Why Apple Notes
I like to use Apple native tools for ease, synchronization across devices, and they are free. I have tried other solutions that offer dedicated note management with great formatting and expandability options such as Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, etc.
I always come back to Apple Notes, so I decided to stop fighting this intuition and I’ve written more notes than I ever did with any other 3rd party solution. I started by creating a personal knowledge base which is something I continuously reference. What ink cartridge do I buy for my printer? Let me check my knowledge base. What’s the difference between a hyphen and a minus? Let me check my knowledge base.
Basically, there is no rhyme or reason to what I want in my knowledge base. It’s anything and everything I want to remember but don’t want to only hold in my head.
Family Folder
The great thing about Apple Notes is that I can share folders or single notes with other Apple users. In my family, we are all part of the Apple ecosystem. I was so happy with my personal knowledge base that I decided to extend this over to a shared folder with my husband and added anything and everything we should both know or remember.
When did our kids get their last flu shot? Check the Family folder. What is that recipe we use every Thanksgiving? Check the Family folder.
Spotlight & Siri
Finding a note is not limited to searching within the Notes app only as it would be with other tool. Yes, I know there are Spotlight tools I can purchase or download on my Mac, but now that my husband was involved…it’s best to use what we both already have preinstalled on our devices.
Siri and Spotlight searches are what make this entire system worth it. Finding a note by hitting Command + Space on my desktop and vaguely searching for what I remember was either the title or in the content of the note is enough to pull up the result I’m looking for. This option to not have to think about where I should make my search lightens the mental load of the most important part of these notes which is finding the note when I need it.
Sharing Publicly
If a friend or acquaintance asked me about something that I had already written down as a note, I was unsure on how I should share that with them.
- Should I share the note via the Apple Notes app?
- Pros: note stays in place
- Cons: I can only share with 1 person
- Should I copy/paste this note to a public repository such as Google Drive?
- Pros: can share with many people
- Cons: I have to copy/paste my note into another system & now I have 2 records of the same content
- Share via text?
- Pros: easy to share via the Share Sheet within Apple Notes
- Cons: Format is completely lost, then the note is difficult to reference by the person I texted it to
Inspiration
I set out to solve my problem. It’s a niche thing to solve and not many see the value in building a full blown application around this.
Some solutions I found and was inspired by:
- Montaigne: https://montaigne.io/
- Anton is clearly a talented developer. This was exactly what I was looking for. The only problem is that Montaigne confines you to the one template layout they offer. The template is great, don’t get me wrong here. I honestly really do like the simplicity and silently powerful functionality of this out of the box layout.
- Quotion: https://quotion.co/
- This tool is much more flushed out and the developer, Qing, is a powerhouse. Again, exactly what I was looking for except for the template layout. The default page template used has more bells and whistles and is styled in a way that makes the posts look like marketing landing pages. This is great for those looking to use this as a marketing tool. There’s also the web hook API option on the paid plan. I even had a chance to email back and forth with Qing as he was shipping out the web hook feature. Thank you so much for your cordiality and thorough work.
- Jakob Bengelhardt: https://www.jakobengelhardt.com/
- I stumbled upon Jakob’s personal site which was the layout I was looking for. Something that looked like Apple Notes so it was a familiar interface for Notes users. I tried contacting him to buy this layout off of him with no response. I would have to build the page layout on my own but the seed of inspiration was planted.
Solution
The calvary arrived in the form of AI. I leveraged ChatGPT and V0 (along with other tools as I was tinkering away) and after many back-and-forth prompts, debugging, and a few a-ha moments, I arrived to a usable code base and website. Currently, I have the program available on my local machine but have plans to push this out on the cloud and then eventually, handle multiple users or folders.
At the very least, with the current setup, I have solved my problem. Which I am happy with. If this is something that gets extended to handle more users, then that’ll just be the cherry on top 🍒