Any recomendations on digital journal/field notes tools?
One thing I loved doing that sort of fell out of my life was keeping a small note book and transferring everything important to a journal. Its what kept me mostly organized throughout high school and uni but things got a bit hectic after I started working. I just jumped to scattered Google Keep notes that are difficult to follow up on. I've since tried Obsidian to scratch that itch but that became even a more chaotic mess than Keep.
Jump to last week and my phone battery and USB port both gave up while traveling. Fortunately the person hosting me was happy to sell the old Samsung Note phone that had been gathering dust. Not a fan of the Samsung Ecosystem or the weird oversized form factor. But the integrated stylus is something I didn't think I needed. I just pop it out and the screen instantly goes into note mode. it's helped when I just need to jot something down or illustrate some idea. I could easily minute a casual meeting and shared the outcomes as an image set. Was a lot more personable than the ignored pdf document or a wall of text in a slack group and people were more likely to check it than ask for information that was right there.
Beyond that, I'm more likely to jot down ideas, reminders and notes, and actually come back to them. I've also found the mazec3 keyboard that let's me write to text reliably and I prefer it to longer typing on touchscreen (used it for this post). The problem is that I really want to combine these tools into an actual workflow. Just checking if anyone has a consistent toolset to easily take stylus notes and to effectively organize and catalog the results?
I've tried messing around with Obsidian Canvas with the ink and draw.io plugin but it doesn't seem geared for spontaneous scribbles and complex shapes. And it all just ends up as a formatting chore that I keep putting off. Also spent some time looking through the Play Store for something off the shelf but everything there is now "AI Powered" and it's another red flag on top of overpriced in-app purchases. It all feels like a data harvesting or advertising scams and google is incentivized to push revenue generators and ad mills over actual functionality.
Try the Excalidraw plugin instead. It's what I used for spontaneous drawn notes throughout uni. You can create and embed a drawing into your current note with one command, and Excalidraw offers freehand drawing (with tablet pressure sensitivity), shapes, text, element grouping and more.
I used Excalidraw for sketching until the developer changed the way partial exports are saved (always in the same folder as the original, which sucks for me and can't be changed).
I loved the freehand vector drawing with pressure sensitivity! Switching drawing tools felt cumbersome and I especially disliked that my preferred tool couldn't be made default. Instead I needed to go through the tray to switch into it, every time. IIRC, I also had to change in to the black colour each time too. It's been a while so there's always the chance these functions have been streamlined since.
I agree that if OP already tried Ink and it wasn't sufficient, then Excalidraw is likely their best bet within the Obsidian realm.
Thanks. This is working very well and is flexible enough to make and manipulate drawings. Also pairs very well with the handwriting keyboard because I'm not jumping between free-handing and typing.
Current trial has a Tasker widget shortcut open a daily canvas for quick notes and I'll sort them out on a tablet or desktop when I can. A lot better than the default Samsung one that constantly creates new memos. Now it's just the long term slog to figure out what to organize this into.
Big reason I dropped the old journal was the time and effort to keep things organized. Especially when space becomes a problem and needing to transfer or track important items. Can see infinite space leading to senseless clutter so excited to go down this new rabbit hole.
If you're a Microsoft OneNote user, I believe there's a way to sync Samsung Notes with it, allowing you to keep your spontaneous notes from when you pull out the stylus (since they get stored in Samsung Notes), while using OneNote for your more important journal things. OneNote played decently well with the stylus when I last used it in 2021/2022 when I was in college. I'd keep my notes organized by semester, class, and lecture. I never tried the Samsung Notes -> OneNote sync feature though so I can't tell how good/bad it is sadly.
Thanks. Might consider that for my work notes since that's the only place I have MS tools. Makes sense since I've always used OneNote and Power Automate to centralize the million other info streams from emails and spreadsheets to Scoro, Jira and Trello. I just checked if the Samsubg Note app had some sort of integration points to push that info somewhere else but no documentation of it on the developer site.
There is of course always more to be said about subjects. But, there also have been threads about this subject in the past you might find interesting. These are the two threads I remember, they are slightly bigger in scope but largely talk about the same things:
Appreciate the pointer. Probably missed those topics because my search was limited to creative threads. Always approached Journaling as a creative outlet because it was a lot of drawing, creative writing and an excuse to use my moms scrapbooking stationary.
But some good info here to consider.