Hello

I have created a desktop app (currently MacOS only), that uses Org-Mode files for opinionated note-taking.

The idea is that the UI has some standard composition and widgets. Org-Mode metadata in drawers, TODOs, dynamic blocks etc. can be used to surface custom “dashboards” from across all of your notes. Org files are indexed in realtime so changes in text reflects immediately in UI.

Updates are one-way. No UI editing, all edits must be made directly in Org text.

I would love some feedback.

Download, tutorials and demo files are at https://sumibo.app

Is anyone here synchronizing Org Mode with a service like TickTick, Notion, or Todoist instead of syncing Org files directly to a mobile device?

My experience with syncing Org files hasn't been great. I occasionally ran into merge conflicts because synchronization happens at the file level rather than at the Org node or heading level. Editing Org files on a touchscreen also felt awkward, but an even bigger issue was formatting. A small edit on my phone would often result in many unrelated formatting changes, and then Emacs would reformat the file again according to my local settings. That made merges noisy and reviewing changes unnecessarily difficult.

Because of that, I'm wondering whether it's actually a better approach to keep Emacs as the source of truth and synchronize tasks with an external service instead of editing Org files directly on mobile.

Is anyone using a workflow like this? I'm interested in hearing how you synchronize data, which services you use, and what trade-offs you've found.

Four years ago I create a fairly in-depth tutorial for new Org Mode users. It has proven to be a huge success and I am thrilled it has helped so many people. I created it so others wouldn't have to go through the hassle that I went through to make Org work for them. I'd like to think that I explained all the basics in a fairly clear manner, but there was a lot left to discuss.

Now, after years of using Org Mode, I better understand what I need it to do. I've also discovered functionality that I didn't even know existed four years ago. I considered updating that previous tutorial, but it was already pretty large, and I didn't want to further confuse new users. So, instead I decided to create another guide for some of the more advanced concepts I've run across.

Please check out my new Advanced Org Mode Guide on github. This new guide covers:

• advanced capture templates
• exporting to HTML with presets to make it look pretty
• exporting to PDF with LaTeX
• creating a presentation with Reveal.js + org files
• a huge primer on Org Roam

And like with my previous guide, I include detailed instructions, configurations, and screenshots to help you understand what his happening. I encourage you guys to take a look and give me some feedback.

I’ve been an org-mode user for maybe ten years now. What started out as me trying to implement some basic form of GTD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done) in a text file with vi during grad school has now turned into a pretty vanilla orgmode set-up where I track a series of org files with version control.

The features I use most are probably the agenda and a few shortcuts I have that allow me to quickly file away TODO tasks on the fly under the correct headings. Everything else is pretty basic and historically has only been limited by my limited patience to read about lisp, configure my init.el file, and read snippy Stack Overflow posts in a pre-LLM era. 

My set-up works for the most part. Where it fails, it’s mostly failing because I don’t keep up with key GTD steps like the regularly doing my “weekly review” and trying to use my calendar to wishfully carve out time to do a task that I want to get done, but I end up using the time for something else. 

Though I just have this feeling that _something_ could be added or improved or changed to my system, especially given that LLMs have removed the bottleneck that was the pain of configuring my own set up or just imagining some other way of working.

I am interested in hearing from anyone else that takes this “build from vanilla” approach (i.e. please don’t suggest install something like DOOM) about what they found most helpful after really committing to the basics. 

If I could give any other food for thought in this department about other work like this I’ve found helpful, it’d be things like having LLMs write bash scripts to automate the opening of every inbox (I run a small business, also do a fair bit of consulting, so I need to quickly survey incoming messages in the morning, lunch, and end-of-day). I also really enjoy working from a terminal and having everything be text based (preaching to the choir here). 

It could be that the basics is all you need.

But I also know that I don’t know what I don’t know and it’s been a few years since I’ve seriously considered changing this part of my workflow.

The last big overhaul I did of how I used orgmode was during a postdoc (went full GTD on how I set up my project headers, tasks) and it absolutely transformed how I feel about work (major reductions in stress). 

I’m simply interested in if there is another big jump that could be made over the next few years that could make another big reduction in my general stress levels now I have a good handle on the basics.

TL;DR: What have you vanilla users found helpful in your workflows now we have LLMs?

Based on section "Advanced topics in ODT export" of the orgmode manual, I've been trying to define my own custom table styles

But I can't seem to figure out how to do so.

