It’s Time to Ditch Evernote for One of These Alternatives::undefined
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Obsidian is a godsend. The sheer number of plugins gives you basically anything you could want.
It not being open-source is pretty much my only complaint lol
I’m really sad that they’ve confirmed they aren’t interested in open source for Obsidian either :(
Is there a plugin that lets me get rid of huge wasted whitespace on either side of the doc?
Sounds like you’re talking about the readable line length setting. That’s an option you can turn off in the default settings of the app.
No good way to use it across multiple devices is my deal breaker for obsidian.
I’ve been using Syncthing for this purpose. My notes are synced between a desktop, laptop, Android phone, and Android tablet. It took me forever to finally take the time to try Syncthing, and it’s been nearly flawless.
You need Obsidian sync for that. It works awesome. It’s not free.
I boost Joplin on here every chance I get, so please allow me to do so again now! I run it with my own sync server and a small userbase of about 6 people on a cheap VPS. I could not be happier; between the webclipper, sharing, encryption, embedding of pdfs, photos, even mp4s, ease of selfhosting, it’s an amazing project! It’s been (knock on wood) rock solid!
Sounds like it is a bit advanced and technical for me…all I want is something I can make a list on android and my partner can edit it on iOS. Can it do that?
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Yep! As the other commenter who replies to you said, it definitely can. You don’t even have to selfhost it; the app’s developer hosts a cloud sync server you can pay for thays dirt cheap. You can also sync notes without the cloud server. There are a lot of ways you can use it without having to get into the technical aspect of it!
I still wish it could render rich text and pdfs/attachments in the composition window, but other than that (and lack of native ocr) it’s been a perfect EN replacement for my uses.
Is the sync server an alternative to cloud based saving?
Yep.
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They list Notion, but IMO Obsidian is the better path. Lack of offline access to data is a big risk to using Notion, and what made me switch to Obsidian after being bit by internet access issues keeping me from being able to use my notes during a critical meeting. Hard no for Notion ever since.
I use Obsidian for a mind map but Notion for project/life management.
That depends. If Notion goes down that’s a problem. If you can’t access Notion because YOUR internet is down, I don’t see you being productive at all. The issue is moot as Notion syncs everything locally, so you can access your latest notes. You just can’t push any changes to the cloud until you have internet again.
The notes being sync’d locally is exactly what would have allowed me to remain productive for that meeting. It sounds like Notion has this ability today, which is good to hear. In this example local access wasn’t yet an option. This was a few years ago though, and I’ll stop bringing this up as a gap since it no longer applies.
Lots of mentions for Obsidian. I’ll throw in my favorite for the past few years that’s similar: Logseq! Check it out!
I really love Obsidian. It is a perfect fit for my needs. I just hope they don’t do the creeping subscription bullshit like Evernote did. The $96 a year is reasonable for those who need it (I don’t need it).
Crossing my fingers that the usual greed doesn’t give them brain rot. I probably should have gone with Joplin, but I’m too invested in Obsidian at this point (and very happy with it). I guess if they do go over to the Dark Side, I could freeze it at the last good release for a while then switch.
I just save my notes to a network location (could be icloud, dropbox, gdrive etc.) which is a much cheaper (free) way to sync notes – love Obsidian
You’re probably fine for a while. My bet is that obsidian’s really happy with all the free advertising evernote’s been giving it
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Even better, Obsidian notes are stored directly in folders on your device as plain text (markdown) files.
It’s all there, nothing missing, and no annoying proprietary format.Not only can you keep using them without the Obsidian application, you can even do so using a “dumb” text editor - though something that can handle markdown will give you a better experience.
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Simplenote is also great and cross platform.
I am currently selfhosting and trying Trilium, looks good so far
Looks like Windows 10 version of OneNote. I use OneNote daily.
I used Evernote religiously five years ago. But I left it for OneNote as well. No issues since.
