This thread is the reason I enjoy this forum so much.
I have settled on Obsidian for my academic research, and I tend to use Notebooks for other notes, mostly around work. Apple Notes is a scratchpad for me now.
I have tried many other notetaking apps, including Joplin, Tangent Note, Nota, Notenik. Upnote, Devon Think 2 (I tried it for well over a year and gave up) Bear, OneNote, Loqseq and others. But kept on coming back to Obsidian.
However, I made a few rules for myself.
I decided to āpick a sideā and focus on using the one app for academic research.
Stop trying to make Obsidian a āLife OSā and do everything in it. Just because you can does not mean you should.
Limit plugins within my main vault. I have a playground vault where I can use plugins to my heartās content, but that is a hobby area, not a work area
Obsidian is not perfect, but it is more than adequate for my needs.
I regularly include other file types (especially MS Office files) in my Obsidian vault, and it doesnāt require any hacks. You just right click the file in the explorer and select āopen with default app.ā
I do also use Open With, a simple plugin that lets you add multiple app options for specific file types to the right click menu. For example, you can choose to open a PDF with Preview or Acrobat, or a markdown file in other editors
My main use of these files is for search. DT indexes and makes them searchable so they are much more useful. If I want to find something, I donāt want to have to manually search through all my iWorks/Office files. Obsidian doesnāt support this AFAIK. I also find DT search much more effective and useful.
And I find that while Obsidian can link to many file types, everything appears as hyperlinks. Links to another note - hyperlink. Link to a Word file - hyperlink. Link to an Excel file - hyperlink. I prefer the visualization an app like OneNote provides where you can see the file and its type clearly. And donāt tell me thereās a plugin that lets you do that. Justā¦ugh. LOL.
I did love OneNote in college and it got me through my most recent degreeā¦ but when I tried it recently biggest issues were:
it didnāt allow you to annotate or edit attached files. I do this all the time for meetings where I drag in and add annotations to a Microsoft Word agenda. In Obsidian, because the files are just stored in the filesystem, it just works and all my annotations are saved.
dragging in attachments scatters them all over the canvas with no way of organising. It annoys me in Obsidian that it always attempts to embed attachments rather than linking to them. I donāt want half a dozen embedded PDFs cluttering up my notes. I canāt find any way of turning that offā¦ and havenāt found a plugin to do so!
because of the infinite canvas on OneNote, viewing pages on mobile doesnāt always go well, with much scrolling. Printing doesnāt work too well either.
(I know youāre not advocating OneNote! Just sharing because Iām feeling nostalgic!)
Stuck inside a plane for 2 hours yesterday and with lots of idle time, I remember this thread and fired up Obsidian mobile just to see what I have missed over the months. Iām currently using Drafts as my main notes app and Iām surprise that Obsidian is able to address a few pet peeves I have with Drafts and Markdown:
Obsidian renders links properly such as I donāt see [ bracket ] and ( ) anymore.
It does highlights and strike through. While Drafts can do that using certain Drafts template and some tinkering around.
Easy to create tables, insert attachments and pictures which Drafts canāt do.
It does footnotes and I love Obsidianās call-out and auto header folding.
I wish it has Drafts Quick Capture and quoting passages from Safari.
I enjoyed Obsidianās toolbar. Itās not as feature rich as Drafts but for a toolbar for editing, it does its job pretty well.
Overall, Iām pretty pleased with what I see in Obsidian. Itās definitely better than Apple Notes, to me. Iāll still use Drafts at this moment but Iām inclined to further explore base on the features above. And I donāt even have a lot of plugins. Iām probably using it as vanilla as it can be.
I like Keep It by Reinvented Software. Supports native files and stores files in native folders. Like Evernote but no proprietary formats and like DevonThink but simpler (but with less features). It has been the sweet spot for me.
Regarding OneNote, I really enjoyed it at work under Windows years ago. So I was temporarily overjoyed when it became available under macOS. But I immediately came across several problems. Correct me if these have been fixed:
Requires storing notes in the Microsoft cloud. No local storage.
No way to import the locally stored Windows OneNote files into the Mac.
The Mac version had a subset of features, missing, of course, some I relied on.
IMHO Growly Notes provides a free (now, was a purchase) alternative to OneNote that is the closest equivalent Iāve found.
Iām pretty sure Iāve seen a bookmarklet that allows you to quote passages from Safari. It creates a new document in Obsidian and adds a bunch of properties about the site including the selection. I think the CEO of Obsidian wrote it.
Well, you could always give my little Mac app Notenik a try. Not many people seem to know about it, but it has many faithful users who love it. It stores everything in text files, but offers many useful field types that enable all sorts of organizational flexibility.
I havenāt used Upnote, but Notesnook seems pretty comparable. Itās E2EE too and rapidly being developed. Also has notifications on mac and iOS.
That said, Iām still using Logseq for everything for a number of reasonsāblock-level relationships/tagging, E2EE, journal system built in. The devs have been neck deep for months in a major rewrite (moving from file-based to database), so the app has remained clunky and annoying in various ways that arenāt going to be addressed until theyāre done. Iāve been crossing my fingers that when the rewrite is finished, things will get more streamlined.
Yup. When I switched to Mac from PC for my personal work, just couldnāt deal with de-featured version and the difficulty of backing up my OneNote data.
I also noticed that the OneNote app for Mac was a severe battery drain, so I started using the web app in Safari until I stopped using OneNote entirely.
You can also use Omnivore to save content from the web and port it to Obsidian as a markdown file. It works pretty wellāIāve only encountered a couple of pages Omnivore couldnāt parse. You can customize what Omnivore will send to Obsidian, the layout of the imported data, and where it will send it.