It has been a while that I am using as my main productivity method, and therefore as my primary productivity app/service. I never thought that I continue using it for such a long time. It is maybe because I designed it for my needs, and it turned out to be flexible enough to adjust over time. I am also surprised by the number of reads and recommends on Medium. It seems it is working for others with other needs too. That is indeed very nice! Workflowy Journal Workflowy Over time, the proved to be an effective method for collecting, organizing and pursuing my thought. Although I am pretty happy with the outlining, I am not very satisfied with the Workflowy as a service. The near-zero development speed and several delays in releasing some very old has started to become frustrating. It is not like that Workflowy at its current state is not being useful anymore; however, you start to see how the availability of particular features can improve your “workflow”, but unfortunately they’ll never be developed in the case of Workflowy. Only recently, the team is starting to hire an engineer to “maybe” start the development again. outlining Requested Features To name a few shortcomings of Workflowy, I can start by highlighting the lack of a app on iOS and/or . Although app available on App Store, the UX is just not right. That is because the app is essentially a wrapper around the website, so non-default text editing experience and overall sluggish web wrapper UI do not help with the UX. After a while, I found myself not using the iOS app anymore, only very infrequently for reading or reviewing. On the missing list of features, Workflowy does not handle dates at all, it offers no integration options, no API, and I wish it were supporting Markdown after all these years, at least in notes, but no. They have recently released their macOS/Linux/Window in the form of web-wrapper again, which I am not a fan of. native macOS Workflowy has an iOS apps Electron-based apps So, I almost gave up on Workflowy. I still use it very frequently, because I have lots of data stored in there, but I started looking for alternatives. There are a few alternatives are available, each with their advantages and disadvantages, from very sophisticated to the text-based and the web-based . Here, I will try to go through a list of apps that I have tested or found interesting which can also support painless Workflowy/Bullet Journal integration. In the end, I will mention two apps that technically are not “outliners”, but they can be used to implement Workflowy/Bullet Journal efficiently. OmniOutliner TaskPaper Dynalist and OmniOutliner for macOS OmniOutliner for iOS OmniOutliner is old. Therefore it is robust! It provides a extensive list of features. In fact, the Pro version is so full of features that they have recently decided to release a simplified version for more casual users, OmniOutliner Essential. 🤷🏻♂️ The Essential version is a simple outliner with very limited functionality. It offers a handful of themes, filtering (search) and distraction-free mode. I find it very limiting, also because it does not support Focusing on an item. The Pro version, on the other hand, is packed with features like , , , , and . Neither the Essential or Pro support tagging (#tags or @tags); however, the advanced filtering of the Pro can replace the lack of Tags, only if you are willing to make a filter for each tag, or quickly search your tag every time which is not optimal. I assume that the powerful theming engine in Pro version can be used to highlight words based on come criteria, e.g. ; however, that needs extra customization as well. This makes OmniOutlier a less appealing app for rapid outlining and reviewing as well. Overall, I guess the focus in OmniOutliner is on the styling. You can make a very professional looking list or table. However, repetitive engagement with the app is not as smooth as Workflowy. Saved Filters Typewriter Mode Focusing Customizable Style Multi-column Document starting with _#_ The is a “simpler” app, and it feels less complicated than the macOS Pro version. However, at 29.99$, I rather be happy with the macOS version first which itself cost 9.99$ for the ) and 59.99$ for the ). It also worth mentioning that the Omni Group offers their cloud service, you cannot sync via iCloud or Dropbox. OmniOutliner for iOS Essential version Pro version OutlineEdit for macOS OutlineEdit is one of those less-known but great apps that does one thing, and one thing well. In comparison to OmniOutliner, OutlineEdit is designed to be an outliner and not more than that. Therefore, there are not many styling features available, no font option, and no themes. However, there are many outlining specific features are included e.g. , and , , , , etc. Item’s Note Categories Color Tagging Checkbox Folding Statistics OutlineEdit uniquely offers two features for collecting notes “on-the-fly” or from web pages. The is a menubar popover that can be summoned by and shows the already saved outline drafts, and allowing you to create a new outline from the menubar. And is a Safari extension that makes it possible to mark texts in a web page and later save them into an Outline. Fast Access Cmd+Option+O Marker for Safari I think OutlineEdit is a reliable and intuitive outliner for its price, ; however, the lack of inline tag is noticeable. In fact, there are categories that can assigned to every item which means an item cannot have more than one category. FREE ) and TaskPaper for macOS Taskmator for iOS TaskPaper is a special app, it is not per se an outliner but in a sense, it almost does way more than an outliner! TaskPaper is basically a parser for file format which is a plain text file with very few rules that are designed to represent a list of tasks, a.k.a a ! In a file, you have three types of item/line, projects, tasks, and notes. Projects are distinguished by a colon( ) after their name and tasks are the lines starting with a dash( ), and finally a line that starts without a dash or does not end with a colon is a note. taskpaper Task Paper taskpaper : Project A: - Besides projects, tasks, and notes, TaskPaper has the most powerful inline tags support among outliner apps. Every word starting with is an in-line tag; however, tags are way more than colored or clickable words. Tags in TaskPaper can have different attributes; for instance, one can specify the start time of a task by or add location context to a task by . With tags having attributes, the TaskPaper app offers advanced filtering and saved search features for getting the most of the tags. The filtering features can search and run a query on tags attributes; for instance, one can filter items that are ing next week or last week . This can be extremely powerful. @ @start(2017-06-17) @at(Home) @due @completed @at(home) TaskPaper is under active development for years and has a big community of users that are writing scripts, providing solutions and bringing new ideas for further developments. I use TaskPaper for smaller projects only. One reason for that being the rather different and cumbersome folding and unfolding experience than the Workflowy. This