now the output should be of the form:
/path/to/source-file.md ./rel/path/to/file.md
so I just throw away everything before the first white space with sd which is like sed but simpler:
sd ‘.*’ ‘’
There’s similar scripts like this here:
Yeah so the issue I have is that the regular links open in a new window, which is a minor nuisance (but maybe less so than I had anticipated).
If you just started your Notetaking journey might I recommend some really helpful tools:
- Recoll
- TMSU
- Fzf
- Rg
- mdcat
- vim/emacs/org-roam are handy as well.
See this link on using Recoll as well as This link which has stuff for TMSU.
If you are looking for something to test out, I would definitely recommend https://logseq.com/ - this is very similar to Roam with the notes being stored locally. I would definitely recommend giving it a try
I don't know how I didn't see the sharing button! Thanks.
I remember two examples of hiding the sidebar:
- RemNote with a "<" symbol beside the user name at the top, for (auto)hiding.
- Nulis with the first icon at the top left side, for showing - hiding.
These are also web apps for note-taking and writing.
You might find RemNote to be of interest. It has many nice features for note-taking (outlining, linking, backlinks, text references, transclusion via "portals", etc.), and it combines them with spaced repetition.
I spent a lot of time thinking about all that. I currently have an anki deck for facts, and my ZK for more complex / abstract knowledge and ideas. I try to use some kind of Cornell method in my notes by having a set of questions at the top. But I haven’t done any automation yet...
I looked into https://www.remnote.io also, but it is far too opinionated for me, and I find it kind of ugly if I’m honest.
I will have more time to create a whole automated system eventually, but probably when I don’t need it anymore... 🙄
OneNote was the best for my needs out of everything I tried.
The main reason for not using it is basically the ROAM white paper:
https://roamresearch.com/#/v8/help/page/1471
ROAM looks promising in its ideas but I don't understand it enough for it to look useful to me yet.
In order to address the things in the paper a simple "notebook" type system is not going to cut it anymore. We want things to be simple but the consequences of the availability and volume of information means a competitive advantage can be found in managing the increase on ROA.
The next "race" is going to be around this sort of stuff since there is so much potential to increase competitiveness. (We don't *need* to do it, but the payoff can be huge) It is hard to see though as attention burn isn't the same as the other burns we "feel". There are a lot of things we do in knowledge work that is akin to wandering around the warehouse every 5 minutes looking for something haphazardly dumped somewhere random, not realizing the significance or importance of the thing or the proper organization of it at the time of dumping.
Hi !
I search an app which can make connections easily between ideas
Desktop's apps I try :
- Zettlr,
- Tiddlywiki,
- then a fork named Tiddlyblink by Dave Gifford, new name since yesterday and new organization Idea stew
- Trillium (very useful and clear documentation online for beginners like me) (It stores notes in SQLite database)
and 1 online app pretty amazing : roamresearch
As @srid noted, Neuron is worth looking in to. I haven’t done it but know someone who has. Also, Zapier has a nifty .md -> HTML converter. Check it out at: https://zapier.com/blog/markdown-html-export/
Good luck!
So thank you again for the answers on the above comment thread. Now to address this one:
In terms of Novice I have no idea what emacs is/are. I understand markdown which is why I was looking into Obsidian.md, but also came across Flowtelic which is in beta not sure what platform it really uses, I just liked the interface from the demo and the idea of it reminding me to go back to old random notes to revisit ideas make corrections .etc.
So where can I find this Zim just to see what it is about? Although the cons are bigger ones for me since the majority of the time I am on chrome OS mobile or chromebook wise so some sort of online option for the chromebook is nice. I do have a windows laptop though, I just rarely use it.
I will watch the youtube you linked in a minute.
I also wanted to add that if you're worried about notes "disappearing", you could create an index. I have a indices that serve as main "landing pages". I have one index that lists all the books by book title, and I have one that lists the most prominent topics I'm engaged in.
P.S. If you're working in Obsidian, you should check out their forum or Discord. There are many people just beginning their ZKs and tackling similar issues and offering solutions that are different from mine. Here's the link: community I'm not affiliated with Obsidian, just a fan! :D
I've been using the relatively new app, Obsidian, which supports Vim bindings. Not the perfect solution for Vim users, but works well enough if you want a great note-taking app that lets you use Vim bindings. I really like Obsidian (see my review of its features). And the developers are very responsive and have been adding more and more Vim features.
+1 Obsidian. I'm a researcher too (PhD student) and I've been using it for more than two weeks and I'm already loving it. Also, check out my blog post where I discussed the features I like most. The community is really vibrant and the developers are very responsive too. It's really an incredible app. And it's free!
Personally, I like Obsidian. One of the main benefits, especially if there is concern about HIPPA compliance related to your research, is that Obsidian stores your files locally (as opposed to say, Roam Research which stores them in a cloud). You can still sync your devices using a secure Dropbox connection and 1Writer for your mobile capture (until Obsidian comes out with a mobile app.
Obsidian is still in Beta and is free. https://obsidian.md
I hope that helps.
Obsidian is easy to use, requires no programming skill, has automatic back link pane, a graph view, and supports markdown files with in-line images. Your files are kept locally and can be used in any other program you want.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alekha.net
Automatically save thread to markdown.
- Bookmark any tweet in the thread
- Open the bookmark
✨✨
Thread is automatically saved as markdown in `Alekha` folder
I wish I had notes on it, but I know My Creative Space author, architect Donald M. Rattner, says being reclined helps creativity. He mentioned it when I had him on my podcast, and I quoted him about it in a book. Michael Chabon writes reclining, and so did the late Truman Capote. Rene Descartes did much of his work while still in bed. Frida Kahlo started painting seriously while bed-ridden from her infamous bus accident.
Generally, anything that relaxes you is good for creativity. Tension or anxiety is the enemy of creativity.
Personally, I don't get sleepy while writing reclined. I like the work I do and I get plenty of sleep. Sometimes I even move my recliner (which is very light) over to my desktop, for an Obsidian session.
Markor ist an offline editor, it expects the files to be present locally on your device. Hence you need to sync them since Dropbox for Android doesn't sync. I use Folder Sync (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.tacit.android.foldersync.lite&hl=en_US&gl=US) and it works pretty well
Buy a HAN 506 box (e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/HAN-506-landscape-support-natural/dp/B000KJVDI4)
and a set of index cards. Read How To Take Smart Notes, and look at some pictures of the original Zettelkasten.
You're very welcome!
Also, I highly recommend investing some of your time into reading (and taking notes on!) How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. I say "invest" because it will take some time. For better and for worse, he doesn't just tell you what to do. It took me a long time to figure out how the hell I'm supposed to being taking notes on the book that's meant to be teaching exactly that. It felt a bit like a chicken-and-egg problem. But if you press on and do your best to incorporate what you learn from the book into the notes you take on the book while reading the book (what a sentence this is!), then you'll get from "What the hell am I doing!?" to "I actually understand this well enough to see why the default recommendations are what they are, and well enough to know when and why I should alter those recommendations for myself" much faster in the long run.
In a nutshell, he doesn't just tell you what to do and hope you make the connections needed to do a good job of implementing the instructions. He wrote the book to make you actually understand the Zettelkasten method. It takes more time upfront as a result, and you'll be frustrated at first about how much it slows down your reading while you're figuring it out, but holy cow it's worth it.