I am wondering what the reasonable limit to the project file size, either by number of notes or the total size of the internal database container file is? I see that each project has its own file in the system, what is the practical limit?
Also where are the attachments / images stored, in the same file or are they stored as separate files in the database container?
I love the program, I’m returning back to it after a brief attempt at Apple Notes, but Agenda fits my style much better and this time I am purchasing Premium as I have seen that I will be using a lot of the features.
We don’t have a hard limit on project size, but I would recommend splitting any project that has more than about 100 notes. And also, to split notes longer than say 3-4 screens in height.
Images are stored as files, but they are with the database in a format that is hard to use. They are not intended to be handled by end users, and messing with them could even break your agenda data, so better to access them via Agenda.
I was planning to use Agenda as a daily Journal, that’s 365 Notes per year. Are you saying I should not do this?
What I enjoyed about Agenda was the ability to continuously scroll through notes in a timeline, contrary to Apple Notes and most other note programs, having to click and open each note on a sidebar. Some of my daily notes are only 2-3 lines of text or a single web link, and I was wearing myself out trying to read them on Apple Notes. Click Click Click
While I do not know how Apple Notes stores it’s notes, I am able to post hundreds of notes to a single Folder. I suppose I could create a new “monthly” journal project each month in Agenda, as the Search function would still find anything I wanted.
I appreciate that the images are stored as separate files, it’s fine them being in the Agenda database, I don’t need to mess with them, I just didn’t want to feel llike I was loading up the project files with images and causing issues. So I can feel free to add images without concern?
I was planning to use Agenda as a daily Journal, that’s 365 Notes per year. Are you saying I should not do this?
Yes, you can do that.
I have been doing this for 4 years. There are often 5-10 lines and mostly checklists. In between are also notes with more text and also with attachments as images or PDFs.
I then archive the project at the end of the year. Archiving large projects seems to help Agenda stay efficient.
Works as expected for me.
Yes, the 100 note guideline per project was more a rule of thumb, assuming notes a screen or two in height. I see no problem with 365 per year, if many are short.
I recommend splitting them into separate projects though. Eg. put each year in a separate project, and make a category called “My Diary” or whatever, which contains the projects by year.
I have been busy copying my pre-existing Apple Notes into Agenda. I created a Project for each of the 5 years. These are for the daily journalling posts. I still have others which are single topic knowledge repositories, much smaller in size.
It is SO MUCH better to be able to scroll through notes within a project, than clicking notes in a folder. Don’t ever change this, it’s why I use Agenda, nobody else does this.
Anyway, the largest Project is sitting at 187 Notes with 234 small screen grab images sitting at 70 MB. While I won’t be adding anything to this (older year) project anymore, it’s good to search in. I’ll be watching how well it performs.
My current note-taking activities are now broken up into a Work Log project (13 MB) and a Personal Journal project (24 MB), so each might be larger than previous years as I use Agenda more often to do more things. I back filled these to start Oct 1st, so only 1 month in.
I’ll let you know if either of them show any issues. I think you said the attachments are saved as external files and shouldn’t clog up the actual notes. So far my complete Agenda storage is taking up 680 MB.
Thanks for a great product.
Follow up…. I don’t know why the current file is so big, with so few smallish notes in it, only 32, except that this project HAD been created years ago and previous items were in it and was cleared out to start anew.
Is it possible that Agenda really didn’t reclaim / cleanup unused disk space and won’t really shrink and that I have more room to fill it up before it grows again?
It says it was created in 2021, but I only have the last month in it now.
Yes, I emptied the Trash. Hope I’m not over analyzing this?
Agenda keeps a full history of changes for each project. So even if you delete a note, its data is still kept for technical reasons related to sync.
We could improve this, and have plans to look into it. For now, if this is a problem, you could create a new project, and copy the notes to that, then delete the original project. Deleting a project does permanently remove it (perhaps only after a relaunch).