is probably because TaskPaper always tries to structure the plain text file into an outline (hierarchal) format. This somehow compromises the smooth outlining experience because, to some extent, you need to deal with space and tabs yourself. Another reason for not using TaskPaper for large projects is the mechanism which is being achieved by moving the completed ( ) item to the end of the file; however, I still prefer the Workflowy method, . Archiving @done Show/Hide Completed Items In the iOS side, TaskPaper does not have an official app, but the (not affiliated with TaskPaper) fully supports files. It resembles many features of the macOS version like tagging, filtering, etc. I am personally not the fan of its design. I prefer a flatter and more modern design but if you are fine with that, it is probably the best “taskpaper” app for iOS. The other option is which is Markdown editor that can edit files too. Taskmator for iOS taskpaper Editorial for iOS taskpaper Before I move to the next app, I should mention the , from the same developer. FoldingText is very similar to TaskPaper, it supports almost all features of file and also adds the Markdown support. Therefore, it feels more like a writing environment, and it can be considered as an outliner because it can handle layers and folding. The app designed in an effort to bring the note-taking to file format. I actually like the FoldingText more than the TaskPaper because of the Markdown support. FoldingText for macOS taskpaper taskpaper and Outlinely for macOS Outlinely for iOS Outlinely is an another less-known app. However, it is maybe the most well-equipped app for implementing the Bullet Journal. Both macOS and iOS apps are beautifully designed, and they are well integrated with the system. Moreover, both bring a large set of features from a different category of apps e.g. Markdown Editors, Note-taking, and to-do list apps. Just to name a few: , , , , , , , , , , etc. Tags Todo Lists Checkboxes Library Management Focus Mode Typewriter Scrolling Text Highlighting Markdown Highlighting Custom Theme Gallery Note Linking Outlinely covers many of the shortcomings of Workflowy as well as borrowing some advanced features from TaskPaper. The fact that Outlinely is an outliner and it uses some OPML-related format as a file structure, makes the UX very similar to Workflowy. Outlinely also addressed one of the shortcomings of the TaskPaper by implementing a built-in library manager. All your outline files are in one place, and the app is managing them for you. Therefore, you can search and filter among all of them without the hassle of finding and opening the project file every time. On top of that, Outlinely syncs all your library between your iOS and macOS devices via iCloud. Overall, the Outlinely has the complete package. The developers have done the research and managed to keep things as simple as possible and still provides many advanced and requested features. is a one-time purchase of $39.99 and the is free with basic features while adding the Pro features and iCloud syncing to the app cost $14.99 per year. So, setting up everything will cost you about $55 and after that, it falls into a yearly subscription of $14.99. It is a rather expensive investment, but for comparison, the Workflowy Pro will cost $4.99/month. 🤷🏻♂️ Outlinely for macOS Outlinely for iOS Other Apps Outside the territory of outliners, I would like to mention two note-taking apps that only by adding the inline tagging feature allows for efficient implementation of Workflowy Journal method. And since they are basically note-taking apps, they might be more useful for users with more text heavy workflows. and Bear for macOS Bear for iOS I guess everyone should know about Bear by now. They won the Apple Design Award at WWDC 2017. The app is well-designed and clean, of course! It is a great note-taking app with Markdown support some powerful features. Most noticeably, the inline tags, note links, and document library. They follow the same business model as Outlinely, with a free download, limited features, and local storage. Adding the iCloud syncing and activating all features will cost $1.49/month or $14.99/year. I think $14.99/year is a very reasonable price for a well-designed note-taking app especially when apps like Evernote already costs $59.99/year! and NotePlan for macOS NotePlan for iOS NotePlan is a relatively new app but with an interesting idea. The designer wanted to bring the Note-taking, Calendar and Reminder functionality in one place, even the name suggests it. The app opens into a Calendar view in which you can see your schedule. Clicking on any date will open a Markdown editor that you can write your note in. Beyond the simple Markdown syntax, you can create to-do items by making a list or using the syntax. Additionally, you can add a date to each item which makes the item visible in the Calendar view. The app syncs with Calendar and Reminder app in iOS and macOS, therefore, it can use their notification functionality as well. Unlike Bear, NotePlan saves everything into plaintext files. All your notes can be accessed, read, and be edited via Finder or other text editors, pretty neat! - [ ] The is priced at $19.99 and costs $14.99. There is no subscription model here, but the iCloud syncing is still provided. Again, pretty neat! NotePlan for macOS NotePlan for iOS Dynalist I just want to mention the Dynalist here as well, although it might not be in agreement with the title of the post. If you have not heard of Dynalist, Dynalist is the Workflowy if it was being developed consistently in all these years. I think that was the original idea of the developers as well, at least in the beginning. At this point, they have implemented that Workflowy users wanted to have. However, as their community is growing, they are starting to go beyond the dusty Workflowy requested features list and starting to implement some new ideas and more importantly listening to their users. Unfortunately, they do not have a native app either! many features To summarize, I think Outlinely is the most powerful and well-designed outliner in the list. However, I’m not a fan of their pricing scheme. I believe it would be better if they follow the NotePlan path, two native apps with fix price and then iCloud as the free cloud storage. Or even the Bear pricing method, two free apps and then reasonable Pro subscription. I also love the idea of NotePlan, but I have a mix feeling about the implementation. Although I like the plaintext file format and Calendar and Reminder integration, I think over time, notes management would not be very pleasant. Maybe a will solve this issue, something similar to Outliner or Bear. Note Library Interestingly, none of the native outliner apps support Images or Documents. Dynalist supports images, but I am still not sold out with the idea of web apps. It would be great if Outliner supports images in a way that or do, by placing the image placeholder instead of the image and then rendering the image in the Preview mode. iA Writer Ulysses If you like this article, please give it a few claps or buy me a coffee or two !
