When you test out different productivity and note-taking tools as often as I do, you end up with so many apps in rotation it’s hard to keep track of. While I like knowing what’s out there, staying on top of new apps or updates and how they work, it’s not very practical to scatter my notes across all of them. Ideally, you only have one or two note-taking apps in your arsenal at a time, one for mobile and desktop, plus a way to sync them across.

I recently cleared out my PC of apps I haven’t opened in a long time, and it hit me how many note-takers I’ve been hoarding. Some I barely remember using, others I’d convinced myself I’d go back. Uninstalling all these apps made it clear that my note-taking system wasn’t a system anymore, so I decided to start from scratch.

Notes shouldn’t be hard to access

Many note-takers make it impossible

I’ve used my fair share of proprietary note-taking tools. And while they’re not a bad option depending on the feature set and user experience, their biggest problem is that they make it hard to access your own notes.

Before uninstalling all these apps, I tried to revive some of my old notes and realized how difficult it is to locate them. You often have to dig through the app directories, and when you find them, the notes are usually stuck in a proprietary format. Some apps are generous and let you export locally in an open format, but doing that for every single note is a complete waste of time.

All I need is Obsidian

Going back to the basics

This system was clearly not doing me any favors, so I decided to stick to one app that lets me access my notes easily and use them anywhere - of course, the tried and true Obsidian. This is not necessarily because it has an amazing interface and feature set (I think there are plenty more refined apps for note-taking), it’s because of its vault. Even other apps that I love that prioritize open standards and control don’t make it as easy as Obsidian. Take Joplin, for example; your notes aren’t directly visible as .md files in the file system.

The whole point of Obsidian’s vault is for it to act as a regular folder anywhere on your desktop containing plain Markdown files and assets, which you can easily access and manage. It works just like all the other folders of text files on my PC - I can drag notes in and out, create new notes, and all of this will reflect in the app in real-time and vice versa. Even the folder structures I create in either Obsidian or the vault will reflect in the other. Not to mention, the open format means all my notes are future-proof and tool-agnostic, so I can quite literally keep them forever and use them anywhere.

Even though I appreciate the privacy wins about this setup, it’s not even about the fact that the vault lives locally. It’s that everything is so easy to manage. I don’t have to dig through directories, export my notes one-by-one, or run into proprietary formats I can’t open anywhere else. It also doesn’t hurt that Obsidian is quite a user-friendly tool. Formatting is easy, backlinking is easy, and I can easily hook it up to other tools such as my local LLM.

Syncing my notes and backing them up

I rely on a couple of tools for this

The secondary element to note-taking is syncing them across devices and backing them up. For starters, I still use an encrypted portable drive to back up my most important files, which includes some notes. And I also use Google Drive. Again, this might not be the most privacy-forward tool, but I care more about convenience and a frictionless workflow at this point. Especially after sifting through the hoards of apps I’ve installed on account of them being “more private” - I’d rather just stick to Google if that means simplicity.

One of my Obsidian vaults is set up to sync with the Google Drive desktop app, and then I can access those notes from whichever device I can access Drive. Plus it acts as a backup; text files are extremely lightweight, so I don’t need to pay for more storage. Moreover, I actually fetch some of those files from Drive through NotebookLM, since some are for research and studying.

Then there’s Snapdrop. This little AirDrop alternative has been a lifesaver on so many occasions. It's what I reach for when I quickly need to get a specific file across and don’t want to go digging through my Drive. Snapdrop keeps the session private so only devices on your local network can see each other, and it supports pretty much every file type under the sun, whether images, videos, text files, music, ZIP archives, and much more. Lastly, I have an iPhone and its native Apple Notes app doesn’t support plain text files, so I use the EasyEditText app to edit my text files.

Note-taking shouldn’t have to be complicated

Even before my job as a tech journalist, I’ve always rotated through a bunch of productivity and note-taking apps on all my devices, hoping they would somehow change my life. While I like exploring what’s out there, at the end of the day, you just need something that works with you, not against you. For personal note-taking that doesn't involve user-testing or work, this is the system I'm sticking to because of how easy and fast it is.