Notes are broken
September 20, 2026 · Tal Shrestha
A lot of people don't really use notes apps.
Which is strange, because on paper they sound like the perfect solution. Every time you need to remember something, you write it down, and when you need it, it's right there.
When Evernote launched, it was one of the first apps to sync your notes across devices. That was a huge leap forward, and it grew into an incredibly successful product.
Today, syncing across devices is something we all take for granted. Yet somehow, a lot of people still feel that something about note-taking doesn't add up.
Allow me to explain what I think is broken.
Short-term vs. long-term
The problem is that we use the same system for two completely different kinds of information: short-term and long-term.
Imagine you park your car in a shopping mall and save B29 - Yellow in your notes app. An hour later, you open the app, and because notes are sorted chronologically, it's right there at the top.
No searching, no scrolling. It works perfectly.
Now imagine a different situation. A friend gives you the gate code to their house: 2584. You save it in the same notes app because you know you'll need it again in the future.
Next time you visit, that note isn't at the top anymore. Now you have to search for it.
But instead of finding one clear answer, you're searching through years of temporary notes: parking spots, shopping lists, hotel Wi-Fi passwords, one-time reminders, countless pieces of information that were only meant to exist for a few hours or days.
The same chronological feed that works perfectly for short-term information becomes increasingly inefficient for long-term information.
The more temporary notes you create, the more noise you introduce into every search.
And even when you're just browsing your notes, you're looking at two completely different categories of information side by side: things that are incredibly important to remember for years, and things that became useless an hour after you wrote them.
They're fundamentally different kinds of information, yet we've been storing them in exactly the same place.
That doesn't make sense.