Do you keep a .txt file with all your notes/todos?

2 liorgrossman 3 6/9/2025, 5:41:40 PM
Hey HN,

It might be an old-school habit (40 y/o here), but I keep a .txt file on my Mac with tons of snippets and references, e.g. useful git or shell commands, TypeScript/CSS reference, helpful ASCII characters, my daily TODOs, and more.

For technical stuff, I find it much faster than using janky apps like Evernote or Google Keep, so it never slows me down.

However, it's still not ideal - since my .txt file has become pretty large, I'm finding it hard to keep it up-to-date or organized, and it's getting harder to find things.

I've been thinking of building a better alternative that would also allow easy sharing/discovery/forking of technical notes from others (https://earlytap.com/get/gitnotes), but I'm still pondering whether this is an actual need shared by enough people.

Curious to hear: are any of you keeping .txt files with notes on your computer too? What do you use the .txt file for? Did you find any better alternatives?

Comments (3)

JohnFen · 46m ago
At work, I keep my notes in text files or in a physical notebook. A new text file every day, named by date. (At home, I use a wiki)

I've yet to find a system that works better than that for me (obviously, I suppose, or I'd be using it). Finding stuff in the notes is just a grep away.

5bolts · 3h ago
not anymore, converted over to logseq a while back and once i got used to the tagging its just quicker.

nice daily journal too. We use onenote for work stuff - shared stuff anyway

liorgrossman · 3h ago
Uh nice, I never heard of logseq, it look really nice!

How do you use OneNote for work though, isn't it slow? (not a user, but I assumed it'll be something similar to Google Keep)