What is the best alternative to Zettlr?

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score 679 · Answer 1

Joplin

Top Pro

Offline access

Top Con

Sync issues with Android

If update on Linux then sync on Android, sometimes the Android sync will duplicate or remove some journal notes. Seems to be a bug in the Android app. The Linux app alone without sync with Android seems to work well using Dropbox. But don't expect changes you make on Android to sync properly back to Linux. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Peace of mind that there is no malicious piece of software in the app. See More

Top Con

Sync issue under Linux

The Linux client has a bug that requires the user to click the mouse frequently in order for sync to proceed. This bug has been open for a while. See More

Top Pro

Encryption

Top Con

Gargantuan memory footprint

1GB+ of memory for taking notes. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. See More

Top Con

Old school interface

Top Pro

Supports file attachments

Top Con

Bloated

This project is suffering from feature creep and uses a lot of memory for a note-taking app. See More

Top Pro

Supports markdown

Top Con

App Image launches very slowly

On Linux, you can only install via App Image, which take 5+ seconds to launch. I can launch LibreOffice in under two seconds. See More

Top Pro

Supports tags for notes

Top Con

Sync issues on Windows

No way to change account settings and sync easily corrupted. See More

Top Pro

Web Clipper

Browser extension saves full pages, clean content, or screen selections to new notes. See More

Top Con

Weak tag searching

Joplin can currently only search for a single tag at a time. None of the boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are available for use in searches. This greatly diminishes the usefulness of tags in Joplin. See More

Top Pro

Optional CLI interface

Provides a CLI interface for terminal lovers. See More

Top Con

Can't create tags from the mobile app

Top Pro

Supports multiple languages

English, French, and Spanish, Italian, German, Czech and many others. See More

Top Pro

Active user forum with support from app creators

Support, troubleshooting, and new feature requests are easy to make at the user forum and you can contact the app creator directly. See More

Top Pro

Dropbox support

Can sync using Dropbox. See More

Top Pro

Nextcloud support

Top Pro

Timed alarm reminder for to-do lists

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS

License:MIT

Export:Yes

Sync:File System, OneDrive, Next Cloud, WebDav, DropBox, JoplinCloud, s3 (Beta)

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679 130

score 450 · Answer 2

Notion

Top Pro

Full-featured on desktop, mobile and web

Even the right-click menus on the web are the same as the app. See More

Top Con

Not very fast using native apps

Can take time if you're switching between lots of pages often as it needs to load the data each time See More

Top Pro

Unlike anything else

One of the most complete applications one can use to build a personal dashboard (or professional) and migrate all other services to it. No more calendar, task, notes, financials, lists, writing and wiki apps, just Notion. See More

Top Con

Not always very intuitive

Column filters are not that intuitive to apply. See More

Top Pro

Pages within pages within pages, to infinity

You can have a ridiculous amount of information within a single note. Look at how it works, you'll be surprised! See More

Top Con

No true backup

True backup can only exist if it's automated and easily recoverable. Else, it's just an outdated copy or useless scrambled data. See More

Top Pro

Flexible contents storage and organization

You can upload files and embed online stuff in any hierarchical structure using pages, toggle lists, etc. See More

Top Con

Designed with teams in mind, and less formatting than Evernote

Evernote may be more individual-oriented and has more formatting and such options available, but whether that affects you is down to personal preference. Try both and see which you prefer. See More

Top Pro

Highly visual, with icons next to every new page and so on

This feature makes it very easy to find certain notes and such. And great for visual people as well. You could also add images as icons instead, if you like. See More

Top Con

Not yet a new protocol, as it could be! (or could it?)

Think of scuttlebutt or email. the best Evernote alternative would be a "web 3.0" of sorts. Something that would be just a simple file added to a computer and automatically replicated to other computers along with a website and any company could easily pick up the concept and make their own hosting, including some awesome google drive/host of sorts. See More

Top Pro

Blocks offer incredible flexibility

The basic unit of organization in Notion is the block, which can be a chunk of text, an image, a bullet point, or even a link to another page. Each page consists of these blocks, which can be easily reorganized, moved to other pages, converted into other content types, or generally manipulated in many useful ways. Because of blocks, restructuring information in Notion is way easier than in any other wiki or notebook app. See More

Top Pro

Does a great job with both notes and to-dos

To-dos in Notion aren't just dot point lists. You can drag and drop them into columns just like Trello (Kanban style), you can have sub-tasks, and you can easily mark things off as completed so they are no longer in your way. Notes are also powerful, with proper formatting and ways to manage and search for them, which makes it a great Evernote alternative. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Works with Android, iOS, Windows, & Mac OSX. See More

Top Pro

Awesome for wikis

You can easily start writing a bunch of web pages, share it with co-workers and choose whether to publicize or keep your contents private. It's also easy to hyperlink pages. See More

Top Pro

Amazing view flexibility

You can create different views for a page's content and easily toggle between kanban, table, etc. (As long as the content is able to allow different views.) See More

Top Pro

Quick and effective search

Just type in a word and you'll have results in no time at all. See More

Top Pro

Attach files in tables

You can attach files in table cells, which is a feature missing in most spreadsheet-like applications. See More

Top Pro

Great spreadsheet functionality

You can use calculation/formula, links, attachment, inter-referencing of data from other pages or tables, embed documents and images in the table cells. See More

Top Pro

Renders Markdown Syntax

Add code blocks, Headers, bullet point, numbered lists, or To-Do boxes by typing using Markdown Syntax (instead of klunkily moving the mouse to formatting boxes) See More

Top Pro

Less headaches when editing pages

Lets you restore your page to a past edit. Also works with sub-pages and databases. Though it is worth mentioning that it's a paid feature. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Web

Collaborative:Yes

Offline access:No

Markdown support:Export

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450 88

score 899 · Answer 3

Obsidian md

Top Pro

Locally stored, not dependent on cloud

Everything is stored in your device. You can back them up, encrypt and process however you want to. Works completely offline. Read your notes anytime, anywhere. See More

Top Con

Closed Source

See related thread at Obsidian forum. See More

Top Pro

Markdown makes for flatter learning curve

Top Con

Needs to be better at block level references, searches, tagging

For example, if you want a tag a block of text, for obsidian, its the whole page that will get tagged. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight and very customizable

Variety of settings, and community themes & plugins, available from built-in marketplace. Every community plugin is open-source which means you can learn from it and develop your own. See More

Top Con

Proprietary software lock-in

Creates dependence on the application with the promise that the content is yours but that cannot be entirely true without the application being free and open source software. You will end up altering the way you create the content to take advantage of Obsidian features and your processes will evolve for its workflows. This replicates the lock-in pain that people experience moving their highly personal information from one proprietary platform to the next when that initial platform stops serving them well, goes out of business, or becomes a bad actor. See More

Top Pro

Backlinking

This allows you to link notes back and forth really easily. See More

Top Con

Does not export to MS Word

Can export only as a PDF file. See More

Top Pro

Fast growing

It's becoming more powerful everyday, it seems like they add many functions within several days. See More

Top Con

Requires .md files

Can't read .txt or other plaintext file formats. Can't read asciidoc files. (Available with a plugin.) See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform: works on Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android and iOS

Top Con

No ability to add dates that link to a daily note, when that day/note may not yet exist

