Notion releases offline mode
notion.com
notion.com
I would like to have more of the content available offline automatically though, i.e all text and image content, and big files downloaded on request. Closer to local first than this.
Have you ever tried Airtable? How does Notion compare?
Notion was always very sluggish and bulky. If they added a simple way to very quickly load and write simple Markdown notes on desktop and mobile like Obsidian, I might not have switched. Meanwhile their mobile app was taking literally 10+ seconds to even open.
Obsidian is just better for writing especially longer notes etc. Notion is great for sharing data intensive stuff, nicely formatted docs, and for collaborating.
But I don't use any of its Database functionality, or any of the other 90% of its features.
Notion is going to have a very hard time turning corporate Notion users into at-home/personal Notion users. Obsidian has already won this use case with one of the most rock-solid products ever.
Now Obsidian gets to fight the battle for corporate on their terms. And their tool is already developer friendly.
There are a million Obsidian champions, and there's probably a dozen of them in your org. I think Notion should be shaking in their boots right about now.
If Obsidian can get their organization management and syncing/backup strategy right, and if they make their product interface well with distributed git automations, Obsidian is going to take over so many new workflows. Not just knowledge bases, but mdbook -> webpage workflows, documentation, customer-facing pages, everything.
Notion makes product managers smile. Obsidian makes developers and product managers smile.
I don't think that's true; my (admittedly limited) understanding of Obsidian is that it strongly appeals to the type of person who reads HN; they're not going to appeal to someone who wants a WYSIWYG editor that they don't have to think about manually syncing with anything.
Obsidian makes developers smile, but it won't make sales people, customer service people, or executives smile unless they're already inclined to.
Love when people just spout straight bullshit without any substance to it.
Gladly using Obsidian with no community extensions. It is completely usable as a PKM without any additions.
Again, love when people spout bullshit.
Are you ever going to elaborate on what is so “low standard” about Obsidian, or just going to keep speaking in vagueness?
(disclaimer: I'm the dev)
[0] https://relay.md
Before it rapidly became untenable as a place to actually store my notes. I use it more as a "temporary note" that will be moved to the proper place later.
PS: I’m aware there are plugins that solve this issue, but none of them have worked well enough for me.
> Love letter to @obsdmd to which I very happily switched to for my personal notes. My primary interest in Obsidian is not even for note taking specifically, it is that Obsidian is around the state of the art of a philosophy of software and what it could be. — https://x.com/karpathy/status/1761467904737067456
And there's a lot of interest from tech-savvy folks wanting to use it at work. (Said as a cofounder of a co making business multiplayer tools)
I bought a commercial license three years ago, and I don't really mind paying it, but then my job for the last year expressly forbid the use of Obsidian [1], and as such I didn't feel compelled to keep paying, though I still used it for personal stuff.
I looked at their website and it looks like the commercial license is optional now?
I don't really mind paying for it, I think it's a pretty decent notes app and I probably get more than $50/year of value out of it.
[1] I'm not 100% sure why, I think it might have been because the people doing the approvals thought that the Sync was an intrinsic to the app and they were afraid of company secrets going out.
Otherwise the free Obsidian has everything, and there are other plugins for self hosted syncing that don't use the paid service.
For those that want to sync without paying, many use syncthing, though I don't think this is a feasible workaround for iOS users.
There are some other syncing methods that I haven't really looked into.
If don't know how or can't be bothered, you can pay for Obsidian Sync - which Just Works.
I tried to roll my own syncing with syncthing and iCloud and Dropbox. In the end I spent so much time debugging and dealing with files clobbering each other mid-sync I figured out $4/month to support a project I use daily isn't too much.
Zero problems since and I use Obsidian regularly on 4 different devices.
I use DriveSync on Android to sync selected Gdrive folder to my phone.
It works.
I don't know if they ever required that, but they certainly do not now. They encourage purchase of a commercial license, but it explicitly is not required.
From the FAQ on their pricing page:
Do I have to pay for commercial use?
No. You are not required to pay for a commercial license, however if you are using Obsidian for work in an organization we encourage you to purchase a commercial license to keep Obsidian independent and 100% user-supported.
