It looks like the Automators crew has settled on Obsidian as the note taking, zettlekasten, and all-around personal knowledge tool for now. I’m looking to make the leap, but Joplin is still out there, beckoning me with its FOSS model. How does The Collective here feel about the pro/con on these two tools?
My brief take
Obsidian’s best feature is its use of plain text files, whereas Joplin uses a database to hold & sync notes, and requires you to “sync” to a local filesystem path if you want the files.
Joplin stores its metadata using database internals, whereas Obsidian uses YAML frontmatter.
Joplin seems to have more built-in features, but obsidian seems to have more plugins.
Joplin seems to talk to more file & note sync services.
I’m guessing the first two are the big items, right? Being able to access markdown files directly, and having the metadata stored in plain text in each markdown file makes working on that pice of information easier, and also accessible by other programs like DEVONThink.
I guess I’ve made my own argument to go with Obsidian, despite my desires to stick with FOSS tools wherever possible. Are there any Joplin fans who have a different view?
One benefit of Obsidian’s approach – using plain text files as the source of truth – is that, with a little care, you can use other apps simultaneously.
“With a little care,” in my experience (so far) means that you don’t get too dependent on some of the more intricate and Markdown-garbling plugins, like Dataview. (There’s nothing wrong with using those if they work for you, but then your notes may look far less readable in other apps.)
So stick to Markdown and a easy-to-read expansions on Markdown – Obsidian has some great plugins that make tables and so on even easier to read, for example – and you’ll be fine to use FOSS apps, or others, right alongside it. I use Obsidian and two other Mac apps, as well as a non-Obsidian iOS app, all with the same notes.
This is a great point and one that does matter to me. My plan has been to index my notes with DEVONThink, and the plain text files here cements the deal for me. I’ll be this is the real reason that Obsidian is winning right now.
Obsidian has
faster sync ( you can use icloud drive )
easy access to notes as flat files
more plugins
Joplin
better import/export tools
better web clipping
more metadata for each note including geolocation data and source URL
better note management for searching moving and deleting notes.
I wish the I could merge their best features, but you gotta pick one!
I moved from Evernote to Joplin a few years ago. Last year i moved to Obsidian and I’ve never looked back.
Joplin was fine but nothing revolutionary. I just collected to many random notes and never really processed these into any order.
Obsidian changed the game for me. I love tinkering around and learning in the process. It was unlike anything i had used before and had changed the way i think about note taking for good.
Luckily, there have so many note taking apps available, allowing us to choose at will.
I wanted to provide a 2024 followup to my question from [checks watch] 2 years ago. (yikes!)
Starting in late 2023, I decided to push hard on Obsidian, and I’m really pleased with the results. I use it more at work than home right now, but that has more to do with my personal MacBook being busted. I can’t share a lot about my work setup, but here’s what I can share:
I have a note for each meeting. An internally-built plugin pulls meeting data from our exchange server.
I have a note for each person that I mention in a note. An internally-built plugin pulls data from our corporate address book. DataView and task queries in those notes show me where if I’ve mentioned that person and things that I need to tell them.
I have a daily note for each day. DataView and task queries show me overdue tasks and those due today, as well as all notes that I create or modify on that day.
I have notes for projects and topics, some of which use queries to fetch real-time data from internal APIs.
I’m playing with integrations with tools like Toggl to show me where my time is going, but that’s not very good yet.
The overall win for me is that a quick search usually shows me the thing that I was talking about. When I get asked, “what was that thing that we talked about?” or “what have you been doing all week?” I can usually give a really complete answer. I don’t forget things nearly as much and I actually complete most of my tasks now.
There are a few downsides:
Obsidian is not very useable on my phone. Maybe I haven’t learned how to use it there yet, but it feels clunky. I’m experimenting with using Drafts to take notes and then storing them in Obsidian.
Obsidian’s UI is not very Apple-friendly. That said, it’s the same everywhere, so my Linux system feels much the same.
Collaboration is not really an option. Obsidian is for individual use.
Publishing your writing isn’t convenient. The tools that publish your vault result in a site that still feels like a vault. Sometimes that’s what I want, but sometimes I want to use Obsidian to draft wiki text or other writing, then publish that in a wiki, word doc, or whatever, and that doesn’t work for me yet.