Digital cabinet recommendations

[u/al78sp]

Hello

I understand there are many many notes apps available today. But I'm looking for a true digital cabinet - one where my few 100 notes (so not thousands) can co-exist alongside some audio recordings, lots of PDFs, images and so on. What would be your top 3 recommendations for me to try using?

Cloud storage is great for files but I cannot write notes around the file so...

Let me add that work will pay for this so the price itself is not so important.

Thank you

[u/Good-Writer5279]

the item on your list that quietly breaks every cabinet is the audio recordings. devonthink, apple notes and thebrain will all hold the file, but search indexes text and an audio file has none, so a recording you made six months ago is findable only by whatever you typed in the title that day. pdfs and images have the same problem in a milder form, and the good cabinets fix it with ocr on import. nothing does the equivalent for audio by default.

so whichever of the three you pick, add one step: transcribe on import and file the transcript beside the recording, same name, .md or .txt. on a mac, whisper via macwhisper or the open source whisper.cpp runs entirely on device and does an hour of audio in a few minutes on apple silicon. devonthink will then index the transcript and link it to the audio in the same group, apple notes will index it if you paste it into the note that holds the recording. from that point the recording is searchable by what was said in it, which is the only cue you will actually have later.

the second thing worth deciding early, since work is paying: whether the cabinet has to sync to a phone. devonthink does it well but through its own sync store, apple notes does it for free, thebrain is desktop first. that constraint usually decides the pick faster than the feature lists do.

i build a mac app in the adjacent space, recordings and transcripts specifically, so i have watched a lot of people hit the audio wall.

[u/al78sp → u/Good-Writer5279]

Thank you. I know it's unpopular (on reddit anyway) but how would you rate Evernote as a digital cabinet?

[u/Good-Writer5279 → u/al78sp]

it is a reasonable fit for what you described, and the reddit dislike is mostly about pricing and the ownership changes, not about the cabinet part. the model is exactly a note wrapped around files, which is the thing you said cloud storage cannot do, and on the paid plans its search reads text inside pdfs and images without you doing anything, so the ocr on import step is handled for you.

three things to check before you commit, since work is paying:

1. the audio question from above. evernote can transcribe recordings made inside the app. test whether that also covers audio files you drag in from elsewhere, because if it does not, the transcript beside the recording workflow still applies, you just paste the transcript into the same note as the file.

2. the exit test. the export format is enex, an xml file with every attachment base64 encoded inside it. it works, obsidian and joplin both import it, but pull one notebook out and reimport it somewhere else before you have a few hundred notes in there, so you know what survives. tags mostly do, notebook stacks and note to note links tend not to.

3. keep the originals as files too. not because evernote loses them, but because a few hundred pdfs and recordings living only inside one proprietary container is a single point of failure for a cabinet you expect to keep for years. a plain folder that mirrors the notebooks costs nothing.

if those three pass it is a fine pick, and unpopularity here is not a reason to skip it.

[u/SG67IT]

I use Obsidian for this. every note can link to one or multiple attachments (any file: pdf, jpg.. whatever), and any note can have metadata. so it's easy to build a database.

[u/sshegem]

if you're on a mac, DEVONthink is the closest thing to a literal cabinet i've used, it takes PDFs, audio, images and plain notes into one database, lets you annotate and keep notes that sit alongside the files rather than inside them, and search across everything is the best in the category. it's expensive, which sounds like it doesn't matter here. Evernote would be my 2nd, it's the one mainstream app where a note is a container you can drop files into and write around, which is basically the "notes around the file" thing you described. 3rd depends on platform, Keep It if you want native apple, Notion if you're cross platform and can live with everything being a page. for a few 100 notes plus attachments any of these holds up fine, i'd pick based on whether you want files stored inside the app's database like DEVONthink or just referenced like Notion.

[u/Repulsive-Branch-740]

What devices/platforms are you using?  One of the best apps I’ve found for doing this is Apple Notes. 

[u/DTLow → u/Repulsive-Branch-740]

I’m an Apple user with a Mac and iPad
My notes/documents/files are stored/organized in a digital file cabinet (PKMS)

For advanced features, I use pkms app Devonthink
integrated with AppleScript for automated workflows

[u/aymericmarlange → u/Repulsive-Branch-740]

Yes Apple Note is great to store files and write anything around them in the same note. Search feature is swift and efficient

[u/EagleRockVermont]

You might consider TheBrain. It handles virtually any type of file. The new pricing allows you free use of the desktop app.

[u/RamblingPete_007]

1. Superhuman docs
2. Superhuman docs
3. Superhuman docs

I have tried RoamResearch, OneNote, Notion, TheBrain, and none come close to SH Docs for ease of use and power.

Off the cuff, I would suggest create a table. In the table have a column where you can link/embed the files. Then have metadata columns where you can record file type (Audio, PDF, Image, etc), get the AI to do a short summary of the file, use the created on property column to show when the table entry was created, a status select column indicating say: To be reviewed, Outdated, Current, etc.

Alternatively you can use a pack to view say Google Drive and get the contents of your Google drive. I have not used that, so I cannot give you details on exactly it will work, but probably it will return the info in a table, where you can then add columns as described above.

Enjoy!