For years, I have been struggling with finding a good way to take notes, or store information I learn.

I think I have tried all kinds of different methods and different software packages, and while a lot of applications have elements that I like, none delivers on the promise of being a one stop shop for all my notetaking needs.

And my needs are many.

I have study notes, lecture notes, exercise notes. I have notes for papers I read, for books I read, and for webpages that I come across. I have journal notes, and notes on reflections about a topic. I have todos, and sticky notes (non-actionable reminders), and I have project notes, writing notes, and full transcripts for publishing. Not to mention notes on recipes I am developing, and on art I experience.

I need it all to be digital, lest I lose them, I need them to synchronize between all my devices. I need to be able to write LaTeX for equations, I need to be able to have robust analog input (using Apple Pencil), and ideally, it should be pleasant to use. Bonus points for extensibility, so I can hook into automation workflows.

But most importantly, I need to be able to retrieve my notes. I need a quick and reliable way to retrieve (and maybe summarize) everything I have ever noted about for example study habits. It needs to include personal observations about techniques that have worked well for me, studies I have read pertaining to the science of learning, memory and attention. It needs to surface any notes on textbooks about learning, or webpages I have read about it. It needs to understand context, and understand synonyms, so it understands that notes about the science of learning is relevant to a query about study habits. It needs to have indexed analog notes, images, pdfs, and any other kind of format I have, so I can get all the relevant notes.

It also needs to be able to summon specific notes. If I know that I am searching for a specific thing, I need to be able to retrieve it easily as well. (As I am writing this, I attempted to summon the blog post I read that proposed the difference between searching and summoning, so I could credit the author, but I am unable to find it)

So far I have found no solution that achieves a good retrieval experience, or a good input experience across all the different domains.

But I have been thinking lately: Maybe I'm going about this wrong. Maybe I shouldn't try to look for the one app to rule them all and satisfy all my needs, but instead embrace the strength of different apps for creating different types of notes. The problem with this approach so far is that my notes become scattered across different silos making an already inadequate search experience even more painful.

But maybe, just maybe, if a third app can index, organize and search across all the apps, it might work. This adds the requirement to the note apps that they must be extensible so you can hook into the data for indexing, but it relaxes the numerous other requirements such that the app should only excel in at least one type of note.

I am not really aware of any third party apps that does this. I know of third party apps that do index a lot of different content, but none that symbiotically hook into other apps much less the specific apps that I use. I know that Apple is creating an IndexedEntity protocol that allows third parties to surface their apps' content making it searchable (including semantic search) by Apple across the system. While it looks promising, I don't want to hold my breath for third parties to adopt this, nor hope that Apple won't limit this functionality in frustrating ways.

Which leaves me to: I probably have to do this myself.

But I am very curious about your experience with notetaking. What system are you using? Do you have a system that works well for you? Do you have any recommendations? Let me know by filling out the contact form!