I think I have finally found the ultimate solution for my note-taking pains. It replaces Apple Notes, Drafts, and any other note-taking application I have been using or trying to use.

VSCode is the main frontend for taking notes going forward. Notes are created in markdown format. I am relying on some extensions to help with the process. The most important being Paste Image allows me to add screenshots easily to a markdown document.

I am using Apple Shortcuts to bind a keyboard shortcut to the ‘project folder’ that contains all my notes.

• Option + Command + . opens the project in VSCode
• Option + Command + / creates a new files with the current date. That file is the place for my daily notes, etc.

I have also created a shortcut that creates a new file in the project folder to daily notes.

Finally, I have created a project related VSCode configuration which adds the ‘magic sauce’ to my new note-taking/knowledge-management solution.

{"pasteImage.path": "${projectRoot}/.img/",
"pasteImage.basePath": "${projectRoot}/",
"pasteImage.forceUnixStyleSeparator": true,
"pasteImage.prefix": "/",
"spellright.language": [
    "en",
    "de"
],
"spellright.documentTypes": [
    "markdown",
    "latex",
    "plaintext"
],
 "workbench.editorAssociations": {
        "*.md": "vscode.markdown.preview.editor",
    }
}

This configuration defines the following for my notes project:

• every image that I paste into a note will be automatically stored in the hidden images folder
• by default, English and German are the languages configured for spell checking
• markdown files are automatically opened in preview mode (you can double-click anywhere in the markdown to switch to edit mode)

All files are located on iCloud Drive which helps with the access via phone and tablet (I might change this part going forward). For creating, viewing, or updating notes on my phone/tablet, I am using the fantastic app Pretext.