You don't need a lot of the plugins to be productive in Obsidian, but I think a superpower people are overlooking is that you can build your own plugins for company specific features/workflows quite cheaply.
Combine that with having everything local, and you can use tools like claude code to actually make use of the knowledge/context that you're creating.
I find it crazy that people are pushing data into locked-in systems like Notion only to be limited by their weak-sauce AI tools.
In contrast, we are all in on file-over-app -- keeping the files locally on your computer so you can actually use them. Many of our customers run their Relay Server on-prem for total document privacy.
[0] https://relay.md
Find me on our discord [0] and I'll gift you some free storage.
Obsidian is very powerful for quick entry and working on Markdown knowledge bases, and it's great. I use it to manage my digital garden among other things.
On the other hand, Notion is great for processing data. I use their databases extensively incl. their charts and whatnot. I also host a couple of read-only public pages for friends or family as documentation.
I think they cater to different use cases and doesn't replace each other. I'd certainly won't run my digital garden over Notion, or store the databases I keep in Notion in Obsidian. Obsidian's Bases fill a different need, for now.
Also, Notion slightly pivoted recently. They altered their “single person” oriented Pro plan and made Business their “Entry level, full fledged” plan. They do not cater to individuals anymore. Where obsidian is more geared towards individuals.
I haven't tried Notion AI, maybe it's great. But I can't imagine going back to a world where all my knowledge lives in Notion's house. Notion CEO Ivan Zhao recently said: "If you think about applications, each application is kind of like a mini-prison of computing". (https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/75...) I think he's right. I don't want to be in Notion's prison even if it's big and nice.
Of course.
> open in Zed, and I interact with files via the tool-calling agent panel and via terminal.
Ah no, I don't use AI for that kind of tasks. I generally use my own formulae and what Notion provides Sans-AI.
> I haven't tried Notion AI, maybe it's great.
Me neither. I asked for authors and synopsis for a couple of books, that's all.
> I can't imagine going back to a world where all my knowledge lives in Notion's house.
Before going in, I always check how the Export works. Notion gives your text as Markdown and tables/databases as CSV, which is good enough for me.
I don't prefer to use services which I need to move my stuff by hand.
If I can make Bases work for me in Obsidian, I might move completely to Obsidian, but I need to test that first.
Edit: Looks like the functions Obsidian supports are not enough for me to move over yet.
Edit: Not to mention that (last I checked) Obsidian lacks a lot of granularity when it comes to permissions for editing pages. It would be very easy for a beginner user to disrupt the markdown files or the organizational system. Even doing things like applying labels or tags in the YAML is less intuitive and requires a lot of consistency guidelines for users to make it worthwhile. Notion facilitates this kind of thing a lot better.
Also, I don't find the Obsidian graph to be practical for organizing or locating files. It's impressive to look at, but not that practical in my experience.
We do everything in Notion. Book time off, HR policies, run books, playbooks, knowledge dumps, project management, sprint management. Search is a lot better so it really opens up the use cases.
Imo, if you're building a company with the goal of selling it you should use Notion. Get your team to use it, and capture everything about your business. When you go to sell it you have the whole business packaged up in a searchable, interactive knowledge base.
I don't see how one follows from the other, the vast majority of people use tools to deliver value without really caring whether they're self hosted or not
You're right, though, people who build businesses they have no intent of selling will also get similar value. They also reduce their hit by buss factor, make onboarding new employees easier, and so on.
I was simply offering one perspective. I don't think any commenter provides every single perspective, or when speaking on a product, all that products value.
Like others are saying, though, Notion is much more geared for collaboration. I couldn't care much less about that, so here I am with Obsidian, still, years later.
Maybe Obsidian appeals to a particular type of techie who uses Vim and stores all their files locally, compared to someone who isn't technical and just wants "documents in the cloud".
I should add that I dislike Notion for most things. In particular, the database support (which a lot of people here are singing praises about), tables, lack of diagramming, and the poor search.
But my main problem with Notion and other document systems is that invariably dissolve into the equivalent of a hoarder's house, full of outdated, hard-to-find garbage deeply buried under other garbage.
