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> Obsidian was a great tool for me personally for a long time. But I felt frustrated when I wanted to access my notes on my phone while on-the-go and saw that I had to pay for this feature.

I'm using Syncthing [0] to sync my vault between devices. On my main PC, Syncthing runs constantly in the background. Say, if I made a change, and want to send those changes to my phone, I open the application on my phone and let it fetch the changes. It's not perfectly smooth, like Obsidian's own integration, but I prefer this instead of setting a Git repository. Also, the files don't stay in a remote server.

[0]: https://syncthing.net

It seems to really be an ad for Directus (https://directus.io/) (?) That he used to replace Obsidian.

One of the first image to hit me when I got there is a button "Start For Free".

And if I want to run it on my own server in "production" it costs money? or at least you have to fill out a form and "Lets chat".

When I go to a page, I click on pricing, and what I get is a form to fill out and "Lets Chat", I am out of there. If they cant show how pricing is structured, No thanks.

""" Chat with our team about your project. We're here as a resource for you. Get clarity on your project, licensing, or enterprise needs. """

It is open sourced they say https://github.com/directus/directus

The first line of the introduction:

"""Directus is a real-time API and App dashboard for managing SQL database content."""

Yeah... that is not what I need for my personal notes system.

"""Manage Pure SQL. Works with new or existing SQL databases, no migration required."""

No

"""Choose your Database. Supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, OracleDB, CockroachDB, MariaDB, and MS-SQL."""

Still going on about that?

I dont see this a good fit for the use case he presents.

I really don't want to critisize OP since building stuff for yourself is always a good mentality. But lets be realistic, 1000$ over 10 years is nothing.

It will always cost more if you consider your own time for maintenance long term. Obsidian is one of the most consumer friendly business for note taking out of there, they are not VC so the Evernote comparison is unwarranted IMO.

Good article but as a heavy user of Obsidian (and previously Evernote), I would offer some counterpoints:

> After some mental gymnastics weighing if I should continue with Obsidian, I found solace when asking myself "Can I see myself using this in 20 years?". I couldn't. The thought of cyclically migrating notes from one PKMS to another every 5 years, as I had done from Evernote to Notion to Obsidian, made me feel tired.

In point of fact this is actually an argument IN FAVOR of Obsidian. While the editor might be proprietary - the notes themselves are just standard markdown. If somehow all the copies of Obsidian magically disappeared off the earth tomorrow, I could easily switch over to Emacs org mode, VS Code, or literally anything else.

> Obsidian was a great tool for me personally for a long time. But I felt frustrated when I wanted to access my notes on my phone while on-the-go and saw that I had to pay for this feature.

Again, a little bit odd considering that the author is technically savvy enough to write an entire PKMS but didn't seem to consider that you can just check your markdown notes into a git repository and sync with the native android/iOS Obsidian app on a mobile device. All my notes sync up to Gitea hosted on my VPS and it works relatively seamlessly.

I'm glad the author had fun. Personally, I'm very happy with Obsidian and the plugin architecture has made it easy for me to extend it where necessary.

> Since my PKMS is hosted online to manage notes across devices, I have multiple layers of security to ensure my notes are kept private. {Screenshot of a login form}

The biggest life hack I can recommend for a self hoster is to set up a VPN on your local network and then just never expose your services on the public internet unless you're specifically trying to serve people outside your own household.

Before I did this I was constantly worried about the security implications of each app I thought about installing or creating. Now it's not even worth setting up auth on a lot of simple services I build because if someone is able to hit their endpoints I'm already in deep trouble for many other reasons.

I went deep into to the PKMS rabbit hole a year and a half ago, benchmarked Obsidian and many many others, and settled with Trilium¹ which I can only highly recommend. It addresses all the hosting/deployment requirements of OP² without the quirky workarounds mentioned here (syncthing & al), and makes the kind of "lifestyle scripting" this article about very simple and straightforward.

In my mind and experience, Trilium has a very unique and extensible model that lends itself to "growing with your PKMS": notes is the atom of information, attributes can be used to manage notes as structured and relational data, templates and inheritance provide structure and consistency at scale.

Trilium may not look like much on the surface, but it is incredibly capable while being approachable. Give it a serious try.

¹: https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes/

²: you can use Trilium local-first/only, or cloud-only, or hybrid. It has its own sync protocol, you just point your instance to a server to sync with, and now you have a master-master replication. All my notes are available offline so I can keep working in-flight, notes shared with others are available via web whether I'm online or not, and I can edit my notes on the web where I don't need offline persistence. All of that is built-in/native to Trilium.