You can create a backlink which doesn't yet exist; it just doesn't auto-fill for you. (Available as a plugin) See More

Top Pro

Very easy to use and link notes, preserves the standard form of markdown

Linking notes is a game changing feature. Very easy to use and link notes. Their implementation of markdown doesn't deviate from the standard form of markdown and so the same files can be used by other markdown programs without any consequence. While renaming note link still works. See More

Top Con

Too many plugins

Top Pro

Multiple Vaults

A Vault in Obsidian is like a database. Internal links and files are not shared across Vaults. Each Vault is opened with a separate instance of Obsidian. Each Vault can have its unique app settings and plug-ins. Useful if you have distinct/unrelated projects or "data spaces" requiring different workflows and data relations. See More

Top Con

iOS version works only with icloud

Does not work with other cloud folders. See More

Top Pro

In-line tagging

Ability to tag-as-you-write and find each occurrence of a tag in the entire vault makes it very easy to organize and retrieve notes. Supports nested tags. See More

Top Con

Needs to be polished

They still need time to fix some bugs. See More

Top Pro

Infinite panes, split panes, lock panes

In Obsidian, pane = window = note = page Obsidian allows you to open as many notes as you can fit concurrently in your screen. You can split a pane horizontally/vertically. You can lock/link panes so they scroll in sync, useful for and edit & preview modes. See More

Top Con

V1.0 release is terrible

Don't download unless you can't find pre 1.0 version. See More

Top Pro

Functionality extensions with a growing number of plugins

Also open for anyone to develop their own extensions/plugins. See More

Top Pro

Daily Notes with template

Daily Notes plug-in, when clicked, generates a new note with the current date. Great for journaling and reduces friction in your writing habit. You can create a custom template for your Daily Note. See More

Top Pro

Helps visualize personal knowledge in ways nothing else allows

The Graph view is more than an aesthetic gizmo. It allows you to grasp and recognise clusters of information, follow branches and easily filter out what you don't want to see. The "animate" option shows how your notes and links have grown organically. With a bit of tweaking to the visuals and the proper theme, your graph might even start to look like a disturbingly "alive", eerie thing. See More

Top Pro

Random note

A plugin that, when clicked, surfaces a random note from your vault. See More

Top Pro

Support for tags

Top Pro

Readable as it hides the [[ ]] around links when in Preview mode

This is a big difference, as having to read through long-form texts laden with [[links]] gives friction. See More

Top Pro

Slides for giving presentations from within Obsidian

Easily turn your notes into simple yet sleek powerpoint-style presentations by enabling the Slides plugin and adding the --- separator. See More

Top Pro

Markdown rather than outline/blocks

Top Pro

Keyboard shortcuts, Vim key bindings

Hotkeys can be customized in settings. Can switch on or off Vim key bindings in the editor settings. See More

Top Pro

Great onboarding experience

The onboarding consists of well-written help documentation (saved as a vault) served in small chunks and organized systematically so that you become familiar with all its features as well as get hands-on experience in real time. See More

Top Pro

Community of developers building themes and plug-ins

Due to the tool being very developer-friendly, there are tons of cool developments being made to it by 3rd party devs. See More

Top Pro

Page previews on hover

When you hover on an internal [[link]], you get to preview the note without opening it on a new pane. Page preview plugin must be enabled. See More

Top Pro

Intuitive and easy to use with an excellent help system built-in

The app doesn't frustrate the user - the built-in help is excellent. See More

Top Pro

Embedding attachments, such as PDF

Variety of file formats are directly embedded in the markdown preview, e.g. markdown, image, audio, video and PDF files. See More

Top Pro

Exporting as PDF

Allows exporting your markdown files as PDFs rendered with all of your plugins. See More

Top Pro

Calendar

Daily and Weekly notes with Calendar Plugin. See More

Top Pro

Graph view

A pretty, alternative way to represent links between your notes. See More

Top Pro

Multiple cursors

A feature unseen in other tools. From the help doc, "This can be useful when modifying a lot of lines in the same way, for example putting - at the beginning of multiple lines to turn them into a list, or appending [[ to a series of links you’ve copied from elsewhere." See More

Top Pro

Can copy search results and paste as lists and/or links in a new or existing note

Top Pro

Advanced search

Supports extended searching by default. Community plugin called "Vantage" allows to make more advanced queries. See More

Top Pro

Git integration

Version Control for your vault with Obsidian Git plugin. See More

Top Pro

Aliases

Allows to refer to a note with multiple names. See More

Top Pro

Big and helpful community

There's a Discord server and a forum. Join the community! See More

Top Pro

Not locked to a provider

No lock-in to a certain company - just markdown files on disk. See More

Top Pro

Mindmaps

Available as a plugin. See More

Top Pro

Math

Uses MathJax. See More

Top Pro

Templates

Allows to create templates with built-in plugin. There's also powerful community plugin called "Templater". See More

Top Pro

Diagrams

Uses Mermaid. See More

Top Pro

Linking to blocks

You can link to a block - e.g.: paragraph, blockquote, heading. See More

Top Pro

Metadata

Add a custom metadata to a note with YAML front matter. See More

Top Pro

Sketching

With Excalidraw. See More

Top Pro

Academic citations

Supports Citations and provides inserting from Zotero. See More

Top Pro

SQL-like queries

Advanced queries for the data-obsessed with Dataview Plugin. See More

Top Pro

Workspaces

Saving and loading workspaces. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Audio Recorder

Top Pro

Folders and file level storage which is open to manage, does not lock navigation

With other options like notion, we can not see how the data is actually stored. See More

Top Pro

HTML Support

Use HTML in a note. See More

Top Pro

Incredible tool for PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) which allows anyone who has a computer and an internet connection to think better and create new insights

Top Pro

Helps with planning and organization.

Variety of planning and organization plugins, such as Kanban boards or Day Planner. See More

Top Pro

Supports importing from other tools

Supports importing from tools such as Notion, Evernote, OneNote, Apple Notes, Bear, Zkn3, TiddlyWiki 5, and Roam Research. Refer to Obsidian Help for more info. See More

Top Pro

Supports several languages

Translations are made by the community at GitHub repository. See More

Top Pro

Discord rich presence

Update your Discord status to show your friends what are you working on with Discord Rich Presence plugin. See More

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting for code blocks

Top Pro

Snapshots, file recovery, trash folder

Top Pro

Copy and paste images easily

When taking notes, you can just grab a print screen from your clipboard and paste into the notes without having to do any file management See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android

API:Beta

Collaborative:Upcoming

Search:Advanced

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899 70

score 111 · Answer 4

Logseq

Top Pro

Privacy-first

Logseq is a privacy-first tool for thought. See More

Top Con

Keyboard-driven editing/navigating is descent but average

It is only because I was a long-time Checkvist user that I say this. Checkvist has keyboard-driven controls which are in a league of their own. See More

Top Pro

Networked notes

Similar to Roam's technique of letting the notes flow with links to each other. See More

Top Con

Still in Alpha

Logseq is still in Alpha and is under heavy development. See More

Top Pro

Local-first software

Every topic is its own flat file. Nothing is better than keeping your data in the file system with an option of git source control or online backup. https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ See More

