1y ago

The cult of Obsidian: Why people are obsessed with the note-taking app

www.fastcompany.com /90960653/why-people-are-obsessed-with-obsidian-the-indie-darling-of-notetaking-apps

104 comments

Obsidian is really good. Very feature-rich and customizable.
I personally prefer Joplin for a couple of reasons. It's fully open source and while it has less features and customizability, I also feel it keeps out of my way more to allow me to focus purely on taking notes and not messing around with other features. Obsidian encourages me to play with its extra features more, which for my case usually just reduces the productivity of my note-taking.
Probably just a me-thing. I tend to gravitate to more straightforward and minimalist solutions generally.
- I'm sort of the opposite. I liked Joplin but found myself needing the features of Obsidian. I do know what you mean about Obsidian getting in the way. While it's easy to start using it, there is a bit of a learning curve to using it well. And it can be a little quirky-annoying at times.
  I think that's one reason there are so many software offerings in this space. There's a wide range of preferences when it comes to features vs simplicity.
  For me, Obsidian is just about perfect without any extensions, but I'm also glad it is extensible if you need them. The configurability and customization, while using standard markup, and keeping the vault storage sizes small were the major pros for me.
  Some other products I've tried in this space were just too much for me. Huge save files, overdone UXs, and proprietary formats. Joplin and Obsidian were both a breath of fresh air when I found them.
- I switched to Joplin after dumping the fully enshittified Evernote earlier this year. Joplin’s entry and reading interface is straight up terrible, and I sorely miss the auto-ocr search from Evernote, but it’s overall layout basic enough to be usable.

Obsidian is great; I was a happy user for a couple years. But I recently switched to Logseq and I think I'm already liking it more, and it's because of something Logseq doesn't do.
Obsidian lets you write a full markdown file, so step one is deciding how to write something down. Is it a nested list? Or a table? Or headings and subheadings with paragraphs?
In Logseq, everything is a nested list. This feels like a limitation, but I've been preferring it. The decision is made for you: you're going to jot this information down as a list. So then you just start writing it.
People often tout that Logseq is open source, and while that is great, IMO there is also a design consideration that makes it better. Pretty much any kind of information you want to write down can be represented as a nested list. Doing it that way keeps everything simple, consistent, and more searchable. (Logseq's built-in querying feature seems to be more powerful than Obsidian's Dataview plugin, although I can't say much about it since I haven't really played with it yet.)
Both Obsidian and Logseq save (kinda) standard markdown files, so if you spend a lot of time in a plain text editor, you can still use that. You don't lose anything by editing a file in a separate editor -- they will both parse and re-index the file next time you view it in the respective app.
- Logseq is the only note taking system that has clicked with me, by lowering the mental overhead at the time of adding notes. I just throw it in there without any considerations while still feeling like it's not going to get lost. Later I may revisit the day's journal and add tags or connect other information, move a block into its own page, etc.
- In Logseq, everything is a nested list. This feels like a limitation, but I’ve been preferring it. The decision is made for you: you’re going to jot this information down as a list. So then you just start writing it.
  Oh - this sounds interesting.
  Whenever I needed to jot down any notes I've been finding myself just writing plain .txt files with bullet points, and trying tools like Obsidian or TiddlyWiki I always ended up being overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I could do (and with all the customization options) that I never got around to actually writing things down. I'm definitely gonna look into how Logseq works.
  (Although I have to say, their website does look a bit "too hype-y" for my liking. IDK how to explain it, just a gut feeling. Still, at least it's FOSS so it can't be too bad)
  
  The website also put me off, I only kept at it because my partner was already using it and it looked solid enough. I even asked "Are you sure this is the logseq? It looks so...idk Marketing?"
  But so far I just seem to use it a lot, and the more I use it the more useful I find it, especially after learning how to add tags (didn't seem particularly obvious in the docs), and after finally getting into the flow of using Syncthing.
- In Logseq, everything is a nested list. This feels like a limitation, but I’ve been preferring it. The decision is made for you: you’re going to jot this information down as a list. So then you just start writing it.
  I really appreciate you posting this. I'm a long-time Obsidian user, and an Evernote user before that, and I never "got" Logseq. I just couldn't understand what people saw in an app that didn't let you "write" anything. I've tried to start using Logseq so many times and just given up because the interface made no sense.
  Thanks to your comment I finally get it! I prefer to be using something open-source, so I'm going to give Logseq another go, now that I finally understand it, and see how that approach feels.
- my situation is very similar to yours; I was previously an obsidian user but then switched to logseq for everything. I really wonder why logseq website doesn't hype up the fact that it's an outliner, because imo that's what sets it apart from similar programs. I didn't even know what an outliner was until recently
- Do you know cherryTree and if yes, how it compares to the two?
  