I also tried to build my own Obsidian[^1] a few months ago. However, I stopped using it after some time, since maintaining it would realistically be a full-time job. What I also found super annoying was the feeling that I'm never done with it. Whenever I encountered a rough edge or missing feature, I had to (obviously) implement it myself.

All in all, I find Obsidian as good as it gets. Also, Obsidian is probably one of the best options in terms of longevity, as all notes are just Markdown files, no proprietary DBs or other BS that could lock you in.

[1]: https://github.com/AlexW00/brainforge-desktop

Wait. Sync is “free” if you want to use some other service other than Obsidian’s. I pay for Obsidian sync partially for slightly more convenience (fewer non-integrated points of failure) and also to support the app itself.

I’d gladly pay $1000 over a decade for a crucial tool. If the concern is open source and true longevity, I get it, you don’t get that here. But cost for value? Holy shit. $1000 over a decade is absolutely worth it for something you depend on.

If you’re a regular at a bar or restaurant, you pay an order of magnitude over $1000 a year for THAT service. This one is probably worth more.

I can, however, relate to the “every five years my system changes” problem. It’s not fun. At the same time, this is a reasonable cadence to re-evaluate things. If you found something perfect for you that works >5 years, holy crap. You are blessed. That honestly should not be the standard for tools these days—ESPECIALLY in a today’s world.

All that said: I don’t knock the author for trying to build software that can work for someone for 20 years or more. I salute that attempt—and I hope they can do it!—even if I think the specific details of how they got there are flawed.

Directius (the foundation on what this was built) is Source Available [1] and not Opensource.

[1] https://github.com/directus/directus/blob/main/license

> It helped me reclaim control over my privacy, and significantly cut down on recurring costs.

Obsidian has end to end encryption and is $4 a month. I totally relate to it being fun to build your own tools but acting like it's a practical use of time... idk

OP's main arguments to build their own PKMS are: - cost (feature or maintenance) - migration because it won't exist in the future

But their solution is to depend on directus, which can lead to the exact same issues. To my eyes, they just added an extra step...

Thank God I got over my tendency for gravitating to such bike-shedding [1] projects! While I appreciate that such pet peeves may result in a net benefit to the world, right now, I am in a place where I would cringe at even taking the risk of upgrading a piece of software that is working fine (like how often has upgrading Pylance or vscode resulted in something breaking? Every single time). The real, actual work is so so so difficult. Sitting down and starting (after attending to family obligations, eating, showering, changing clothes, commuting, et al). Getting into a productive flow state. Not getting interrupted. Not getting distracted. Just choose one thing, anything (OneNote, Evernote, whatever) and get to the real work, I beg you. Productivity + don't mess with success.

https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/bikeshedding

I find it just a bit crazy that this is still an issue. I too jumped from Evernote when they did their rug pull in 2016, landed on Emacs+org-mode, and never looked back. Since then I've adopted Orgzly for org-mode on my phone, and syncthing to keep it all synced. The only real issue I ever had was the occasional conflict, which I resolved by splitting one of the files further into things that got modified on the laptop (primarily write-ups and my cheatsheet collection) vs things that got modified on mobile (primarily repetitive tasks).

I haven't found use for plugins yet since I'm really just searching, updating tasks and archiving. But if I do need extra functionality, Emacs is the most versatile editor out there, and org-mode is native to it.

Are there any private note solutions that can encrypt all markdown files against your own Yubikey-generated privkey?

You can do this with SOPS and age encryption and it's amazing, but can't view/edit notes outside a terminal or on mobile very easily that I've found.

Looking for a new solution like this, or maybe obscure configuration for an existing notes app that can support this workflow.

All of the "end-to-end" solutions seems like they just store your encrypted keys somewhere with the application files, sync them around to different machines, etc, and decrypt key with a password. But web frontends can be compromised and the master password intercepted, so I'd like to require a Yubikey touch for each document decrypt, which would make exfiltrating multiple documents more difficult.

> Obsidian charges $8 a month to access the same notes across multiple devices.

It's $4 actually, for the normal plan that works perfectly well for most use cases. It's also end to end encrypted, which is great. And it's not just about syncing for me, it's about a backup solution for the notes.

> I started to have concerns about the longevity of the plugins and app itself. Some of you may remember when Evernote aggressively limited free users to 50 notes, many users migrated their notes elsewhere. I was one of those users.

The great thing about Obsidian (in comparison to Evernote), is that everything is just a plain text markdown file on disk. You can open those files in any app. If Obsidian goes away someday, all your notes can continue to be edited in any plain text editor. Sometimes I open notes in VS Code, because there are certain things I just prefer writing there.

