Holding something or someone “hostage” means either having to pay a ransom to free the hostage or going in with guns blazing to extricate the hostage. Neither applies to any Markdown-based workflow. 
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That’s an excellent point. I should have thought of that on my own—I’m a big fan of plaintext markdown in system folders for that very reason. I just edited my comment accordingly.
Thank you for pointing that out.
That’s true as long as the files are stored in system folders as Obsidian and NotePlan do.
If they’re in an app’s database and the app stops working for any reason, it’s going to be very hard to access your data, even if the app uses markdown and has good export options. And even if the app is still working, the transition is going to be more complicated.
Then that is NOT Markdown. A Markdown document must first be a plain text file.
Software like Bear, Joplin, and Drafts are also typically called markdown apps because they use markdown syntax, even though they store files in a database. Bear and Drafts can even integrate with the Marked 2 markdown rendering app.
But I think it’s fair to say that they’re not plaintext markdown apps, even though they can export to it.
Even though I love Agenda, I’m trying out Obsidian again. I’ve also subscribed to Obsidian Sync; at $48/year, it’s not too off $38/year for Agenda. I’ve got some time before I can’t get a refund. Memory pressure isn’t too bad, and I’m still in the green. There is a community plugin to import tables; that was one of my biggest problems before. Images are in a vault-root-level assets folder. I’ve even just finished changing about 130+ Agenda backlinks to Obsidian style.
The persistence of many members here and on hacker news on recommending the use of plain text Markdown notes has nudged this. I’ve been fighting this pressure for a long time.
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You can change that in the settings under Files and Links. I like to keep mine in a subfolder under the current folder, so images and attachments are associated with the notes they’re connected to, rather than just dumping them into root or one big vault-wide attachments-and-images folder.
I didn’t know this was there! It must be new; it wasn’t a feature when I started using the service. Great!
Glad you found it helpful! It’s a basic Obsidian setting that’s always been there afaik, regardless of whether or not you subscribe to their Sync service. Sync does add additional settings to control what does and doesn’t get synced between your devices, which I find helpful.
It wasn’t always there; I was using a plugin to do this previously because I wanted this setting. But the plugin was flakey and eventually I gave up. Thanks for putting this in the forum!
Edit: this feature was added in Obsidian 0.10.8, in 2022. I can’t believe I didn’t know before now. Thanks!
You’re welcome! I was using Obsidian before then, but I used it for quite a while before I started adding images in it. Before that I used Bear for a few years and I don’t recall whether I used images in it at all. My notes are still mostly text.
OTOH, I don’t usually have very many attachments, because markdown is text-based. But for some, not most, technical articles, a photo is helpful. PDF’s aren’t stored in my notes apps; they’re in the file system.
Tables, on the other hand, are more essential, and the Excel to Markdown plugin is very essential. I’m taking off the Advanced Tables plugin.
Now all I need is a faster way to initiate search on mobile. Obsidian Mobile doesn’t use swipe down for search, like I’m used to; that action starts the command menu, which doesn’t include “search all files”.
Try the Omnisearch plugin for better search.
You can change the pulldown action to Omnisearch (or any other command) in Settings > Toolbar > Configure mobile Quick Action.
Alternatively, you can pin the Omnisearch command at the top of the palette so you still have quick access to all commands via the pulldown action, or add it to the mobile toolbar.
Btw, the Commander plugin greatly improves customizability of the mobile toolbar. I especially like the column layout, which scrolls the toolbar vertically instead of horizontally.
Omnisearch, default settings, is instantly accessible in the lower right hand menu at it’s bottom. That’s what I needed.
Thanks. 
Update: I think things are nailed down for the moment (but that’s a bad thought to say; tempting fate).
Markdown syntax is not enough for me. Markdown syntax is limited and quirky. The only reason I find it acceptable at all to use Markdown syntax is because it allows me to format writing that I can store as plaintext in a document in the Mac and iOS file system!
Do you imagine that Markdown syntax would have caught on without the plaintext and file system benefits?
Yes, because it lets writers publish to the web easier.
That was John Gruber’s original reason for creating Markdown but that was not the reason for its runaway success.
Maybe you weren’t around when plaintext editors on Mac and iOS and the Dropbox service were all the rage for inter-device communication?
Brett Terpstra famously compiled his spreadsheet of somewhere between fifty and a hundred plaintext and Markdown editors just for iOS. He still maintains it at iTextEditors - iPhone and iPad text/code editors and writing tools compared
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I notice that Brett Terpstra (see above link) says YES to all three of these apps in the three columns Plain text, Markdown preview/export, and Markdown editing features. That’s good enough for for me. Markdown apps they are!
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I’m with you though that markdown files are much better when saved as .md files in system folders rather than in an app’s database. It one of many reasons I switched from Bear to Obsidian, and I know that’s something you like about NotePlan.
Out of curiosity, do you sync your NotePlan files with iCloud, and if so have you had any issues with that?
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iCloud Drive sync is an option with NotePlan. But a much better option, and the one that I use, is CloudKit sync because it works faster and more reliably than iCloud Drive. No sync method is perfect, but CloudKit comes close.
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