Top Pro

Daily journal is capture on Steriods

The daily journal feature allows you to quickly capture disparate topics under today's date and by way of tags make things organized and findable from any topic page. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Logseq is opensource. See More

Top Pro

Structured data over willy-nilly formatting

Lots of apps are too graphically flexible in how they allow content to be entered, placed, and formatted. They act like Word when what you want when authoring content is Markdown. Content and semantic structure, not graphical frills. See More

Top Pro

Org syntax

Logseq support Emacs Org syntax out of the box. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS

111 11

score 28 · Answer 5

Supernotes

Top Pro

Short-form note-cards

The note-card format is incredibly versatile, and great when you have lots of information. See More

Top Con

Only web apps for now

The developers haven't released native apps yet. See More

Top Pro

Responsive platform

Works on all devices, from mobiles to laptops. See More

Top Pro

Full Markdown (with LaTeX equation) support

Great to be able to use all the features of Markdown, rather than a select few. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android

28 0

score 31 · Answer 6

Trilium Notes

Top Pro

Free and open source software

Top Con

Interface can be confusing

There is a fair amount of flexibility to the interface but it can also become confusing, especially when some parts are not necessarily simple to use. Most of the basic features nevertheless are intuitive. See More

Top Pro

Note encryption

Top Con

Database storage rather than files

This makes it a little less simple to work with (also has benefits). See More

Top Pro

Excellent WYSIWYG interface

Top Con

Not markdown

It will import and export markdown but it does not store content as markdown. This isn't necessarily a problem if you don't need it. See More

Top Pro

Attributes that can be assigned to nodes and inherited

Top Con

Synchronization requires use of Trilium's sync server

This can be problematic to set up unless you have a web server that will support the requirements of this. See More

Top Pro

Graph of node connectivity

Top Pro

Note versioning

Top Pro

Synchronization with a server

You can set up synchronization but you need a server to do this. See More

Top Pro

Database storage rather than files

This enables the tool to do a lot of things that would be difficult with plain text file storage. See More

Top Pro

Archival functionality

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, Mac

License:AGPL 3.0

Technology:JavaScript

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31 4

score 52 · Answer 7

Mark Text

Top Pro

Open Source

Top Con

Not lightweight

On Windows 10 the installed size was 259 Mb, no surprise as this is an Electron based app. See More

Top Pro

WYSIWYG or TEXT visualisation

Top Con

Not a WYSIWYG editor, no formated preview

There is only plain text editing. See More

Top Pro

Has RTL language support

Can be used with languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. See More

Top Con

Limited block selections

Top Pro

Very light : 103 Mb only

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

License:MIT

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52 8

score 605 · Answer 8

Boostnote

Top Pro

Cross platform support

Supports Windows, macOS and Linux. See More

Top Con

Some of the features are not consistent

Top Pro

Markdown support

Top Con

Must use third-party service for sync-ing (Dropbox, etc.)

Boostnote does not have sync-ing capabilities and relies on third-party services to fulfil notes storage. There are additional steps involved to set this up. See More

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Can't work in "real" offline mode

Top Pro

Open source

See here. See More

Top Con

Very poor syncing

Data loss may occur on syncing. See More

Top Pro

Great for developers

Boostnote is great for developers looking to take programming notes with code snippets and such. See More

Top Pro

Supports code snippets and syntax highlighting

Boostnote has the ability to store code snippets and comes with syntax highlighting out of the box, supporting many languages. See More

Top Pro

Works offline

Boostnote doesn't require an internet connection to work. You can write notes offline and sync later. See More

Top Pro

Global search, tag feature

Top Pro

Comes with many themes

Boostnote comes with many themes out of the box, most of which are popular themes and color schemes for code editors: e.g. 3024, base16, solarized, tomorrow. See More

Top Pro

vim/emacs key bindings available

Boostnote supports vim/emacs key bindings. If you're a developer familiar with either of them, navigation should be easy to pick up. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows/MacOS/Linux/Android/IOS

605 54

score 517 · Answer 9

Turtl

Top Pro

Multiple Platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, Firefox, Chrome)

Turtl has applications for all the major operating systems, as well as Android. In addition, there are extensions available for Firefox and Chrome that cooperate with the downloadable applications. See More

Top Con

No iOS app

While many other operating systems have a client, iOS does not have one yet (though it is planned). See More

Top Pro

Open source

The app is licensed under GPLv3 making it open source. This means that anyone can use the code and contribute. This also makes it easy to use on one's own server or for company solutions. See More

Top Con

No image embedding

Instead of image embeddings, there's a sort of poor man's substitute: image + description. If you add an image, you can create a description of any size and with all the formatting features. It can be used instead of image embedding but much more limited: only one image and only at the very top. See More

Top Pro

Good security

After assigning a password to your account in Turtl, a key is created to encrypt the entire account. No data is stored on their servers meaning they have no access to unencrypted content. This is a huge leg up when comparing to other Evernote alternatives. See More

Top Con

Internet dependent

Requires Internet connection to initiate offline mode, loses access to notes without Internet or server. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Android

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517 81

score 57 · Answer 10

Checkvist

Top Pro

As simple or as complex as you need

Checkvist hits a sweet spot between minimal and complexity. It gives you a host of options and extras to use on your lists, but you can completely ignore them if you don't need them and keep it very simple. This makes Checkvist a one-stop shop, regardless of what type of 'list' you need. See More

Top Con

Limited capability in the android app

Checkvist is primarily a web interface. See More

Top Pro

Tasks can be managed with custom tags

Top Pro

vim-like commands

Top Pro

Convenient search by text or tag filtering

Top Pro

Converts incoming emails to todos - this is a way to enter tasks from anywhere.

Top Pro

Great search

Search filters help you search for tasks by tag, due date, assignee, etc. See More

Top Pro

Very flexible

To-do lists often need to be grouped and regrouped for clarity. The outline-based nature of Checkvist makes it easy to move things across categories, to increase and decrease priority, etc. See More

Top Pro

Smart parsing of items

Parses markdown, html links, hashtags to become formatted text, clickable links, and tags, respectively. See More

Top Pro

Generous set of free features

Checkvist offers many free features if you are using this individually. See More

Top Pro

Supports comments on tasks

Any item can have a free-text comment, which can be shown or hidden as desired. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web-based, Android/iOS PWA

57 1

score 11 · Answer 11

VNote

Top Pro

Able to attach files to a note

Top Pro

Markdown

Markdown note-taking app. See More

Top Pro

Free, open source

Source code is available via https://github.com/tamlok/vnote/ See More

Top Pro

Fast, uses C++ and QT Frameworks

Top Pro

Supports MathJax, Mermaid Diagrams, Flowchart.js

Top Pro

Vim Mode

Top Pro

Can be synced using third-party synchonization services

All files on your local disk. Utilize third-party synchronization services to work from anywhere seamlessly. (taken from https://tamlok.github.io/vnote/) See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

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11 0

score 158 · Answer 12

Org-mode

Top Pro

Very flexible

Org-mode is characterized by a flexible and versatile system with adaptability to different workflows, making it comparable as an Evernote alternative. It is at once simple and complex., which helps it to compete as an Evernote alternative. See More

Top Con

Difficult to learn

Org-mode has a difficult learning curve since you have to learn all the keybindings and commands. It's especially difficult if you are not used to Emacs. See More