I ditched for [silverbullet](https://silverbullet.md). MIT licensed, markdown editor with embedded lua scripting. It's a PWA app that works offline and syncs well.

Reads like a mix of valid concerns and a plug for Directus, which is sort of fishy.

Either way, like many others, I use SyncThing to sync my vault, and routinely edit it with vim, so Obsidian is just one comfortable shell that can (relatively easily) be replaced.

> But if it's so obvious, why aren't other developers rolling out their own PKMS? Perhaps I'm the first to discover this or perhaps developers aren't writing about their custom PKMS. My guess is that commercial note-taking apps have larger, more vocal communities that drown out the murmurings of other DIY solutions.

Because we value our time.

> Obsidian charges $8 a month to access the same notes across multiple devices. While not a huge amount for such a useful app, it adds up to an eye-watering amount - almost $1,000 if I planned to use Obsidian for a decade. I was surprised at this fee because I thought Obsidian was open-source.

Before going out and building my own software I’d have looked into self hosting the files. To save those couple bucks.

Maybe I’m just not a very insightful person, but I can’t imagine ever having so many original and valuable thoughts that I’d need a place to store them. In fact, many of the things I think end up being wrong, so I’d rather use the Internet as my “PKMS” since it is more likely to refine what I think I know.

There are community plugins to self-host the sync-server though.

Anyway, I hate the fact I'm using closed-source editor, because it kinda is a sensitive thing, but the more I'm using Obsidian, the more unlikely the switch seems. I was kinda stingy with installing new plugins too, but, well, you cannot just ignore the productivity benefits. It doesn't seem feasible to build something like than on my own (for multiple platforms too!), and nobody brave enough seems to have made it so far.

I used git to sync a work related repo, but now use remotely-save with WebDAV (nextcloud, with base set to /Notes). No cost for sync and still access to the ecosystem of Obsidian.

> Will our preferred notes system last the sands of time?

Yes... My note system will last.

> Could you see yourself using your note-taking app you use today in 30 years?

No, I do not trust apps to last. Therefore I use a simple file system hierarchy to categorize everything. Then I use the best avaliable browser and editor.

My setup is Markor on mobile for browse and edit. Syncthing-fork to get it all into my big system where I run customized Neovim and can make scripts to interact with the data as well as syncing any generated output to the phone.

Having been a Obsedian fan, with similar plug-in fascination, I also experienced the negatives the article mention, and I finally settled with a simple file hierarchy and resorting to as few and basic tools as possible. Obsidian is great, but I didn't need all the features. I need a way to categorize, to quickly find, to edit, and to easily sync and my current setup satisfies that and I'm productive with it. (of course it does not reflect Obsidian's second brain feature, but personally I found that concept to require more work than reward and it wasn't intuitive for me to get accustomed to, but I guess the second brain thing is more like a lifestyle).

I'm a fan of TrilliumNext, which is open source, for this:

https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes

Obviously no right answer, but personally I think worrying too much finding the perfect tool instead of just integrating more knowledge to your PKMS is a distraction.

Rolling your own solution is especially limiting in the context of the sheer amount of integrations the popular ones (like Notion for example) support.

You're basically saying you will quickly build something better than the X hundred engineers at PKMS company Y quickly and it will continue to be better than what X hundred engineers will iterate upon.

I think that time is just better spent learning and picking the subset of features that, for example, Notion offers that really improves your learning rate.

And here's me just shoving everything into hundreds of .txt files. Easy to grep, easy to backup, and every system has an editor for them.

I don't understand the negative concerns mentioned by the author.

It's quite easy to sync notes to your mobile device using a free method, or using a cloud service you might already be paying for [4].

The great thing about Obsidian is that the notes itself are just markdown files, so you can use them in any other program. This protects you as a user in case Obsidian enters a enshittification phase. A good alternative is haptic [0], it is very similar to Obsidian but can also be used in the browser. Or LogSeq [1], SilverBullet[2] and just Visual Studio Code also work well. For just editing a single file MarkText[3] is also good.

[0]: https://github.com/chroxify/haptic

[1]: https://logseq.com/

[2]: https://silverbullet.md/

[3]: https://www.marktext.cc/

[4]: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/how-to-sync-obsidian

fwiw, on mac/ios you can put your obsidian vault inside icloud directory and have a “free” cross-device sync feature.

I'll always applaud people building things and experimenting and building momentum, so I think this is a worthwhile exercise, but practically questionable.

I think this is extreme micro-optimization of something that ultimately matters little (or not at all).

