In my Portable Operating System post and its comments, I bemoaned the lack of an Emacs port to iOS/ipadOS or at least to the iPad. If I had that, I’d probably still use my MacBook Pro at home but I’d, for the first time, be able to easily and unobtrusively take my working environment with me wherever I went.
We’re not there yet but we can carry a crucial part of our Emacs environment on our phones and iPads. The apps that enable that are Orgzly and beorg. This post is about Orgzly, the solution for Android phone users. Perhaps I’ll cover beorg, the iPhone solution, in another post.
Because Orgzly is Android only and I’m an iPhone user, I don’t have any personal experience with it but I’ve read nothing but good things about it. You won’t get the whole Org-mode experience, of course, but you can capture notes, display agendas, and track your progress on tasks when you’re out and about. The alternative for Org users is to maintain two lists: one for Org-mode and another for the mobile app of your choice. Perhaps you can even exchange data but that’s enough friction to prevent many people from adopting it.
Josh Rollins is an Orgzly user and blogs about it regularly. In a recent post, he has a mini-interview with Orgzly’s author. If you’re curious about Orgzly, take a look at Rollins’ post. It gives you a nice overview of what the app is trying to accomplish and the project’s goals. If you want more information there’s an FAQ and some documentation to look at.
As far as I can see, the only real problem with Orgzly is that the only available syncing option is Dropbox. Due to Dropbox’s recent price increase and policy changes, that may be a problem for some users.