I often get asked what my favorite tools are and how I use them to get my work done, and I'm writing this both to answer that question, and also fo...
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Hello. I'm a big fan of markdown, using it since years and all my notes are .md files. I've therefore tried Obsidian but... do not see why to use it. I mean what are the added value against visual studio code ? What are for you the killing features of obsidian ?
Vscode can preview the file, can manage table of contents (using Markdown All In One plugin), ... and since I'm using vscode all the day, yeah, didn't see yet in which way Obsidian can be better for me.
Sure, that's fair! I personally like having my notes and my code separate, plus I like the plugins that Obsidian provides that aren't necessarily in the VS Code ecosystem, and also I take a lot of notes on my phone (which VS Code is not really set up for).
Thanks. I've read a few "obsidian vs vscode" articles yesterday after having read your post here and didn't see in which domain obsidian can be, for me, better than vscode.
I'm using it everyday (I'm developer) and, yes, I find there everything I need.
For smartphone, you've vscode.dev / github.dev i.e. a web interfaces. I'm storing my notes on github.com (public or private repos) and I can well edit my files on my smartphone.
(I don't appreciate the [[plugin]] syntax in obsidian because it's not standard in markdown and thus you'll loose features as soon as you stop using obsidian which is not really "open")
Obsidian is not an editor for markdown files. It's a separate system of notes which are supposed to be highly interlinked. Wiki-like link syntax is essential to it. The files are not supposed to be used outside (although they can, since it's basically markdown), this has nothing to do with openness.
The concept is also not unique to Obisdian. As a VSCode fan (apparently) you might be interested in checking out Foam.
Ah there you go, yeah, I don't want to store my notes in a repo, but that makes sense!
Also you're right about the [[link]] syntax, but it's not as proprietary as you might think; Notion, Bear, Roam, and a bunch of other note-taking softwares use it!
Also VS Code has a extension that does obsidian-like stuff.
Personally I'm losing interest in obsidian - and markdown in general. Ito formatting, It’s all or nothing for me.
Obsidian is a flavored markdown editor, and as soon as you commit to github, everything (dataview, etc) breaks.
What I do appreciate about markdown repos is that they're easily editable in notepad++ and vscode. I spend some time in notepad++ just adding (autosave) files to a subfolder in my obsidian repo. The notepad++ plugins are better than obsidian.
I guess there's a gradient of use cases for markdown. Oh and I appreciate being able to save files of any type (html, rtf, .txt and .csv, .Json, .xml and .sql) in my note repo.
Thank you for sharing your list!
Centered sounds interesting — I’ve been trying to get stuff like that just work in the background without having to worry about it and have not yet found a good solution.
For the others, I also tried a lot of tools and the only one to ever stick with me is Emacs orgmode. All others failed because I simply started to forget them. Org stuck with me and it’s the core of all my organisation today — from task planning over note taking and time tracking up to blogging (which is just org-capture saving into my org-based website). Plus it’s local (synced via Mercurial or git) and if history is a guide, it will still be around 20 years from now.
And I don’t work on a phone …
Wow, that is an amazing article. So many useful recommendations; thank you for providing them! I try to use not many apps, but a few, which will help me be productive and not forget something important. I don't like having many apps just for quantity; that's why finding something new and useful is always hard. That's why I always look for such reviews or recommendations, and it saves me time on "testing" new apps myself. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to find some interesting articles online, like the one I found recently. I usually work on Mac, and sometimes when I use it for too long, I notice that it's quite warm, which I suppose is not that good. And I found one amazing article, and I can recommend visit the website to read it, which is decided to Mac temperature and how to check it. Personally, I found there some new info, which helps me now, and I think it will help me to extend the "life" of my laptop. I know a few situations when Mac was overheating for some time, and there was nothing good about it. And it's cool that there is a soft which can help you with it.
A question for all the Obsidian users who don't work at a 1 person shop - are you paying for the license or do you use a separate app when taking notes for your work related things?
EDIT - and if you are using a separate app, which are you using?
I admit I don't use my work notes on Obsidian for this reason, but most folks I know pay for that license, or ask their work to pay for it (as a productivity tool)!
Huh? Create a repo anywhere you like, and add your notes to the repo.
Svn, gitlab, github, bitbucket, perforce.
Basically save your notes workspace in a shared location, even Google drive or Dropbox will do.
Specifically referring to the licensing. If you use it in any way related to work for an organization with more than 1 person (so like for my job) you're required to pay.
I think Obsidian is an excellent note-taking app that offers local-first markdown editing, plugin/theming customization, and syncing capabilities.
Centered seems like an innovative tool for boosting focus and productivity through flow state to-do lists with strategic time management and helpful features like focus music and distraction reduction.
Raindrop also caught my attention with its all-in-one bookmark manager that supports public bookmark collections, permanent copy saving, full-text search, and annotations.
Cron is another interesting app with keyboard shortcut-powered calendar features, though it currently only works with Google Calendar.
Todometer seems like a useful task management tool with its meter-based approach and desktop integration.
I use themindmap.app/ for keeping track of all the important events coming up my way for the upcoming week. It's like a reminder-as-a-service thing. It lets me add birthdays, work-anniversaries and other important events, then it sends me a consolidated email every sunday about what's upcoming in next week.
PS: I wish work-anniversaries to all my colleagues and I have never forgotten anyone's birthday since I am using Mindmap 😀
This looks well-built, nice work!
Hello great post, I think everyone has their special stack that fit with their own needs on my case I have another stack that I would like to share
I too use Obsidian, probably in some part because you (cassidoo) mentioned it :)
And I also journal in Obsidian, so I wonder what does Dabble do better?
I do take some journal-like notes in Obsidian, but I think the way Dabble.me reminds me to actually journal is what sticks for me, personally!
Templating and periodic notes auto-generation works well for reminders...
Nice article. Surprised I hadn't heard of many of these apps, guess am slacking on prod apps
Great tools, thank you!
Love this! Lately I have been super into the "Second Brain" Notion organizer! So good and super helpful to organize high->low priority tasks!
Thanks for sharing @cassidoo :)
Cron is a pretty weird choice for the name of a calendar app. I mean, it's appropriate, I guess, but it's so widely recognised as something already that it'll either get lost in searches or it'll confuse users.
I'm using ClickUp for my tasks. It's a powerful task management app, which is a bit bloated I admit, but similar to Trello, but with a few features that can be useful.
I don't see the point of using notes at this moment, but maybe one day. In any case since I'm using the Arc Browser, Notes are available out of the box, so there's that.
Hey @cassidoo
Qq on todometer. It is possible to open it as a default chrome tab?
Not yet, but it's on the roadmap!
That will be so cool, I use Papier atm
For task track and todo, i used TickTick from last 2 years. it is very good and powerful tool.
And, for journal i am happy with traditional method book and pen.
I still don't get the use and how to use this obsidian
Treat it as a plain ol' markdown editor first, like Notepad but with markdown instead of txt files, and then go from there!
I find it amazing that they just took markdown/files and built such an extensible system out of it. The abundance of plugins for Obsidian is a selling point. Just admonition could make your content look rich.
In my personal experience with obsidian I found that Very long MD is either not supported/L or just Breaks.
That's a shame! I haven't had that issue with my pretty large files, personally.