The hard part of PKM isn't finding the perfect tool, it's to take the time to:

-read/experience something and actually take good notes on it -actually retrieve something from your notes and add to it with new knowledge

Those two activities are how you get almost 100% of the benefit of note-taking, whether you're using a self-hosted sync or a folder of txt files.

Of course, a few things make these easier (linking, RAG, daily docs), but most of the common tools now offer this

For years, I used Trello for taking notes and tracking my reading/research. The feature I cared most about was being able to reference notes in other notes and have lists of notes. It turns out that Trello is an awful tool for this because their database doesn't scale well to large boards.

I built a bare-bones alternative where each "card", e.g. book or paper, is a JSON file. This was motivated by parsing the bloated Trello export file into individual files.

I tinkered with this until I came across Obsidian. I used a version of this tool[0] to parse my Trello export into markdown files. It's still not perfect and continually requires tinkering to do what I need, but my present setup is infinitely better than the prior. r.e. another comment: I can imagine using this setup in twenty years and am happy to pay for Sync.

[0] https://forum.obsidian.md/t/t2md-a-tool-to-migrate-trello-to...

Funny - I went the opposite direction. Built my PKM in neovim (still a works in progress) + lua + markdown [main plugins I use is treesitter, telescope]; the upside? It's the same tool I use for editing all of my code, config, documentation. I have already re-implemented features such as Dataview and Tasks (not a 1:1 re-implementation, but covering the gaps) using common shell tools (i.e. lua, rg, sed, etc). I have written a few small functions, plugins for neovim that I use myself. I've kept it as barebones and minimal as possible (don't want to overbuild) so I can maintain it myself and not incur maintenance cost for this.

I sync using git between my two laptops - I have given up on mobile sync as I realize: I rarely need to edit my notes on the go, it's mostly for view only, and most of my deep work is on the laptop anyways. Yes, I have a "3 copies - 2 locations - 1 remote" backup system in place (I upload an encrypted volume once a week to iCloud [I'm already paying for it] for my remote).

I wanted to eliminate a dependency on proprietary tools and I've found a way to manage my notes in the same way I manage everything else - using my filesystem, and common open source tools.

I wrote my own CLI tool for notes a few months ago (https://github.com/ollien/quicknotes). A web interface with proper rendering is something I thought about, but didn't pursue because I just know my UI skills aren't up to the task. Directus is a really interesting compromise!

Is there a reason that Obsidian, Notion and OP all decided to use a dedicated sync service, as opposed to just using generic file storage, which may or may not be in the cloud ?

It would seem to me that it would leave out a whole lot of complexity to just use Google Drive / OneDrive / iCloud Drive to handle the synchronization across devices, and if need be you could then just add encryption on the cloud storage (if desired), which you would need to do anyway for the dedicated sync service. It would also reduce the infrastructure cost a lot, and utilize resources already available.

At the meta level, my life is already too short to allow closed-source tools for anything on which I may need to depend in the long term. Commercial entities come and go, for reasons important for them but not necessarily for me. Old, ancient code can be made to run, as long as it's available and legal to distribute and run. If it's useful enough, I will be not the only user by far, and there'll be enough collective effort to keep it afloat, or replace adequately.

Locally runnable freeware is the next best thing, but a distant second.

So, no Obsidian for me, no Directus for me, etc, no SaaS; Org mode is good enough so far, and when it becomes inadequate, if ever, I'll start looking.

For quick notes on the go, I also did go my own way and eventually built the app I wished I had. Journelly: kinda like tweeting but for your eyes only (in plain text)

https://xenodium.com/journelly-like-tweeting-but-for-your-ey...

While you don't need to know anything about its serialized format, it happens to be powered by Org plain text. For Markdown fans, I am recording Markdown interest. Do reach out: journelly + markdown at xenodium.com.

edit: A user's blog post from today (also a Markdown fan) https://ellanew.com/ptpl/157-2025-05-19-journelly-is-org-for...

As a longtime Logseq user who was sick of their app focus (it used to be a webapp!) and skeptical of their revenue model, I switched to Silverbullet a while back. It gets the basics right, and I can throw together some Lua and make it do whatever else I want. Plus there's a small but enthusiastic community developing for it. I have it set up in a VPS and it has brought back most of the magic of early days Logseq.

Obsidian answers one of the key questions I asked these days of tools that I use, “Can I walk out of this easily and seamlessly?”

The best tools are the ones that get things done and get out of the way. When the time comes, you can walk out of Obsidian easily without being a hostage in any format.

The few plugins that I use are the ones I can walk out too and live without it. I love the idea of spending extra time to learn the details, shortcuts, and be able to use a tool natively without the help of plugins or extreme configurations that it takes hours/days to deviate too far away from the original configurations.

