Last week, I came across this new note app called Omni.
It seems very unique and cool, so I wanted to play with it and share what it's like with
you guys.
It's hard to explain this app in a few words.
But it's an interesting writing app with AI assistant.
But it's not like the ones you've seen before.
It's definitely one of the new generation note apps in my opinion.
So this is how its web app looks like.
It has multiple panes like in Obsidian.
And you're going to be mostly working on the left panel.
Whether you're writing an academic essay or your next blog post, you can start writing
here.
But this is the cool part – as you write, it uses your writing as a query for your knowledge
base and brings up relevant passages from articles and books.
And then you can dig deeper into each passage if you need to see the context which will
be displayed in the central panel and you can keep reading it if you like.
Then you could also go to another book or an article.
But you don't have to worry about the ones you opened previously because it keeps the
record at the bottom of the central panel so you can always go back to where you were.
Also, if you select a specific word, sentence or paragraph, it will use it to find relevant
information from your database.
This makes it very easy to find links between ideas because you don't have to manually search
through your database, find the ones you're looking for, and then go back and fourth between
pages.
But there's more.
Like many AI apps these days, you can ask it to write for you, using prompts.
So by default, your prompt is set to "continue writing".
By hitting the "Generate" button or press cmd G, it will generate content based on what
you wrote so far.
This process takes a while like 15-20 seconds, but then once it's done, you get a few ideas
to choose from.
You can then copy one and paste it.
But there are other prompts too.
So at first you have two more -- contradiction and tweetify.
Contradiction literally gives you an counterargument of your point.
Tweetify will generate a tweet about the topic you provided.
But you can add more as many as you like.
I added a few like summarise and explain.
Anyway, this is not even the coolest part yet.
I think the best thing about Omni is that you can upload your own datasets for the AI
to use.
Let me show you what I mean.
From this menu, you can see I have different datasets such as Nietzsche, Elon and brainpickings.
These are all pre-installed datasets that you can use right away.
So Nietzsche dataset contains all the things in his books and writings.
For example, you can enter some query, and it will show you relevant ideas from him.
In a way, it's like you can directly interact with his books like asking questions and writing
about something based on his ideas.
And it's the same case for Elon dataset which I believe contains passages from books and
articles about him.
Then there are lots of other datasets for blogs by famous writers.
You probably know James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits.
And there's Wait But Why which is another extremely popular blog.
These datasets contain most of the writings by them so it's easy for you to browse their
ideas.
But if you have your own favourite writers, you can upload their blogs as a dataset just
by copy-and-pasting the URLs.
This upload process can take ages in my experience like hours, but it is easy - you just have
to be patient.
Anyway, my most favourite part of this app is that you can upload your own notes as a
dataset too.
So I used a note app called Logseq as my note app for a long time.
So I uploaded its folder to Omni which took like an entire day because I have thousands
of notes.
But it was worth the wait.
I can now choose my notes as a dataset and browse them and find useful related ideas
as I write.
Even ask questions and then Omni gives me an answer based on my notes.
This is really cool because it feels like you have GPT-3 that is trained with your own
data.
To me, this feels significant because with most of the existing AI writing apps, you
cannot choose which dataset the AI is going to use.
So what they generate is very generic, which is why I almost never use those AI apps for
my own content.
But this changes that because it can now use my own data to write, like how I write.
Anyway, if you've been using a note app like Evernote, Obsidian, Logseq or whatever else,
you should give it a try because it's pretty cool.
You can simply export your notes and then upload them as a dataset.
Of course, if you have sensitive information in your notes, you might want to avoid uploading
that.
But if not, it's great.
It doesn't have to be your notes though.
You can upload Google docs, ebooks, pdfs, or even an entire Google Drive.
So if you want to make some documents easily searchable and use them for writing, this
can be a game-changer.
Omni Chrome Extension
Omni also comes with a Chrome extension, which is like a mini version of the web app that
you can use on any website.
