Are you happy with Dynalist?

[Alem_Bukvic]

Just wondering what other people’s experience with Dynalist has been so far… At the moment I feel Dynalist has everything I could need. I don’t need any fancy features and I love the minimal design. However, I’ve been tempted to switch to Notion because it makes it easier to display different kinds of information (tables, boards, galleries, etc.). Plus, it’s a lot cheaper ;). But I still like the ‘feel’ of Dynalist if that makes sense. I’ve used it for a while and I find it difficult to let go.

I’ve been looking for an app that I can turn into my ‘second brain’. I don’t like having to use 10 different tools… I feel I can do that in Dynalist, but it has quite a few limitations. Maybe I need something like a wiki (e.g. Notion).

Here’s what my current setup looks like if any of you are interested…

[YG]

Unfortunately a deal breaker of Notion for me is lack of offline access. Also, the app takes like 5 seconds to start on my android phone.

I can’t say I’m entirely “happy” with Dynalist but I’ve not found anything better.

Every single day I find myself thinking at least one of these thoughts:

• If only the tag autocomplete match algorithm matched by arbitrary substring, not initial substring! (This is one thing Notion does really well) Come on, it’s probably just one ^ symbol in a regex somewhere! (If someone could point me to the relevant bit of js, so I can locally override it, would be grateful)
• If only there could be real WYSIWYG! Or at the very least markdown syntax highlighting (think the way markdowns are shown in Sublime/VSCode, or how Markor on Android shows markdown)! I really like my colors, highlights, bolds, italics, underlines, and I read my own notes much faster when those visual cues are present. When I use Dynalist it feels like going back to notepad again
• Without WYSIWYG, at least some kind of button on mobile in the meantime that allows you to wrap selection with ** or __ …
• If only I could rename tag across docs!
• If only there were an option when exporting as/importing from plain text, to have some way of preserving the distinction between notes and items (e.g. TheBrain’s plain text export will put a “-” in front of all the notes, and when importing will properly detect those). That would make my workflow so much smoother (since I often need to process my Dynalist documents using my own text tools )

[Brian_Rossiter]

I’ve been a paid Dynalist customer since January 2017. I love it and have created 600-plus documents. I know Dynalist is positioned against Workflowy, Moo.do and Checkvist, but I’d love to see it evolve and expand, taking on Evernote and Notion. I’d love some more functionality.

I bought a year of Notion a few weeks ago to see if I’d like it better, but it is clunky and slow—and would take forever to import all my stuff into. Things transfer as bullet points instead of as toggles. Notion doesn’t show deeply embedded files in the sidebar, resulting in more clicks to find anything. With Dynalist, I’m hitting Ctrl+G all day long to find the right documents.

Dynalist has a great feel about it, is very fast and uses much less in the way of computer resources compared with Notion.

[Philipp]

My brother uses Notion as his second brain so I have quite a good comparison between them. Notion is a great tool but for me it lacks one thing and that is a good hierarchy+hiding functionality.
In Dynalist it is very easy to capture thoughts and a huge amount of content because it is always possible to collapse/expand bullets in an endless hierarchy. In Notion it is only possible to collapse/expand everything and you cant jump to a specific level. And that is what makes Dynalist special.
On the other hand there are some features missing in Dynalist which are strongly desired but unfortunately not implemented yet like tables and multiple tabs/panes (the last one fortunately possible with @Piotr’s Powerpack) .

I like the simple and minimalistic approach of Dynalist and that why I am a happy user since 2 years.

[Alem_Bukvic]

Yup, I have to agree with this one. It’s why I’m still using Dynalist. Plus, it’s SO EASY to create stuff in Dynalist. Because it’s so minimal I don’t have to spend any extra time setting up a new document or page like I would in Notion. I would love some basic tables, but I use tags to get around some of my databases. It’s not perfect, but Dynalist feels more ‘natural’ than Notion.

[dave3456]

im still very happy with dynalist. the only thing the has been making me look around for other alternatives is the lack of offline support. im starting to get concerned about the about of personal information i have i dynalist (nothing incriminating but lots of personal notes and thoughts) and with the way things are going these days with security breaches happening every second week i would feel a lot better if i could store some documents on my NAS drive and sync between devices on my home network only.

notion looks pretty good alright. it would be neat being able to have in-line images again. i used them a lot in evernote, but i love using dynalist so much that i am managing just fine without that feature.

did they just recently add windows or android support? i remember looking at notion at some point and wrote it off for some reason or other. anyway, its no good now because i switched from windows to linux a few weeks ago so i would need a linux version first to even consider notion

Plus, it’s SO EASY to create stuff in Dynalist

im actually starting to think of this as a downside! its so easy i end up writing down every random idea i have. if i was using evernote i wouldnt bother writing down half of the things because i know things would get way too messy

[anon77612580]

Except for the Pro pricing, which is simply unaffordable for me due to currency exchange rates [I stay in India], I love Dynalist and it’s the only note app I use. I’ve found ways to live without some of the pro features, so the free app is enough for me now. I’m also not too concerned about privacy as I’m not really storing the country’s secrets in it.

