Ask HN: How to organize personal knowledge?
I copy pasted everything from my blog here. If you want the actual links to things I use, just use the link since I can&#x27;t dump it in hackernews without it being really unreadable.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vincentmtang.com&#x2F;toolbox&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vincentmtang.com&#x2F;toolbox&#x2F;</a><p>I only put all the ways I organize my things via software, still a WIP <i>(work in progress)</i> for hardware things I use <i>(pens, notebooks, etc)</i><p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## Notetaking &#x2F; Productivity<p>Dynalist – Primary notetaking software<p>Airtable – Google spreadsheet meets microsoft access. A swiss army knife for business. Very useful for making a minimal viable prototype<p>Pinboard – Bookmarking. I consider this 3rd party chrome extension a must-have, I bind it to my CTRL+D key<p>Anki – Flashcard software. I use it to speed up learning math, programming languages, and computer science.<p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## Software Development<p>Chrome – My everyday browser<p>Slimjet – A simple chromium based browser that I use for webdevelopment occasionally. Because then I can have a seperate desktop icons<p>VS Code – My primary IDE<p>Github –  Git + cloud storage for programming projects<p>Codepen – Isolated frontend environment. Used to A&#x2F;B test components and explore cool things. Organize codesnippets here like I do in evernote.<p>Postman – API testing<p>LucidChart – Making flowchart diagrams and data models. Not free though, for that I prefer draw.io<p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## Design Tools – (macOS and windows)<p>Flux – Makes screen red at night so I can sleep easier<p>AffinityDesigner – I use all adobe products as well, but I prefer this over illustrator<p>AffinityPhoto – Same reason, I prefer over adobe photoshop<p>AdobeIndesign – Catalog &amp; Brochure design<p>Figma – UX design tool, applesketch is macOS only<p>AutoCAD – Architectural drafting program, but not free<p>Fusion360 – 3D modelling program for DIY projects<p>GooglePhotos – Photo &amp; video backup<p>Dropbox – Cloud storage for files&#x2F;folders<p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## WINDOWS SPECIFIC<p>Phraseexpress – Keyboard macro automation. Checkout my 14 phrase-express guide to see use cases<p>Autohotkey – When I need an advanced macro that phrase express doesn’t work on. It has a high learning curve and ugly syntax language though<p>DirectoryOpus – Native windows file explorer sucks, this is best file explorer in market. Has a learning curve. Checkout use cases here<p>7+ Taskbar Tweaker – Smaller icons on my windows desktop screen<p>Blank Spacer Exes – It gets hard to look at so many icons in windows, so this gives me eye relief by grouping icons together<p>Greenshot – The best windows quick image editor out there. First thing I install on friends&#x2F;family PC normally, its that good. MacOS version is not good.<p>ShareX – ShareX is greenshot image editor that supports gif uploads &#x2F; custom image-hosting options. Version 11.6 is the best. MacOS has no equivalent.<p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## MacOS specific – alot of programming apps<p>Iterm2 – A better terminal environment. I binded it to ⌃⌥[spacebar]<p>Oh-my-zsh – My preferred bash alternative for development<p>Penc – Gesture based window snapping&#x2F;resizing<p>Spectacle – Keyboard based window snapping&#x2F;resizing<p>Keyboard Maestro – Keyboard automation for macOS. Similar to phraseexpress but better<p>Alfred – Better alternative to macOS’s spotlight for quickly opening files &#x2F; apps. I binded it to ⌥[spacebar]<p>Captured – An inferior version to shareX without gif support, but best thing I could find.<p>Dropzone 3 – For quickly handling common tasks like moving folders around<p>Cheatsheet – Because I’m a new mac user I need to quickly memorize commands<p>Unarchiver – So I can one click install things on macOS<p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## Chrome Extensions – Productivity<p>Silverbird – For quickly tweeting things on twitter<p>Tabsnooze – Set reminders to myself to pay bills at end of month, and to do incremental reading<p>Pagenotes – When I need to save some specific information on a website. E.G. terminal commands, regular expressions on regex101.com, etc.<p>TheGreatSuspender – Suspends unused tabs after 30 minutes. Because chrome is a memory hog<p>Tampermonkey – Injecting javascript on a page to enhance notetaking tools. Its like your own chrome extension. Read about how I use it here<p>Ankitab – Relatively unknown, but its the opposite of Momentum. I use it to review flashcards thoughout the day<p>DynalistCompanionClipper – I use this with my notetaking app dynalist, I dump all my ideas here as they happen.<p>Stylus – Add custom CSS to webpages. Since stylish was tracking user data and got banned<p>VideoSpeedController – So I can play youtube videos up to 16x speed with captions to speedread. Its how I consume information very quickly<p>Imagus – Hover over an image to see its full view. Useful for my notetaking app dynalist, as well<p>GoogleDictionary – Select a word to see its definition.<p>PowerThesaurus – Select a word to see synonym and antonyms. Thesaurus are my favorite business and coding tool, naming is important<p>ClipboardHistory2 – SelectAll, CopyAll – you now have a saved copy of whatever your typing on reddit &#x2F; hackernews &#x2F; wordpress<p>Lastpass – Chrome extension for managing passwords. Cross platform<p>AmazonAssistant – So I can dump all my favorited wishlist items anywhere to amazon, export it out later<p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## Chrome Extensions – WebDevelopment<p>Wappylzer &#x2F; Builtwith – To check what websites are running these days, accurate 50% of time<p>Page Ruler – Measure things on screen quickly<p>Webdeveloper – Powerful swiss army knife for webdevelopment, but I never use it<p>ViewportResizer – For responsive webdevelopment, I use this daily. Better than chrome’s native tools. Checkout bookmark version here<p>Gifscrubber – I need to pause gifs especially if I want to make a codepen of it from dribbble, etc.  PlaytheGif is a close equivalent.<p>RefinedGithub – Better looking github made by Sindresorhus<p>Octotree – Left side file explorer for github repos<p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## Android &#x2F; General<p>ColorNotes – Every other noteapp I’ve used sucks. I write things here, copy+paste it to dynalist later<p>GoogleKeep – When I need to quickly sync an image or text from my phone to PC and nothing else works<p>Meetup – Use the specific link, login, and add URL to homepage. Meetup android app sucks. Shows only the 28 techmeetups I’m subbed to<p>SolidExplorer – File explorer<p>Should I answer? – Tells me if phonecaller is a scammer. Not that I pick up phonecalls I don’t recognize anyways, that’s what voicemails for.<p>Slack – Team communication<p>OfficeLens – For making PDF’s from documents using your phone camera.<p>waze – If I know a driving route is slow, I use waze<p>okgoogle – My favorite commands are: “Play spotify”, “Next Song”, “Navigate Home”, “Exit Navigation”, “Find Parking”<p>Spotify – Music<p>Musixmatch – Lyrics for spotify<p>GoogleCalendar – Calendar<p>------------------------------------------------------------------<p>## Content &#x2F; News<p>Youtube – I only put an alert on people that post high quality content infrequently. E.G., SmarterEveryDay, MarkRober, TomScott<p>ProductHunt – Where I like to see all the new fun tools out there<p>Hackernews – Lots of smart and interesting people here. Also, where I find out about news in the tech environment<p>Reddit&#x2F;subreddits – Copy this multihub, delete ones that aren’t relevant to you, add cool ones like r&#x2F;welding, r&#x2F;cableporn, r&#x2F;engineeringPorn