I use Drafts on iOS and iPadOS. I have been for years. Just as a quick scratchpad.
But now I want to see if it’s possible to use it as a real notes app. Right now I’m using Bear for that.
Is anyone out there using Drafts as a dedicated notes app, storing lots of notes and how do you nest all those notes?
Thanks!
Here is one previous discussion that might be of interest to you.
Yes, I use Drafts for all my notes. And I came from Bear. Drafts tags let me see my notes in different ways than the tags as folders approach in Bear. Also, tags are always at top in Drafts. I found changing tags in Bear tedious sometimes.
In general, I tag notes with what they are (project, ref, list, journal) and their Area of Responsibility (me, my husband, my son, biz, finance, family) or subject (tech, medical, hobby, etc.) So I can see everything by what it’s about or what type of item it is.
For example, if I’m trying to remember something that is medical and relates to my son, I can see all things with those tags. Too many notes? I add reference or journal tag to my sort depending on if I was journaling about an appointment or looking for some fact I saved.
My project workspaces use the project tag and the Area. I flag current or most important so they are at top. When a project is done, I change the project tag to done and it disappears. But I can see everything done in just a few clicks. I also use SMB for projects I might do.
I use one of the Add to Lists Actions from the directory to keep idea lists, gift lists, etc.
I have a few extra tags - Read to track books read, Watch for movies, TIL for interesting facts, Quote for, uh, quotes, and Recipe for…
For journaling, I have some like fun, funny, pleasant, unpleasant. So a fun day out with my son would have journal, son, and fun tags.
I save links, thoughts dictated to my Watch, etc, to my inbox all day and process most evenings. I love the rearrange feature, the navigate to headings and recent drafts, and some actions that process lists and link drafts.
Occasionally, I miss images and being able to save a whole web page. I couldn’t stand the new Bear web clipper. Overall Drafts is just so much more flexible with more features.
Thanks for your responses I will get back to you soon when I have to look at it.
Without I’m having read your comments yet. How do you guys handle images in Drafts? If I need to include an image in a note and write something and then send it all off to someone with text and image. Will that work in Drafts?
Drafts only handles text. Any images would need to be stored externally and referenced accordingly by whatever means you would find practical for local logging and access (potentially offline?) and accessible for whatever sharing mechanism you put together (e-mail attachment, public hosted image URL, etc.)
Think of “nesting” notes like Gmail does - by using labels (named however you like, even if they look like directory paths), you can have whatever arbitrary scheme you like.
Tags are really the best value, and what make the Drafts archive so valuable. I have actions to randomly pick drafts, to bring a sense of novelty. Heck, I’ll even pick 4 drafts that have any kind of tags, and the rich sense it creates is generative itself.
Set up a workspace of untagged notes, have an action that allows you to select notes, turn on Focus mode, and just process note after note - over time, you’ll get the tag scheme you need, and have a rich database to boot.
Thanks for all your input. I just had a look at it again tonight, and I just can’t use Drafts as an all purpose notes app.
I really detest tags which is the problem here. I need a nested folder structure like Notes.app or Bear or Ulysses. I can’t do the other thing as I have some 200 notes in Bear and they are all nested neatly, I know where everything is and I just can’t give that up, despite loving Drafts and I will keep it in the dock as an entry scratchpad, but for now I just don’t see how I can use it fully-fledged
Excellent reply! Thank you for this. It gave me a lot of ideas on how to use Drafts