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Notion releases offline mode

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131–140 of 189 posts

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#133

For me one of the biggest issues with Notion (and to a smaller extent with Obsidian as well) is its ever present UI. When I write (or read) something, I don't want to see 20+ buttons scattered around distracting me from the content. IA writer got this right, but it's too local and doesn't have colab or better online sync features. Shameless plug – I'm building https://kraa.io/about that's trying to be a writing app w…

Are you talking about the sidebar? or is there some other element you'd like to disappear?

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#134

I guess for a lot of users like myself using Notion ship has sailed. Most of them have moved to Obsidian, with the new database feature of Obsidian, and it being free, I do not see why users would choose Notion over Obsidian.

For me, a lot of it is that the "plumbing on the outside" approach of Markdown isn't nice. I don't understand why anyone thinks that seeing and editing format codes all over the place is good UX in 2025. Maybe Obsidian appeals to a particular type of techie who uses Vim and stores all their files locally, compared to someone who isn't technical and just wants "documents in the cloud". I should add that I dislike Noti…

> I don't understand why anyone thinks that seeing and editing format codes all over the place is good UX in 2025.

Because if you can see them you can fix them when they inevitably get fucked up. (Literally commenting immediately after fixing some formatting that Confluence broke, like I do every day)

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#135

I guess for a lot of users like myself using Notion ship has sailed. Most of them have moved to Obsidian, with the new database feature of Obsidian, and it being free, I do not see why users would choose Notion over Obsidian.

I switched to silverbullet[0], you get to write lua instead of YAML or whatever these apps are pushing.

0: https://silverbullet.md

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#136
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no tiers or different features, just their own sync service is a paid service, and the commercial license is paid but optional. Otherwise the free Obsidian has everything, and there are other plugins for self hosted syncing that don't use the paid service.

but without syncing is basically unusable, or can I access my texts from my pc and my cell for example?

Plenty of other sync options in the plugins if you didn't see the last part of my comment, or you can just sync the Obsidian directory with Syncthing.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But everything is stored as .md, which is ubiquitous. You'll still have access to your notes and be able to edit them with your preferred text editor.

This is always the argument but obsidian does a lot on top of these md files. NASA's mission control software stores data in JSON, it's an open format so I guess the NASA software is easily replaceable huh? If obsidian was such a thin layer then why isn't there a good open source alternative? People build their workflows on top of the obsidian functionality, not just the md data.

this is only an issue if you use a ton of plugins

also, it's not unreasonable to think that a compatible alternative would be easier to build compared to a less standard format

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#138
This is pretty impressive. A lot of people underestimate the amount of work required to make something available offline. Planning the syncing architecture alone is a monumental task, especially at the scale Notion operates. I built a custom sync solution for my own app, Brisqi (https://brisqi.com), and it took me weeks to get it right, albeit with some trade-offs.

Kudos to the Notion engineering team for achieving this milestone.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#139
While we're here; as a long time zim-wiki user, and as someone who dabbled in org-mode for a year; Obsidian never felt compelling enough to switch.

For me, this year, Logseq did. The killer concept for me is that it does org-mode hierarchy and outline collapsing, but easier; being able to "zero in" on a block, regardless of whether its its own page is excellent.

Re: Notion releases offline mode

#140

I guess for a lot of users like myself using Notion ship has sailed. Most of them have moved to Obsidian, with the new database feature of Obsidian, and it being free, I do not see why users would choose Notion over Obsidian.

Notion still has Database feature that Obsidian doesn't, e.g. a good Kanban board.
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