Top Pro

Built-in agenda

Org-mode has some built-in agenda functionality. You can schedule tasks and assign various degrees of importance to each of them. Org-mode agenda can also be synced with Google Calendar. See More

Top Pro

Versioning can be tracked and synced using Git or other VCS

Org files are plain text, and lend themselves well to version control. Emacs also has good integrations for various VCS. See More

Top Pro

Great sync support

Notes and to-dos can be synced with Trello, Toodledo, Simplenote, Orgmobile, or with tools like Git on Github, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Bitbucket, while WebDAV (with iOS and Android) can also be exported to PDF, mind map, LaTeX, HTML, Docbook, or txt. See More

Top Pro

Basic spreadsheet functionality

Org-mode has some basic spreadsheet functionality. Other than auto-formatting ASCII tables (a notoriously annoying problem), it also has support for LISP-like syntax to define equations or any other functionality that can be achieved through spreadsheets. See More

Top Pro

Out-of-the-box Latex support

Org-mode has out-of-the-box support for Latex: it can immediately parse equations (or other Latex markup) and can even compile notes to PDF or HTML. See More

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158 14

score 269 · Answer 13

TiddlyWiki

Top Pro

Free and Open Source

No commercial interests, no ads, no registration, no nonsense. You own your notes 100%. See More

Top Con

Too many backlinks can cause performance issues

With 100k+ notes, backlink and brain graph visualization can slow down the wiki. See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable

This is a major aim and point with TiddlyWiki; people can relatively easily modify it to fit their particular application needs. See More

Top Con

Relies on browser performance, online or offline

TiddlyWiki is a single HTML file. Thus, if you directly embed e. g large images or videos in it (instead of using the features to display externally stored images and videos) it would make the file big and performance slow. See More

Top Pro

Single html file

It's a single file and all your notes will be "accessible even in 25 years" because they can be seen in plain html text. See More

Top Con

Without JavaScript nothing is visible

You need a browser that is not outdated to open the wiki, if you want to edit the HTML wiki file inside browser. Or you will need to download app like TiddlywikiDesktop or TidGi App to edit the wiki. See More

Top Pro

Self-hosted and indefinitely accessible

All content is stored within the same html file as the interface. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive, complex official user interface

Too powerful for some new users, requires stribg ability to learn many interactions and advanced features sets. But this can be change at anytime by install community theme and plugins. Or use edition like TidGi app to get Notion style experience. See More

Top Pro

10+ years mature

Mature software, active community with members from all over the world. See More

Top Pro

Relational links

Allows for relational links and lists between notes to keep things organized. See More

Top Pro

Lots of plugins

Top Pro

Progressive user level, from ease of use to programming your own plugins

Basic users can start with simple note-taking, progressively discover predefined features and existing plugins, then start using more fancy features (like filters, widgets, macros), in order to adapt their wiki to their needs. See More

Top Pro

Multiple, user-defined usages

The list of possible usages is practically infinite in TW, and more importantly it lets the user define their own method of dealing with their content. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Low barrier of entry for the non IT knowledgeable. See More

Top Pro

Backlinking and backtagging and brain graph visualization

Follow the link back-and-forth. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight and very customizable

Variety of settings, and community themes & plugins, available from built-in marketplace (CPL library). Every community plugin is open-source which means you can learn from it and develop your own. Some plugin don't require programming knowledge (written using WikiText), and is very easy to learn. See More

Top Pro

Support many text format (Markdown, WikiText, HTML, WYSIWYG...)

Suit for programmer, writer, Notion style WYSIWYG editor lover, and HTML UI designer. See More

Top Pro

Locally stored, not dependent on cloud

Everything is stored in your device. You can back them up, encrypt and process however you want to. Works completely offline. Read your notes anytime, anywhere, in any platform, and sync between without cost. See More

Top Pro

Backlink and BackTagging, advanced linking and cross-references in various ways

Every card can link to other card, and other card will see the way it's linked to. Use Tag for nesting and build folder structure. Tags are tree shaped, and count of tag is limitless. Backlink can be automatically generated or selectively generated using advanced filter. See More

Top Pro

Update all links when renaming notes (required the Relink plugin)

Renames titles in "Tags" and "List" fields by default. Relink plugin updates titles in all links automatically. See More

Top Pro

Host your TiddlyWiki file on GitHub for free

You can use the TiddlyWiki saver to save your TiddlyWiki file directly to your github repository. If you also use GitHub pages, then you can load your file wherever you happen to be, make changes, and update. See More

Top Pro

Active and helpful community typically answers questions within hours

The official support forum is at talk.tiddlywiki.org. It's frequented by a large number of knowledgeable TiddlyWiki enthusiasts. You rarely see a question go unanswered more than 2 or 3 days, and in most cases questions are answered within minutes. For harder questions, the developer himself frequently wades in to add information. See More

Top Pro

The equivalent of DataView/SQL already baked into the product

You can create lists of anything inside TiddlyWiki like tags, title structure, date, custom fields and present it as links, checkboxes, tables or whatever structure you need using a few lines of wikitext (a markdown-like language with powerful widget ability built-in). See More

Top Pro

Official CodeMirror Plugins for a complete editing experience

The official CodeMirror plugins allow you to close brackets, close tags, auto-complete, use VIM, Sublime or Emacs keybindings, and edit CSS, HTML, XML or Javascript text. See More

Top Pro

Free multiple workspaces

In cross-platform desktop APP TidGi and Android App Tiddloid you can create as much wiki workspace as you want, they are free forever. See More

Top Pro

Tags are first-class objects in TiddlyWiki

In TiddlyWiki tags aren't some kludgey text-based add-on -- they're built into the design from the first. Tags can contain spaces and non-Latin characters. Tags are available at the top of each note. Click on a tag and you instantly see all the other notes that share that tag. You can then change the order of that list simply by dragging and dropping from the tag-pill. Tags can tag other tags, allowing you to create multiple types of TOC's with the built-in tag macros. You can create new notes tagged with the current note with just one click. See More

Top Pro

Encrypt your entire Wiki with SJCL without additional plugins

You don't have to worry about leaving your TW somewhere it might get exposed. You can activate the built-in encryption ability, using the Stanford Javascript Encryption Library to have your wiki encrypted with 256 bit security. See More

Top Pro

Can embed images and documents for a portable, single-file solution.

