Thanks to The Archive for sponsoring BrettTerpstra.com this week! I know that—with the impending release of nvUltra—it seems like touting the competition, but The Archive is a great app and their support of BrettTerpstra.com means a lot to me. Thank you!

The Archive is a modern note-taking app built to make your notes last a lifetime.

The Archive’s slick and fast interface makes rapid note-taking a breeze, and its native support for Markdown will show your thoughts in colorful plain text glory.

You are always in charge: with our Software Agnostic Design philosophy, we make sure that the app is about your content, and you can do with it whatever you want, whenever you want. We value your freedom very much ❤️. Use other apps if you like, sync via the cloud, or utilize some of Brett’s scripts to manipulate the files. No boxing-in, no proprietary features.

The Archive’s core principles are simple and focused around you and your work:

  • Use plain text to store notes, because it’s the one format with the longest lifetime, ever. Any other choice would compromise your notes. The Archive will keep you prepared for an uncertain future.
  • The tool is not important, your ideas are. By design, The Archive does not box you in, ever. It’s your content, your insights, your ideas. You shall be the true owner of your notes at any time.
  • You are the owner. For us, the importance of your ideas also means you should own the tool. That’s why we sell lifetime access to a long-time supported app, not subscriptions.
  • Allow any workflow. Do what you want. You can customize your workflows with your own scripts any time, or just stick to the core for totally unopinionated note-taking. Search, write, collect, create insights. The Archive is there to aid you with that.
  • Facilitate knowledge networks. With the flexibility and power of plain text workflows at its core, The Archive enables you to create [[Direct Links]] between notes and organize knowledge using #hashtags: plain text conventions that are well-supported by a lot of tools, including Marked 2!

So there’s no forcing you into any file naming schemes, no directory management shenanigans, no proprietary file formats, no forced cloud synchronization, no locked-away database, no subscription pricing – The Archive will accompany you and your insights in a beautiful writing environment.

By the way, The Archive works extremely well as a tool to implement the Zettelkasten Method: a method to facilitate creating more and more insights through smart note-taking. It’s backed by a community of genuinely helpful and interesting folks where we help each other with our struggle to become better creative knowledge workers.

In this time of obscure pricing schemes, we value transparency. Our open road map tells you about all the features we work on and when.

Check out The Archive today and celebrate its 2nd release date anniversary with the community!