How I exploit Trilium Subsequent to take notes throughout all my gadgets

I’m the primary to confess that I’m a quite disorganized individual; flitting between must-do duties and fleeting fancies like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve by no means been a note-taker, and I frequently misplace any tiny scraps of paper I hassle to jot stuff down on, however that is more and more coming again to chew me. Having learn concerning the success my colleagues have had with the likes of Obsidian and Notion, I assumed it was about time I hopped on the productiveness app bandwagon.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t instantly get on with Obsidian, as a result of my total drawback with taking notes is having to dig them up. I want one thing immediately accessible, whether or not on my telephone, pill, work, or private laptops. Provided that I’m nonetheless testing the note-taking waters, I’m not paying Obsidian $48 a 12 months to sync throughout gadgets. Notion appeared like the higher choice, however I don’t really need all my notes to be online-dependent both, and the training curve appears to be like fairly steep. Discuss choosy necessities, I do know.

With my house NAS already up and working, self-hosting appeared just like the pure match, however there aren’t many choices that don’t run right into a tangled mess of extra necessities. If you wish to self-host the impressive-looking Logseq or Joplin you’ll be messing round with background syncing and praying to the battle gods, whereas self-hosting Anytype doesn’t appear to help the wide selection of gadgets I need to use. After a quite exhaustive search, I settled on Trilium Subsequent — the community-maintained fork of Trilium.

Trilium Subsequent has all of the bases lined, with markdown, picture, to-do lists, and desk help, together with interlinking, thoughts maps, flowcharts, and code blocks for the extra savvy person. Should you’re aware of Joplin, Notion, and the like, you’ll discover most of the similar key options right here, simply with out among the fancier AI additions or on-line collaborative instruments that I doubt many people want for our non-public lives anyway.

I spun up a Docker container and will immediately begin creating notes through any net browser on my house community, be that on my telephone, pill, or laptop computer. There aren’t any devoted apps to put in with Trilium, which can be a professional or a con relying on the way you prefer to work together with software program, but it surely helps cellular and desktop screens simply fantastic. Because the notes are all hosted on and accessed through the NAS, syncing points aren’t a priority, not less than. I may even lookup stuff exterior my house by tunneling in through Tailscale.

Like all these choices, Trilium Subsequent could be as easy or as complicated as you want, particularly provided that it helps JavaScript scripting that can be utilized to construct graphs and automate duties. I largely use Trilium’s to-do lists, utilizing the devoted characteristic to make and mark off pleasing little checkboxes, which ensures that I finally do the factor that briefly popped into my head earlier. Whether or not including one thing to the week’s purchasing or checking off steps on considered one of my numerous coding/electronics initiatives, having this all as a easy net bookmark on all my gadgets is past helpful.

However to-do lists are barely scratching the floor. I’ve been making good use of Trilium Subsequent’s integration of Mermaid diagrams to assist hold some work and unwieldy aspect initiatives on observe. It makes use of simple code syntax to create numerous kinds of diagrams and movement charts, making it straightforward to plan and visualize what’s subsequent on the docket to succeed in an finish objective that requires quite a few transferring components.

However for extra complicated notes and data bases, you need to be way more organized from the get-go. Don’t simply dump every thing into the foundation listing; belief me, it’s straightforward to get into a large number of random, uncategorized notes. As an alternative, it’s extra simple to navigate Trilium by breaking your content material down into smaller notes and nesting them in subtrees. One of many first and strongest options I made certain to grasp was embedding notes inside notes, which makes it easy to cross-reference and robotically replace info that spans a number of folders. That is particularly useful (and a large time saver) in the event you’re going to be referencing the identical info in a number of locations.

It’s a little-known truth, however I’m a surprisingly good guitar virtuoso (I must be after 21 years!). However my music concept mind is sluggish, to be well mannered. I’ve been utilizing Trilium’s observe linking performance to hitch the dots between numerous bits of concept I’ve floating round in my head. Now I can rapidly lookup whether or not a scale has a naturally arising Dominant seventh chord and consider the chord form straight from the dimensions’s observe I made. If I spot a mistake or need to add a brand new inversion, I can merely replace the chord diagram and the brand new model immediately seems in each place I’ve referenced it. Even higher, I can rapidly eyeball the relationships robotically constructed from cross-references within the Be aware Map. Fairly neat.

There’s a ton of options I haven’t made time to study but, although, resembling creating observe templates, mastering charts, and thoughts maps. Even so, there’s nobody characteristic that I’d say makes Trilium stand out from the competitors. As an alternative, it’s extra the truth that I can leap into it from a easy net UI on any machine, basically making it my transportable notepad, whereas remaining secure within the data that my information stays all the time accessible at house, even when the web goes down. Oh, and it’s not costing me a penny, which is all the time good, particularly when there’s no assure that I’ll truly follow my newfound note-taking regime.

As is usually the case with freeware, the expertise isn’t all the time flawless. Trilium Subsequent’s design feels somewhat outdated in comparison with among the choices on the market. It’s not fairly as clear and trendy as among the spendy choices, and modifying could be cumbersome on a cellular show. However with a devoted cellular mode, it greater than will get the job achieved for my rough-around-the-edges method to note-taking. Among the tagging and syntax capabilities even have a steep studying curve, and it lacks third-party integrations that you could be need to use to handle a wider vary of paperwork or information.

If you would like fancy integrations, modern UIs, and collaborative instruments, Trilium in all probability received’t match the invoice, however there are already loads of good choices on the market for that anyway. You simply may need to spend somewhat cash on them. One of the simplest ways to consider Trilium Subsequent is as an offline-first note-taking answer with a give attention to group — if that seems like what you want, I don’t hesitate to advocate it.