  CherryTree is way clunkier, IMO, and has too many irrelevant options that get in the way, particularly around formatting. Obsidian is just markdown, so you don't have the option of spending 15 minutes trying to figure out why code blocks are showing up as dark text on light background even though you're in dark mode, which was my last experience in CherryTree. Looking and cross referencing documents is also super easy; I'm not sure if CherryTree even does that.
  
  I have not heard of cherrytree before, I'll check it out.
- LogSeq also supports Org (which is what it was originally designed for), which is phenomenal for an Emacs user like me.
- Kinda surprised I had to scroll this far down to find logseq. I've started using it in university and it's been a life saver. I love the idea that everything is in these nested blocks, so I can just hammer down notes about whatever super quick with no setup or thinking about it. I just plunk my laptop down, open it up and go to town.

Trilium for a database and therefore faster method that is actually foss.
Obsidian is reaching market criticality so I'm expecting enshitification any time now.
- Obsidian is reaching market criticality so I’m expecting enshitification any time now.
  You could be right, but I'm not 100% sure of that. From the article:
  Keeping the team small and spurning outside investment is Obsidian’s way of avoiding incentives that might lead the company astray.
  If they can stick to that, they can avoid going downhill. The main driver for enshittification is big shareholders that want the company to keep growing -- shareholders don't care about stable profitability, they need growth for their ownership stake to increase in value. If Obsidian is profitable now and they're fine with just keeping it that way, they can make it work.
  
  The driver of enshittification is extracting money from your user base and investors alike. Lacking one doesn't stop it.
  If I was going to trust obsidian, their code would be fully foss. Since it isn't, there is nothing future proofing my notes in their software. Might as well switch now to something which largely works better and is more feature rich.

I've recently switched from Notion to Obsidian (almost anyway). But I still have to find a good way to sync. I tried nextcloud, but I couldn't get two way sync to work on mobile. I feel like €10,- a month for just sync is a bit much, and it (partly) defeats the idea of "the files are mine".
I wish the official sync software was available for self hosting (ie as a Docker container). Maybe even against a one time fee?
What solutions do others here use for syncing?
- I use syncthing, it is great for folder syncthing between multiple devices and no "server" needed
  
  SyncThing is fantastic; I use it for Obsidian files and also for password manager databases.
  
  I used to use syncthing but got annoyed by it drawing sooooo much battery from my android phone. Tried the fork and got it down a bit but kt was just too much in the end.
- Obsidian Livesync
  Pros:
  bullet proof
  Simple
  FOSS
  Selfhosted
  Cons:
  password/secrets manager nearly required to setup new devices
  fails to make my morning coffee
  
  Amazing, sync has been holding me back from adopting Obsidian. I've been tooling around with Nextcloud Notes/Quillpad thus far and while it works, it has its limits - especially since I like to link my notes to one another. This might actually be the thing that finally gets me to switch. Thank you for sharing.
  
  Is this better than syncthing?
- I just keep my vault in Dropbox and use Dropbox sync for Android to keep it working on my phone.
- Syncthing. Works really good for paying nothing.
- If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, you can toss your vault into iCloud Drive. If you’re technically proficient (and brave) you can write a cron to sync into whichever service you want via a local machine.
  In addition to iCloud, I have a one-way sync (rsync) which functions as a poor man’s backup to get all my files into Dropbox; lots of stern warnings from Obsidian not to use Dropbox.
- Obsidian and Syncthing should work together in theory, though I haven't tried them.
- My sync setup, working perfectly, and using Obsidian on all 3 devices almost daily. YMMV.
  Desktop (Mac): Google Drive
  Chromebook (installed as Linux app): Google Drive
  Phone (Android): AutoSync for Google Drive. Bought paid version just to support them, don't think it was necessary. $5, got to spend my Google Play Credit 😊👍
- I used syncthing for a while. Then tried github with mostly terrible results. Now i'm back on syncthing. It involves a little bit of setup, but i mostly forget about it now. It just works.
- I keep the vault in Nextcloud, and use Nextcloud notes for any other platform than desktop. For the most part it's working pretty great.

