Preferences

I just can't keep up with all the note taking apps; I sometimes go through a Phase of "I need a means to organize my things", but invariably just go back to a folder with text documents. The note taking apps are fine, but they will either have a web/electron based interface that is too indirect, or their data storage is not open (like text documents), or they try and upsell you cloud storage / sync, or they offer no benefit over a plain text editor (with global search).

This is precisely why I ended up on Joplin several years ago... Being able to sync for free (I just pay for S3 costs) means I got cross-device/platform support and know I will never lose my notes.

I'm trying to understand the use case where it would be worth it to switch to Obsidian and pay monthly for the sync and no longer host the data myself, which doesn't sound like an improvement to me.

The way Obsidian organizes notes sounds intriguing though, I can see how some might find that worth the additional cost (or loss of sync ability).

Obsidian stores all the notes and attachments as normal files in a folder, you can sync it however you like.
> Being able to sync for free (I just pay for S3 costs) means I got cross-device/platform support and know I will never lose my notes.

This is also the case with Obsidian! Because the files are just loose `.md` files in a folder, I personally use Syncthing and Git to keep them synchronised across devices for free. Sync is another option to complement those, for people who don't want to roll their own solution.

By default in Obsidian you own the data (and it never leaves your hard drive), you pay for them to host it for you so that it 'just works' across devices

fwiw, I just use a syncthing folder for obsidian and I've never had an issue
That's where I used to be for years, first in Tiddlywiki, then away from that as it was having trouble with browsers (it's good again now, I gather) and into a Dropbox folder of pseudo-markdown text files.

That said, I've stuck with Obsidian so far, specifically because it doesn't lock me into a format. I was able to drop it on top of my folder-o-markdown & go from there. We'll see if it sticks, but so far so good.

This is the reason I ended up on Obsidian, it's data model is a "a folder of markdown files on your local filesystem", which was already my prior system when I used VS code as an editor for notes.

This item has no comments currently.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Story Lists

j
Next story
k
Previous story
Shift+j
Last story
Shift+k
First story
o Enter
Go to story URL
c
Go to comments
u
Go to author

Navigation

Shift+t
Go to top stories
Shift+n
Go to new stories
Shift+b
Go to best stories
Shift+a
Go to Ask HN
Shift+s
Go to Show HN

Miscellaneous

?
Show this modal