So, overall I’d say I’m pretty satisfied with it.

[pottster]

So…

Where are you storing the country’s secrets?

Just asking.

[Philipp]

How expensive is Dynalist in India compared with other countrys?

[anon77612580]

So…

Where are you storing the country’s secrets?

Just asking.

I’ve entrusted that responsibility to my cat. Jokes aside, I understand the concerns over privacy, so I don’t store any information I consider to be sensitive. I’m still very much a pen and paper person, and I tend to write a lot traditionally. I usually scan the important pages and keep them on my hard drive.

How expensive is Dynalist in India compared with other countrys?

@Philipp Well I can’t speak for other countries, but $9.99 would be between Rs. 700 - Rs. 750 (with processing fees and such), and I’m not comfortable having that expense every month. I also do not wish to pay for an entire year as I don’t want to be tied to the app. If it was $4.99 - $5.99 a month, I’d have gladly paid.

[Subhinay]

Dynalist has become an integral part of my workflow. I can’t function without it anymore.

In India not everyone has a credit card either, nor does all debit cards work for international payments.

I wouldn’t mind one time paid app that unlocked Pro features on phones only. Maybe a new unlock every year or two for major features, something like what Action Launcher does.

[pottster]

@subhinay @anon77612580

You’re probably aware of it, but don’t forget the referral programme as a way of offsetting the cost

How does the referral program work? - Dynalist Help Center

[Annie_Logue]

I switched to Dynalist this year after using Workflowy for years and years. I really wanted the calendar sync, and it has made a huge difference.

I would love embedding. I would love to be able to work on different files in Dynalist rather than simply have links to them.

Other than that, though, I’m happy.

[Philipp]

Embedding and working on different files is possible with the Powerpack 3 . Maybe something you should try, it’s a game changer

[Alex_Avenarius]

I discovered Dynalist last summer, following the (impending) demise of Toodledo, and it has likely become my no. 1 most important app. I know @Erica said Dynalist is not meant to serve as a to-do list (?!), but I definitely use it that way (among many other things), and it’s superb in this respect. (Toodledo’s note-storing capabilities are atrocious.)

I plan to purchase the annual Dynalist subscription next week, switching from monthly payments. (Hoping for no “50% off special discounts!” to be announced a few days after I make my purchase.)

As to payments, I regret PayPal isn’t an option. And, out of 5 (!) of my credit cards, Dynalist refused to accept 4 (!). It was a relief to discover that at least one of my cards got accepted here. I’ve been buying stuff online for decades, and I’ve never encountered such payment difficulties as here with Dynalist. Must be a Canadian thing, I guess?

[Erica]

I know @Erica said Dynalist is not meant to serve as a to-do list (?!)

I think I meant Dynalist is not meant to compete with task managers like Things or Todoist, not that you shouldn’t use a todo list at all, sorry for the misunderstanding.

I plan to purchase the annual Dynalist subscription next week, switching from monthly payments. (Hoping for no “50% off special discounts!” to be announced a few days after I make my purchase.)

As to payments, I regret PayPal isn’t an option. And, out of 5 (!) of my credit cards, Dynalist refused to accept 4 (!). It was a relief to discover that at least one of my cards got accepted here. I’ve been buying stuff online for decades, and I’ve never encountered such payment difficulties as here with Dynalist. Must be a Canadian thing, I guess?

Not sure it’s a Canadian thing… Our payment processor is Stripe which is US based, and we use a US bank account. I looked up the transactions and didn’t see any paid payments, so maybe your other 4 cards were rejected before Stripe attempts to charge them. Do you remember what the error was?

Speaking of PayPal, we don’t have an automated system for accepting PayPal, but if you prefer we can arrange that. Just drop support@dynalist.io a line.

[Alex_Avenarius]

Thanks a lot, Erica, good to know there’s an alternative should my “fifth” card fail one day. For now, it’s been working fine for monthly payments since the summer, so I’m sure it will work fine for the annual payment next week, too. The working card is Visa, while the rejected ones were all Mastercards, I think, but it’s weird because I’ve been using them for years for purchases from US Amazon, for instance. I no longer remember the error messages (from early September or so?), but they were terse one-liners simply announcing the payment had failed, with no specific reason given.

Yes, I was so blown away by Dynalist after discovering it I became a paying Pro user right away. And now I’m confident I can stay here for the full year. Toodledo is still sputtering along, but even if it goes away completely one day, I think I could replace its functionality satisfactorily with Dynalist.

