Why I moved my notes to plain text
I have used a long list of note-taking apps. Each one promised to be the last. Each time, a few years later, I was exporting thousands of notes into some half-supported format and fixing broken links by hand.
Two years ago I moved everything into a folder of Markdown files, synced between machines and backed up like everything else.
What I gave up
Pretty databases, embedded spreadsheets, and a few clever search features. In practice I rarely miss them.
What I got
- Notes I can open with any editor, on any machine, decades from now.
- Search with the same tools I use for code.
- History for free, because the folder is a git repository.
The format is boring, and boring is exactly what I want from something I expect to keep for the rest of my life.