I noticed that Amplenote was mentioned in the spring, but hasn't really received much attention here since. I am enthusiastic about this app. I especially like that you can create tasks in any note, then see a list of all tasks throughout your notes.

For a good introduction, take a look at this video:

https://youtu.be/wspUsA32Z_8

BTW, one thing I love about this video is that the presenter ends the introduction with use cases. That's all too often missing from such videos.

Steve Z.

Seems to be as privacy-conscious as Standard Notes, but more full-featured (albeit for $20/yr more).

I moved to Amplenote from Evernote three months ago and it has been working well for me. I would lump Amplenote in with Roam or Obsidian as a personal knowledge manager, but it also borrows a subset of the features of a filing cabinet-type application such as Evernote, and a task management apps such as Things. The key features of Amplenote include:

1. Backlinks with context. The context is well done here. If the link is in a bullet, the entire bullet is provided as context in the linked note. If the link is to a heading in the document, then the entire section is transcluded.
2. Rich footnotes. While creating links there are several fields that you can populate.I like to add a description in my links that explains the reason I am link the notes.
3. PDFs and image files attached to notes are searchable with OCR. The OCR works well and there is a button on images to pull the text from the photo into the body of the note.
4. Task list. All todos are pulled out of all notes in a tab of the application. The tasks have fields for marking priority, urgency, importance, due date, etc. It uses that data to calculate a task score. The task list can be sorted by tag, task score, which note it appears in, etc.
5. Calendar integration. You can assign reminders on tasks or block time you want to to work on tasks and that will be sent to your Outlook or Google calendar.

I'm all for calendar integration when possible, but since the sync process here is one-way only date and data get synced to the calendar, but not the other way around. So with apps like Amplenote and Dynalist you must switch between editing dates in the app and using the calendar to view your events. And if you see conflicts and need to make changes you have to switch back to the notes app to make the changes. This is so frustratingly clumsy that I avoid using the feature.

The task manager I use has two-way sync, so that when inside my calendar I can move events around and have them link back to the task manager. I think that's the way it should be done with all these apps.

Amplenote claims to be planning to have its own calendar at some point in the coming year. I don't know if that will improve the situation or not. I agree, two-way integration with your calendar is crucial.

I think apps creating their own calendars is usually a waste of programming resources. I have never seen a proprietary calendar app for a note taker app that could compare favorably to some of the dozens of already-available calendar apps that can natively pull in Apple or Google Calendar data. There are literally dozens of good mobile calendar apps already that work with Google Calendar, and several good PC/Mac ones too. And people in offices who have to use Outlook would be better off pulling in a sync to their existing calendars than having to use a completely different calendar app to work with their notes.

There are some excellent task managers I won't consider because of this. Things for Mac/iOS uses a proprietary calendar, but its calendar is simply inferior to the one(s) I use. I have less of a need to integrate events with an outliner or a notes app, but it would certainly be a nice feature if it were able to provide 2-way sync.

The number of apps that natively offer two-way sync is rather small unfortunately. The ones I know offhand are TickTick, gQueues and Todoist. It's possible to automate 2-way sync with an outside service like Zapier but I don't know of any notes apps that work with it. (Zapier does sync Google Calendar with OneNote but I think that's it for note-taking apps.)

Of course it remains to be seen how useful Amplenote's calendar will be, but having a calendar -- that is a way to schedule tasks -- is essential to their stated goal:

https://www.amplenote.com/about_us

So I hope they do a good job.

One of the real discoveries of my effort to compare various PKMS was Amplenote, which I hadn't known about before. It is surprising this app doesn't get more attention as it is quite powerful.

Pros:

1. integrated task management
This is really important for me, because I find that there is tremendous utility in being able to have my notes and tasks in one place and have them integrated. A simple example is making a note to call someone about a project and then having the ability to link to pages about that person and project. Only a few apps let you do this easily.

