Longtime Obsidian user here, thinking about kicking the tires of Logseq.
As I understand it, Logseq is focused on blocks while Obsidian is focused on documents. And Logseq is built on a timeline view. How does that work out in real life?
What are relative strengths and weaknesses of Logseq vs. Obsidian?
Can anybody talk to this who’s familiar with using Logseq for journalism/blogging type projects?
(signed)
Curious
If you are not already aware, you may find insights from discussions at this site. A search on logseq brings up 11 title matches just to start. One of them says Replacing Everything with Logseq.
https://www.outlinersoftware.com
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JJW
I tried Obsidian for a bit and, more recently, Logseq and I definitely prefer Logseq. It feels much more like a replica of Roam but with local markdown file storage. I’d like them to launch a sync service since it now depends on iCloud and, while that works, its not as smooth as I’d hoped.
I’d definitely recommend trying Logseq and letting us know what you think. So far I’m liking it.
can’t say I am one of these people but I tried Logseq roughly two months and I liked it. The only reason for abandoning it (at least for now) is the reliance on iCloud sync for my iPad app. iCloud sync is just unreliable and slow. So I am back to Obsidian. So you do not need iCloud sync there is no issue. I am also waiting for the Logseq sync
From my limited experience with Logseq,
strengths
weakness
I also tried to get Obsidian and Logseq to share the same vault but it is not a neat and clean process so at the end I gave up
This guy has good videos on logseq.
If you like outliners, Logseq is a good choice. But less plugin choices. It has the integrated PDF highlighting features that no other app has been able to match and can handle .org files.
I found their sync to be inconsistent, and I lost notes. I suggest you wait for them to launch their sync feature before you take a plunge…
This thread is extremely interesting to me—making obsidian work more like an outliner.
Tangentially related: there’s apparently a very popular game called Obsidian, which can make google auto complete confusing. Like, just now I started to search on making obsidian work more like logseq, but Google auto completed that to making obsidian work more like Minecraft. Which made me go, “huh?”
I’ve been giving Logseq a good hard tire-kicking for a couple weeks and am liking it. I’m also enthralled with Obsidian and have no intention of giving it up. For me, they do two different jobs. Obsidian is for supporting long-form writing projects; for what some call a digital zettelkasten. It’s where forever notes go; to become a body of knowledge that builds over time and which I anticipate will be useful to me for decades to come.
That leaves a job for information that is far more transitory. Notes and reminders for supporting projects, for example, and who’s useful life will likely expire upon completion of the project. They can and are archived—placed in digital cold storage—and capable of being resurrected should the need arise. But until then they are blissfully out of site and out of mind. That’s one job I’m using Logseq for.
The other job is as a combined journal and scratch pad for the mind. I’ve built a daily note template for Logseq that automatically refreshes each morning and has a section for tasks and a section for a transcript of morning pages. And a general notes section for everything and anything that floats in over the transom during the course of the day that needs to be noted and then considered or dispatched later. In that sense I consider it analogous to the right-facing “Daily Record of Events” in the paper planners we lived and worked out of before we had smart phones, computers, or even PDAs.
It’s for all of the transitory stuff that I am using Logseq. I’ve used Craft in the past. Before settling down with Logseq I tinkered with Remnote and looked at Roam Research. Just yesterday I lost several hours in a dalliance with NotePlan—which I used for a while a year ago—after reading that Ryan J. A. Murphy was using it in addition to Obsidian. Probably the biggest advantage I saw in favor of NotePlan is that it allows one to create folders for organizing notes. There are no folders in Logseq. So the only way I know of to create some organizational structure is through linked Index notes or what Nick Milo calls “Maps Of Content”. I do the same think in Obsidian even though Obsidian has folders. It is doable. And all in all, Logseq is doing a competent job.
Just a point of clarification: I don’t personally use them both concurrently anymore, though many folks do!
I love Logseq’s outliner approach and continuous daily journal, but it has less of a focus on organizing with folders. I regularly interact with my Obsidian vault with other apps, so keeping the folder/file system is important to me.
I experienced issues with sync and higher idle CPU usage vs. Obsidian, YMMV.
I used logseq for a while, and found this guy’s videos helpful.
Update:
I played with Logseq a bit as an alternative to Obsidian, or complement for it.
Logseq seems like a simplified version of Obsidian that does less. For many people that will be a plus. Fewer options equals fewer things to fiddle with and potentially break.
Logseq is an extreme outliner. It wants everything you do to be an outline. Obsidian supports outlining, but Logseq is more opinionated and more powerful as an outliner. That’s a minus for me; I do use outlines but mainly I just write prose.
Logseq wants you to limit yourself to store everything in just four folders, and organize all your data using links instead. My brain doesn’t work that way. I make heavy use of folders.
Logseq is open source, which makes it—possibly—more futureproof and secure than Obsidian.
I don’t think I’m going to stay with Logseq. It doesn’t seem to be different enough from Obsidian to be worth the hassle of switching.
Still, Logseq seems to be a great app for people who are looking for an extremely powerful outliner. And I may come back to it.
And playing with Logseq gave me some ideas for doing a better job of organizing and using my Obsidian vault. I need to use the Daily Note more, and move blocks of text between notes using the Text Transporter plugin
Also: @Crystalliere 's idea to use Logseq for transitory notes and Obsidian as a more permanent archive seems intriguing. My Obsidian vault is a mess, a hodgepodge of transitory notes, important documents, and notes for completed projects, some of which are for former employers and therefore extra-dead.
Good thoughts Mitch. I’m surprised LogSeq doesn’t get much airtime here.
Everyone’s different. I preferred Logseq to Obsidian because it was outliner-like, and therefore more like Roam, which I liked, but didn’t like paying for. I was also happy to say goodbye to the Obsidian edit/read toggle faff, and the lack of a back button which made navigation a pain.
As we frequently say on this forum, the search for a perfect note taking app never ends…
That’s my challenge too… although sometimes my transitory/temporary notes are useful to look back on.
Logseq might be an option for my rough note-taking, mostly hanging off a daily note, with final documents ending up in my EagleFiler repository as Word or PDF documents.
Perhaps similarly, I have begun paring down my note taking app to Daily Notes and a handful of Getting Things Done (GTD) notes. Everything else goes into EagleFiler.
What note-taking app do you use for daily notes and GTD notes?
I’ve been an avid user of NotePlan since last May.
EDIT: If you like GTD, I should have mentioned that developer @metzgereduard has a nice write-up How to Use NotePlan for GTD on his NotePlan blog.
So’s mine but I have not worried about it much at all. Whenever I look for something and it’s notwhere I first looked when I find it I make a link in the original first look place. Whenever I find a note that seems irrelevant I delete it. As I’m working when I find 2 or more notes that are very similar I combine them into one and then delete the extras. When I need to link to individual blocks in a note I can easily do that within Obsidian.Over time my vault is becoming more organized and more importantly more useful to me.
Sounds like you have found a good balance. Taking notes, like life itself, is going to be a jumble. It is too easy to get lost down a rabbit hole organizing notes. Much better to not worry, take advantage of the tools we have, and let them grow organically.
Similarly, when searching the house for something, put it away in the first place you looked.