Notes/Todo App Wishlist
For the past few years, Wunderlist has been my most used app and the main reason I still use my Macbook (for better keyboard shortcut integrations).
I use the app not only as a todo list, but also as storage for my notes. However, the app has recently been discontinued, and I'm not happy with the successor (Microsoft ToDo) for a few reasons.
- Crashes at least once a day.
- API is still in beta.
- Developer community is a bit barren.
- Export feature doesn't do anything.
- Loses some of my data (~1 per 100 items).
On the plus side, it does have a really good Android android widget, which is one of my top priorities.
Specific complaints about To-Do aside, Wunderlist/To-Do model always had some pain points for my use cases. The two-layer list format (one layer of folder and one layer of list) isn't really suitable for organizing notes whilest including citations from articles, books, scientific papers, etc. The separation between my thinking todos and the media that inspired them makes it hard to track back my reasoning.
Finally, my 5-year-old Macbook Air (bless it) has been having battery, storage, and processing issues. Some of these are not really solvable without buying a really expensive new one, and it would be much better to just switch to Windows.
Moving away from ToDo (as soon as my Export issue gets resolved) seems like a good opportunity to solve all of the above problems at once. Since I have a bunch of use cases the app, I decided to try brainstorming the features I'm interested in and rank them to help my search.
Minimum requirements: 1. Good keyboard shortcut integration. 2. Android widget app. 3. Expressive public API. 4. Don't lose data. 5. Good search feature. 6. Excellent export feature. 7. Support for offline use. 8. Few crashes. 9. Cross-platform.
Nice-to-haves, in order of priority: 1. Multi-layer nested pages. 2. Automatic sync with Instapaper. 3. Automatic sync with Kindle. 4. Automatic sync with Audible. 5. Good app longevity. 6. Suitable for long-form quotes and notes. 7. Good developer community. 8. Don't have to write my own service for it. 9. Integration with Anki. 10. Ability to sync with Twitter. 11. Cross-linking functionalities.
It's ok to get features through Zapier/IFTTT. In fact, I think most of the automatic features will probably come through Zapier or IFTTT. I can't think of a single product that would meet all of the requirements without using those.
What's interesting here is that all the integrations – Instapaper, Kindle, Audible, Twitter, Anki, cross-platform – will probably come from specifically two conditions being met: good developer community and expressive public API. I haven't really given this much thought before, but the lesson here seems to be that as long as you have an expressive public API and a product that developers like enough, developers will make the product more useful for everyone. There is a real network effect going on here. In a sufficiently open platform that developers like, the number of developer contributions becomes a leading indicator of consumer usage.
Anyways, my current forerunner seems to be Notion, which meets all of the minimum requirements except “Android widget app” and “expressive public API”. For the prior, it seems like I might be able to get away with using a different app like Todoist as my widget, and do a once-a-week copy of the contents to Notion. For the latter, there are some popular repositories that has reverse-engineered Notion's API (!) and so opened the floodgates for integration. The obvious caveat being that tools can in theory break anytime.
The nice-to-have list will be a bit fiddly. There's a service called Readwise which can sync and collect Kindle & Instapaper highlights, while Snippet seems to be a service that has better automatic syncing of Kindle highlights. These support IFTTT/Zapier, but Notion don't. I'll have to look around for ways to get syncing onboard.
Other than some issues in the automatic sync items, which are admittedly most of the nice-to-have features, Notion seems to be the ideal candidate here. I am looking into Roam as well, though.
Finally, Evernote is an interesting alternative. I consider it abandonware at this point, so it's Really Weak in the longevity department. I'd like the new system to last for a while, so hopefully I don't have to look into Evernote too soon.
Anyways, these are my notes on the todo/notes app wishlist so far. Would be curious to hear recommendations, and expect to post back here when the search is done.
— Categorized under: #workflow