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It's always cool to see other people's home screens - it's like peering into their living room. So I present my current home screen. What I'm using and how I'm using it. 

First of all, I don't have folders on my home screen. Why? I think a home screen should be reserved for those apps that one uses every day. I want to get to the info or app when I want to as fast as possible. 

Starting with the dock, I use a three-app setup for the apps I use the most: Silo, Calendars 5, and OneNote. 

Silo is an excellent To-Do list app and has a native iPad and Mac app as well, which is essential for me. You can make multiple lists and Silo's signature feature is sharing those lists. This app is great for task management within groups. 

I've raved about Calendars 5 from Readdle. Lots of people love Fantastical, but I prefer Calendars 5 because it just works best for what I need. I need to see a month a time in meetings and talking to people about scheduling, and I need to do it quickly. C5 offers that and a very quick entry of new events into my calendar. 

OneNote has become my default app for everything. I love the design, I love the updated iOS apps, and I love how it handles documents to and from devices (it maintains layouts and fonts across all platforms). It's a great project management tool - not just for notes. 

Back up to the top, I use the Ascend Federal Credit Union app to keep track of my bank account. It's a small local bank here in Tennessee but have just added mobile check deposits through the apps. Nice. 

I use the standard Apple Maps app because it has pretty good integration with iOS. The Weather Channel is also pretty standard, but their recent iOS 7 update made it way more like Yahoo Weather, except with the accuracy of The Weather Channel. 

Scanbot has become a new favorite of mine for scanning documents with my phone, which is surprisingly great. You would think that would be cumbersome, but it's not. 

Tweetbot is my Twitter client of choice. It is magnitudes better than the standard Twitter app. I love the user muting feature - comes in handy when you've got those people that you follow that tweeting just a little too much. 

Paper has actually made me like Facebook again. It's a real pioneering app that uses "sloppy swiping" to navigate. It works really well and I like this Facebook app a lot better. 

Reeder is my RSS reader of choice, and I sync through Feedly. I don't have a ton of feeds, but it's nice and handy when standing in the checkout line and you can quickly skim your feeds. 

Dropbox is a staple. While I don't have as much storage space on DB as I do with Google Drive or Box, I still find it more useful and less irritating than other services. 

Mailbox is my favorite email client on iOS. It's basically email triage. I talked about this app on episode 16 of Ministry Bits. I have it set to display a numbered notification badge on the app if there's messages in there, so for me it's almost like a task list, because I know if I see a badge there that I need to act on something. I hear there's also a Mac app in the works as well. 

1Password is probably my most essential app. While not cheap, I know that my passwords are secure and every one of them is unique and very difficult to break because I have this app. You have a master password to unlock the app, and then you can copy any of those password into other apps or other sites using the built-in and very capable browser. 

Pedometer++ is great for tracking your steps every day. It's simple and effective. 

Instacast is my podcast catcher of choice. It's great, and I use it on iPad as well. You can subscribe to podcasts directly within the app, and download podcasts for later viewing. 

The ESV Bible is the simplest Bible app out there, and it's the version I prefer. 

Evernote I mainly use for taking pictures and scanning business cards, all of which are searchable. Evernote can be used for lots of things, but that's what I use it for. 

Last but not least, Day One is a journaling app that I use to keep track of what I've done - as a youth minister I need accountability, and I log every event from phone calls to conversations I've had to ball games I go to. It comes in handy if I ever need to remember what I did on a particular day. 

So that's it! Let me know if you would like YOUR home screen featured on the site. We'd love to see your home screen!

I have actively struggled with how to take notes. From organizing them in nested folders in plaintext and markdown documents to throwing everything I digitally collect into Evernote, I have never been really happy. 

Microsoft's OneNote made a splash last week when the company released the Mac app (on the Mac App Store no less), and reduced the price to free. I've heard a lot about OneNote and loved the iPhone app, but without a companion Mac app, it was dead to me. 

I've been using the Mac app, along with the iPad and iPhone app for over a week now, and I am truly impressed. 

First, it's a Microsoft product. I didn't know that the boys from Redmond could make quality and stable apps on the Mac. Usually you got one or the other: it was great but not stable, or it was stable but not great. OneNote is both. 

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OneNote for Mac

I plan to do some comparing and contrasting of OneNote versus other note-taking platforms in the coming weeks, but I can faithfully say that I've found what I'm looking for. 

Why do I like it, you say?

1. It's pretty. I know that doesn't matter to some people as long as it's not ugly and it's great at what it does, but it matters to me. A lot. In OneNote, you can add notebooks, which go down into tabs that you can color any way you want. Then those tabs can be further subdivided into pages in that tab. Microsoft's stamp is all over the product and it should be - from Calibri font to the famed "ribbon" for formatting at the top. What's weird is that after kicking Office to the curb six years ago, all this doesn't bother me one bit. I will use whatever I deem is the best for me, no matter what company makes it. 

