Introduction

What kind of memo tool do you usually use when taking quick notes on your PC?

I usually use Notion and Logseq as my main note-taking tools, but for quick and simple notes before organizing them in these tools, I’ve been using a tool called Stickies.

However, Stickies lacks extensibility and is so simple that I often find it difficult to manage when the number of notes on the screen increases. Therefore, I recently started trying out a software called Obsidian as a memo tool.

Since I’m still new to using it, there’s a lot I don’t know, but I find it a very interesting tool. In this article, I’d like to share a brief introduction to Obsidian and my initial impressions.

What Is Obsidian?

Obsidian is a closed-source commercial application that allows you to create and manage notes in Markdown format. It’s a note-taking app with basic features available for free. One of its key features is the ability to visually organize information by linking notes together. Additionally, it offers high customizability and can be used offline, making it ideal for personal knowledge management and research.

Like Stickies and Logseq, Obsidian is designed to save user data locally on the file system. Unlike services like Notion or Evernote, which store data on the provider's cloud, Obsidian stores data on your own device, ensuring that it can be used securely even without an internet connection and protecting your data's privacy.

Other features include the ability to visualize the relationships between notes in a graph view (which I haven’t used yet), and a high degree of customizability through plugins.

Comparison with Stickies

In my case, I’m currently using Obsidian with the concept of "storing notes before organizing them in Notion", and since I create a lot of notes daily, the organization features like folders, tags, and links in Obsidian have been very helpful. This has allowed me to efficiently manage a large volume of notes.

However, compared to Stickies, which allows for quick and intuitive note-taking, Obsidian feels slightly less convenient for casual use, and its high learning curve could be seen as a drawback. This ease of use is perhaps the biggest strength of Stickies when compared to more complex tools like Obsidian.

In conclusion, I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other—they each have their strengths and weaknesses. Stickies’ strength lies in its simplicity, while Obsidian excels in handling complex tasks like linking notes and building hierarchical structures.

Conclusion

Since I’m still new to using Obsidian, there’s a lot I’m not sure about, so I’ve summarized my thoughts as of now. If I come up with any new ideas about Obsidian, I’ll share them on the blog.

Thank you for reading :)