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What a Digital Zettelkasten Needs

Which No App I’ve Found Currently Offers

Anthony Draper
Cocktail Napkins
5 min readMay 5, 2022

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I recently wrote a short article about the “best app for my zettelkasten.” And that was a bit tongue-in-cheek. Because it wasn’t really an app.

One reason for that is because the best app doesn’t exist. At least, not for me.

Photo by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash

So I thought I’d publish what I would need in a digital zettelkasten to make me transition from my physical one.

There are obvious benefits to a digital zettelkasten. It’s much more portable, you can take it with you everywhere (just as we’re used to doing with our writing tools such as our laptops, iPads etc.) so it makes sense to be able to bring your ideas and idea-generator with you too.

But in order to do that, here’s what I’d need from an zettelkasten app:

Bibliographical Features

Many of my zettels are connected to a book, film, podcast, or whatever, from the outside world. Many of the zettels I have that don’t have that bibliographical link are built off the ones that do, because that’s where my ideas come from: the ideas of others.

For now, I keep my bibliographical data in Zotero, and I’ve got a little automation that lets me automatically insert the citation into Ulysses as I write. So in the…

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Cocktail Napkins
Cocktail Napkins

Published in Cocktail Napkins

Cocktail Napkins is where I publish shorter articles that ponder one or two ideas briefly. The type of thing you might think of while sitting at a bar, and briefly jot down on a cocktail napkin.

Anthony Draper
Anthony Draper

Written by Anthony Draper

Graphomaniac interested in culture, philosophy, and theology. Support my efforts: https://anthonydraper.medium.com/membership

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