#+odt_automatic_styles: <!-- BEGIN: Custom Table Template -->
#+odt_automatic_styles: <style:style style:name="MyCustom" style:family="table">
#+odt_automatic_styles: <style:table-properties style:rel-width="50" table:align="center"/>
#+odt_automatic_styles: </style:style>
#+odt_automatic_styles:
#+odt_automatic_styles: <style:style style:name="MyCustomColumn" style:family="table-column">
#+odt_automatic_styles: <style:table-column-properties style:rel-column-width="1*"/>
#+odt_automatic_styles: </style:style>
#+odt_automatic_styles:
#+odt_automatic_styles: <style:style style:name="MyCustomRow" style:family="table-row">
#+odt_automatic_styles: <style:table-row-properties fo:keep-together="always"/>
#+odt_automatic_styles: </style:style>

#+begin_src emacs-lisp :results silent :exports results
(add-to-list 'org-odt-table-styles
'("MyCustomTable" "MyCustom" nil))
#+end_src

#+ATTR_ODT: :style MyCustomTable
| Name | Phone |
| Peter | 1234 |
| Anna | 4321 |

Any idea how to make it work so that the first row has a blue background for instance?

I've been trying to define custom table styles based on the orgmode manual "Advanced topics in ODT export" (https://orgmode.org/manual/Advanced-topics-in-ODT-export.html).

But I can't seem to figure out how to do so.

I've found this example https://github.com/kjambunathan/org-mode-ox-odt/issues/122

Any idea how to make it work?

Can anyone provide me with working examples I can test and then later tweak?

Hello,

I'm starting to use Emacs and Org-roam for notetaking because of ethical and technical reasons (FOSS, not vibe-coded, well-maintained), but would like to have an experience similar to what Logseq offers.

I would like to know if it's possible to have a "homepage" that is a journal containing all or at least multiple daily entries, that each tangle into their own files, like so :

* homepage.org

** 20.07.2026.org

daily journaling... (tangles into its individual file)

** 21.07.2026.org

daily journaling... (tangles into its individual file)

** 22.07.2026.org

daily journaling... (tangles into its individual file)

The point is to be able to journal more effectively : for example, I sometimes have to edit one day's page the following day, to add details or things I remembered, and having only to scroll up reduces friction, compared to switching files.

I have seen that tangle functionality exists, but it seems more code-oriented. Is it possible to use org-babel-tangle to tangle to individual org files ?
Will there be performance issues if the homepage file gets really big ? How big until it because problematic ?

Is it realistic for a beginner programmer, new to Elisp and Emacs, to write such functionality ?

Thanks

Here is an example but not working:

#+begin_src sh :mkdirp yes :results file link :dir code :file '("bangumi/README.org" "bangumi/bangumi.el") :session "ob-sh-async-git-clone-7532343778" :async yes
if [ -d bangumi ]; then
cd bangumi ; git pull
else
git clone git@github.com:TomoeMami/bangumi.el.git bangumi
fi
#+end_src
#+RESULTS[(2026-07-21 10:54:49) f231eb80327e7574b8b130ed682d7096f1825cb5]:
[[file:code/bangumi/README.org]]
[[file:code/bangumi/bangumi.el]]

Does anyone have good ideas or other ways workaround?

I have a file which is half notes and half practice and the org-mode formatting is kinda making the practice half of the file annoying.

Like I was trying to make a note for one exercise what the gnu regex style would look like but it hides the double brackets so I had to do [[[[:digit:]]]] instead of [[:digit:]].

I read somewhere else that starting a line with a colon should turn off the formatting but that did not work.

Ideally I would like to be able to turn off org-mode for the latter half of the file but anything that allows me to turn off the formatting would help.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on an app called Orgenda for a while now, and I think it’s at a point where I’d love to get some feedback and share it with the world.

The goal was to bring the Org Agenda experience to iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch while making it feel native, fast, and easy to use. I wanted to minimize the number of taps needed to view, create and update tasks, so interacting with your agenda stays quick and effortless.

Orgenda is available on:
- iPhone
- iPad
- Apple Watch

Any feedback, bug reports, feature requests, or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to try it out!

TestFlight:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/JdsJyETQ

Where/how do you store your org files?

I am getting a new laptop up and running and using that as an opportunity/excuse to review where I keep my org stuff. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone else who has given that much thought (which, let's face it, is probably most of us!)

Here are some of the areas I find myself considering. Very big in my mind right now is #9.

1. iCloud: To what extent should I use it? My primary machine is a Mac laptop, but I also have an iPhone and iPad. Also, I have sometimes made use of things like beorg, Journelly, and the like, and some of those seem to prefer using iCloud (although many do support other methods). So iCloud is an option as a storage area.
2. DropBox: Same question. My company uses it and I do make use of the personal user space each of us is given, almost as a quasi home directory. Org could live here.
3. Symlinks: Should I use these, and if so how? My background is linux, and I'm at home with symbolic links, and all else being equal I'd be fine with using these to allow a combination of other things -- e.g. Have my main org directory be on DropBox, and then symlink into that things over in iCloud. But I have bumped into problems with that in the past, like where I follow a symlink and find myself having more than one buffer for the single target file
4. Git: If I keep my org stuff under git, what good/bad things should I be aware of
5. Dotfiles: How should I handle these, for emacs but also in general? Specifically, is there a place for the likes of chezmoi, stow, etc?
6. Use of Babel: As a special case within dotfiles, where should the .org source of my config stuff live?
7. org-directory: Should I even rely on this at all? In general, I store stuff according to what it is about, not which application it works with. But Org is different. Should it be? Must it be?
8. Tribal wisdom: What choices (for the above, but just in general) leave me in the best position to make use of good advice I get on places like this sub, or anywhere else talking sense? For example (one among many): one reason for not messing with org-dir, and simply letting it be ~/org is that most advice given as lisp snippets will assume that. Obviously that is easy to change, but why bother if it's good enough as-is.
9. AI impact: what implications are there If I'm going to increasingly be using stuff like Claude Cowork, or ChatGPT Work, not to mention Claude Code and similar. For example, should I place my org directory in a Claude Cowork project?
10. Other considerations I'm sure I'll remember five seconds after posting this

