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Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

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Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#331

Post by duskdozer »

skrobul wrote: post #118
riffruff24 wrote: post #30

another one in the same space: https://helixnotes.com/

Thank you! I am long time obsidian user looking for something that will work decently on Android and this looks promising. I only really struggle with one basic feature - I want to be able to write note within 1-2 seconds of clicking the app icon. Obsidian makes it 10-15 seconds at best. The HelixNotes sometimes can get this in under 10, still looking for better options.

I'm having the same issue with Standard Notes. It's almost 30 seconds now and becoming an issue, especially with Android's aggressive memory freeing. It wasn't so bad early on but it gets worse as notes accumulate.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#332

Post by duskdozer »

jlos wrote: post #96

So you saw a product that (1) gives you complete control of your data (2) uses an open format (3) only charges for sync, publish, and commercial use, and you thought to yourself: "What a great use of my time building a competitor that adds no value, just to save a few dollars a month on sync and publishing. I hope other people value their time as little as I do and contribute" Have fun!

I often find irritations in programs that are either too low-priority or too idiosyncratic to end up getting changed by the owners/maintainers, so having easy access to the source is a huge plus for me, regardless of the product cost.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#333

Post by thingortwo »

tomburgs wrote: post #328

One strength of Obsidian is actually it's plugins. All of the plugins are fully open source so I think if someone truly plans to disrupt it they should make their editor interoperable with Obsidian plugins. It's a bit strange to me that in 2026 where code is allegedly "free" we're still building these web apps that pretend to be desktop apps. In part I understand it, and logically a PWA must be better than electron f…

Most people actually just prefer convenience with web apps you just instantly go to a domain and can check it out also secure and sandboxed by default since I don't have to worry what they are doing in other parts of my system which is a big worry with current supply chain attacks and what not.

Their "PWA" marketing holds them back in addition to financial incentives of Apple and Google. Most people aren't familiar with term "PWA" also why is "installing" a feature who wants to manage these things through their OS which a lot of normies already find confusing. People want plug and play the whole benefit of pwa (seperate window etc) could basically be exposed as per origin setting inside the browser itself and if user want they can pin it to their desktop. Since in my own testing there isn't much difference it terms of API's exposed only lack thereof like no proper user controlled storage retention settings for apis like OPFS and also lack of syncing directly to a user specified folder across all browsers. If they improve these files workflows you will see a lot more robust web apps.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#334

Post by thingortwo »

chr15m wrote: post #274
tsurba wrote: post #255

Joplin is open source, syncing setup between devices is one login to Dropbox, works for free, with native apps on Windows/OSX/Linux/iOS/Android. It has a bunch of plugins too. If you just need markdown files with syncing, use it rather than paying for Obsidian sync. The 2GB free quota on Dropbox is plenty enough for text (and some screenshots). Or you could self-host obviously. Git while lovely for source code is a h…

It saves to sqlite though, not markdown files you can edit on disk.

Why is that a problem if you are already going to be using specific software to interface with your notes don't you want it stored in an optimized foolproof format that is also one the preferred format recommended by library of congress?

And if you want always direct edit access and do it often why not then a simple plain text since either way you will be dependent on the software if you like the additional features it offers which aren't inside .md like linking and other

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#336

Post by m4chei »

First of all: this looks great, and might be exactly what I always wanted.

One thing I am missing though, is the ability to search globally throughout all the markdown files. I am pretty bad at organizing my thoughts, so often I find myself globally searching a word to figure out the file I need to navigate to.

This is something I really liked in Obsidian.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#337

Post by troyvit »

hogwasher wrote: post #325
AuthAuth wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its "safe" as in you can access it but its not safe from Obsidian accessing it.

If you don't use their sync service, all your vault files are local only, and there isn't any mysterious telemetry happening in the background. If you do use their sync service, it's end to end encrypted with your own local-only password, so Obsidian doesn't have a backdoor to your encrypted remote files either. If you don't trust Obsidian's sync service, but want to sync files, you can sync your files in any other w…

> If you don't use their sync service, all your vault files are local only, and there isn't any mysterious telemetry happening in the background.

I think the parent's point is that Obsidian could add any tracking they wanted and -- unless you're examining their TOS or your network closely -- you might never know. However:

> Obsidian's business model is just selling the sync subscription service. There's no ads component to incentivize data collection/tracking and pissing off their entire customer base.

And that to me seems deeply infused into Obsidian's entire culture. They built a community and they're not gonna mess that up. And like you say, if they do it's trivial to move one's markdown somewhere else.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#338

Post by thr1owaway9621 »

ramoz wrote: post #247
al_borland wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, a key tenant of any good note taking system is low friction. Leaning on an LLM feels like significant friction. Formatting something into HTML manually also feels like a lot of fiction. Individual HTML files for notes would also be a friction filled experience for opening and browsing, without some kind of template to allow for navigation of the notes within the browser. This ends up turning into a local wiki…

I was about to comment: "HTML creates too much friction after doing all sorts of visual explainers" ... thanks for articulating it well. As a layer of abstraction, it also creates more requirements: need a browser, likely need includes/cdn libs to avoid bloat, all sorts of other things. Markdown is consumable, diffable, shareable in raw form - and you can add enrichment layers on top without much effort.

To me, the "enrichment" layer means 2 things:

- a tiny DSL for rendering anything custom, where every markdown renderer potentially introduces its own unique bit of syntax that's not transferable (example: frontmatter in Obsidian where you can put tags, that's not vanilla markdown)

- a note taking / viewing app, of which we now have dozens, where moving notes from one app to another creates friction, because of the custom "enrichment" layer each of those apps have (example: any popular plugin in Obsidian, where your notes are now littered with that plugin's tags)

HTML has this type of "enrichment" built-in.

Anyway, I am not trying to convince anyone. This is me working through this in my head. I have a large vault of Obsidian notes that I want to make more useful. And I figure, HTML is the standard-issue tool for producing beautiful-looking and functional text documents, so it's worth thinking about.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#339

Post by teppeik »

bityard wrote: post #139

Heh, the author admitted that he got tired of what I'll call "curating metadata" in Obsidian, so wrote an app that handled more of it automatically. My take: you probably don't need so much metadata! I've spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to figure out the perfect knowledge management app for me and honestly, I'm pretty sure I will get a lot of mileage out of something you just throw pages into, search to f…

> I'm pretty sure I will get a lot of mileage out of something you just throw pages into, search to find it again, and ask AI to summarize/consolidate when you need it again.

I found this to be similar to my own opinion. So, what tools are you currently using? I'm interested to hear about it.

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