That's because Notion only has hierarchy. It doesn't have a sense of "cross cutting". So everyone organizes their stuff in completely different ways, and you have to deal with poorly thought-out folder hierarchies. Where I work, any attempt to carefully "garden" pages is futile because there is no discipline enforced by the tool.
Lately I've been using Linear as a replacement for Notion for some things, and it's just a much better designed tool.
Because if you can see them you can fix them when they inevitably get fucked up. (Literally commenting immediately after fixing some formatting that Confluence broke, like I do every day)
Lightweight markups in most basic usage are essentially punctuation extensions to natural language. It enables the UX in that what feels and looks like punctuation doubles as the effective key command you'd want to know for changing formatting modes anyways. This is why you'll find people like writers who like it.
Two neatly separated editing, or one editing plus one preview, mode(s) don't equate to "all over the place".
> "But my main problem with Notion and other document systems is that invariably dissolve into the equivalent of a hoarder's house, full of outdated, hard-to-find garbage deeply buried under other garbage."
I have never used Notion. But if said program does support good enough search as well as tagging functionality (an essential of any KM tool to be considered at least decent), then the "hard-to-find and deeply buried" is on the user for being incompetent at managing (meta) data... which is often enough an inherited problem, e. g. through bad company policies or practices.
And if the tool, in 2025, does not support such essential functionality, the user is obviously also (at least partly) at fault: for choosing it.
> "That's because Notion only has hierarchy."
Easy to avoid as there have been lots of freeform knowledge management tools out there... since the likes of Lotus Agenda. In my experience their freeform-style makes them unpopular with most people for it takes... some... effort (e. g. discipline) to make proper use of them. Such software obviously has to be adapted for any corporate use, which makes them rather unpopular in that space. See below.
> "Where I work, any attempt to carefully "garden" pages is futile because there is no discipline enforced by the tool."
The garden's consistency and associated enforcement ("discipline") is the job of the gardener(s), not the tool.
You don't like Notion's hierarchy-only structure... but then complain about "poorly thought-out folder hierarchies" of the people that use it at your workplace. I mean... whatcha think is gonna happen when you introduce your crowd to powerful freeform KM tools... in a structure that is hierachical (your workplace) and conducts its affairs accordingly? XD
For the same reason they liked it in the UX of 1985 and 1995...because Markdown gives you the ability to actually see the format codes that create your formatting and fix them if they're not what you want.
Now Obsidian (or any other Markdown editor) certainly isn't WordPerfect, but the one thing that diehard WordPerfect users loved was the ability to hit "reveal codes" and gain exacting control over their formatting...something Microsoft Word has never even tried to do. Markdown is far, far simpler, but the same control is there.
By analogy, to me it's like people preferring to draw by writing SVG, when drawing lines and circles is much more natural in a visual medium. Its not like sheet music where notation describes a completely different medium.
Collaboration on the same notes works just fine, even if there is no “live editing” (which we realised is not really useful for us anyway). The fact that notes are just text files on disk has been transformative though - folks use the Shortcuts app, scripts and what not to manage and lookup things.
Nerdy devs are a niche.
HN is a tiny tiny bubble. Most users don’t know and wouldn’t care for obsidian or markdown etc.
I think is not a feature to appease the nerd community but for business users who are on the go.
What database features?
Speed and local-first was originally the main differentiator, but over time Steph Ango's "file over app" philosophy has become my favorite feature.
Yesterday I used Claude Code to automate some Obsidian cleanup and it was trivial because everything's just a file.
i usually compare obsidian to joplin... seems like i should be looking more at obsidian because i was considering starting a new wiki in notion.
See also: Google Docs
That's what Microsoft has that market sewn up with Office 365, despite being several years late to collaborative document editing -- Outlook anchors the whole thing together.
Kudos to the Notion engineering team for achieving this milestone.
I do want to keep Notion's ability to work in a browser and to maintain a single, accessible store of my notes.
What are my options?
OK, I think this may be a bit less powerful than Notion and Obsidian.
