Post #669700

2026-03-15 07:49 UTC

And I have a question: You know index card files, like in this here picture? Does anyone know of an android app that&#39;s good for making organised notes in this way? Ideally searchable. I&#39;ve used ColorNote for as long as I&#39;ve had a smartphone. It&#39;s great for just making quick notes with no bells and whistles, I&#39;ve recommended it to lots of people and would never give it up. But it&#39;s not great for organising notes. And I also kind of want a separate app for this particular purpose, so I can continue to use ColorNote for quick jottings of whatever whilst this has its own place on my phone. The purpose in question is this: I want to note down recipes, as generations have used index cards to do in the past. I don&#39;t want to use a recipe app, though: I&#39;ve used many of those down the years, but always find them awkward for noting recipes in the way I want; I don&#39;t want to select ingredients or measurements from a drop-down list, I don&#39;t want to write it in a way suited to public consumption, I just want to scribble my thoughts down quickly in free text. And to be able to easily alter them as I go along. I&#39;m not publishing anything. (And for clarification: yes, it has to be an android app. No, I&#39;m not going to get my laptop out and install linux. No, I&#39;m not going to install a different OS on my phone. And no, I&#39;m not going to use physical index cards, I understand the benefits of doing so - actual card never crashes, never gets bricked, never relies on proprietary software etc - but I&#39;ve always found writing by hand difficult, ever since I was in school, my motor skills aren&#39;t great, so I need to do it on my phone.)

Replies (5)

@RolloTreadway@beige.party 2026-03-15 07:57

This thought brought to you by my intention to make pizza dough in my bread machine later. Last time I made pizza dough, I had to do it twice, the first attempt failed. But I can't remember why, and it's really annoying me that I can't because I don't want to make the same mistake again.

Open ##1658091
@ygathgoch@cloudisland.nz 2026-03-15 07:59

@RolloTreadway I have no suggestions, but I’m giggling because this is Fedi and you have to explicitly tell people you’re not going to install Linux on your laptop (spoken as a person with a Linux laptop )😂

Open ##1658096
@bencurthoys@mastodon.social 2026-03-15 08:17

@RolloTreadway I use Trello for notes like this.

Open ##1658099
@Kimberley@ecoevo.social 2026-03-15 09:54

@RolloTreadway I think either Anki (index card app used for study revision but allows for tagging and sorting in to groups so can be easily adapted) or Obsidian (information organising tool) would work well for this. Both allow synching with a desktop version so you can keep a copy outside of the app

Open ##1658101
@fishidwardrobe@social.tchncs.de 2026-03-15 13:37

@RolloTreadway you could use Obsidian for this — it will do a lot more than you need, but this is really its starting point: a list of files ("cards") each of which has text on them. you'll see the list of cards on the left and the currently selected card on the right. or you can look at more than one card, if you like.

Open ##1658103