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A late 2024 Update

Earlier I wrote about how no one single application stood up to all the things I needed. In the last few years, that has evolved. First, my requirements are a little different, and second, Obsidian has grown up.

Obsidian and Ecosystem

So let me go back through my requirements. They used to be:

  • No lock-in / proprietary format
  • Multi-device
  • Simple formatting
  • Code formatting

And now, I can say we have a winner. Obsidian does all of these things, and it's free. I've even added some requirements to sharing, with the capability of publishing to my own site per page. It handles all of these things. Let me talk about how from a technical viewpoint, and then we can talk about notes themselves.

First, I said the clear winner back in 2020 was GitHub Flavoured Markdown, or "GFM" for short. This has continued to be the case, and now it's the gold standard. That spec can be found at GitHub. It still follows the John Gruber Markdown manifesto from way, way back. Markdown is 20 years old now. It's a fantastic pseudo-format. It essentially conveys the same idea if you read something in its pure language. Thus if you add 2 asterisks on either side of a word, it looks bold. If you render that text in a Markdown-capable application, it will be turned into bolded text, often with the removal of those asterisks. Same as a <b> from back in HTML olden-times, but it actually is readable.

So the Markdown spec has evolved a little bit. GFM handles all the simple formatting, code formatting, and Obsidian handles look at feel. There's no lock-in or proprietary format; it's all text files held on your local machine. And for sync, keeping the library in iCloud is easy.

Obsidian has two paid options of their own sync service and their own publishing/hosting, and they get good reviews. I'm not signed up to either, but if it makes sense it doesn't violate anything related to export. You still have local text files kept in sync for your notes. If Obsidian the company disappeared tomorrow, you'd lose nothing -- and that's not true with most services.

Note

Below is out of date, but remains for context, for now.

One of the most maddening, frustrating parts of staying organised is that you can't just remember everything. We all keep notes in some form or fashion, and I've jumped from platform to platform, trying to find the best way to do things. I'll share what I know.

My Requirements

No lock-in

In order to be functional for me, there are several conditions that I look for. Having used a lot of notetaking applications and websites, the one thing that you should always be wary of before trying a new tool is how well it exports your content. Many note systems are very good, but they lock you into their app. Their business model is to keep you in a subscription, and to make it as hard as possible to leave. The more months you pay, the better.

Multi-Device

To be effective, your ability to take or read something you've written has to be available when you need it. To that end, it's essential that your notes be available at home or at work, on your desk or your mobile.

Simple formatting

What I mean by simple formatting is that it's readable. Too often, when you look at a note outside of a system, it loses all of its formatting. That is a non-starter.

Code

For me, it's important to be able to keep certain text separate. In a very loose sense, we can call that "code". Maybe in other areas, it's just pre-formatted text, or text that you want to prohibit from being changed, etc.