Damon Hargraves

April 16, 2021

Notes Apps Odyssey



A few years ago I migrated away from Evernote.  This was a pretty significant event for me, as I had been using Evernote since 2009 and had over 5000 notes in tow.  I'd been using digital notes apps since about 2006, when I needed to keep collections of HTML snippets, passwords, and standardized email responses. 

I started with Google Notebook and then moved to SOHO Notes (now called Notelife) when I needed to start saving screen captures.  I also briefly tried Yojimbo and DEVONthink.  I ended up settling on Evernote a few years later and stuck with Evernote through its most innovative period from 2009-2015. 
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One of the features that I loved the most about Evernote was the geotagging notes feature called Evernote Atlas.  Evernote removed the Atlas feature for some mysterious reason (I'm guessing that they were being threatened with a patent violation).  This is a pretty touchy subject for many.

Eventually the usefulness of Evernote (and the trust) wore out for me and I migrated everything to Apple Notes.  Apple Notes has great handwriting recognition, works great with the Apple Pencil, has all of the OCR capability that you'd want, nested folders, allows searching within PDFs, maximum storage limits are defined by the iCloud subscription that you already have, and all notes are dowloaded to your iPhone for quick access.  

For me, it's a happy junk drawer.  It's there when I want to look.  It's probably got the thing that I need.  It's fun to go through but it's not very organized, and maybe that's okay.  

Is Apple Notes missing features?  Tags...  Oh, and specifically geotagged notes with a way to visualize them on a map.  



About Damon Hargraves

Elementary Principal & EdD Candidate
Kodiak, Alaska

Email me at hargraves@hey.com or find me on Twitter @damonhargraves.