Evernote
Note-taking app to capture, find and organise notes, documents and tasks on all your devices.
A personal notes app with attachments, full-text search and OCR of scans is within reach in a few days. The chore is elsewhere: recovering years of notes (importing .enex exports), a web clipper that works everywhere, sync on the phone. If you mostly have a large stock to migrate, count the migration as the real project. If you are starting from zero on a computer, replaceable.
What you lose
- The web clipper that works reliably on all sites.
- The mobile apps.
- OCR and search honed over years of data.
- Sync between devices.
- Import and export edge cases, and long-term peace of mind.
Existing alternatives to Evernote
- NotesnookOpen source
Open-source note-taking app encrypted on the device, with a usable free plan but a less mature ecosystem for tasks and web clipping.
- SiYuanOpen source
Open-source note-taking and structured knowledge tool (AGPL-3.0), weaker than Evernote on scanning, clipping and turnkey sync.
The prompt to build it yourself
Build me a notes and capture app to replace Evernote. Stack: Node, Express, better-sqlite3, server-rendered pages, listening on localhost only. To do: - Notes in Markdown stored in SQLite, with tags; editing in a textarea with live preview (marked). - Attachments: I drag a file or image onto a note, stored in ./data/files/ and linked from the note. On upload, OCR with tesseract.js on images and PDF pages, and the extracted text is stored so my scans and receipts are searchable. - Full-text search (FTS5) in notes and OCR text, with a search field in the header and filters by tag. - Capture by bookmarklet: POSTs the title, URL and selected text of a page to a new note. A bookmarklet, not an extension. - An import script for Evernote .enex exports (notes, tags, attachments) so my old notes really migrate. - A weekly export of everything to a folder of .md files with the attachments. - No accounts, no telemetry, data on my machine. Out of scope: mobile apps, sync between devices, browser extension. README: installation and data location.
Frequently asked questions
- Can Evernote be replaced by a custom-built tool?
- casevibecode verdict: Partly replaceable. A personal notes app with attachments, full-text search and OCR of scans is within reach in a few days. The chore is elsewhere: recovering years of notes (importing .enex exports), a web clipper that works everywhere, sync on the phone. If you mostly have a large stock to migrate, count the migration as the real project. If you are starting from zero on a computer, replaceable.
- What is Evernote used for?
- Note-taking app to capture, find and organise notes, documents and tasks on all your devices.
- What alternatives to Evernote already exist?
- Notesnook (open source), SiYuan (open source). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.
Community feedback
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