TiddlyWiki gives you the choice of whether you access additional resources (images, docx, pdfs) externally from the operating system or internally as embedded objects. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android

269 86

score 502 · Answer 14

Microsoft OneNote

Top Pro

Text can be added anywhere like a whiteboard

OneNote allows you to arrange text freely on the digital paper mimicking the way it would be done with a real pen on real paper. See More

Top Con

Not available for Linux

There is no native Linux client for OneNote available, and most likely will never be created. Users can use the web based client, but a native app would be a better choice for those that use the app frequently. See More

Top Pro

Comprehensive organization methods

Can have multiple 'sections/tabs' at the top like in a web browser with many notes within each 'section/tab'. Also, there can be sections within section groups infinitely. The complete hierarchy looks like this: Notebooks > Section Groups ... Section Groups > Sections > Pages > Sub-pages > Sub-pages. See More

Top Con

Requires a Microsoft account

You need to have a Microsoft email to sign up for OneNote (Outlook, Hotmail, or Windows Live). See More

Top Pro

Supports hierarchical organization of information / notes

OneNote is designed to allow hierarchical organization of information. This is achieved with grouping into the following categories and UI elements (Notebooks, Sections, and Pages). Both Sections and Pages allow additional groupings that can be expanded / collapsed in list view. This can be incredibly helpful for quickly taking notes and organizing them for work or personal projects. For example, you could have a Notebook for "Cooking Recipes", with sections for "breakfast, dinner, desserts", where individual recipes would be page entries (i.e. the "Desserts" section would have pages for brownies, chocolate cheesecake etc). See More

Top Con

Not open-source

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed. See More

Top Pro

Powerful table editor

Adding and resizing rows and columns is easy and flexible. This makes for an easy way to adjust a note as it grows in content size. See More

Top Con

The added flexibility means your notes may feel cluttered

Since you can place elements anywhere you'd like on your note, you have to pay attention to how you structure it. For some this added flexibility is a huge selling point, but for others it could become distracting and makes notes feel difficult to digest. See More

Top Pro

Insert files into your notes

You can add a variety of different files into your notes including images, video, audio, and more. See More

Top Con

Menu/ribbon can feel crammed

OneNote offers a lot of formatting options, which results in a lot of options being crammed into the ribbon. It can feel somewhat cluttered and takes a bit of time to get used to. See More

Top Pro

Strong search features let you quickly find what you're looking for

If you don't want to search through all of your notes, you can narrow it down by specifying the page, section, group, or notebook. You're not limited to just searching through your text either. You can search for text in images, video recordings, and audio (this is off by default). See More

Top Con

Sync isn't stable

Many users have reported synchronization issues. While not everyone will experience this, it can be difficult to troubleshoot, with some fixes resorting to editing registry keys in Windows when using the Windows client. See More

Top Pro

All indented lines under the first can be expanded and hidden

Which makes it easy to quickly look at the high level of notes, and then drill deep into each point. See More

Top Con

Text editing is weird (poor UX)

When clicking in the middle of a note, it adds something like a text-box positioned in the middle. If you move that field to the bottom right, it gets weirder. You can end-up with an empty note, having an empty text-box 1km to the bottom-right of it. See More

Top Pro

Add notes through email

You can choose what notebook the notes will save to. E-mail notes to your special Onenote e-mail and it will be accessible across all devices. See More

Top Con

Syncing issues

It tells you there are conflicts between a note on the PC and on the Android because of the timing of the synchronization but doesn't try to resolve itself. See More

Top Pro

Stylus and digitizer pen support

OneNote can be used on all touch capable devices via stylus or digitizer pen making for an intuitive and easy way to take notes by hand, which can often be faster or just preferred over typing. It has the best pen input out of any note taking app. See More

Top Con

Platform dependent

The newer versions for Windows and Mac are converging, using the Windows style layout (with a more more consistent and usable UI). The original OneNote for Mac for example is very different from OneNote for Windows. Because Microsoft has a vested interest in making sure the Windows version is superior, the Mac version tends to lag behind in terms of functionality. Tutorials and other forms of documentation available online generally apply only to the Windows version, which implies non-Windows versions are undocumented. Even worse, because the documentation rarely, if ever, indicates it only applies to Windows, it's easy to waste hours trying to make non-existent features work. As such, the documentation is "negative documentation" (i.e. worse than no documentation at all). See More

Top Pro

Very similar design for those used to Microsoft programs

If you have experience with other Microsoft programs such as Microsoft Office, you'll feel right at home with the design of OneNote thanks to the similarity of the menus. See More

Top Con

Doesn't automatically sort (by name, size, date)

You can't choose to sort automatically. Just do it manually. See More

Top Pro

Lots of options for customizing fonts

You can fully customize your default font (the color, type of font, and font size). You can override this styles with the same options (and more) in individual notes. See More

Top Con

No backup on Windows 10 free version

If you accidentally delete a section on the windows 10 free version of Onenote, there is no backup to fall back on. See More

Top Pro

Converts handwriting to text on Windows version

You can take handwritten notes on your mobile device with a stylus or digital pen and then convert the handwriting to text later on your Windows PC. See More

Top Con

Search function is lacking advanced features

e.g. Searching for "friend" will find "friendship" and "friendly" (because "friend" is at the beginning of the word); using this query will not find words such as "girlfriend" or "boyfriend." See More

Top Pro

Article Web Clipper available on desktop and mobile

Has a web clipper extension on Chrome and Edge that can be used for clipping whole articles and images. Web clipping of articles is also available on Chrome mobile through the "Share" option. See More

Top Con

Uninspired, bland user interface

Many of OneNote's competitors use Material Design and bold colors to create a minimal, clean looking interface. OneNote has a bit more of an outdated look and can feel over crowded at times. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Its available Windows Mobile, Windows Store, Android, a Desktop Version, and a Web app. Apple macOS and iOS are also supported. See More

Top Con

Annotations can’t be anchored to a photo

If you annotate a photo or some text, then insert some text above it, the annotations don’t necessarily move with the photo and get misplaced. See More

Top Pro

Table is sortable

Top Con

iPad version is behind the Windows version in features

Biggest issue for me is that you’re stuck with the default, example tags - you can’t import custom tags from your Windows copy, or create and delete tags. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with other Microsoft services

Integrates well with Outlook, Office, and OneDrive. See More

Top Con

Some features require external apps

Sort pages, find and replace, etc need external apps called onestatics. See More

Top Pro

Sharing and collaboration

You can share your notes by inviting people with an e-mail, or by giving them a direct URL. You have control over what kind of access the user has on your note (read only, edit) and can revoke it at any time. OneNote will alert you when a chance is made on your shared note. See More

Top Con

You cannot use local OneNote files with the version of OneNote that is included with Windows

There is a difference between the OneNote that is included with Windows 10 and the OneNote that comes with Microsoft Office. The version included with Windows cannot use local OneNote files and requires you to be online to access your notes. See here for this and other differences. See More

Top Pro

Offers flexible encryption

Unlike most other apps, you can selectively password protect, and fully encrypt, individual documents or entire folders. This is especially important to many people with data stored in the cloud. As of early this year, even the free version supports encryption. Microsoft has also enhanced their internal security methods for storing data on OneDrive (where OneNote performs sync), which makes it more secure than most of their competitors (including Evernote). See More

Top Pro

Mathematical calculations

You can perform mathematical calculations in OneNote like a calculator. e.g. 1+2=3, 85/4=21.25, 8!=40,320, 7^2=49 See More

Top Pro

Ink to Math

Handwritten mathematical equations can be converted to typed mathematical equations. Moreover, you can ask OneNote to solve the equation too. See More

Top Pro

Optical character recognition

You can copy / search text in images added to OneNote. See More

Top Pro

Page versioning

You can view the history of any page and revert to a previous version. See More

Top Pro

On Android, you can tap a badge to start a note

The badge on Android hovers over on your screen similar to Facebook Messenger's Chat Heads. You can tap it and instantly start jotting down your thoughts without having to flip to the app first. See More