The most important thing in any note taking app is to use it consistently and use it for years. And bring it with you as you change jobs.
Sometimes simple things that work in plain text files that can be exported and imported easily is what you need for long term note taking.
You can disable the graph feature and never link any notes.
I feel like you just described Obsidian. You can do more with tagging and linking but you definitely don't have to
The only downside for me is the inability to use it from a web browser. This isn't a major issue for my workflows.
My biggest gripe is that the OSS project is very oriented around a hosted product rather than the self hosted - so things like AI configuration is tricky at best and ive had to manually manipulate my account in the db to remove "free" user limitations.
FWIW I use obsidian for "note-taking, list-making, and markdown friendly" and have not bothered with note graphs etc and it none of such features have gone on my way ever.
The good thing imo about obsidian is that it is perfectly possible to keep it all dead simple if that is what you want. The only "advanced" feature I use is rendering a slides-based presentation out of a markdown file (and setting up a css file for this). For any other notetaking or knowledge management tool I have spent more time configuring/learning to use it than actually taking notes.
For my uses, notion is unnecessarily complicated.
IA writer got this right, but it's too local and doesn't have colab or better online sync features. Shameless plug – I'm building https://kraa.io/about that's trying to be a writing app with a minimal, yet feature-rich, UI. (better offline and local-files functionality planned)
https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/obsidian-focus-mode
This is what differentiates Obsidian from many other note taking apps. Anyone who has an itch can build a plugin and customize it.
Unlike a venture-funded SaaS application there's no meaningful commercial incentive or issue with building something that will eventually get sherlock'd b the application vendor in the future.
also, it's not unreasonable to think that a compatible alternative would be easier to build compared to a less standard format
What do they do besides the frontmatter (which is fairly trivial to process or ignore in a hypothetical future where one wants to stop using obsidian)?
My notes, which can include things like my location, appointments, plans, things I don't want a random company viewing never leave my device, which is the only way you can be sure they are not being viewed without an oss app.
I don't understand how the benefits of open source are so easily downplayed.
Apparently in contrast to many of you, I think Notion is a better product for what I want, which is collaborative notes++. Personal info repo, shared project pages with people, and I straddle work and personal life using it everywhere. Tinkering with the backend is not a goal of mine, but I wonder if that's what people like about Obsidian.
Personally, I don't really like Notion very much. Not silently losing data is a low bar to clear for an application that edits rich text. Notion didn't clear it.
https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology...
This sounds like they’re trying to support cases where you temporarily lose connection while editing a document. Very different from being able to start up your computer without an internet connection, open a document you’d previously downloaded, edit it, and sync sometime later once you come back online (which is what Notion now supports).
For me, this year, Logseq did. The killer concept for me is that it does org-mode hierarchy and outline collapsing, but easier; being able to "zero in" on a block, regardless of whether its its own page is excellent.
Even published a very cool article last July about all the (considerable) challenges one runs into when going after making wasm-sqlite work: https://www.notion.com/blog/how-we-sped-up-notion-in-the-bro...
It would "mostly work" offline before, but you could have cases where some blocks in a page aged out of the LRU, or they changed online in a way that invalidated the page but new content wasn't downloaded. When that happens we show a "go online to view" error instead of risking you viewing/editing a known-incorrect local snapshot of the page.
With "available offline", we now proactively download and keep up-to-date the content you want available offline. It will either work, or show an explicit error if things go wrong in the sync process. No more guesswork.
1. I was manually dumping the the link and manually adding the title. 2. Slack lists seems to be okayish but doesn't let me tag easily. Message is not highlighted as much as Later feature does. 3. Trying out Notion but it doesn't show message upfront.
"Let's get you to bed, grandma..."
I had to leave Notion far too many years ago and life is elsewhere.
Yeah, thanks, I’m good. Obsidian it is then.
OTOH, you don't need to pay for Obsidian sync. You can sync it via any cloud provider or syncthing if you prefer.
I have a business related vault under Obsidian. It syncs via office's Nextcloud instance. I also added "Edit history" plugin, so I have unlimited diff and undo on that vault, too.