Hi again. Please allow me to ramble for an extended length of time. I will try to keep it informative and concise.
BACKSTORY: WHY I LIKE AGENDA OVER THE OTHERS
A bit of backstory. I’ve probably tried just about every kind of productivity tool on the App store, both for MacOS and IOS. So if you’re wondering, what am I doing using Agenda and engaging with the community more and more here? The answer is that, after extensive testing, analysis, and comparisson, I feel that Agenda is least likely to break under my heavy usage.
I’ve already been using it whilst out and about and it’s demonstrated its value to me. Prior to Agenda I was usign Apple notes quite a bit, Sorted, and Things.
Owning Sorted and Things already, why would I use Agenda instead? Things has one stinging feature deficiency and that is no bloody calendar. Secondly, the interface on MacOS is way too minimalistic. Literally no elements besides a plus button, forcing you to remember their keyboard tools or drag your mouse all over the place to do stuff. Not only that but they make you buy the IOS, IPAD OS and MACOS apps seperately, so flip those guys. #### censored expletives ####
Sorted is a solid competitor to Agenda because it has a calendar, has lists, and does notes fairly well. Unfortunately the drawback I experienced here is that you can only view one note at a time. It is a proper reminder app, but for keeping notes, there could be some issues.
Finally, Apple apps like Notes, Calendar and Reminders… I don’t want to use separate apps, particularly when I am out with just my phone. I want my notes, calendar and reminders all in one place. And so coming full circle back to Agenda, it gets my time investment for these reasons.
CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK
Most loved feature is the sharing integration. I can’t emphasise enough how helpful Agenda has been with its share extensions in IOS and MacOS. I think that’s the key reason I work in Agenda as much as I do now. I love sharing text from an app or or links from the browser whilst having the control over where to save it and what to name it, in addition to making little notes or reminders about it at the same time. Thank you for that.
Honourable mention: consolodating notes together and exporting as text or PDF etc. I like using the search or overview tools to get me note lists which can then be exported out to ChatGPT for example where I can tell it to make some sense out of it and then generate a new note as a summary. Maybe that’s something your developer team could consider as a future feature.
REQUESTS
I am going to break forum etiquette just a little here and combine a few feature requested ideas into one post if that’s okay. Having said what I love about this app, here is what I would like to see more of in the hopeful future:
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Consolodate icons at the top, together, and give outlines to the clickable elements. What do I mean by this? On a note window we have the agenda circle button on the top left and a gear icon on the bottom. For me personally, I would like to have all of those at the top and I would like to have menu items spaced out. Agenda cicrle for marking notes as to-do, done, move and put in the trash. Gear menu for other aspects. Pop out button. And Search. All at the top. All separately deliniated as icons to lesson the learning curve for new users and just to save time for those of us multitaskers and on the go people.
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Reminders sidebar. On the phone it is too narrow. Tapping the Reminders / Events sidebar should be full screen and rather than have the reminders abridged if they are too long with the “…” allow the reminder title to carry over to new lines. Better still if the reminders had visible checkboxes in view, I know they can be checked with a tap popup, but the gist of my message here is that some of us like to have visible screen elements to shave down on waiting time otherwised spent opening menus.
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Tag-list in the sidebar left sidebar. This is something Sorted did well. Agenda allows tags to be added in anywhere on the note, whereas Sorted has a section at the bottom dedicated for putting tags in. As tags are created, they also go into the tags list section of the Sorted Sidebar. This is useful for people who often forget to tag, if you see a list of tags on the sidebar whilst working on a note, you might be reminded to tag your note. Additionally if you have duplicate tags showing up in your tag list visible on the sidebar, you can go into those notes and change the tag to have them consolodated under one.
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Attachment list: This might be a big ask, I know. Apple Notes has an attachments window allowing you to see all attachments added to notes. If I make a quick note to paste an attachment and I don’t give the note any good description, then if I want to look for the attachment later, I might need to open a lot of notes and look at a lot of attachments. An attachment window allowing us to see names, dates and or icons of attachments like a little database would solve that user problem.
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Customisable toolbars. I’ve mentioned it before that the formatting popup windows don’t vibe well with me. I use a lot of displays, deskop spaces and windows already. One more window that can get lost in the shuffle can be annoyance. However you guys decide to design and implement the toolbars is up to you, but I would just add my voice that it is a feature we would love to see.
CONCLUSION
Agenda has made my work easier in many ways. Perhaps it’s started to change my life. I recognise feature creep is a problem for a lot of developers. I’m basing my feedback on using a lot of other apps. For those of us working in content creation related work, we recognise the value of this integrated writing and planning tool. Hope to see more productivity streamlining features in the future.
Have a nice day