Top Pro

Import and link calendar events and tasks in Outlook

This is great for taking meeting minutes. You can import all the meeting details, including a checklist of attendees and a link back to the original event in your Outlook calendar. You can tag all the actions coming out of a meeting and you can create linked tasks from them in Outlook. Much quicker and more effective than writing meeting minutes the traditional way. See More

Top Pro

Browser plugins allow easy saving of web pages

The ability to quickly file away web clippings is a key part of note taking. See More

Top Pro

Large variety of themes available

You have quite a few options for themes available with illustrated backgrounds. If you want something a bit more simple while still having personality, there are also several color themes. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows / OSX / iOS / Android / Web

Collaborative:Yes

Export:*.one, *.docx, *.doc, *.pdf, *.xps, *.mht

Offline access:Yes

See All Specs

See All Experiences

502 164

score 514 · Answer 15

Evernote

Top Pro

Consolidates all your information

Evernote is designed to store a lot of different types of information from a lot of different sources in one place. Using the Web Clipper, native integrations, or a service such as IFTTT (If This Then That) you can use Evernote to store all your ideas, notes (both handwritten and typed), tasks, reading lists, receipts, and more. See More

Top Con

Free version limited to 2 devices

The free version has become very limited as a cloud based note taking app as there is now only sharing between two devices allowed. See More

Top Pro

Powerful features for organising your notes

Evernote is designed to make it easy to keep your notes well organized, which aids in quickly finding/browsing old information. You can put notes into a single notebook and use search to access old notes, or if you're so inclined, organize notes extensively with hierarchical notebooks and tags. See More

Top Con

Pay for offline use, search, and other functions

The free version of Evernote is highly limited. You have to pay if you want to access your notes without internet connection, search your notes or documents, or upload large amounts of data. The free version allows you to upload 60 MB of data per month, which is about 20 to 30 iPhone camera pictures. At a certain point, they started charging you for "advanced" capability, which includes searching your own attachments. See More

Top Pro

Can include images, and snippets from the web or a whole webpage via web clipper

With one click you can clip part or all of any webpage, including text, images, and links. Especially for those who use Google Chrome, this web clipper is a very rich add-on. The “simplified article” mode strips all graphical overhead from the page before adding the information to Evernote. It's also possible to add highlighting, tags, etc. before storing the note. See More

Top Con

Different features and functions per device

Desktop app has table creation. Android app lacks font color changes. Some functions can only be accessed on the desktop app. These include changing your default notebook. See More

Top Pro

Has OCR functionality to convert images to searchable text

A really cool and handy Evernote feature is the ability to automatically scan images for text. See More

Top Con

Security issues

Evernote had their entire database hacked and compromised including customer user passwords. They responded by locking valid users out of accounts and forcing password changes but are still vague about their own security policies. They do not have a good track record for data security. They also do not offer local personal encryption of entire Notebooks as Microsoft OneNote does. See More

Top Pro

"Reminders" are a great way to combine your to-dos and notes

One of the note types is a "reminder," which can act as a to-do list. You can add all the usual formatting to reminders, including audio. Evernote will provide alerts when they are due and house them in a special location within the app. See More

Top Con

Buggy

A program with more features is always prone to more bugs. Evernote is definitely not the most stable note-taking program available. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Evernote is easy to dive into because it doesn’t overwhelm you with advanced functionality from the start. As you get more accustomed to the app, you might want to delve deeper to see what benefits the more advanced features will offer. See More

Top Con

No official Linux app

Evernote does not offer an official Linux app, although there are some third party alternatives available. See More

Top Pro

Native and offline-capable apps on pretty much every platform

Evernote has apps for Windows 7 and 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, Mac, Android, iOS (both iPhone and iPad), Blackberry, and Windows Phone. It also has a fully functional web app and chrome plug-in. No matter what device or platform you're on, you will pretty much always be able to access Evernote. See More

Top Con

Constantly directs you to upgrading your account

The frequent reminders to upgrade your account can quickly become disruptive. You get notifications when using the app, and many of the features that show as available in the app are actually for paid accounts only (which, when you try to use them, will remind you to upgrade). See More

Top Pro

Multipurpose

In addition to general note taking and to-do list management, Evernote lets you search through scanned documents, handwritten text, and images; collaborate with others through shared notebooks; record audio notes; and more. See More

Top Con

Syncing is slow

Top Pro

Trustworthy to store data in the long term

With many utility tools being constantly shut down by their creators, it's really important to consider the long-term risks of picking a home for all your notes. Evernote is a $1 billion company with a track record of exceptional security and goals of becoming a "100 year old" company. See More

Top Con

Prices have doubled since Bending Spoon purchase

I used to pay 7 €/month, now it's 13. See More

Top Pro

Powerful note formatting

Evernote has an extensive range of formatting options and note types. You can create checklists, reminder alerts, audio notes, or add images and attachments. It also has an awesome speech-to-text feature if you prefer to dictate aloud. See More

Top Con

Very heavyweight for a to-do list

Evernote is a powerhouse program with many features. It uses a correspondingly large amount of memory to run. See More

Top Pro

Great selection for integrating with other apps

The Evernote app center page is nicely organized and has good quality integration of apps that can improve your productivity. See More

Top Con

Missing some basic functions

Top Pro

Focused, uncluttered user interface

Evernote has a very clean and intuitive interface that's simple to understand at a glance. See More

Top Con

Not distributed

One cannot run Evernote on own servers. This brings with it the risks normally associated with handing over critical applications to a large corporation. See More

Top Pro

Evernote is synchronized

Top Con

Bending Spoon have relocated to Europe and fired 129 people

Top Pro

Premium allows search in attached files and documents

With a premium account you are able to search through PDFs and Office Docs. See More

Top Con

Poor text formatting abilities

Text formatting in Evernote is buggy and unreliable. Bullets (outlining) are getting stuck or disappearing, tables are very static and prone to breaking and everything beyond the most basic formatting might cause an issue. See More

Top Pro

Innovative hacks

To save emails, just forward them to your Evernote email address generated on account creation. It is of course one of many such hacks. See More

Top Con

Basic and lacking handwriting function

Handwriting has basic functions, is attached as a picture See More

Top Pro

Flexible image manipulation

Permits photos that are taken, to be processed when in automatic mode and saved as a photo, black and white document, colour document, post it note or business card. The automated mode is also good at cropping the document effectively. See More

Top Con

Bloated and complex

Evernote is too big, has too many features. Note taking apps need absolutely clean interface to allow unobtrusive note taking and not a struggle to search for which buttons to click. It focuses on the search feature so much that it doesn't encourage or make it immediately easy to organize your notes and thoughts. It's essentially a sophisticated notes dump with good search. See More

Top Pro

Best web clipper

Can clip to the web from desktop or mobile, using simplified format or original formatting. Very quick and flexible, and enables you to highlight, take notes, tag, etc. See More

Top Con

New web editor does not support Firefox

As of now, Firefox users must download a separate extension to change their user agent to trick the Evernote site into giving them the beta, or install Chrome. See More

Top Pro

Can choose from a few themes

You can pick from a green theme, light, or dark theme. All are very clear and visually appealing. See More

Top Con

No recurring and snooze reminders

Perhaps because it is not truly a to-do list app, there is currently no support for recurring events or snooze reminders. The company claims to be working on this functionality. See More