2. Calendar integration
Again, only a few PKMs have this, but I agree with the comment above about how key this is for any kind of task management workflow. I also like to make notes on events and meetings. I haven't really tested how this might work, but that is another reason for having good calendar integration into a PKM.

3. Mobile app
Right now I use Logseq, but have never been able to use it on mobile. The DB version should fix that, but even then they don't currently have a dedicated mobile app developer, so it could be a long time before something decent is available.

4. Plugins
There already seem to be a number of useful plugins, such as for Readwise integration and better markdown support. I haven't tested these yet.

Cons:

1. While it does have folding in outline view, it does not have zoom, which I consider an essential feature. Every PKM I've used for the past few years (Workflowy, Roam, Dynalist, Logseq) has it, and I would hate to loose this.

2. Not block based. It is document based like Obsidian, not block-based like Logseq. This means you can link to documents, but not to individual parts of an outline. I could probably live with this.

3. Limited offline support. Attachments are stored in the cloud, and so aren't accessible if you are offline.

Another con is the lack of aliases. The ability to refer to the same note by different names is something I use all the time. I'm not talking about link aliases where you have one name written but the link is something else; rather, true aliases like Logseq where you can link to the same note using different wikilink names. This is another key feature that many PKMs fail to implement.

So you can create events. First you create a bullet and then you use the bullet menu or type ! to select a start time.

However, a problem with it not being block based is that if you create an event and then add a note or task as a child of that event (in the outliner), it is only linked to the page, not the event itself.

Example, from a fictional page titled "PKM Course"

2025-01-18 Lecture on outliners
- [[todo]] prepare power point
- [[notes]]

If you look up the todo or the notes, they will be linked to [[PKM Course]] not [[2025-01-18 Lecture on outliners]] but in Logseq they would be identified as being related to this block.

I could probably learn to work this way, but I don't think i want to.

Luhmann wrote:

It is surprising this app doesn’t get more
attention as it is quite powerful.

OVer the last few years Shu Omi's YouTube channel has released a number of videos on Amplenote. In this video about it he calls it his "lifeOS":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnegdZOYK6A

In a video survey of notetaking apps ("15 Best Note-Taking Apps for 2025 (That Aren't Notion or Obsidian)") just posted today he continues to call Amplenote his go-to notetaking/todo app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WIkrZr3XWI

Here's his Amplenote video playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voEkgvYETdM&list=PLralmZwl_8jLEwOERwc-ZIehv19zuDkq9

It's interesting that he specifically omits Notion and Obsidian in that video, which seems to imply their current frontrunner status in the PKM space.

One feature of Amplenote that I value is that the daily notes are viewable in a scrolling page, so it is easy to look back and ahead a few days to see what happened and when, or to make notes about upcoming events. Reflect has this and it is one of the reasons (among many) that it has become my go to note app. There must be other apps that do this, but I am unaware which ones.

Steve

Heh, there’s an Obsidian plug-in which allows you to do the same thing (can’t remember offhand what it’s called).

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

One feature of Amplenote that I value is that the daily notes are
viewable in a scrolling page, so it is easy to look back and ahead a few
days to see what happened and when, or to make notes about upcoming
events. Reflect has this and it is one of the reasons (among many) that
it has become my go to note app. There must be other apps that do this,
but I am unaware which ones.

Steve

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

daily notes are
viewable in a scrolling page,

Tangent can do this

One feature of Amplenote that I value is that the daily notes are viewable in a scrolling page

The early EverNote had this already 25 years ago efore they started the enshittification process.

Does anyone remember? https://web.archive.org/web/20041018192828/http://www.evernote.com/en/products/evernote/

Yes, the 'toilet paper' paradigm :)


Christoph wrote:

One feature of Amplenote that I value is that the daily notes are
viewable in a scrolling page

The early EverNote had this already 25 years ago efore they started the
enshittification process.

