I keep them in IDEAS.md file on iCloud. I have shortcuts on both my phone and laptop to open the file instantly. I don’t need the sync to be instant. I just want to have the latest version when I run these shortcuts.
I added some ideas on my phone yesterday. Today, I opened the file on my laptop, but I didn’t notice it didn’t sync the huge <0.1KB change, so when I saved the file, the changes were overwritten, which means my ideas are now gone.
So a whole day has passed between me entering an idea and me expecting to have it synced, so the iCloud sync had its time to run on all of my devices that are apparently online even when they are in sleep mode. It’s the year of the Lord 2025, I’m paying 10€ per month to Apple for this wonderful experience, and I can’t sync a fucking text file between two devices.
So I installed Dropbox, after a 10-year long hiatus. Maybe they know how to properly sync a text file. They don’t. Opening the file from Dropbox folder doesn’t guarantee it will open the latest version.
So it looks like the year of the Lord 2025 is still not the year when I can enjoy a text file that is synced between two devices in the Apple ecosystem. For now I’m going to have to keep my ideas file in an app, in a non-plaintext format.
So, I’ll go with Bear for now. The sync actually works great for my use case and I have additional features, like keeping my ideas as todos if I want. I value the fact that the ideas are actually saved more than the fact that the format of the file is plaintext. I can always export it to plaintext later if I want to, which is the main reason I want to avoid keeping it in Apple Notes.