They make some great RPGs ;P
- Literally what I thought when I first saw the headline.

I love it, but I wish it were open source. I have since switched to LogSeq, and now I'm even trying out TiddlyWiki.
- Oh boy. Weve all been there.
  Stay hydrated.
- I'm just switching from TiddlyWiki to Obsidian lol. Have not looked at Logseq though.

I downloaded obsidian, but I haven't used it yet because I'm intimidated and don't know where to start. ¯(ツ)/¯
- Same for me. I got some plugins too, people say they're a must, but they have their own tutorials almost. But one day I'll try it
  
  You can use without plugins as well, they are not a must. I've been using Obsidian for years just for it's inter-connected markdown references. Kind of like a wiki, I'm just taking markdown notes and sometimes create a link to another related note. Also, good at handling attachments and embeds. I haven't used anything else (maybe tags nowadays... But that's it) Thing is, if you like markdown then you should give it a go.

Nice app, like the idea of it being just plain text, but will stick to one note myself. The synch service is a must for me, and don't want to pay for another service, when onenote and onedrive synch all that I need.
An interesting app nevertheless and am sure will suit many users.
- There's lots of alternate, free and open source syncing solutions. I use syncthing myself.
- Like another person said, many ways to sync. I use Resilio personally and love it.
- Try Notion. I changed from OneNote to it and don't regret it.
  
  100% agree that Notion is fantastic compared to OneNote. I also switched back in 2018.
  Unfortunately, their mobile app is still fairly sub-par, their data format is proprietary and not markdown, and it is only slightly cheaper than Obsidian Sync. Also, their integration system has basically gone nowhere. Which sucks because it could be good. I also have lost data on numerous occasions due to their sync system and their official policy is "oops". In that respect, OneNote is better.
  I used Notion for about 5 years before switching to Obsidian recently. Notion was far better than anything id used and generally it is a good tool, but i also was never able to make notion work as well for me as Obsidian, esp. in a way that i optimistically keep information in it. Notion often was just enough effort (esp when on the go with mobile) that i just simply could never use it to its full potential.
  However, obsidian, imo, does require some plugins to meet my needs. But i think this is a good thing. Projects basically does everything i like about Notions databases. Dataview takes care of database views.

Obsidian is the best thing I've been able to find for my use case. I'm able to fudge collaboration for the things I need by using separate files and dataview to combine. As soon as someone comes out with an open source alternative that has plaintext storage, local-first editing, and live collaboration, I'm switching to that.

Joplin user here. What does obsidian have that I might want? I remember briefly trying it years ago and disliking it.
- Joplin stores its files inside a database. Obsidian stores all notes as individual plaintext Markdown files.
  In the first instance, that's clearly more future-proof and robust - your notes are immediately available in any application without a layer of abstraction. You can't have a single file corrupt and destroy all your notes.
  I vastly prefer it for that reason. I want to know these notes are still going to work fine in 10 years, and be easily accessible.
- I use Joplin for a simple notes app mostly for my phone but I do have it on my desktop and sync. What I do not use it for is my desktop notes collection which is a several thousand notes pages some quite big. I use Zim for that. It is a desktop Wiki.
  I do not use Obsidian but it seems like knowledge base and linking is what people rave about. These are the ways in which I use Zim for example.
- Write 4000 notes
  Get a new device
  Sync
  Die waiting
  I do miss joplin, but not cuz it looked good or cuz it was good at syncing
  
  Looks like Obsidian's sync is $8/mo and is a bit messy to sync otherwise, if sharing between Android and Windows. Not a fan of that at all. Joplin sync just works.

I enjoy using Obsidian, mostly because it's faster than Notion, and it's one of the few Notion alternatives that has good and fast table editing support.
- Better table editing than many other markdown editors, but I wouldn't call it very good for a note taking app.
  
  May I offer that it really depends on your note-taking style? I’ve been using it since July having come from linear note-taking on Cornell NTS. It’s way faster and much more interlocked once you get past the slight learning curve.

