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Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

Obsidian. It's markdown based, so simple at the base, but you can go wild with plugins ( including latex, graph visualisations, dynamic queries across notes, etc.), and it supports metadata, tags, etc. if you want to. You can sync with anything supporting text files ( Git, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) or pay a bit for their ens to end encrypted service that works great.

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Dendron, it's like Obsidian (markdown based notes in files on your filesystem) but as a VS Code plugin, so it's also compatible with Git and other VS Code filetype extensions.

https://www.dendron.so/

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=dendron

This.

After using Notion, Obsidian, Mem and other tools, I have settled down on this app. Solid community too.

Would like to mention excalidraw plugin for obsidian. It works in both desktop version and obsidian mobile (with pencil support). One can quickly scribble a drawing (LaTeX formulas allowed in drawings) and embed it in an obsidian note. Syncing between desktop, laptop and iPad works great.

I wouldn't mind using it but their license keeps me away.

What is it about their license that bothers you? It seems pretty fair to me... Free for personal use, pay for commercial, unless you are a nonprofit or a single employee company. Did I miss something?

(I assume you mean EULA: https://obsidian.md/eula)

Some us based companies forbid to use obsidian due to this clause in license:

This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the laws of Canada applicable in that Province. Any action or proceeding arising from or relating to this Agreement may only be brought in the courts located in Kitchener, Ontario and each party irrevocably submits to such exclusive jurisdiction and venue.

I don't want to have to separate my notes between work and personal. Sometimes in my daily journal I will think about work things. That would requires me to pay $50 a year for an editor to edit Markdown files. That seems steep even if mostly I use it for personal use.

A solution springs to mind, but I fear it would be impolite to state it directly.

Well my solution is to use an editor that is free, open source, and is not burdened by a license that cares not what information I store in it's memory nor how many other people I organize with.

I agree. This is my solution also.

Obsidian's license terms are weirder than expected. But I'd never hesitate to use a Personal license for random, incidental professional purposes.

But I'm much happier to avoid thinking about the question altogether.

I just wish the Obsidian sync features were better. I often end up with two copies of the same note when switching between devices.

Another vote for Obsidian here. Its the first 'note taking' system I actually _use_ (even evernote wasn't as frictionless for me).

Not an issue for me, but others might be concerned about its (lack of??) mobile support. I do all my work on desktops and sync thru git, so its not been a problem for me.

Obsidian has a solid mobile app now

do they have widget support? Specifically a list of starred/favorite notes?

All the plugins from desktop version sync to mobile too.

Starred notes is a core plugin that lets you pin searches too.

There are slightly more involved approaches as well:

https://tfthacker.medium.com/dashboard-a-simple-organization...

yes, core obsidian support star notes and lists them in a star note tab.

I’ve stopped using it because I can’t figure out how to make a nice home page with links to various notes and important links, it just dumps me in the latest random note. Is there a way to organize that, like in notion?

If you use any of the daily notes plugin, you can tell it to always open with the note for today, which is based on a template and can contain anything you want. iIRC by default it just opens the last note you were in.

So every daily note saved will have this saved over and over? Doesn't seem very elegant

I actually sync my instances so when it does the git pull, it puts me in the last note I was working on, regardless of what machine it was.

I use the calendar, and tasks stuff to give me a daily/weekly view in the sidebar for quick nav. and a 'general' note for links to notes I want quick access to.

https://tfthacker.medium.com/dashboard-a-simple-organization...

What do you mean by lack of mobile support? Mobile app had been working fine for me since its been released, at least for me. I only use it to access previously written stuff or quickly capture something to be properly edited later on my laptop though. So I’m not exactly power mobile user.

I couldn't tell you...which is why I put question marks in :-)

I just remember seeing comments about it being a bit behind some of the mobile support offered by other systems. I do everything on desktop, so I ignored it. This was a while ago though, sounds like they have a (new?) mobile app?

I cant remember when it was released, I had access to TestFlight for a good while for being the supporter. But honestly, its great. I was amazed that plugins just sync between desktop and mobile.

Obsidian has a solid mobile app and a good sync service. It's not an issue.

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