Notes you can still read if the app disappears

First, find out what you would actually keep

1. 1

   Export everything, today

   Most applications offer an export. Do it once and look at what comes out: whether it is one file per note or a single archive, and whether it opens in a plain text editor.

2. 2

   Open one of those files without the application

   If a text editor shows you your note, you are fine. If it shows a database, an encrypted blob or markup you cannot read, that export is a ransom note rather than a copy.

3. 3

   Check what the export leaves behind

   Attachments, the links between notes, tags and history are what usually do not survive. An export that loses the links between your notes has lost most of the work.

What an export does not fix

• It is a photograph, not a way of working. You have to remember to repeat it, and the day you need it is the day you forgot.
• Your daily notes still live inside the application, so the dependency is intact between one export and the next.
• If the format is proprietary, the export gives you something you can store but not read.

Writing straight into files that are already yours

• Tisty keeps notes, documents and tasks as plain files on your own disk. There is nothing to export, because the files are the notes.
• Any editor opens them, with Tisty running or not, installed or not.
• No account and no server: nothing is synchronised unless you put the folder somewhere that synchronises.
• Free and open source under the AGPL-3.0, for Windows and macOS.

Carry on with

• Let an AI assistant read your notes without uploading them

Questions