I wrote an article for me to remember it in future. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/obsidian/

I've been doing this for a while. My biggest hurdle was implementing sync between local and backend. I ended up using GitHub as my backend, Chrome extension as frontend, and implemented a simplified version of the Git client in SQLite with lots of triggers. Happy to share it with people. The app is here: https://github.com/osmoscraft/tundra and the sync logic is here: https://github.com/osmoscraft/tundra/blob/master/apps/browse...

What do people's success stories with fancy PKMS looks like? I get writing stuff down, but I've never quite gotten the deep linking stuff. I tend to just be able to get away with some basic folders.

You can self-host obsidian syncing which is exactly what I'm doing. You can also share your notebooks with something like Syncthing, but you may get merge errors that way - just self host the database (CouchDB) and you're good to go:

https://leduccc.medium.com/setup-self-hosted-synchronization...

Obsidian is so useful to me, I don't mind paying for the sync to support Obsidian dev.

The notes being markdown is also very useful, I spend most of my time in a text editor, so I installed a Neovim plugin that works a bit like Obsidian [1]. So, for simple note-taking, I don't have to open Obsidian at all. It comes in useful when I need to use the massive collection of plugins, especially Excalidraw.

1. https://github.com/epwalsh/obsidian.nvim

I applaud the action, but motivation is strange. I am all for making custom software for your own needs and tailored for own use cases, but price?

How much does your VPS costs vs Obsidian subscription? I wonder. Is it like 1 5$/month micro machine and you just pray that it will survive for 10 years without data loss?

I just don’t have any of these worries with Obsidian. I pay for it because it’s great software and needs support. The sync is amazing, totally solid. The data is wherever you want that data to be. It’s just MD files. You can adapt the tool to be whatever you want from a PKM system - massively complex, with some kind of dataview hell, or just some files in a hierarchy. You can use plugins or not use plugins. You can build your own. There’s no lock in. “Migration” isn’t really a thing - it’s some files in a folder system. It’s as future proof as it can be.

I mean go nuts and roll your own if you want, but really, what’s not to like?

Most note-taking apps share the same fate: they either become obsolete over time (due to unsupported operating systems, security issues, or discontinued drivers) or end up locking you into a proprietary ecosystem.

My solution was to move to a file-based system — using plain folders, files, symlinks, and relative links. The filesystem is one of the most fundamental and enduring parts of computing infrastructure, which means I can rely on accessing my notes the same way 20+ years from now. It also allows me to plug in containerized tools for viewing or editing notes, without being tied to a specific app. Filesystem APIs are incredibly stable — basic commands like mkdir won’t suddenly be locked behind a subscription.

Plus, there are plenty of options for syncing and real-time collaboration, many of which are self-hostable and vendor-neutral.

KDE Plasma has a vaults feature which allows you to encrypt and decrypt contents of a directory. Combine that (or some other encryption software, eg syncthing encryption instead) with syncthing and markdown editor is virtually the same thing no?

I have my own reasons why I left Obsidian and now building LimanDoc[1]. The enormous learning curve and a constant OCD itch (that I like to scratch) made me realise I am not actually improving my knowledge system. A constant hoarding is also putting an emotional pressure.

I like the offline part, but for me Canvas was the best tool. I am also building a P2P synchronization feature for LimanDoc, and having offline LLM support is coming soon too

[1] https://limandoc.com/

I have switched to joplin from evernote and I am using webdav on synology NAS to synchronize notes. It is open source and also self hosted and works on all platforms without problem. I also share notes with my wife. We use it for planning and shopping lists and it works really great. It has some basic conflict resolution which is usable for two people.

Joplin uses sqlite as storage but you can export collection to md files and there is backup plugin which does that periodically.

Also you can setup external editor. I am editing notes in neovim and joplin is just for viewing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250518171639/https://amberwill... as long as the original throws a 500 "Internal Server Error".

I started doing some stuff myself as well. Still very much in-progress, but I felt that obsidian was a way bigger hammer than I needed, yet still I found edges that didn't cover my workflow

Ended up building: https://crom.ai/

Here is a little write-up / more details on how it's built: https://notes.rolandpeelen.com/notes-on-building-crom

I long for the days of a note taking / personal "data store" system that isnt a pain in the arse to use. I really couldn't give a damn about apps i need to tweak like craxy or constantly maintain to work how I want. Obsidian is good but its just massive overkill for someone who just wants to wright stuff down and have it securely stored, and accessible anywhere anytime its needed.

The second someone says "oh just set up X server and add Y plugin and tweak Z settings" you've lost the whole point of the thing.

