The last note-taking tool in my small summer series is Drafts by Agile Tortoise. I admit, Drafts is something for note aficionados, and I probably need to explain right away what sets Drafts apart from other tools.
Where Text Starts
First, it’s important to note that Drafts can only handle text. It’s a Markdown tool through and through. The Drafts keyboard on mobile devices provides all important Markdown symbols like #, * or -.
Of course, you can include links, images, and files in Markdown – but ultimately, you only see Markdown code.
The true value of Drafts lies in the right column of the screenshot: once I have written and edited my text in Drafts, I can pass it on to other apps using actions. The extraordinary thing about this: I can not only pass the text to classic word processors. Instead, countless options are available to me:
- Create tasks in todo apps
- Blog in WordPress
- Start a search in various search engines
- Generate a PDF
- …
The list could literally be extended indefinitely, because in addition to the included actions, the Drafts community has already programmed thousands of actions themselves and shares them in a comprehensive repository.
Bring it all in!
But let’s take a step back. Maybe I don’t want to write my entire text in Drafts. Maybe I want to quickly clip a text. This is easily possible with Drafts. On iOS or OS X, literally any text snippet can be collected in Drafts.
I can also append new clips to existing notes, so I can create entire collections on a topic or clip several important text passages from one source.
Particularly practical: I can create templates for this. When I clip a text section from a website, the URL and title of the website are also noted.
Modifying Text
Once the text is in Drafts, I have many other options besides Markdown to automatically edit my texts. I can perform sophisticated search-and-replace operations, where Regular Expressions are also available. Here too, various extensions are available in the library to make the work easier.
For me, one advantage of Drafts is that I can automate everything from input to processing to output. Drafts can also be easily integrated into the iOS system via shortcuts and serves as my text automator.
When Do I Use Drafts?
Simply when I’m in text geek mode. When I’m fine-tuning words, when I want to bring structure to a text as automatically as possible, and when I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with the text later. But I know: as long as I have my text in Drafts, I can get it out exactly as I need it later.