You can open this sidebar with a keyboard shortcut which is Cmd E on Mac.
There are a few ways to use this.
For example, when you're browsing on the Internet, you could highlight a part and then Omni will
show you relevant passages from the datasets.
Or you could use a prompt like "Summarise" which will summarise the highlighted part
for you.
Another useful one is "Explain" prompt when you're reading about difficult concepts.
Since you can use this on any website, you could try it on your favourite writing app.
If you like Google docs, you can have Omni in the sidebar.
This way, you can always find references and get some writing help from AI.
As you type, it will use that as a query to pick up relevant information for you which
saves you tons of time from manually typing query in the search bar.
And then if you want it to write for you, you can just use this generate button.
Here, you can customise which dataset and prompt it will use.
Obviously, the results will change depending on what you choose in here.
I think using your own notes would be the best option to avoid that genericness of AI
writing.
By the way, another useful chrome extension you should get is TextBlaze, who is kindly
sponsoring this video.
You may have heard of it before because it's one of the most popular browser extensions.
And it's also available as a Windows app.
It's a text expander that allows you to quickly insert pre-written text snippets anywhere
you can type.
This can save you a lot of time, especially if you often type the same phrases or sentences.
For example, I have to reply to many emails every day.
Instead of typing the same things again and again, I can just make a snippet with TextBlaze.
Then I just need to type the shortcut which saves hours of my time every week.
But that's the most basic use case of TextBlaze.
It has a massive library of templates you can install depending on your workflows and
jobs.
So I'm sure you will find ones that can save you tons of time.
But with the recent integration with AI, TextBlaze is becoming even more useful.
You can now incorporate some AI elements into snippets.
For example, it can generate a whole reply to an email for you.
You just have to write the main point and then it will be rewritten so it sounds polite
and ready to be sent right away.
And there are lots of more cool templates like email thread summariser and grammar correction.
So definitely give it a try and play with it.
I'm sure you will find it useful.
You can install it right now from the link in the description.
Thanks!
Okay, there's actually more to Omni.
It is this ChatGPT style chat mode.
It's similar to the original that you can have conversations and save them as threads.
But it feels a little bit slower than ChatGPT.
Anyway, a big difference is that you can select which dataset you talk to.
So if you select your notes dataset, it's like talking to your own knowledge base.
You could ask questions about what you've written and read before.
It's pretty cool that you can create a chatbot that trained with your own data.
Also, it's a nice way of reviewing what you learned.
A nice thing is that it also gives you the list of pages the answer is based on so you
can check its sources.
This is actually a great alternative to that normal search a typical note app has.
Instead of manually having to find information you need, you can ask AI to fetch it for you.
I think this is going to be a new trend in note apps -- having AI help you search.
Anyway, I imagine this is going to be useful in many situations.
If you're a student, for example, you can upload a bunch of academic papers as PDFs
and then ask questions about them or get a summary and so on.
I have to say, I really like this product.
Its idea is brilliant and I feel like it's a big step forward towards the next level
AI integration with a knowledge management tool.
But obviously there are a few things missing.
First of all, uploading a dataset feels a bit tedious.
I wish there was an automatic sync option instead of having to manually upload every
time.
Things like Readwise integration would be useful too.
Also, there's no option to add a new file to an existing dataset.
So new files are going to have to be a whole new dataset.
And then your note that you wrote inside the web app will not be saved to the dataset.
So once you're done writing it, it's gone.
You can't save it unless you copy and paste into another note app.
I wish there was an option to add the note to a dataset.
The chrome extension could be better too.
For example, it would be useful if you could highlight a text and have an option to directly
save it to a dataset, instead of having to upload it.
Also, I can't figure out what this chat mode does.
I tried toggling on and off, but it doesn't do anything.
So if you know, please help me.
Alright, despite all of this, I love the idea of the product and I can see a massive potential.
So I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops.
If you're interested in more AI note apps, you might want to watch this video.