If you're really committed to having lots of text file notes, Obsidian is probably the way to go nowadays. Sync it to a git repo (termux on Android, Working Copy on iOS) or use the first party option (or iCloud if you're in the Apple ecosystem)
I use Emacs as my daily driver but I also have Obsidian and I use that from time to on the Mac to do things like generate PDFs or work with some of the great Obsidian extensions.
To your point about editing in the phone, Obsidian has great iOS and iPadOS versions that work as well as the desktop version (albeit with some wackiness with some extensions that only work on the desktop version).
In combination, this gives me a seamless setup that is all text files (.md) and that works really well across all three form factors.
iOS does not ship with a plain text editor as far as I know. I think it's _kind of_ there underneath when you open a plain text file directly, but it needs to be associated with the app that's accessing it.
As an aside, iAWriter is very good. I use that paired with Syncthing for cross-platform working.
Comments
What is a good way to edit plain text files on a phone?
Do iOS and Android ship the tools to open/edit/save plain text files these days?
Edit: My question is not about third party apps. It is about what ships with iOS and plain Android.
If you're really committed to having lots of text file notes, Obsidian is probably the way to go nowadays. Sync it to a git repo (termux on Android, Working Copy on iOS) or use the first party option (or iCloud if you're in the Apple ecosystem)
I use Emacs as my daily driver but I also have Obsidian and I use that from time to on the Mac to do things like generate PDFs or work with some of the great Obsidian extensions.
To your point about editing in the phone, Obsidian has great iOS and iPadOS versions that work as well as the desktop version (albeit with some wackiness with some extensions that only work on the desktop version).
In combination, this gives me a seamless setup that is all text files (.md) and that works really well across all three form factors.
iOS does not ship with a plain text editor as far as I know. I think it's _kind of_ there underneath when you open a plain text file directly, but it needs to be associated with the app that's accessing it.
As an aside, iAWriter is very good. I use that paired with Syncthing for cross-platform working.
There are a bazillion Markdown editors out there. iA Writer, Textastic, a-Shell gives you vim and other UNIX tools, etc.
iA Writer and it has a nice zen mode