Top Pro

Effective with pictures or snapshot of boards

Take a picture of your white board/paper board and you have it instantly in evernote everywhere, ready for additional notes and classification Scannable friend app is rather efficient to keep hand written note as well. See More

Top Con

Lacks search and replace capability

Top Pro

Skitch integration

If you're on iOS and have Skitch installed, you can quickly annotate your notes using Skitch. See More

Top Con

Rather poor user interface

Slow, not user friendly experience, complex, and somehow limited. See More

Top Pro

Has conflict management and undo

Allows undo/redo when editing (i.e. all changes are finalized upon saving). If conflicts between synchronized versions arise, both copies are saved in Evernote. See More

Top Con

Lacks right-to-left writing support

When you write in a right-to-left language (Arabic, for example), everything looks fine in the editor but the direction changes to the left again after saving the note. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Since Evernote has so many features built in, it's hard to know where to find everything until reasonable amount of time has been spent with it. See More

Top Con

Easy to accidentally hit the wrong button on the mobile apps

The mobile apps have fairly small touch targets, making it easy to miss the button or accidentally press the wrong one. See More

Top Con

No ability to re-order notes other than sorting

Evernote has no way to re-order notes, nor even to change their display order. Sorting is the only option, and the "official" workaround (for years now) is to prefix note titles with line numbers manually so notes will sort and display as desired. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android / iOS / WP / OSX / Windows / WebOS

API:yes

Collaborative:yes

Export:ENEX, HTML, MHT

See All Specs

See All Experiences

514 189

score 199 · Answer 16

Dynalist

Top Pro

Ability to create documents and organize by folder, and search by title

Top Pro

Unlimited notes

Which is perfect for personal knowledgebase. See More

Top Pro

Search and link to other notes

Top Pro

Bullet hierarchy with zoom

Able to zoom in in bullet points, collapse bullets, move bulleted information, etc. See More

Top Pro

Create custom user styles

Anyone can create a custom style and share them with the community, which can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Inline images

Top Pro

Printable shared lists

Specs

Platforms:All major platforms (Web/Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android)

199 28

score 180 · Answer 17

Standard Notes

Top Pro

Encrypted

Notes are encrypted and secured so only you can decrypt them. See More

Top Con

Formatting enabled only as extension for money

Top Pro

Extensible

Editors, components, actions, and themes. See More

Top Pro

Open-source

Top Pro

Simple

Faster and lighter than most notes apps. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Available on Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux. See More

Top Pro

Themes

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Web

Technology:TypeScript, Docker

See All Experiences

180 35

score 176 · Answer 18

Zim

Top Con

No mobile app support

This is a desktop app and there are no mobile versions available. This can make it more difficult to use on-the-go if using cloud storage to store files from the app, as there is no mobile app version to access those files. See More

Top Pro

Allows for organized, wiki-style navigation

Notes can contain links to other notes, allowing you to reference important information when needed. This way the user can connect and reference many different pages in the app, keeping things clean and structured, unlike Evernote, which makes this a good Evernote alternative. See More

Top Con

No native sync support

Zim notes don't automatically synchronize with other devices or offer built-in cloud sync support. Of course the user can add the files to Dropbox, or something similar, to then open them on another device with the app installed. But this is more of a work-around than a built-in solution. See More

Top Pro

Plain text data format rather than proprietary

If/when the app is no longer developed (or if the user simply decides to no longer use the application or view/edit it on a non-supported platform), this can still be done with any plain-text editor. See More

Top Con

Looks ancient

Zim has a very plain and outdated interface. See More

Top Pro

Automatically manages files and folders

Zim will automatically create a folder structure that fits your page hierarchy and adds/removes files such as images to/from appropriate folders. See More

Top Pro

Good export options

Zim supports HTML, LaTeX, Pandoc Markdown, and RST. This allows ones documents to be easily used in a wide selection of other apps. See More

Top Pro

Support for multiple platforms

Windows, Linux, and BSD are supported with their own clients. This is nice for those that use multiple operating systems but still want to use the same app on each. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

License:GPL

Technology:Python

Markdown support:Export

See All Experiences

176 38

score 2402 · Answer 19

Vim

Top Pro

Lightweight and fast

When compared to modern graphical editors like Atom and Brackets (which have underlying HTML5 engines, browsers, Node, etc.), Vim uses a sliver of the system's memory and it loads instantly, all the while delivering the same features. Vim is also faster than Emacs. See More

Top Con

High effort to customize

A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs. See More

Top Pro

Free and open-source software

Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware. See More

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

You'll spend a lot of time learning all the commands and modes supported in Vim. You'll then spend more time tuning settings to your needs. Although once it's tuned to your needs, you can take your .vimrc to any machine you need and have the same experience across all your computers. See More

Top Pro

Works in terminal over SSH

Unlike other editors such as Sublime Text, Vim is a command line editor and hence can be used in remote development environments like Chromebooks via SSH. See More

Top Con

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

Top Pro

Extremely portable

Vi/vim exists on almost all Unix-like platforms. It's the de-facto Unix editor and is easily installed on Windows. All you need to make it work is a text-based connection, so it works well for remote machines with slow connections, or when you're too lazy to set up a VNC/Remote Desktop connection. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Many plugins depend on optional Python and Lua features, which may or may not be included in whatever binaries are available for your system. And without platform-specific hacks, it is difficult for plugins to operate in the background or use external tooling. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard-based, mouse-free interface, and trackpad support

There's no need to reach for the mouse or the Ctrl/Alt buttons again. Everything is a mere key press or two away with almost 200 functions specifically for text editing. Vim does support the mouse, but it's designed so you don't have to use it for greater efficiency. Versions of Vim, like gVim or MacVim, still allow you to use the mouse and familiar platform shortcuts. That can help ease the learning curve and you'll probably find you won't want to (or need to) use the mouse after a while. See More

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Though basic features like syntax checking, autocompletion, and file management are all available out of the box or with minimal configuration, this is not obvious to new users, who might get intimidated or assume they need to install complex plugins just so they can have this functionality. Other features new users might expect to find embedded in Vim, such as debugging, instead follow a UNIX-style model where they are called as external programs, the output of which might then be parsed by Vim so it can display results. Users not familiar with this paradigm will likely fault Vim for lacking those features as well. See More

Top Pro

Great productivity

Vim's keyset is mainly restricted to the alphanumeric keys and the escape key. This is an enduring relic of its teletype heritage, but has the effect of making my ost of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches. See More

Top Con

No smooth scrolling

Even with the GUI version, the lines jiggle line-by-line. If you are used to smooth scrolling, this is very annoying, especially when working with larger files. See More

Top Pro

Macros increase productivity

Many text editors have programmable macros, but since Vim is keyboard-based, your programmed macros are usually far more predictable and easier to understand. See More

Top Con

Doesn't play nice with the system cut/paste mechanisms

This can be worked around somewhat if you disable mouse for insert mode. You can then right-click your terminal and use paste like you would anywhere else in a terminal. But it still doesn't feel right when the rest of your system uses Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V, and you have a system clipboard manager, and so forth. See More

Top Pro

Excellent performance

As it loads the whole file into RAM, replacing all string occurrences in 100 MB+ files is quick and easy. Every other editor has sort of died during that. It is extremely fast even for cold start. Vim is light-weight and very compact. In terminal, it only uses a small amount of memory and anytime you invoke Vim, it's extremely fast. It's immediate, so much so you can't even notice any time lag. See More

