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Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#201

Post by applecrazy »

tiffanyh wrote: post #198

Dumb question: is Obsidian anything more than an open source version of Apple Notes? I realize there's technical differences but from a use cases / feature perspective - isn't it essentially the same?

They're the same in the sense that Mail.app and Outlook are the same.

Apple Notes is great, but can't do things like tagging/graph view and doesn't allow you to export in a standardized format.

Obsidian is a superset of Markdown (with a few modifications for page embedding and wiki-links) and allows you to sync with anything that provides a way for you to upload a folder of text files.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#202

Post by applecrazy »

murermader wrote: post #200
tiffanyh wrote: post #198

Dumb question: is Obsidian anything more than an open source version of Apple Notes? I realize there's technical differences but from a use cases / feature perspective - isn't it essentially the same?

Well it is open source, is cross platform and is not made by Apple. So, really different.

It is actually not currently OSS, although the creators have indicated interest in open-sourcing parts of it in the past.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#203

Post by cepth »

tiffanyh wrote: post #198

Dumb question: is Obsidian anything more than an open source version of Apple Notes? I realize there's technical differences but from a use cases / feature perspective - isn't it essentially the same?

It’s a much more fully featured note taking app, probably most directly comparable to Roam Research.

E.g., tagging, graph views, back links between notes, note/document templates.

All docs are (more or less) plain markdown as well, so if for some reason the open source community ever abandoned Obsidian, in theory it’s easy to export/transfer your notes.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#204

Post by SamBam »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #45
TRcontrarian wrote: post #20

Obsidian is the closest thing I've found to the Pensive from Harry Potter. It's a data recording format good enough for me to extract thoughts from my mind, represent them with enough fidelity to reconstruct later, connect them to the concepts that they are related to in my head, and then forget the thought completely so I can move on and process it later. I was only willing to try it out because I had heard it menti…

You’re right it was on Cortex, clarification though: Grey loves Obsidian, Mike doesn’t really get it though. Neither like Notion, even though it has a massive fan base. There is a whole episode (maybe the one in question) where it comes to light that Grey has spent most of his life NOT making notes like most people do and instead just highlighting areas in source material and referring back to it. Very funny episode…

I spent a while trying Notion, seeing if it could be a good replacement for Evernote, and I had trouble with it as well. I can certainly see its use-case for teams, where the whole notion of homepages and things makes sense. But for the individual, it seemed too much. You're basically making a website.

My biggest gripe with it may have simply been the endless hyping and gushing that all the "productivity gurus" on YouTube and elsewhere did over it. Indeed, it seemed custom-made for YouTube productivity gurus, since you could make everything look so clean and beautiful and polished. It seemed the sort of note-taking tool for people who cared more about how the final result looked, than for people who wanted to quickly add or go over notes.

That said, I recognize that there was much there I probably never really used to its fullest-extent, databases being the fundamental differentiator between Notion and most other note-taking apps, and potentially very powerful.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#205

Post by analognoise »

I liked Obsidian but I moved all my notes to Zettlr and Org-mode because they were truly free and they could never be revoked. I have had my heart broken too many times by various pieces of software changing licenses or being bought out or whatever.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#206

Post by stevecat »

tiffanyh wrote: post #198

Dumb question: is Obsidian anything more than an open source version of Apple Notes? I realize there's technical differences but from a use cases / feature perspective - isn't it essentially the same?

I'm probably underselling it but for me, markdown support and note organisation simply reflecting the directory structure is what sold me. I can then sync it whichever way I want; I've taken to having a "notes" folder in each project and including it in the Git repository. The notes are then browsable on GitHub too.

I've spent a lot of time trying to find my "perfect" note taking app, and have attempted to build my own a few times, and I'm very happy with Obsidian.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#207

Post by [deleted] »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #45
TRcontrarian wrote: post #20

Obsidian is the closest thing I've found to the Pensive from Harry Potter. It's a data recording format good enough for me to extract thoughts from my mind, represent them with enough fidelity to reconstruct later, connect them to the concepts that they are related to in my head, and then forget the thought completely so I can move on and process it later. I was only willing to try it out because I had heard it menti…

You’re right it was on Cortex, clarification though: Grey loves Obsidian, Mike doesn’t really get it though. Neither like Notion, even though it has a massive fan base. There is a whole episode (maybe the one in question) where it comes to light that Grey has spent most of his life NOT making notes like most people do and instead just highlighting areas in source material and referring back to it. Very funny episode…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#208

Post by whimsicalism »

EleanorKonik wrote: post #169
prashantsengar wrote: post #5

I love using Obsidian and it is where all my notes live. Last year when I was searching for wiki-type note taking tools, I stumbled upon many of them including Roam Research, TiddlyWiki, and then Obsidian. Obsidian is what I chose because of how it stores my data - markdown files. And it does not lose any functionality even if it uses markdown. Bidirectional linking, block references, heading references, a beautiful…

I've heard good things about the LogSeq/Obsidian interoperability, but out of curiosity, have you tried the Outliner plugin for Obsidian? I haven't gotten a good sense of how the two differ.

Currently looking all over the place for a good markdown backed out liner. I currently used Logseq with the storage synced by Obsidian.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#209

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

bachmeier wrote: post #182
dkislyuk wrote: post #173

Obsidian has really delivered in a crowded note-taking space by focusing on the fundamentals: 1. Privacy. You can roll your own syncing (or use iCloud, Dropbox, etc.), without the notes being stored on the note editors' servers, which is a huge win over Roam, Notion, Evernote, etc. After the Evernote fiasco from a few years ago (where they considered reading your notes for ML model training and got massive pushback),…

> Speaking of future-proofing, Markdown is as close as it gets to having interoperability with the notes. Obsidian is at its core just a Markdown file editor, which means your notes are stored as plaintext and easy to export. There is a bit of Obsidian-flavored syntax (e.g. bi-directional links [[...]]), but these are becoming standard in note-taking. Many note-taking apps claim export functionality, but at the end o…

An "export to standard markdown" feature is on the Obsidian roadmap, in the "short-term" column.

https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap

edit: they've moved it to the "working on" column

Re: Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

#210

Post by nsriv »

rvieira wrote: post #35
wiradikusuma wrote: post #13

Has anyone used Joplin ( https://joplinapp.org/ )? How does it compare to Obsidian? I've used Joplin for a while. It's Markdown so I like it. The UI is dry (compared to Evernote).

I have both on iOS and I have to say I much prefer Obsidian. Although Joplin is FOSS, Obisian uses plain text files rather than a database which is a massive plus to me, personally. Also, Obsidian UI is light-years ahead of Joplin's. It's interesting that (IIUC) Obsidian is also not native but it feels completely native when compared to Joplin. Also most Obsidian plugins work fine on desktop and mobile and the ecosys…

Do you have any tips for making Obsidian function like Noteplan? I'm out of the iOS/Mac ecosystem but love how it works.
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