So I built my own thats a bit more lightweight. Think nvalt meets markdown. thats native, iOS and Mac with I cloud sync, and open source.
Check it out if it sounds interesting!
iOS app is still in review ;(
I don't want to be overly negative, but no plugins are mandatory, there's no "47 step setup guide" unless you want to heavily customize.
And as far as I can tell you mostly replaced some of the weight with AI?
AI "Search Notes", "Organize Notes", "List and filter, tags", "Clean up notes"
I guess I just see this as weight in a different area? You've pushed a lot of the weight and plugins to cloud-based AI?
I am, on principle, very much a fan of "native app, not another Electron view".
By lightweight I mean it’s not a super heavy and bloated electron app on desktop and a slow and janky capacitor app on mobile that takes 10 seconds to launch and that the project can be greppable in a day to build on
So pick the good ones you like and make your own.
For instance, I’m pretty well-organized, and I like it that way. This leads me to native organizations using folders and some patterns that I learnt aloong the way. Nothing more complicated. One day, if I have to walk off Obsidian, I can, and I will still know where things are.
Right now, my organization is a loose combo of PARA[1] and Johnny Decimal.[2]
Obsidian is another tool; it just happens to be one hell of a good tool.
This is the best file-explorer GUI ever made hands down.
All your files map 1-to-1 with the OS filesystem. No double clicking files over and over again. No getting lost in endless unsorted directories. Launch any file extension type straight from the same explorer GUI.
I use this app less as a second brain and more as a personal document vault. (Markdown is ugly sorry about it) I get lots of pdf’s and such so it’s all in one place.
Cool, end of speech. Peace out
besides norton commander and its clones
But every PDF I download, ebook, academic article, it goes in Calibre and out of my Downloads path.
He eschews a lot of the common wisdom pushed by influencers in this space who tout "the one true way™" to stay organized. File splattered in the root? Sure. Unresolved links to notes that don't exist and probably never will? Why not! Blank daily notes that aren't carefully manicured journal tomes? Heck yeah.
His point is "perfect is the enemy of good." You could carefully curate and perfect your pkm...or you could have a life.
To me, obsidian is a thought-taking app, not a notetaking app. Thoughts are amorphous and incomplete no matter how much you embellish them. They don’t belong in only one place with only one label or pinned to only one date. They reach out to each other. Merge and split. They sit inside each other sometimes.
Obsidian gets that. It offers _just enough_ structure and automation and operating system (of a kind) to force the binary file system on some silicon to work like our brains do...and not the other way around.
If you aren't a researcher in a field, why do you need personal knowledge management? Even when I learn a subject, I find just...taking a flat note file to be way better than all these Zettelkasten stuffs. It all feels very pomodoro to me. It is useful for some people, but influencers have hyped it up into the Grand Unified Solution.
Same with mind mapping. I don't see the benefit. Maybe being AuDHD has something to do with it? Like...if it's an area I want more expertise, I'm already hyperfocused on it and remember everything. If I don't want expertise, I don't need PKM. I keep trying to use them, but it feels superfluous. Like I never have to refer back to it.
Insanity•1h ago
I actually think Obsidian is a great tool, but I just need something as low friction as possible to quickly jolt something down. Vim and Goodnotes does the trick for me.
ehnto•1h ago
There was an exception though, where text just didn't cut it, which was a brief period where I was importing vehicles from Japan and needed lots of images, documents and comparisons up on a big digital whiteboard. I used LogSeq for that.
timothyduong•1h ago
ravenstine•1h ago
Brajeshwar•52m ago
The Notes folder(s) is sync with a Cloud Service. So, I use iA Writer[1] (a brilliant Notes App) to have a pleasant writing experience on other mobile devices. They are just Markdown, so I can open them in any Notes App that supports Markdown. I paid for iA Writer once, like 10+ years ago.
1. https://ia.net/writer
Peacefulz•24m ago
SOLAR_FIELDS•24m ago