I’ve tried 'em all. And I am always on the lookout for new apps that can do what I want. So far, Obsidian is the best.
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Joplin: adds meta data to your text files making it nearly impossible to find anything outside of Joplin unless you export
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Logseq: the closest substitute to Obsidian. The android app is almost unusable in my testing. And it’s an outlined based note app, so it requires a different mindset
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Silverbullet: such a neat project. The PWA runs great on every device I’ve tried it on. That said, I find it hard to navigate and will require more learning to take full advantage of its features
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Nextcloud Notes: decent if you already have an instance running. Not worth it just for Notes though. It’s very spartan, feature-wise
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Quillpad: the closest Google Keep alternative I’ve found so far. Does require Nextcloud insurance to sync though. At least currently.
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Acreom: very cool project. Similar to Obsidian and Logseq. Local first…unless you’re on mobile, then you are required to have an account and use their sync.
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Notesnook: has great features but does not store the notes on plain text (due to encryption), which is a deal breaker for my use case
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Memos: very easy to selfhost. Think of it like a personal twitter feed. Stores entries in a db file, so it’s out for me
I tested others, and many didnt last long enough in my testing to even be worth writing about. I find Obsidian’s folder hierarchy easier to fit around how my brain works. And the plain text files in folders, maintaining the hierarchy, is a killer feature for me. Lots of folks self host a sync solution. And I want to but am currently paying for their basic sync plan of $5/mo.
Seafile. It’s super fast and lightweight. There are some caveats though:
Data is stored in git-like chunks on the server side. There is Seafuse and Sea drive functions that you can leverage to “assemble” the data on server side for backups. I personally use rclone mount, then backup.
Paywall hiding some features. The community edition is free but is missing some features that pro has. Pro edition is free for 3 or less users.
Documentation isn’t great. The forum is active so that’s helpful, but some of the docs take some time to understand
Chinese owned. As far as I can tell, there is no call home for a self hosted server, so I don’t think it’s a worry in that case.
All that said, I like it much better than Syncthing for it’s selective sync. All files on each client are synced to the server. But unlike Syncthing, it doesn’t sync all data with each client. This is vital for me with some devices with small storage drives, so I would t want all files to sync. Yet I can still reach to the server from any client and pull data from any other client. Syncthing has an ignore flag, but that seemed way more trouble to setup than just sticking with Seafile.