looking for
an alternative
to Apple Notes?

focus and vibe

Apple Notes
Great at capturing thoughts and notes on the fly. Ideal for quick jottings, to-do lists, and storing simple information like your Netflix password.

Sublime
Sublime believes the ideas that move you should not live alongside your grocery lists or kids health insurance info. Sublime is all about building the perfect home for all your creative information—the knowledge and inspiration you come across and want to later use in your life and work.

organization style

Apple Notes
Uses notes and folders, which locks each note into a specific location.

Sublime
Uses cards and collections. Any piece of content becomes a standalone card that can be recontextualized, combined, or connected in multiple ways. This approach allows for more flexible organization and promotes unexpected connections between ideas.

Practical Example
Imagine you come across this quote from designer Don Norman: "Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible" This insight is valuable for both your design resources and your newsletter content collections.

In Apple Notes, you'd need to create two separate notes and duplicate the quote (the way around this requires a much more complicated setup). One copy goes in your "Design Resources" note. Another copy goes in your "Newsletter Content" note.

In Sublime, you'd create one card with the quote and add it to both your "Design Resources" and "Newsletter Content" collection.

idea capture

Apple Notes
Media handling is an afterthought. Links are often dumped as plain text, lacking proper metadata.

Sublime
Media capture is at the core of the experience.

• Offers a browser extension for effortless highlighting and saving of content from anywhere online.
• Organizes and presents any media type intelligently with full context.
• Uses OCR and understands the meaning behind your media, allowing for intuitive retrieval.

search and retrieval

Apple Notes
Basic search functionality, which is suboptimal for finding specific pieces of information in media files.

Sublime
Advanced search capabilities. You can retrieve information by describing it conversationally, like you were asking a friend. This applies to all types of media, including images and PDFs.

social factor

Apple Notes
Primarily for personal use. Keeping ideas to yourself is the default and only option.

Sublime
Offers both private and public modes. While you can keep everything private, the secret sauce is the communal experience.

• Put in a thought or idea and get instant related inspiration from other people's libraries. (everyone's favorite)
• Follow other people's libraries and let others peek into yours.
• Create collections, collaborate, and share with others.

bottom line

If you are:

• An avid reader and consumer of content.
• Someone whose job requires using information to create new forms of knowledge and meaning.
• Currently using Apple Notes haphazardly to capture links and inspiration.

Then building your library on Sublime will change your life. You’ll get the peace of mind from having a repository of ideas to pull from and a boost in creativity from being able to discover unexpected connections.

While Apple Notes excels at quick, simple note-taking, Sublime is designed to be a comprehensive tool for managing and utilizing your creative information. Your choice depends on whether you need a basic note-taking app or a more robust system for capturing, organizing, and leveraging your ideas and inspiration.