Does anyone remember?
https://web.archive.org/web/20041018192828/http://www.evernote.com/en/products/evernote/

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Yes, the 'toilet paper' paradigm :)

Employed by Jack Kerouac for On The Road, a book I've never read, written on a roll of paper fed through his typewriter.

Kind of a shame I remember how it was written without having a clue what it says.

(A brief interval transpires.)

Ok, Wikipedia has filled in some gaps in my literary knowledge. Don't let me discourage anyone. I think, however, I live a life at some distance from the Beat Generation.

What I'm talking about is a little bit different. In Reflect and Amplenote, the daily notes have the scrolling action, but regular notes are individual and are not in a scroll. In the original Evernote, every note was on a timeline that you could view through the scrolling "toilet paper" roll. I did like that approach.

Steve

Christoph wrote:

One feature of Amplenote that I value is that the daily notes are
viewable in a scrolling page

The early EverNote had this already 25 years ago efore they started the
enshittification process.

Does anyone remember?
https://web.archive.org/web/20041018192828/http://www.evernote.com/en/products/evernote/

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

What I'm talking about is a little bit different. In Reflect and
Amplenote, the daily notes have the scrolling action, but regular notes
are individual and are not in a scroll.

In Tangent it's all on a filter - so tags, folder or search.
View options are cards, or the scrolling list.

I'm pretty sure there is more than one, but the one I use is called Daily Notes Editor:

https://github.com/Quorafind/Obsidian-Daily-Notes-Editor



MadaboutDana wrote:

Heh, there’s an Obsidian plug-in which allows you to do the same
thing (can’t remember offhand what it’s called).

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
One feature of Amplenote that I value is that the daily notes are
>viewable in a scrolling page, so it is easy to look back and ahead a
few
>days to see what happened and when, or to make notes about upcoming
>events. Reflect has this and it is one of the reasons (among many) that
>it has become my go to note app. There must be other apps that do this,
>but I am unaware which ones.
>
>Steve

FYI this week Shum Omi posted another Amplenote video, comparing it this time to TickTick and Todoist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0nq7qmGvMk

satis wrote:

FYI this week Shum Omi posted another Amplenote video, comparing it this
time to TickTick and Todoist.

Do you think he should be regarded as an Amplenote publicist?

No. He does videos on all major notetaking and PIM apps and his comparisons are fair. When he's compensated he clearly notes it, as with a recent video about Evernote that they had sponsored. He's a longtime Amplenote user and fan and while he tries to get the word out about the app he has relied on for years he seems scrupulously fair, as you can see in this week's comparison video.

If there is one sticking point about Amplenote he typically fails to disclose it is the paid tier pricing (which is almost 50% more than Todoist's Pro tier) but his other reviews also focus on features not pricing.

Agreed.


satis wrote:

No. He does videos on all major notetaking and PIM apps and his
comparisons are fair. When he's compensated he clearly notes it, as with
a recent video about Evernote that they had sponsored. He's a longtime
Amplenote user and fan and while he tries to get the word out about the
app he has relied on for years he seems scrupulously fair, as you can
see in this week's comparison video.

If there is one sticking point about Amplenote he typically fails to
disclose it is the paid tier pricing (which is almost 50% more than
Todoist's Pro tier) but his other reviews also focus on features not
pricing.

I do recall the roll, ie scroll, and liked it. It was fun at the time, but with thousands of notes it becomes less practical except for a way to reach into a list of miscellaneous notes at random and see what might strike your fancy. I think by using a specific tag on all notes (or particular groups of notes as per your choice) in a program such as MyInfo you can get the one big list of notes to roll through.
- Daly

Christoph wrote:

One feature of Amplenote that I value is that the daily notes are
viewable in a scrolling page

The early EverNote had this already 25 years ago efore they started the
enshittification process.

Does anyone remember?
https://web.archive.org/web/20041018192828/http://www.evernote.com/en/products/evernote/