I also built my own note-taking app[1] out of frustration of existing apps, so I can relate to the author.

I wanted:

- A flexible block editor like Notion.

- That runs natively and FAST (unlike Notion).

- Where the underlying data is always plain text (Markdown formatted).

I wrote about its development on my blog[2].

[1] http://get-notes.com

[2] https://rubymamistvalove.com/block-editor

The whole article can be summarized by “I don’t know that iCloud sync is free”.

The Maya Angelou quote is a very poor choice. I don't know if the author realizes the absurdity of putting the civil rights movement in parallel with her "PKM journey"

I'm at the other side of the note system trade-off thingy. I use Apple Notes.

It's not perfect, but if I really want better search functionality, I'll just use the SQLite database that stores the notes. I've never needed to roll up my sleeves for that. I get around the limitations.

It's not perfect, but crafting one's own Personal Knowledge Management System sounds like a 5 year journey for 10 to 20 hours per week at least.

Note-taking app is very complicated, even bookmark manager is also complicated. They need much time to develop and maintain. If one person develop a himself/herself such app, the possibility is giving up at last.

I think there are two ways:

1. Select an open source app which meet your requirements

2. Select and pay for a commercial app

do not waste your time and resources for it, just use a or some proper tools, and use the time for the most important things.

I've built a couple for myself so far; the most recent is in zig (sqlite extension that treats markdown files / frontmatter as virtual tables) and it's lasted me. I plan to rewrite it soon to adapt to how I've been using it :)

https://github.com/kunalb/termdex

I have my Obsidian notes on an iCloud Drive that I already had. Works great, even on Windows.

Would probably work with other similar options too.

My solution: a bunch of Markdown files in a git repo. I move between files with Vim's `gf`. I sync manually. If I really need to, I can edit through GitHub's web UI. Not ideal in amy way, but wicked simple.

I use Joplin (https://joplinapp.org) on mobile and pc(windows and Linux). Joplin has a free encrypted sync via OneDrive.

I'm a lot more concerned about some random app on my phone accessing my Obsidian notes, which is why I haven't synced them to my phone yet, rather than Obsidian somehow knee-capping at some point in the future (which is not possible since it's all just md files in the end) .

Obsidian looks a tad bit overcomplicated. I've used TheBrain.com since ages. It's simple to use, and straightforward.

> Obsidian was a great tool for me personally for a long time. But I felt frustrated when I wanted to access my notes on my phone while on-the-go and saw that I had to pay for this feature

On Android, I solved this problem quite simply by pointing Obsidian's mobile app at a syncthing folder, which cheerfully communicates with my workstation (and about a dozen other devices I own) and keeps things up to date. Works way better than I expected it to. Honestly the most infuriating part is that Google seems to have decided that apps like syncthing aren't welcome on the Play Store anymore, leaving the maintenance of that particular app up in the air. But the point here is that Obsidian can point to any folder, and the syncing task is totally separate. It's nice to have the convenience of their hosted option, but it's by no means the only solution to that problem.

About a year ago I did the same migration: Obsidian to self-hosted Directus.

My main reasons were:

- Straightforward queries. I have a lot of structured data in my notes and lesson plans, and being able to work with SQL was ideal.

- A web app was much more reliable than Obsidian's third-party sync platforms.

- I could extend Directus to do all sorts of other things. I eventually built my wedding planner and website backend on the same Directus instance that holds my notes.

  (I also built a set of scripts on my Hackberry Pi that let me write text files on the go that saved to Directus)

The biggest disadvantage is that the writing and saving experience isn't as fluid.

I could be wrong, but I’ve always been under the impression that Obsidian charges a lot for sync because the app is amazing and free. Sync helps pay for that. But they’re also very helpful about providing other ways to sync your files to your phone. I use iCloud Drive (which I have anyway for other reasons).

I tried a number of note taking apps. I use them for longer term storage of ideas, rather than daily todos. For example holiday itinerary or project ideas. Because of this I don't use them very often and I found I could never remember the basics of Obsidian.

One app that is very simple to use had everything I needed and sync'd using Github is https://about.noteshub.app/. I have been using it for around 6 months and found it perfect for my needs.

Very curious to hear from avid note takers: is it a habit? (maybe addiction?) is it just a tool to do you work better? Is it for fun? Why the elaborate setups (Git + Wireguard etc.)

Sincerely, not-trolling, from a bare minimum note taker.

I installed logseq but i guess i am either too stupid to learn it or just lazy because there are so many things

Interesting that storing images is not something solved yet.

If you watch the animated gif, he is still using a third party service to store that graph.

