I’ve decided to move my academic research into Obsidian and completely remove DEVONthink from my workflow (after it lost about three months of files from a database due to bugs in DT). I’ve never liked DT’s interface and if it’s not trustworthy at storing data I’m through with it.
So far, I’ve found Obsidian absolutely fantastic for this purpose. Using alongside Ulysses while writing seems to be a fit from heaven, as it is a really good way to organise and display my materials and to record notes from research meetings.
I’m still keeping all my other notes in Craft though, which I much prefer for my personal notes. I want this to be strictly for logging meetings and making notes for research projects.
I’m curious as to how this will work for you as I’m keeping an eye on Obsidian. But I keep a lot of PDFS, emails, jpegs, and websites in DT consolidated and grouped based on research topics or projects.
I haven’t spent enough time with Obsidian to get a handle on this but I don’t see how Obsidian can handle efficiently what I just described.
Just when I think I have my workflow settled and perfect …
I’m not finding Obsidian especially intuitive–perhaps I’m just slow. Do you have a recommend best resource (besides the upcoming field guide by Sparks)?
It’s not super intuitive. However, I managed to figure it out in about half an hour just playing around. I started by filling a folder with md files and put all the attachments in a folder, then I made this into a vault. Then I just dragged the attachments into the documents from the folder browser to where I wanted them and it inserted the appropriate links. After that I’ve just been viewing in preview mode and arranging the window panes as required.
The hard part was getting it working on mobile. I had to add “stickers” to a Discord account (I’ve never used Discord before - that’s a really unintuitive app and makes Obsidian look friendly!). Eventually after following a lot of steps, I got a link to the TestFlight app (which is pretty darn good!)
Hmmm. I will stay with DT (I’ve never lost data and I backup religiously) because it has a lot of powerful features beyond storing files so my only remaining dilemma regarding my workflow is making a final decision between Craft and Obsidian. I want to stop "shopping apps. I’m almost there.
I like Craft, a lot, but there is something compelling about only using plain text files, even though I can and have exported Craft notes as .md files. I also like the idea of storing all professional and personal notes in one place and linking thinking, research, and project notes at will. “One note app to rule them all.”
I did not realize you could drag files into Obsidian and they would create links for you. That is MUCH easier than the awkward markdown syntax.
Ok, against my better judgment … I’m going to relaunch Obsidian and give it a longer test run.
Addendum
I converted my DT notes to markdown, created a new vault, indexed it to DT and opened in Obsidian. Here is what I now have.
I’ll experiment with this over the next four weeks to ensure I give it a good test run.
My biggest challenge will be how to get a bulleted list of to-dos from Obsidian into OF without copying and pasting. Craft does this seamlessly and easily with one click.
I’m hoping someone can help me with this. I’m interested in moving from Craft to Obsidian but one of the things I’d have to give up, unless someone has a solution, is the ability to select a list of acton items from a meeting note and share them out to OmniFocus to avoid a copy and paste of each item. Here is how this works from Craft to OF.
I got it!! After watching this excellent video, I figured out how to get a list of tasks associated with a meeting note (or any other note) from Obsidian with only two copy/paste actions regardless of the size of the to-do list. My steps:
Create the Obsidian template
Create the template Obsidian “universal” keyboard shortcut to select a template
Create a new note and use the shortcut to insert the desired template
Take notes including the list of tasks
Copy and past the list into OF–it creates a discrete task in OF for each task in the Obsidian list
Copy paste the Obsidian link into the corresponding OF note field using the Obsidian copy URL link command
I must not really care about prettiness in an app. after all I’ve dealt with DEVONTHink for years
I really think I can replace DT with Obsidian and gain some other neat features I can’t do in DT.
I’m technically retired but the value of the PKM is a way to maintain my continual learning, document the how I do things so when I forget I can still function.
I too lost a bunch of files out of DT and that really soured me on using it and I was a huge fan for years. Plus there are issues with DTTG that the developers neither acknowledge nor give any indication of being willing to consider changing.
OTOH I’ve been thrilled with Obsidian and even found a way to handle a manual sync to my iOS devices so that I do notneed to use their sync service or iCloud for any of my data.
I’m actually moving a lot of my personal notes that I kept in Scrivener documents into Obsidian. It’s a lot easier to do the thinking and planning and prototyping and drafts for short form items in Obsidian and ten when it’s ready for more polish or really does turn into a long form document I can then consider putting it into Scrivener.
I also have a lot of that sort of stuff in my current DT system. Emails are probably going to stay a separate DT database as an archive because I dont’ really use them in my system much. However I can easily embed PDF or image files, in fact a LOT easier than in DT where the PDF, the notes and the image are all separate documents.
