How to store notes in Markdown format and why it's better than Evernote

Last summer, Evernote raised its pricing and limited the number of free syncing devices to two. Many users were unhappy and switched to other services for storing notes, which are abundant on the Internet. They are comfortable, beautiful, each has its own characteristics. The only but - if your favorite service decides to raise prices, like Evernote, cut functionality or completely close, like Springpad, you will have to spend a lot of time to save your data and export notes.

Do I have to use third-party services to take notes? After all, there is another way. Organize your notes as simple text files with Markdown markup, organized into folders in any cloud storage.

What is Markdown

Markdown has already been written about on Lifehacker several times. It is an extremely easy-to-learn text markup language that allows you to create formatted documents in plain text files. You can see its syntax, for example, here.

Advantages

Cross-platform

Evernote is obviously not going to release an official client for Linux, like OneNote, and third-party clients are far from perfect. Markdown notes can be opened on any system and on any device - Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS.

Convenient synchronization

You can use any cloud storage you want. Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud - the choice is yours. As a result - the convenience of backups, since most cloud storages support file recovery from previous versions. If necessary, you can organize your own storage. Naturally, the chosen cloud can be changed at any minute. It is enough to copy the folder with notes.

Ease of migration

If you've tried to migrate from Evernote to OneNote or WizNote, you may have noticed how inaccurate the migration utilities handle your data, losing notes and corrupting their formatting. By storing your notes in Markdown files organized into folders, you don't have to worry about export problems. You can quickly convert your notes to any popular format using text format utilities such as Pandoc.

Extensive sorting of notes

Evernote users complain that notebooks don't support more than two levels of nesting. You can create tags in Simplenote, but you cannot create folders. By saving your notes as text data, you can sort them as you like, depending on the tools of your operating system and file manager. If you want, you can improve the system by adding tags to your notes in the form of simple text, indexed by the search.

Large selection of tools

Notes in plain text files with Markdown markup are good because, working with them, you can do without third-party tools at all. All you need is a file manager to sort them out and Notepad to open them. But using note-taking programs can make editing Markdown files more comfortable.

What you can use Markdown for

Notes

This markup language is good for quickly writing short notes with minimal formatting or taking notes and notes. The created documents can then be easily converted into other formats (.docx,.odt,.pdf and others) while maintaining the formatting. With Markdown, you can write posts for your blog.

Articles from the Internet

Markdown is suitable not only for writing your own articles, but also for saving information from the Internet, for example using the Fuckyeahmarkdown service. Saved articles, cleared of extraneous information, can be comfortably read on a computer or tablet.

To-do lists

Markdown lets you create descriptive lists, and with apps like Simpletask or Cheddar, your todo.txt becomes a complete task manager.

mail

With Markdown Here, you can quickly create Markdown emails without the distraction of clicking formatting buttons in your web interface or email client.

Markdown annotation tools

Windows

Of the many editors, MarkdownPad can be distinguished - a simple and functional editor that lacks only the file panel, or ResophNotes. For writing text in abstract mode, Writemonkey is suitable.

Mac

MacOS has a large number of Markdown Notes. Write and iA Writer support synchronization with Dropbox, iCloud and other cloud storages and have clients for iOS. Notational Velocity and nvALT are perfect for those who like a minimalistic interface. The Ulysses app is a great tool for writers.

Linux

Linux users can try P. S. Notes, a simple, lightweight and fast note manager. Similar to nvALT, it has a file panel and distraction-free mode. For writing larger notes, Ghostwriter is perfect, in which you can insert images and export the resulting result in various formats, Uberwriter or Typora.

Cross-platform solutions

Cross-platform text editors like Atom, Brackets or Sublime Text with a file pane and multiple extensions turn into handy note managers. They support document search and simultaneous editing of multiple notes with autocorrect and regular expressions.

iOS

You can select any of these applications to edit your notes.

Android

There are plenty of Android editors. Supports, for the most part, syncing via Dropbox or Google Drive.

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Web services

Fuckyeahmarkdown is a handy service that turns web pages into Markdown. A bookmarklet from this site can replace the Evernote Clipper.
An IFTTT recipe for saving your favorite articles from Pocket to a text file with Markdown.
The Copy as Markdown Chrome extension comes in handy if you copy information from the Internet.

The Save Text to File extension for Firefox saves the selected text to a file by adding a time stamp

There are also many web editors that support Markdown, such as StackEdit and Dillinger

Eventually

I've been using text annotations in Markdown for over a year now. I'm missing only two features that were in Evernote - text search in images and automatic tagging. But the advantages of the new way of storing notes outweigh the disadvantages. Now I really feel like my data belongs to me. Markdown Notes is not a cloud service. They will not demand payment for access to them and will not inform one day that they intend to close.

What do you think of this way of storing notes?