All articles
Tools
Started as a thread
The notes app I actually kept
Eleven apps in two years, one survivor. What it does well, what it refuses to do, and why that turned out to matter.
Noa Kestrel
·
7 min read
I am easily seduced by software. Backlinks, graphs, AI summaries: I have tried them all, usually on a Sunday night when I should have been writing.
What stayed
The app I kept stores plain text files in a folder I own. Search is instant. There are no tags, just words, and it turns out words are enough when search is fast.
The best tool is the one you stop noticing.
What I gave up
No graph view, no templates, no clever linking. I miss none of it. The time I used to spend organising notes now goes into writing them.
Written by Noa Kestrel
Writer and designer in Lisbon. One essay every Thursday, short posts in between. Replies are open, and I read every one.
