TiddlyDesktop. TiddlyWiki is a single HTML file that somehow has everything it needs inside of it. For example, it can tell me when I played Animal Crossing and the people that I played with on that day.Ģ. This lets me see all the relationships between my documents. It means that if I make a “Nintendo” link in a document called “Animal Crossing,” “Animal Crossing” will end up creating a link back to “Nintendo,” too. Stroll. As I mentioned in “ Hello, TiddlyWiki,” the cool thing about Stroll is that it adds bi-directional links to my documents. Here are the plugins and tools that I’m currently using that make TiddlyWiki more of a joy to use:ġ. I had to put in some effort and tinker to get it to work well for me because it felt like it was missing some of the features that I needed. Who knew that a wiki would be so useful in my day-to-day life? The downside of using TiddlyWiki is that it’s not exactly what I wanted out of the box. Being able to weave my ideas, notes, and experiences together easily has been a bit of a game-changer for me. There are many note taking applications available out there that each target a different Method used to keep track of information.I’m starting to love the process of journaling and note-taking on TiddlyWiki. Unless you are one of those blessed few with a photographic memory with endless roles of film, you may have to write some things down.
Although there are a few different applications I use to record information, I consider one to be my perpetual system of record, TiddlyWiki. I have been using it for about 10 years now, the same file has grown with me over the years. I have used TiddlyWiki to keep my projects organized for work and personal projects.īottom Line Up Front: If you want to keep your data locally, have notes that you can use whether or not you have access to the internet, easily replicated and will not ever be left with a system that loses support and a loss of your notes. This just may be the application for you.
It is simple enough to get started with it but extensible enough that you may never out grow it.
It is incredibly easy to get going at the very basic level and I truly have not exploited its full potential at all as I use this just to keep my head straight on projects and ideas, things I have started to research and so forth. I enjoy that the markdown editor is accessible and has buttons to make it easier to add the readability enhancements necessary to make reviewing notes better. There are plenty of built-in, easy to access features in TiddlyWiki but with a little time and understanding it will grow with you and can become as functional as you need it to be. What is key, here is the low barrier of entry. When you first start TiddlyWiki, the GettingStarted tiddler helps you set it up with your own personalized title and description. To create new notes, or called in this application, “Tiddlers”, select the “+” on the right-hand pane and begin typing away. The preview pane is nice to have so you can make sure that the result of what you are imputing is going to be readable later. This can be a bit slow on some older, lower powered machines but it is nothing serious. If you do choose to use TiddlyWiki, I recommend you just play with it and see how it works. You can even try it here but remember, it isn’t being saved unless you choose to save it locally. The standout feature of TiddlyWiki is all the power and capability it has is all available locally. There is no need for signing up to any service or setting up a complicated server system to get started with it. It should be noted that you can do these things with TiddlyWiki, but it is not a requirement. Two options the easy one that will work but lacks one major feature which is TiddlyDesktop, the second uses Firefox (or Chrome but that is not my browser of choice). Up until I started writing this, I was using TiddlyDesktop and I was mostly content, but having the ability to use it fully in the browser, Firefox, has made my life so much better. TiddlyDesktop works quite nicely but lacks a search / find on page feature like you have available in the browser. Outside of that, it is a no-fuss method of taking notes on the Desktop. The key feature I like about this is the ability to have multiple TiddlyWiki files linked, making it very convenient to operate out of multiple notebooks. With this window open, it only takes a click of the “Open” button on the wiki file and you are presented with your TiddlyWiki notebook.