“I get this, I am software developer and I just didn’t want to manage any more stack than needed, Obsidian does look really customizable, but maybe it’s my habits or using the tool wrong. For me Notion is plug and play, and visually easier for me to understand”
“I really hope I don’t come across as dismissive by saying this, but I’ve always found it a little odd that a VCS of all things is so highly recommended with Obsidian users, specifically to use as an ad hoc file transfer protocol and not a VCS.”
“While obsidian feels quick and responsive and stays out of your way once you have it configured properly. Search is much better, switching between vaults is a breeze. Sharing data is easy with no proprietary formats.”
“Obsidian is great for note taking, Notion runs my project tracking setup where I can keep track of what I work for, for whom, which tasks, and how long etc, along with logging bugs for each project. Obsidian can kinda sorta do that, but it all runs through plugins and just somehow feels.. messier to me.”
“Always keep in mind that there is a reason why Obsidian and Notion are very prevalent in youtube in comparison to other notes application that offer similar feature set, and this is because their level of customisation is very high and youtubers have lots of materials to go on and about.”
“What Obsidian does excel at, is note taking, organizing knowledge etc... And it is consistenly getting better at that. It's true, you do have to install plugins to get some of the functions you may want; but in turn, Obsidian is a lot simpler and faster than Notion.”
“Obsidian uses Electron and almost everything can be customized with simple CSS and JS snippets. I don’t get it what the aesthetic thing that can’t be achieved with CSS.”
“i tried (obsidian tasks , but you can't specify a file for all tasks to go to , i tried tasknotes , but tasks are created as files not as lines (idk if there is a workaround) , i tried operon , task genius , but tbh they are a bit overkill for me”
“So I may store it on latex, PowerPoint or obsidian. I do not have a systematic system because it is not flexible enough and most importantly requires to much work. I prefer using my time doing messy research (fucking around to find something interesting) instead of spending days to manage a note system that won’t really be useful.”
“At the end of the day, I still prefer Obsidian due to how quick it is, how agents can manage my project files and tasks, and how the general folder structure is less obfuscated than Notion or Anytype. However, it took me literal years of trying Obsidian before my workflow became simple enough to migrate.”
“Obsidian is my daily workhorse for everything else. Sync was easy enough to set up (Windows 11 and iOS) - it was “spend one hour, then forget about it” and still works 3 years later.”
“I use obsidian for note taking, it's free and open-source and easily export it's notes to pdf. it is very fast and also support mathematical equations.”
“Since your real target is "one big .md I can paste into ChatGPT", I'd keep the master section as its own note, use normal embeds inside Obsidian for reading, and generate the flattened file only at upload time.”
“I ended up with Obsidian. Overwhelmed at first but with a few plugins I have what I had in ON and feel more secure with my own backups. ON had been stalked for years while Obsidian continues to improve and add features constantly.”
“Obsidian is not meant to “look nice” I mean there are tons of plugins and bloat and shit. obsidian is made to hold your information properly and well interlinked. If you are “a tech guy” you understand the UI, once you hook agents matters pretty much nothing.”
“what do you use Obsidian for? Can i really transfer all my tasks to Obsidian? it seems very complicated to set up for me. I have the book and show tracker and recipes.”
“I use obsidian on a daily as an analyst (for 6 years now), and I've found solutions to monitor markets and data while only using Obsidian's native features like bases, canvas and simple plugins like dataview.”
“I thought it was a lot easier to make note evergreen on Obsidian, where as Notion felt more like a drive with notes loosely related. I got so used to map of contents that organizing notes by folder felt restrictive.”
“I pay the $5 for the Obsidian sync service, just so my new clippings get synced in Obsidian no matter where I open it. That makes it more convenient, but I might eventually go to iCould, only.”
“I'm accepting that Obsidian's aesthetics are not what Notion's are, but on the same day I can customize them a lot more and change things that Notion just simply wouldn't let me do. The simplification within Obsidian also shows me how much I was overusing databases when I didn't need them.”
“I am another OneNote refugee. Go Obsidian, it's ideal for your use case where you want to find stuff at a later date. There's many ways you can identify your notes for searching or listing in tables, cards, etc.”
“It is possible to sync Obsidian without using their sync service (they'll even tell you how), but it is absolutely worth subscribing to their service - $50ish a year is cheap for having all my info in one place, in plain text that I can easily move in/out of other apps, with markdown formatting.”
“Obsidian has the benefit of being in markdown, which means you can just send a note to lab members or advisors without needing to worry about if they can open/read it or not, or what OS they're on. I picked it over Notion at the time also because Notion requires browser access which can also be annoying.”