Been on a Notesnook kick myself

I’d love to get into using Obsidian but it overwhelms me and freaks me out and also I just don’t know how to best utilize it for my personal work cases…I.e, how to blend professional/personal/creative uses into one all in app experience with Obsidian.
- Check out this plugin for it!
  https://www.make.md/
  It's goal is to lower the barrier to entry for obsidian substantially.
  As for different use cases, you can create different "vaults" for different applications. For example, I have a vault for work, and a vault for personal. They're basically just different folders on your computer, but it helps keep differentiation.

I use foam for vscode. Works great, is codium compatible, and is open source
- This. Foam is awesome and it's what I use.
  Also I really like how it's just a folder full of documents so if I need something that foam can't do (like a proper spreadsheet with formulas) I can just use another product for that and save the file in the same folder alongside my Foam notes.
  The only thing is it's not a complete package. You do need to combine it with other VSCode extensions and a sync platform. Also VSCode doesn't run (well) on a phone.
- Commenting to remind myself to check this out. Thanks.

I love the idea of it, but it hasn't clicked yet. It never occurs to me to even tag things in order to leverage my notes as a mind map/second brain.
The absence of a clean means of using it from multiple devices and syncing between them without their cloud service is kind of disappointing. The git community plugin is godawful to set up on mobile/tablet, something native that handles git behind the scenes would be excellent.
Ultimately, what I'd like is obsidian but with the interface of confluence.

I use it to keep track of my dinosaur breeding on ark survival evolved

On the topic of note taking programms.
Is there anything like onenote that is linux compatible, especially for handwritten notes? The closest in regards to decent handwriting support I could find was xournal++ but that felt kind of limiting to me especially without the infinite canvas and the ability to switch notes within the program (think onenote sidebar)
- There really isn't. I hunted for a while before I gave up and bought an android tablet for hand writing notes.
  
  What do you use on android? The main thing I want linux compatibility for is for reading my notes on my computer, not for actually creating them. I thought about just annotating PDFs directly but I'm not sure how good that will work

Tried it, felt it was too limited with just markdown. Feature wise i prefer Notion, but i don't like it's ongoing feature creep with AI implementation or it's pricing model.
So if there's any note taking apps out there with a database page type or proper tables, do let me know.
- I'm a happy Notesnook user, here. And they have tables.
- Check out Anytype it's pretty much just an open source Notion, I like it a lot
- O use, and self hosted synching for joplin.
  I have also looked into logseq which has some of the additional features that people like, but the app was too slow and ubstabled.
- what sucks about notion's AI stuff is that you can't even opt out of it. Back when I used to be a notion user part of what made me leave is that doing commands with the forward slash was always shoving AI shit in my face lol

Obsidian looks interesting, but I'm already using emacs and I'm pretty sure every feature in obsidian can be done in emacs.
Honestly emacs is pretty decent for almost every text related task and many non text related tasks as well.
- ...I’m pretty sure every feature in obsidian can be done in emacs.
  It definitely can. Unfortunately, I was the only emacs user on my team at work, so switching from org-mode to something that used plain markdown files was beneficial. There's a network effect here -- sharing notes is valuable.
  Also, since Obsidian (and Logseq, which is what I use now) both use save plain markdown files, you can still edit your notes in emacs.
  Honestly emacs is pretty decent for almost every text related task and many non text related tasks as well.
  For sure, emacs is still my favorite operating system. :)
  
  For sure, emacs is still my favorite operating system. :)
  (Neo)Vim guy here. That's something that I love and hate about emacs. It's powerful and extensible to the point of being intimidating (being basically a lisp interpreter that can write lisp is crazy, in a good way). If I didn't do work on remote machines, I'd probably give it another go, as I enjoyed it the when I used it before. Just not enough time these days, with all of the other stuff that I want to do.
- Honestly emacs is pretty decent for almost every text related task
  With emphasis on "pretty decent". Personally my bar is higher than that...
  
  Idk, there's a wide range of text related tasks. Some of those tasks, I would say emacs is very good at (like programming or taking notes), and others are good enough (like email and file management). The reason that I would want to use it for the worse tasks is that the text editing tools between the tasks are all the same and its all programmable.
  Its all personal preference though.

I've been meaning to try it, maybe this will push me to stop using Samsung awful note app.

The Doom map generator? /s

104 comments