You can still use folder sin Obsidian but I’m finding that I am actually doing better with notes that are like an index or TOC. I also group similar things into larger notes and the graph view helps me find orphan documents. I created an inbox folder in my Obsidian vault that is where I keep notes util they are cleand nand ready, then a simple move and all the links etc automatically update.
I thought I was in that camp too. I do daily bootable backups, have a rotating stable of external hard drive, have time machine backups and keep some offsite as well. But I found that I had lost files from far enough back that my year old OSB backups had them as empty documents. Because they were in deep archive I didn’t access them and didn’t find out in time to save the data. I lost over 100 documents to the DTTG sync bugs. That alone has really soured me on DT.
I completely agree that I lost confidence in DEVONthink and that I would much rather have my data in a folder of md files. I’m really liking Obsidian, and I think it’ll replace DEVONthink and Craft (which has been solid but seems unnecessary with Obsidian).
Having an iCloud folder of markdown is the most secure and future proof option imaginable. That’s two less apps to worry about eating my data!
Now you can download your Kindle notes and highlights to Obsidian!
A new community plugin (i.e., not provided by the developers) was recently made available by @hadynz – see this post in Obsidian’s Discourse forum. In Obsidian’s Settings > Community plugins use the Browse community plugins feature to find and install Hady’s plugin.
It is called “sync” but is not really sync – since it scrapes your Kindle account online, or loads from the My clippings.txt file, if you have downloaded that file from a Kindle device.
The plugin creates a note for each book, and adds front matter such as this to each note, followed by your notes and highlights for that book.
I’m beginning to think the same thing. I really like Craft, a lot, but once I’ve mastered Obsidian, Craft may not be necessary. As to DT, the ability to convert files, merge files, OCR, and more, make it a keeper for me.
That is awesome!! I have my Kindle highlights in DT but they will be far more useful in Obsidian. Thanks for passing this information along!
Addendum:
I just synced all of my Kindle highlights to Obsidian. That is a game changer. There is no doubt now that I’m moving from Craft, which I like, to Obsidian.
In addition, because I will continue to use DT and index my Obsidian vault, I also have the advantages that come with the power features of DT, e.g., file conversion.
Question @anon41602260, did you create a separate vault or did you create a folder in an existing vault for your Kindle highlights? I have A LOT of books highlighted that are now in Obsidian. I want to ensure I have the best method for connecting concepts.
That made me laugh! I suspect that our non-geek/non-nerd friends would think we are crazy. They’re probably right!
BTW, check out this incredibly helpful Drafts Action shared by @Rob_Polding . I changed the necessary Obsidian vault name variable. After that, it works perfectly for using Drafts to send meeting and other notes in markdown with tags directly to Obsidian!
@OogieM I’'ve also been thinking I might be able to replace DT with Obsidian.
Or at least use DT less and Obsidian more. I’m starting to keep all my documents in Obsidian folders, indexed with DevonThink, rather than in vice-versa.
What are you doing for search? Do you miss DevonThink search at all?
I have no complaint about DevonThink. I am, however, concerned about having another layer on top of the filesystem in which to store my documents. If I’m going to do that, I want a big payback for the risk, and I’m not certain DT delivers that payback.
And if you’re “retired” then working-Oogie must have been a dynamo!
I’m only using Drafts as a short-term substitute for the Obsidian mobile app. Once it is out, I’ll use that on my iPad for Obsidian related notes. Drafts will then be relegated to short temporary text, e.g., an email.
I think we have too many choices; this was easier when all we had was WordPerfect.
Right now I have very few folders in Obsidian. I’m using MOC or TOC type notes to collect links to notes that would exist in a group in DT. I am also indexing the Obsidian vault but the lovely wiki links can’t be followed in DTTG so that isn’t a total solution for me.
I don’t use search all that much in DT, maybe once or twice a day at most and some days not even that. So far I have not missed searching. But I am also at the beginning stages so I may come across something that I do need search for that I can’t do in Obsidian as my Obsidian vault gets bigger. I’ll just have to see how it all plays out over time.
I had believed that the easy integration of many file types and the sync to a reasonable if not full featured mobile solution was worth the problems of DT storing documents inside a package and therefore somewhat hidden right up until the data loss issues that surfaced in DTTG. That totally destroyed my trust in the DT ecosystem. Combine that with the attitude of the developers that reasonable use cases that could use modifications to their system are totally ignored and that critical features are eliminated (3-pane view) means they no longer if they ever really did care about what actual users need and value about their product. The attitude is we know best so basically tough to the users who depended on those features. I’ll put up with a lot but DT has used up my store of goodwill and I’m now just planning how to get out.
I’ll add one more thing. I’m experimenting with Obsidian to draft my presentations instead of using Craft. It renders beautifully. Attached is a screenshot of a portion of my opening remarks to a group of investors. This is a screenshot from my iPad (which I always use for my presentations). I’m biased, but I think this looks great.
Notwithstanding all of my posts today, I am actually working.