2. It does everything Evernote does. From a basic functionality standpoint, OneNote does everything Evernote does for me. It just does it a bit better. I never bought into the tagging system - even with multiple tags on one note, I still didn't feel like everything was organized. With OneNote, everything is categorized into your tabs and then subdivided into your pages if you wish. OneNote is also pretty great in the fact that it lets you type anywhere on the document open, almost giving you a canvas feel to the thing. I can put blocks of text, to-do lists, pictures, and anything else I want to - anywhere I want to. 

3. OneNote interfaces with Office much better. If I was an Office user, I would be absolutely giddy over OneNote. It would be a major thing for me. As it stands, I'm not, but OneNote is still a great standalone app for me. It collects everything I need it to, and it syncs to my devices for later use. I can configure what I need to and drop whatever I need to in it. And it will be organized where I want it. 

You should give OneNote a try, on the Mac or PC. There are obvious advantages to using OneNote on Windows, and for the low price of free, you can't lose by trying it out. I hear that the Windows Phone app is pretty swell also. 

Bottom line: don't change your notes system if it's working for you. Just like the Bible says though: "Test everything." Doesn't mean you have to change your whole process, but it might be a good thing for you to do. 

For the last year, I have been looking, searching, researching, trying out, and tweaking what I thought might have been the one solution to my workflow woes. You see, what I want isn't hard - a simple synching solution for me to be able to compose classes and sermons on my computer (or iPad mini) and have them sync to my two other devices. I had some criteria when I began this mission:

1. It must sync to my iPad mini, because I do all my teaching and preaching from it. Additionally, it must look great and I must be able to format it in a way that I can easily glance at my notes when presenting. 

2. It must be on iOS. A companion Mac app would be helpful, but not essential. iPhone app is also not optional as I do a lot of tweaking on the go. 

3. It must be simple. No crazy layouts or unnecessary button on the app - just...simple. 

So, I narrowed my list down to three applications for my workflow: Evernote, Simplenote, and Plain Text. 

 

Evernote

Evernote seems like it's been around a long time, and that's because it has. It is a service that has never been accused of standing still. Evernote continually pushes new designs, additions, and features to its suite of apps which now include Penultimate and Skitch. 

Pros: Evernote is very well designed. The iPad app is beautiful on a retina iPad mini screen (and on the iPad Air as well). The apps are designed to easily do what you want to do: capture anything and everything. Evernote can capture text, pictures, voice memos, and even has embedded To-Do lists. It allows rich-text editing (bold, italics and such). It syncs fast across all devices, has a Mac and Windows app, and is also cross-platform on Android and Windows Phone as well. 

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The Evernote iPad app is gorgeous. 

Cons: For me, it seems a bit too much. I don't often need to capture photos and voice memos, only text. So I end up completely ignoring those features, mostly because I refuse to pay for a premium account ($5/month or $45/year). I did have a premium account for six months and didn't use the features. While it's a great app for 90% of people, a power user like myself who wants simplicity above all else isn't going to be using it very much. Still a great app though. 

Simplenote

Appropriately named, Simplenote is just what it says it is - simple note syncing across devices. I was just about ready to declare this platform dead when Simplenote relaunched with a new web design and app design as well as an introduction of a dedicated Mac app. I really thought this was going to be my solution. 

Pros: Extremely simple and well designed. Fonts and text look great and a retina MacBook Pro and retina iPad mini. The app is active in development and syncs well with other devices. There is no clutter to deal with in these apps - they simply allow you to compose notes, title them, tag them, export them, and pin them to the top of your list. Composing and writing in these apps (as well as the Mac app) is a joy. 

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Simplenote for Mac. 

Cons: It's almost too simple. Simplenote allows no formatting of any type and does not support Markdown editing, so if you want to style your text at all, you are limited to bullet points, numbering, and capitalizations. This sounded great in theory but I've noticed if I can't bold some text or make section headings bigger in my notes then I frequently lose my place while teaching and preaching because all the text looks the same. Tagging is great, and if tagging is your thing, you're going to love this app. If it's not, stay away, because that's the only amount of organization you get from Simplenote. All you have is a long running list of your notes, in order of what was last edited first. There's the option to 'Pin to Top' which comes in very handy.

I've run into some sync issues (as late as Oct-Nov 2013), but most of those seem to have been ironed out. The apps still crash on me frequently (once to twice a week) - I don't think a day or two goes by that the Mac app hasn't quit for no apparent reason and once the iPad app crashed on me while scrolling and preaching in front of hundreds of people (ack!). The iPhone app has a bad bug where it will crash when trying to sort changes in a note. I know developers are active on this app and I love Simplenote, I just cannot afford to use something that's unreliable. If the apps were stable enough, I might have this as my go-to platform. 