Top Con

Outdated UI

Top Pro

Tons of plugins/add-ons

This makes Vim the definitive resource for every environment (Ruby/Rails, Python, C, etc.), or simply just provides more information in your view. See More

Top Con

Requires Brain Mode Switching

When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the vim combinations can actually make you SLOWER at everything else. See More

Top Pro

Everything is mnemonic

No need to memorize different key combinations for things like deleting the text inside of a block or deleting the text inside of a pair of quotes. It's just a series of actions, or nouns and verbs, or however you prefer to think about it. If you want to delete, you select "d"; if you want it to happen inside something, you select "i"; and if you want the surrounding double-quotes, just select ". But if you were changing the text, or copying it, or anything else, you'd still use the same "i" and ". This makes it very easy to remember a large number of different extremely useful commands, without the effort it takes to remember all of the Emacs "magic incantations", for example. See More

Top Con

Slow when opening files with very long lines

A lot of very long lines can make Vim take up to a minute to open files, where a few other editors take only seconds to load the same file. See More

Top Pro

Vimtutor

Vimtutor is an excellent interactive tutorial for people with no prior experience of Vim. It takes about 30 minutes to complete. See More

Top Con

Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic

Text editing in vim is awesome, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing. See More

Top Pro

Amazing extensibility

Vimscript provides a rich scripting functionality to build upon the core of Vim. When combined with things like Tim Pope's Pathogen plugin management system, it becomes easy to add support for syntax, debugging, build systems, git, and more. See More

Top Con

Foreign keyboards have a hard time on Vim out of the box

A lot of frequently-used keybinds are way harder to access on foreign keyboards because they use different layouts. For example, Germans use the QWERTZ layout, while French use the AZERTY. See More

Top Pro

Usable from a Terminal or with a GUI (GVim, MacVim)

If you happen to be logged into SSH, you can use Vim in a terminal. It can also run with a GUI too. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive mode switching

Top Pro

Has been supported for a long time

And will be supported for many years to come. See More

Top Con

Extensibility isn't that great

While it has gotten better and some projects are slowly starting to build proper extension support, it still can't and by design never will achieve the extensibility of another editor like emacs. See More

Top Pro

Once learned, it's very hard to forget

Vim's somewhat steep learning curve is more than made up for once you've mastered a few basic concepts and learned the tricks that allow you to program faster with fewer cut/paste mistakes. See More

Top Con

Works poorly out of the box with right-to-left

Top Pro

Can never outgrow it

The fact that very few, if any, people claim to be a "Vim Master" is a testament to the breadth and depth of Vim. There is always something new to learn - a new, perhaps more efficient, way to use it. This prevents Vim from ever feeling stale. It's always fresh. See More

Top Pro

Flexible feature-set

Vim allows users to include many features found in IDEs and competing editors, but does not force them all on the user. This not only helps keep it lighter in weight than a lot of other options, but it also helps ensure that some unused features will not get in the way. See More

Top Pro

Has multiple distinct editing modes

Interaction with Vim is centered around several "modes", where purpose and keybindings differ in each. Insert mode is for entering text. This mode most resembles traditional text entry in most editors. Normal mode (the default) is entered by hitting ESC and converts all keybindings to center around movement within the file, search, pane selection, etc. Command mode is entered by hitting ":" in Normal mode and allows you to execute Vim commands and scripts similar in fashion to a shell. Visual mode is for selecting lines, blocks, and characters of code. Those are the major modes, and several more exist depending on what one defines as a "mode" in Vim. See More

Top Pro

By default in Linux

All Linux distributions out there will have Vim built into them, which is highly convenient! See More

Top Pro

Vim encourages discipline

If you use Vim long enough, it will rewire your brain to be more efficient. See More

Top Pro

Useful undo features

Vim does not only offer unlimited undo levels, later releases support an undo tree. It eventually gives the editor VCS-like features. You can undo the current file to any point in the past, even if a change was already undone again. Another neat feature is persistent undo, which enables to undo changes after the file was closed and reopened again. See More

Top Pro

Donations and support to Vim.org helps children in Uganda through ICCF Holland

Top Pro

Built-in package management

Starting with Vim 8, a package manager has been built into Vim. The package manager helps keep track of installed plugins, their versions and also only loads the needed plugins on startup depending on the file type. See More

Top Pro

If you can use Vim you can also use vi

Top Pro

Works on Android

Top Pro

Productivity enhancing modal paradigm

As with all vi-like editors, Vim provides a modal paradigm for text editing and processing that provides a rich syntax and semantic model for composing succinct, powerful commands. While this requires some initial investment in learning how it works in order to take full advantage of its capabilities, it rewards the user well in the long run. This modal interface paradigm also lends itself surprisingly well to many other types of applications that can be controlled by vi-like keybindings, such as browsers, image viewers, media players, network clients (for email and other communication media), and window managers. Even shells (including zsh, tcsh, mksh, and bash, among others) come with vi-like keybinding features that can greatly enhance user comfort and efficiency when the user is familiar with the vi modal editing paradigm. See More

Top Pro

Asynchronous I/O support

Since Vim 8, Vim can exchange characters with background processes asynchronously. This avoids the problem of the text editor getting stuck when a plugin that had to communicate with a server was running. Now plugins can send and receive data from external scripts without forcing Vim to freeze. See More

Top Pro

Can set up keymapping

Top Pro

Multiple clipboards

It is called "registers". See More

Top Pro

Status Booster

Using vim not just increase your productivity, but helps you flex. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:Vim License

Price:0

Extension language:Vim

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score 82 · Answer 20

Org mode for Emacs

Top Con

Obtuse documentation

The documentation assumes a level of understanding of basic Emacs usage that not all users may have. See More

Top Pro

Can be as simple or as complex as you want

Org mode started out as a simple outlining/note taking app. Then each outline heading can optionally be a TODO list item. And if you desire, you can add SCHEDULE and DEADLINE dates. (Schedule being the date you'd like to start the item.) You can customize the TODO states to add things like DELEGATED, WAITING, BLOCKED, etc. See More

Top Con

Complicated to get started

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Top Con

Difficult to use as a database

For example, if you need to quickly populate client details on quotes, unfortunately its easier to find, copy & paste. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Emacs runs on all platforms, Windows, Linux, OSX, even Android and IOS See More

Top Con

Not suitable for normal users

Not even a majority of software developers can be bothered to use Emacs (or VI, for that matter). See More

Top Pro

Exports data to PDF, LaTeX, HMTL and other

You can even build presentation or blog from your data See More

Top Con

PDF export can be difficult

Latex assumes you're a (compliant) student, have to do a lot of research to get what you want out of it. See More

Top Pro

Supports tables with formules (quite powerful!)

Top Con

Uses Emacs (for those who prefer vi, menus, etc.)

Top Pro

Plain text data storage

Future-proof. See More

Top Pro

Inline image displaying

Top Pro

Free but copyrighted

Top Pro

Fast interaction

Once muscle-memory sets in, can be much faster to use than a point & click program. See More

Top Pro

Uses Emacs

Top Pro

All apps

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