I’ve lost track of the ridiculous number of ‘Zettelkasten apps’ now on the loose on the wild wild web. When I checked the ChatGPT marketplace, for example, I had to stop counting at 50. I was losing the will to go on looking at them.

Everyone makes the apps, it seems, but who’s left to use them?

If you’re one of those sensible people who just want to make useful notes, plain text files with Markdown are simple, elegant, versatile and durable.

It’s hardly magic.

You can create these notes with any basic text editor, but I’m keen on people creating a working environment that works for them. So if you’re looking for a few bells and whistles, here are four note-making apps that seem to offer just enough features and not too many. Oh, and they’re open source and free to use, so you know, use them. Go make your notes!

a group of students trying to register for university courses using trays of punched cards in 1968

“Hey, check these out!"

Zettlr

“Zettlr offers first-class support for any style of curating your own Zettelkasten. Zettlr supports note IDs, internal Wiki-style links, related files, seamless navigation, and even a graph view.”

There’s a fairly good summary of how to use Zettlr for the Zettelkasten approach to making notes.

Who’s it for?
Academics and others who want to write and publish their research with Markdown and who aren’t totally scared of Pandoc and LaTeX but could do with a little support in that area.

Who’s it not for?
Anyone averse to Pandoc or LaTeX (although you can just ignore these and still use Zettlr).

NB

“a command line and local web note‑taking, bookmarking, archiving, and knowledge base application with plain text data storage, … Initializing a folder as an nb local notebook is a very easy way to add structured git versioning to any folder of documents and other files.”

There’s a very brief nb-for-Zettelkasten summary.

Who’s it for?
Anyone who prefers command line tools, likes the idea of syncing their notes using Git, and wants maximum format flexibility.

Who’s it not for?
Windows users who never worked out how to run Linux-native apps and who aren’t about to start now. Ditto for command-line refuseniks.

Foam

“a note-taking tool that lives within VS Code… Foam is open source, and allows you to create a local first, markdown based, personal knowledge base. You can also use it to publish your notes.”

Who’s it for?
Anyone who already uses VSCode (it’s Microsoft’s flagship code editor) but wants some note management goodness, and anyone who might otherwise use the paid notemaking app that Foam rhymes with.

Who’s it not for?
Timid souls who might be put off by apps that are ‘still in preview’.

LogSeq

“Logseq is a knowledge management and collaboration platform. It focuses on privacy, longevity, and user control. Logseq offers a range of powerful tools for knowledge management, collaboration, PDF annotation, and task management with support for multiple file formats”.

Who’s it for?
They say “Logseq is a networked outliner”, so if you love outliners it might well be for you.

Who’s it not for?
People who don’t love outliners, I suppose. Oh, and they’re planning to make LogSeq Pro a paid app, so it might not be for freeloaders (eventually).

Well, that’s the end of this little roundup. Please let me know what fantastic app you find most suits you - and why.

And for the record, I couldn’t find a note-making app I really liked so I made one myself (sort-of).

Image:
No it’s not a bunch of hyped-up influencers salivating over the latest batch of AI-enabled notemaking apps. It’s actually a Marshall University “arena registration” utilizing IBM punched cards, in 1968.

Source:
Dickinson, Jack L., and Arnold R. Miller. In the Beginning…A Legacy of Computing at Marshall University : A brief history of the early computing technology at Marshall University, Huntington, W.Va., in the forty years: 1959-1999. Huntington, Marshall University Libraries, 2018. PDF

Now read: A minimal approach to writing notes