I also think people to tend to like Markdown mostly because it’s plain text. The added benefits of that preview view is minimal. Like my gut feeling Markdown is popular 90% because of it’s in an accepted way to do plaintext and only 10% for the added formatting.

this is the inevitable PKMS pipeline, and the one that almost certainly led to Obsidian and Notion to begin with.

Need PKMS > Use existing product > Notice shortcomings > Switch to main alternative > Notice shortcomings > Begin creating bespoke PKMS with the specific functionality you wanted.

OSS alternatives with free syncing to your chosen cloud already exist, and have plugin systems. Why not just contribute to those? Because this is either advertising or procrastination.

I think an PKMS is strictly related to how each of us thinks. It's similar to project management/organizer tools. I also created my own (https://brainminder.it/) based on how I think: I prefer to organize items by type with different fields that I can add and search. Instead of simply collecting ideas and thoughts, I'm trying to build a system that can help me evaluate leveraging what I've entered.

There's a lot of ways to sync your notes for free with those said community open-source plugins, including through standard free cloud options if you really want to pay zero and have no server in the middle.

I am also searching for an alternative to Obsidian, that also works well on iOS and macOS. Obsidian is currently really slow somehow although all extensions are disabled, e.g. rendering the content when switching between notes is not instant. I really really like Outline, but I don't want to access the web just to write and read notes.

Kudos to the author for scratching their own itch.

People in a similar position might be interested in Joplin, which is indeed FOSS, and has lots of sync options. I personally use SyncThing, which keeps things free, but you can also use a number of other free cloud providers. You can choose to encrypt your notes to protect your privacy.

Does anyone know of a tool that can e2e + collaboration (or in other words: notion but e2e)?

I wish there was something as lightweight and as well integrated as Apple Notes. Just support MD, sync well and have a search function.

I was hesitating to start writing my own PKMS. Today I started: Lisp and postgresql, thanks for writing this post!

I’ve done this! I wound up writing a small 500 sub LOC solution (very bare bones) that I copy/paste when I work in places where I don’t get to use my fav note taking software.

That said, I just converged on Apple Notes in the end.

I'm assuming a lot of interest in Obsidian stems from (1) having underlying plaintext docs, and (2) preferring the doc-as-note unit

If you ever relax these constraints, Tana is a great mix.

I'd call it a mix of Roam + Notion.

Now that it's in GA, easy to recommend too.

Vibe coding a plugin to increase security, compared to trusted, open-source code? The mind boggles.

Plain text in git. Eternal, searchable, compact.

Obsidian is nice...

but.. i just think that writing markdown (unless its just #headline and ### subheadline) it takes too long.

The main thing being complained about here is that you have to pay for device sync. But instead of setting ups FOSS alternative like with a-shell and git you decided to… checks notes… build a less featureful obsidian without getting all the benefits of the obsidian ecosystem?

I’m all for doing projects like this as an intellectual exercise. It’s just that the motivation behind doing so in the article is a bit more “huh?”

just use txt / html / numbers/excel / files. All will lasted next 20 years.

> The most commonly used PKMS or note-taking apps today are Notion, Obsidian, Evernote and Logseq. The problem is that PKMS come and go.

Uh oh. I wouldn't use those. Of course they come and go - they're made by companies.

> Could you see yourself using your note-taking app you use today in 30 years?

Yes of course. Otherwise I wouldn't be using it.

> Do you ever have concerns around the privacy of your notes?

Not really.

> Are you spending more time setting up your notes system rather than managing your notes?

No.

> What does an effective and timeless PKMS even look like?

I use VimWiki[0]. There's a possibility it will go away, but I doubt it. There's a possibility both vim and neovim will go away, but I doubt it.

It stores everything as Markdown files. Should Markdown ever go away, it's all still very readable plain text files. I use UTF-8. Perhaps that'll go away at some point?

I version everything with git, I doubt git will fully go away, but I'm ok migrating to a different VCS if need be.

I bet the longevity of my setup is way better than the longevity of a backend written in TypeScript, backed by a SQL database, running in Docker, based on a CMS I've never heard of (Directus).

[0]: https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki

I like using neovim / nvim + plugins for this kind of thing

I tried obsidian but VSCode and Dropbox or Github is hard to beat. Stays out of your way.

If you need an option to publish your notes online, check out Retype (https://retype.com). You can use Obsidian or GitBook or any Markdown files as your GUI editor and generate a static website using Retype.

> Obsidian charges $8 a month to access the same notes across multiple devices. While not a huge amount for such a useful app, it adds up to an eye-watering amount - almost $1,000 if I planned to use Obsidian for a decade.

