In my corner of the internet, there’s a well trodden, twisted path of searching for the one true notes app. I’ve reached a fork in the path between Agenda and Craft. As I wrote earlier, I’ve been using Agenda for a while now and its date-based approach really suits my meeting-dominated work. Now, though, Craft has added calendar integration and I’m testing it out.

There are several things I really like about Craft, relative to Agenda:

  1. Document syncing is far more reliable. This isn’t entirely Agenda’s fault. I’m restricted by corporate policy from using iCloud Documents, so have been using Dropbox sync for Agenda. I often have to wait an indeterminate, though long, time before documents sync across my devices. Craft sync has been instantaneous and very reliable.
  2. Having access to my documents from a web browser is great. I’ll be back to working from the office on a Windows laptop soon and won’t have access to my iPad. So, web access will be important.
  3. Performance is much better on Craft. Agenda often freezes in the middle of typing and suffers from random crashes. This could very well be something about my particular setup, though it doesn’t happen in any other apps.

On the downside, I do miss Agenda’s simplicity. Craft has lots of ways to organize notes (such as cards and subpages). Of course, you can mostly ignore this, but I like Agenda’s well-thought-through approach that didn’t require much deliberation about where to put things.

Of course, having just made this switch, Apple announced Quick Notes and I may well be back on Apple Notes in a few months.