Anyone had any experience with Tot note taking app for IOS & Mac? If so, how does it compare to Drafts 5? Thank you
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I think the quote in the Macstories Tot review sums it up pretty well.
For the purpose of this roundup, I have excluded apps like iA Writer, 1Writer, Drafts, and other, more complex text editors that go beyond the simple act of just saving text in a scratchpad. While it is possible to use those apps for that kind of task – and I believe plenty of folks use Drafts like that – I was effectively looking for iPhone and iPad alternatives to Apple’s TextEdit for Mac.
Tot is a quick to capture editor. Drafts is a quick to capture editor, which can go beyond the simple act of just saving text in a scratchpad.
Personally, I think Drafts is in a different league and other than the per document editor settings (Drafts is per syntax type and more is coming soon for syntax options), I haven’t seen anything in Tot that Drafts does not have a direct equivalent for or indeed something that does more than Tot currently delivers.
At the same time, Tot is a brand new app and Drafts has existed for quite a few years, so maybe it will become a more capable alternative in the future? Certainly competition can be good for all apps and users.
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I have, and use, both apps.
If all you are doing is writing something down, they are similar. Tot will limit you to 7 different notes. Drafts will not.
That’s pretty much all Tot does: let’s you write things down. It also has very reliable sync between Mac/iOS (as does Drafts).
Drafts has an expansive set of things that it can do with that text once you’ve written it down.
Tot has none.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Again, if you are just writing things down, Tot is all you need. But it’s not going to replace Drafts for most cases.
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I think they complement each other very nicely, with Tot as scratchpad and Drafts as the place where text actually gets worked on. I use both and have found Tot fits really nicely into my current workflow, but is nowhere near replacing Drafts.
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I use Drafts very much the same was as Tot was designed to be used. One of my favorite actions is the “long press Drafts icon” + “Paste clipboard into new note”.
Drafts can certainly do much more than Tot. but if all you need is what Tot does, then I can see people considering them interchangeable.
Use both. Drafts has more features but one thing I really love about Tot is that it does markdown formatting of copied text when paste. For example, if portion of text being copied is in Bold the when paste in Tot, it’ll add ** in that portion of the text. Drafts should add that feature as an option
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It has the constraint of seven (infinite) notes: more likely than not, you saved that tiny scrap of text there and not anywhere else; at least it’s where you first check.
Reliable? Try “flabbergastingly impressive”. I love how Tot handles sync.
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Exactly, I quickly found out that if you need to add a child bullet to a main bullet in Tot, it’s best to just append to the main bullet the mention “develop elsewhere” where “elsewhere” is your favourite app (Drafts, iA, Ulysses, 1Writer, etc).
Err, I usually find arbitrary developer applied constraints a limitation rather than a feature. I mean, I get it. it drives a certain type of engagement, but personally I like being able to store more sets of information in a notes app than I have toes. 
For me that only seven notes simply isn’t a feature; though I guess the direct comparison would be that Drafts is limited to some number that is upwards of thousands of notes.