This highlights one of my personal bugbears. People have a mental barrier when it comes to recurring, low-cost payments; even though the net sum is small in comparison to other things that they wouldn't think twice to pay for.

A $5 latte every workday comes to (260 * 5) $1300 annually. Obsidian sync is $96. Why would you not pay this amount for a tool you use everyday?

This article is a background of why I built my own PKMS. I've also written another article with a step-by-step on how I built it here https://amberwilliams.io/blogs/the-last-note-system

> But I felt frustrated when I wanted to access my notes on my phone while on-the-go and saw that I had to pay for this feature. Obsidian charges $8 a month to access the same notes across multiple devices.

Errm, no? Obsidian sync is optional. I pay for it to support them, but my main vaults are all synced by iCloud, which was auto set-up by Obisidan during initial setup on my iPhone.

On the Android side, any service which can sync files can work, I assume.

Note: Yes, I use Obsidian on my phone without sync, all the time, and it syncs.

Just a reminder that if Obsidian or Logseq is not sufficient note taking solution for you, nothing will be. The problem is on your side

Why not Anytype? long love IPFS p2p sync.

For anyone who wants an analog version of this: https://youtu.be/UV7vaqElPHk?si=_c-rxqV4RGhluTJS

Syncthing + wireguard solves this. What a waste of time.

Emacs chads just keep winning.

I have many thoughts, as I'm sure everyone on this forum does. I feel like mentioning PKMS on Hacker News is like mentioning, idk, shave soap or knives on reddit.

> But if it's so obvious, why aren't other developers rolling out their own PKMS? Perhaps I'm the first to discover this or perhaps developers aren't writing about their custom PKMS.

Well, because of Standards, of course: https://xkcd.com/927/

I don't mean to shit on the OP's work here, but from what I can tell, the app they built is a multi-platform markdown editor and renderer that has an auth stack. Oh, and it's self hostable.

If I hop on https://awesome-selfhosted.net/ , head down to the note taking section: https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/note-taking--editors.htm... , I can see at least 7 that support this feature. Oh, also this category: https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/knowledge-management-too... has many more.

So while I think it's fun to do personal projects, I kinda feel like, if you had time to do this, it would probably have been better both for you and just like the world in general if you instead just created a PR with whatever feature you wanted on one of these more fleshed out projects. Bonus: you get a bunch more stuff, for free, since many other people are working on the same project. Bonus bonus: You can put a project with a shitload of github stars and users on your portfolio/resume/whatever and point to your PR.

Anyway as for PKMS thoughts, I've been using org mode since 2016. I've tried Obsidian and Logseq for completedness but in both cases ended up back in org mode for various reasons.

In PKMS, everyone goes on about knowledge graphs, linking etc, but I've realized lately I've never found that useful - I do use org-roam and link notes, but when I want to find links to, say, "machine learning," I'm just as likely to simply do a full-text file search for the term, which leads to the same results. As for the visual knowledge graphs, I've never seen them useful for anything other than showing off at coworking meetups.

What I've come back to is, what I really need my PKMS to do that I haven't really configured org mode to do yet for me is, in situations that happen to me CONSTANTLY when I'm out and about, I need my PKMS very quickly to answer questions for me like, "who was that guy I read recently that said something about modern capitalism causing us all to be alienated," or, "I vaguely remember reading about how social media categorizes us into advertising groups, what was that again?", or, "What was that city in Italy we went to with that crazy good ice cream? Actually on that note what islands did we go to on that trip?" I'm frequently in conversations with people where I want to share information with them, but maybe because I have ADHD brain or just am uniquely deficient and remembering very specific bits of info, I can't recall stuff (a great example of this, and I had to google to write this part: I ALWAYS forget Quentin Tarantino's name despite really liking his movies). Anyway, I tried using an org-roam org-to-html deploy tool to create a searchable, private website of my knowledge graph, and that's... fine I guess. I need to get it automated somehow, but even then I'm sure it won't be great. Of course I'm thinking of some kind of deployed solution that queries an LLM that can search my entire note repo, but that's a project and a half I don't have time to do.

So for now my plan is to just keep plugging away at org mode and org-to-html to see if I can get a really good flow there.

Gotta respect anyone who just builds their own stuff instead of waiting around for the 'perfect' app to show up.

just use txt.

I think this is a great time to build personal knowledge base!

LLMs are the missing piece that everyone has been desperately need to have the knowledge base come to life, instead of as a glorified key word search engine

I'm not saying AI is going to replace programmers, but it's been almost a century already and we still don't have a decent note taking app or even a todo list app and that's like the first app you learn to make. Maybe humanity just kind of sucks at this whole application development thing.

I use cherrytree currently, by the way.