I considered just using vim, but my vim environment is way too feature-packed for what I want. Ability to write to a note from the terminal or any other application.Starting a new note should be as easy as Ctrl+N.Accessible from my Phone and all of my computers.Of the hundred or so text documents on my Desktop, 99% of them are called “Untitled”. The ability to disable everything “smart” in the text editor.I’ve got other ways to handle pictures, drawings, geo-location, and to-do lists. So I resolved to find a new note taking system. OSX’s Textedit application can be configured to take the kind of simple notes I like, so that’s what I found myself using. It’s not hard to see why: Evernote has gotten all “smart”. In the last several months I’ve noticed that I have a thousand text notes on my computer again. In short, if your feature starts with the word “smart”, it can fuck off. When I type something in single quotes, I want it to stay in single quotes. Grammar checkers make it impossible to mix short form and long form notes. I write notes in a mix of 4 languages, so spellcheck is an automatic fail. I like simple, reliable tools that don’t try to think for me. I get to digress a little here, because it’s my blog.

I just want to write, sync, and search text.

I’m sure that somewhere out there, there’s a target market that wants all of this shit every time they write a shopping list, but I am not in that market. I recently heard that it does Salesforce integration, too. Then came poorly-implemented sharing, groups, chat, geo-tagging, google drive integration, and so on. First it was photos and videos, then to do lists and Reminders. Nowadays, it seems like every time I turn around, Evernote has found some more bloat to add. In short, I jumped on the Evernote train. In 2008 I discovered that the act of writing isn’t nearly as effective as the act of searching, so I resolved to start taking notes in a central, searchable, sync’ed system.

For years I had a thousand text documents scattered around my computer. Meetings, ideas, to do lists, grocery lists… The act of writing really helps me remember, so I’ve been writing everything down since I was a teenager.

Turn off autocorrect evernote desktop