Plain Text

And here we are, talking about the joys of plain text once again. I really don't know why I migrated away from plain text, but it seems that my search has brought me full circle, back to where I started. 

You may read this and discount the plain text preference as an uber-nerd thing, but, in fact, it's really not. It just works. 

Pros: You can use a variety of text editors on all devices and plain text formats, including regular ol' .txt, Markdown, or Multi-Markdown. Markdown allows you to style your text how you want without changing to rich-text format. It uses simple symbols like asterisks to indicate bold and italics and hashtags to indicate headlines. Comes in handy when you get it down. The app I love to use on the iPad is Editorial, and on the Mac it's Byword. You can usually sync these apps to Dropbox and keep them in nested folders, easily categorizing what you need where you need it. Apps like Editorial, Nebulous Notes, and Byword are minimalistic and usually offer inline Markdown support, so you can see your bold and italics and headlines while writing. Best of all, plain text is future proof and my files are not tied to any platform, so I can move them around as I please. 

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Editorial for iPad. 

Cons: No simple "Compose it and forget it" syncing. Syncing is pretty painless, but requires a little bit of file management as well. Syncing isn't instantaneous unless you save your files in the app you're using. So unlike Simplenote and Evernote, you can't just sync and go. Plain text may not appeal to many people because it's not as simple to set up as other services. There's an extra added step when syncing to Dropbox, and you must know where your text repository folder is located. 

So looking at these three platforms, jumping back and forth between using them for the last year, I realized that there really is no "one solution" for capturing all my thoughts, pictures, and text (long or short). One solution is finding a small, precise suite of apps that fit your purposes. I'll use Editorial and Byword for all my writing (70% of the time), Simplenote for lists and occasional text capture (20% of the time), and Evernote for pics and logs (10% of the time). 

For me at least, one solution ends up being three solutions. 

Simplenote is an app that I've loved for a long time, but several design choices like small text on the iPad, unreliable syncing, and too simplistic of a design with mobile apps has made it unusable in my opinion. 

Until now. 

Simplenote, in late August, unveiled a complete redesign of their mobile apps for all platforms, including iOS for iPhone and iPad and also for Android. I've been teaching and preaching from it for the last 30 days exclusively. 

I was very excited about Editorial for iPad, with it's great interface, configureable buttons and layout, customized workflows and Markdown support, and I had purchased it and began using it when the new Simplenote came out. Needless to say, I was impressed. 

For the longest time, my workflow included plain text editing with Elements on iPad and iPhone, syncing with Dropbox, and I would actually preach and teach from within Elements. But Elements, at least for me, started getting buggy, even with regular updates. (I'm sure it's been fixed, but 1 or 2 crashes while I am speaking to 300+ people is 1 or 2 times too many.)  So I stopped using it and turned to Nebulous Notes.

While syncing with Dropbox offered some flexibility (like seamlessly offering my lessons as .txt files for download on my website, copying and moving files, and making backups easy), I found that it was a few too many steps. I would compose a text file in my Mac text editor of choice (usually Textastic), save it as either a .txt or .md file if I wanted limited styling, make sure it was in the correct folder in Dropbox, then search for that file under my Elements directory to pull it up on my iPad for teaching. 

With Simplenote, I write my lesson in the Simplenote app for Mac (which is incredibly nice by the way), and my changes are automatically pushed to my devices. All I need to do is load the app on the iPad and whoosh - it's there. And syncing with SImplenote is incredibly fast. 

Another thing that helps is local note caching. All my notes once synced will be available for edit and viewing whether connected to a network or not. I've had lots of speaking engagements where there is no connection whatsoever - even through a cell network - and my notes, provided I synced before I left, are there. No having to worry whether or not that 7th revision to my sermon synced to the correct folder and file in Dropbox. Dropbox doesn't append the file (unless you're using specific programs), it re-uploads the entire file if one letter is changed. I know text files aren't that big to begin with, but when you're out in the middle of nowhere with little or no data connection, every byte is hard to come by. 

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Simplenote Mac app. Click for larger. 

I mentioned it before, but what helped push me over the edge was the Mac desktop app for Simplenote. You can see for yourself that Simplenote really lives up to its name with its very spartan and minimalist interface. The changes are almost instant - I can type and sentence on the desktop and watch it be pushed to the iPad app seconds later. It's great. 

I love Editorial, plain text, and Markdown, but to tell you the truth, I don't need any of that. All I need is text, and the new redesigns for the mobile apps make the fonts much easier to read and far better to compose in. And if a worst-case scenario happens and I lose all my devices, including my Mac, my notes are all backed up on Simplenote servers. I can log on to simplenote.com and edit and back up my notes from there. 

If you're looking for a simple, elegant solution and don't want all the fuss with saving file and formatting, look no further than Simplenote. It's free and it's wonderful. What do you have to lose?