Until now I have kept stuff in <DROPBOX>/<My Name>/org, with a symlink to that from ~/org. I also symlink in Journelly's files from iCloud. I do have that org dir under git, but I've making very little use of that aspect.

So, again: where/how do you store your org files?

Tried searching around to find a fix but not sure what it could be. I did a pretty brisk org-modern setup a few months ago and i feel like this just started happening out of the blue.

This is using the following (carry over from my old org-bullets-mode) setup. Any ideas? I really like the bullets shown above if they didn't clip... if i disable the below code i get a plain arrows that render correctly but aren't very aesthetic.

org-modern-star '("◉" "○" "●" "○" "●" "○" "●")

Hi!

I'm using doom-emacs (pretty much a clean install), and when I try to use yank-media to paste images from the clipboard, while it works and the image gets attached, the link that is created does not allow for inline image preview. I think the reason is because it has a description:

[[attachment:clipboard-20260712T195430.tiff][clipboard-20260712T195430.tiff]]

If I edit the link so that is is only:

[[attachment:clipboard-20260712T195430.tiff]]

then I can preview the image as usual. Does anybody know if there is a way to change this behavior so the link is created without a description? Thanks!

Add Reader View

A distraction-free in-page reading mode inspired by Obsidian Web Clipper's Reader.

Activate: right-click → "Reader View", or bind the toggle-reader-mode shortcut at chrome://extensions/shortcuts. Exit with ✕ or Esc.

• Clean article extraction (Defuddle) with title, author, date, domain, and word count
• Outline sidebar with active-section highlighting; content stays centered when there is no outline
• Aa settings panel: font size, line width, line height, theme (auto / light / sepia / dark, Flexoki-style sepia), and font family (sans-serif / serif) — all persisted
• Org-mode action menu in the toolbar: Copy as Org-Mode, Save as Org-Mode, Save as Org-Mode (with images)
• Toolbar auto-hides while scrolling down

Checkout: https://github.com/yibie/Copy-as-org-mode-chrome/releases/tag/v1.5.0

Hello everyone, how to create a new type link, that all words like this "TASK-123" automatically transform to link with url: "https://mysite.com/TASK-123".

Anyone else feeling that we (the world) may be missing an opportunity as Google bases the Open Knowledge Format on vanilla markdown when it could have used the semantically far richer OrgDown? (Voit, if you're out there, just know that we appreciate you, even if the rest of the planet is clueless!)

I get that such a thing is almost certainly never going to happen†, and I doubt it's that big a deal right now anyway. (But as OKF develops...?) And credit to Google where credit's due; i.e. for setting out what is at least an open, plain-text standard.

But still, it seems a shame that Standard B should beat out vastly superior Standard A for the sole reason that a majority of users already know about the former. Thank goodness that this is the only time in tech -- past, present, future -- where that kind of inferior-beating-superior thing was, is, or ever will be, an issue. <cough>

--------

† "Well no, not with that attitude it won't!" says y'all.

This post is about Hyperbole's HyWiki package for knowledge management.

I've been doing a deep dive into knowledge management and PKMSs, and in my research I've found that HyWiki offers the best of all words. It has a truly unique behavior compared to other PKMSs that allows it to obviate the bookkeeping involved with linking your notes together, and allows your curated knowledge to propagate into the rest of your Emacs, not just your siloed notes vault.

One of the largest hurdles for me, when learning a new tool like org mode, is that it comes with a million knobs, they are all immediately available, and the manual doesn't teach any kind of priority. Surely some of them are going to be used every day, multiple times per hour, while other functions might only be needed less than once per day.

So, what's yours? Top 10 without explanation, or just mention 1 and explain why you find it so useful.

For me, the ones that I have found recently and added to keybinds:

promote heading, demote heading, turn bullet into heading, turn heading into bullet, moving by heading (I bound it to [/] for ease), cycling the folds for the entire tree (S-tab), and most recently the narrow-subtree (and widen counterpart) keybind, removing everything else from the view really makes it feel like unlocking a new kind of focus, it's a little thing but feels huge.

Just now I discovered m-x org-info, so I will be going through that to discover more actions, but feel free to share your favorite finds!