Prior to discovering Dynalist, I was considering Remember The Milk or Amazing Marvin as Toodledo replacements (Todoist and TickTick didn’t impress me in my testing), but the ability, in Dynalist, to bookmark time-based search results, is a life-saver.

So, I have set up Dynalist bookmarks such as Overdue, Overdue & Today, Today & Tomorrow, Next 3 Days, Next 7 Days, Next 14 Days, Next Month, and Next Quarter, and the speed with which you can click through all these in Dynalist is quite wonderful, and in a way even more impressive than in Toodledo, the native to-do app. The heading sizes and color highlights in Dynalist are, I find, nice (and even richer, in fact) replacements for Toodledo’s priority levels. Of course, Toodledo offers more task-specific features, but I could survive without them if need be.

In particular, as mentioned, the note-taking functionality in Toodledo is very poor, so I have transferred all of my task notes from Toodledo to Dynalist, putting links to Dynalist docs in Toodledo tasks’ note fields instead.

But Dynalist can do so much more than just to serve as a to-do list. That’s the great thing about it. I’ve been using Dynalist to prepare outlines for articles I write, for instance. And I’ve been using Dynalist to share professional feedback with my team members, and they’ve been impressed by the clear structure of those feedback notes as offered by Dynalist. They couldn’t quite believe they could even insert their own reactions to the feedback notes without having to log in or set up their own Dynalist accounts, so that’s some amazing functionality for the professional user.

In short, to reply to Alem’s question, Dynalist has been a revelation.

[Erica]

Thanks for sharing your use case in-depth! That’s super helpful to us

[Paul_Keith]

Being a victim of psychiatry - Dynalist is a 4//10 for me.

1. Once you get abducted inside a psych ward - There is no way you can cancel or pay for the monthly Pro subscription. I was surprised Dynalist was offering a pro service when I created a new account just to de-clutter everything and as a back up in case I had failed to log out of my phone but this is where Scrivener gets it right. 30 days (non-running) trial if you don’t log into the app for days and auto-cancel Pro set to x amount of days are missing so the credit card aren’t running.

2. Since psychiatrist can prescribe drugs that mess with the mood and narcissistic parents can leave lots of broken hardware around mixed with moving pieces of paper: the traditional way to gather secure content on paper has never worked for me. Encryption is worse what with different hardware and software having different interfaces. (I just happen to forget the OPPO phone PIN code because I was kidnapped and it just happened to have 6 digit pin rather than 4. Something I could remember before being prescribed with memory and hormone destroying drugs such as Depakote, Lithium, Tegretol. This even with undergoing ECT before which should have ruined my memory pre-signing up for Dynalist.)

I haven’t figured out the solution yet. Friends seem like the safe bet like how services like Lastpass Premium offers but 100% of my friends have betrayed me in the worst of times. Most likely because I pretty much meet these people inside facilities like psych wards. Collaborated we can do great stuff such as be there for grieving victims and make people who will never be let out smile but once they get out - psychiatrists manipulate their fear and they turn into fearful people that would defend their psychiatrist to death just because in their head it was the psychiatrist who let them out and they aren’t insane, we’re the ones insane. They just have “mental illness” issues (psychiatry would never admit that there’s no way to measure the chemical imbalance issues they promote). This has left me with lots of cluttered links in Dynalist and other services that I have to spend time re-collecting and while the spread out data is a life saver for going back in time. (Say 2 years prior like when I was kidnapped by 6 men who said they didn’t care for my human rights back in October 28, 2018) - It isn’t perfect in addressing the needs for an outliner with Roam Research graphs rather than Obsidian with graphs as my brain focus dies after 1 minute and I lose huge pieces of memory after a 3-6 hour period.

I can literally reread a previous page for example and find new paragraphs I should have remembered since I remembered the page having just recently read it but huge sentences would pop up that are crucial that my brain flat out couldn’t remember. I would pour a hot cup of water, lay it besides me and everytime it would get cold. This isn’t purely from the drugs alone but the combined reality that there are people being kept locked in forever or will be re-sent back (I am on Temporary Discharge for ex. due to Co-Vid quarantine) and we have to consume knowledge fast and e-mail people who don’t reply about psychiatric laws (ex. Jim Gottstein who wrote the Zyprexa Papers revealing how the company purposely hid warning labels) and psychiatric help groups such as Mindfreedom Shield all while the whole internet censors if not cyberbullies anyone mentioning these facts in detail because psychiatrists and psycho psychiatrist fans and clients have hijacked the idea of antipsychiatry as being Tom Cruise cults while hiding the history of concentration camps and lobotomies to the general public.

[timers]

#googlesheets

dynalist is top-notch during her time, and better than a whole bunch of things out there. Just couldn’t ever find much use for it. Not being able to do regular notetaking and not being able to copy/paste into it I believe were a few of the key deal-breakers

#googlesheets is a bundle of useful though