Happy weekend everyone and welcome to episode # 52 of my series where I review Android note-taking apps.

A big thanks to the new subscribers this week:

Each time someone subscribes it motivates me to keep on the winding road to find the best note taking app!

Why no love for Apple?

Why no love for note-taking apps for Apple? Well, I use two Android phones – a duty phone and a booty phone – and although I test with Apple devices at work and I repaired iPhones as a hobby for a couple of years, I still cannot convince myself to spend $1,500 for a phone. When I see this, my inner voice says:

But you have two phones Stone! Yes, I do. One of my phones is the one that work pays for (the duty one) and the other is my personal one (the booty one). I do this for two reasons. First, I don't want any company that I work for controlling my personal device nor do I want them accessing my personal data. Second, payphones now cost $0.50.

My Payphone story

A couple of decades ago I was laid off from a startup and they took away my work-provided cell phone right away. I was allowed go to my desk to gather my things and while there I quickly grabbed a handwritten note that I pinned on my cubicle wall. It had the names and phone numbers of a few recruiters, folks that I had been using to hire a lot of people at that startup.

Having been laid off twice before, I felt the urge to start looking for a job immediately. On the 20-minute walk to the GO Train to go home, I found two quarters ($0.25) in my pocket. I knew there was a payphone at the train station so I had enough change to make two phone calls: my wife and one recruiter.

This is a pay phone.

When I got to the station and went to make the first call, I realized the price had gone up! It had increased from $0.25 to $0.50 so I had to decide: do I call my wife or call the recruiter? I chose the recruiter. After the "HELP!" call to the recruiter, I got on the train for the 50-minute ride home and ended up telling my wife about the layoff later that day.

I never wanted to be in that situation again so now I always have a booty phone. It's been very expensive, cheaper than iPhones, but I never need to worry about having enough change in my pocket nor being without a phone.

Now speaking of not having money, a quick message to support an app developer.

Please support Om!

A big shout out to Om, developer of Notally which I reviewed last week. He replied to my email which is rare for an app Developer so thanks Om! Here's what he said when I asked him about his app:

Notally was a personal project, I never expected it to become this big.

And when I asked him what he does for a day job:

I'm in high school :)

OMG that blew me away: a student built that great little note-taking app. OK, so now I want to support him on Patreon even more than last week. Join me if you're not a starving student and if inflation leaves any money left over!

Can we get to the review, please?!

Not yet!

This week I tried a couple of apps. I was thinking that I was close to hitting the bottom of this rabbit hole. But no, I stumbled upon GNotes and it got my blood flowing again. Before diving into GNotes, let me tell you a bit about another rabbit hole I started down this week.

One Obsidian vault or multiple?

As you may know, I use Obsidian a lot and as I learn I take notes about it. That sounds recursive: creating notes on Obsidian inside Obsidian. I know, right?!

I split out my notes on the Obsidian software from my single personal vault into a second one. For those who don't use Obsidian, a vault is actually just a folder on your computer. That's right, your computer and not someone else's aka "the cloud" which is exactly why I love their app.

There have been a number of discussions about using a single vault or multiple vaults. As a teaser to see if there is any interest in Yet Another Obsidian Resource, I posted this on r/ObsidianMD:

"Last night I went to the dark side and created a 2nd Obsidian vault (basically a folder) for my Obsidian notes. I'm thinking to publish them on github but need to scrub and make sure all the attributions are correct."

Shortly after I created that post where I included a screenshot of my vault in light-mode, someone commented:

Not in the dark side yet, missing the dark theme xd

So here's the screenshot in dark mode :)

Here are my initial thoughts on the matter of single or multiple vaults. I copied from my comment on this r/ObsidianMD post.

Migrating from 1 vault to multiple is a royal pain and I'm going through it now. The other way is easy. So, it's good you ask early.

Here's what I've learned this week about multiple vaults in Obsidian:

Pros

• Allows me to have a stronger separation between projects
• I can prepare in one vault and move to another with simple copy and paste or move the file
• Don't have to worry about accidentally publishing my personal notes
• My personal notes don't get mixed up with my project notes

Cons

• Unable to link from one vault to another
• Two places with Daily notes
• Share to in Android can't choose which vault so goes to the last one you opened

And now for the review:

GNotes is GGood, but who is TickTick?