Trillium lets you run arbitrary JavaScript, plugging into their APIs. It lets you do some cool stuff that you otherwise couldn’t with OneNote. If you do need something more powerful than OneNote, and admittedly most people don’t, I’d recommend downloading trillium and checking out the sample JS code that the developer wrote.
Trilium is great. It has a copy of excalidraw with history which is nice. You can also automate things inside of it with scripting
Came to say this. Been loving my Trilium instance.
I was pretty happy with EverNote until it started to feel like they were ransoming my content against sudden price hikes and enshittifying reductions in basic function Fk those guys
Who is still using Evernote in 2023? Everyone I know is using either Notion or Google Keep.
It is kinda hard to move on when you have hundreds of notes you know… I still haven’t moved, but I have been using Obsidian only locally for so long.
I am but I have less than 50 notes and I like the cloud sync feature for 2 devices.
I’ve exported my notes and imported them into Obsidian but it lacks the cloud sync and up to 2 devices, for free anyway.
Never heard of Notion but I’ll give that a shot. Thanks!
you do not know any sane ppl it seems.
they are not using google keep, they are just too dumb to make decisions for another app or use notion because the other mamals in the herd use it. don’t be like that. help them evolve into proper humans.
I think I’m a bit of a dinosaur, but I’ve been making all of my notes in Zim for over 10 years. It’s not much to look at but I find the hierarchical wiki structure easy to navigate, and most of the functionality (todo lists, equations, version control integration, etc) is implemented by simple plugins.
in my opinion, a lot of these programs are too complicated - I tried Joplin for a while but I ended up spending more time organising my notes than I did making them.
I don’t need to take notes for work, but this seems great for documenting the home automation & media setup for my wife.
Not me having never actually heard of Evernote…
Unless you were into productivity applications 8-12 years ago I’m not surprised.
What happened to Evermote? 😂 I used it so much when u was in uni, so sad
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Holy shit, $170 a year for pro? Who on Earth thinks it’s worth that? SAAS is generally an infuriating model, but I definitely think I get $100 worth of use out of Office 365 over the course of a year. Evernote is just not that useful.
In other words, the market is nearly saturated now, and Evernote makes its money with business people and institutions who often adhere to the “don’t change a working system” principle regarding their “tools.” Most of them will just keep paying if the functions are needed and already integrated.
It’s a model most of these types of companies adopt sooner or later if they are for profit, and investors see the potential of this business as almost exhausted. It’s: grow, establish, grip, and squeeze.
Ah yes, the good ol’ extortion system: “Nice data you have here, it would be a shame if something happened to it.”
I mostly ditched them many years ago because of privacy concerns (or lack thereof.) Around when I stopped using Dropbox too (same reason.)
They have just been bloating the software continually with useless features as well over the years, the android client became so bloated it was basically unusable for taking quick notes. I was a user for 13 years, after the last price increase I imported everything to Joplin about a year ago and am very happy with it.
The app literally freezes for me now there is so much crap in it.
They also started annoying the users on every load with “deals” to buy their paid version. And they do that shitty thing where they switch the intuitive nature of the yes and no buttons.
Oh wow feels bad :/
I’m giving Obsidian a try and I’m liking it, but I still use freebie Notion for a lot of work things.
I do ~6-12 month contracts, and have found that publishing notion pages is a really easy way to share stuff quickly with the team and keep it live-update-able by all parties. That feature suits some fast-paced environment needs.
I never really used evernote tho. I think i first tried it years ago before they allowed dark mode, so it automatically failed.
My only real complaint with Obsidian is the lack of cloud service functionality. I understand why, (because it would directly compete with their paid cloud service) but it’s just another subscription to pay. I’d happily pay a one-time fee to be able to use my own cloud service like Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud. But everything is Software as a Service these days, so lifetime purchases are getting more and more rare.
If you really want, you can use almost any cloud-based solution that allows you to sync folders, with some caveats.
I use Obsidian with my Google Drive; it took me about 5 minutes to set up, and it works like a charm now. However, you need to set it up on every device you plan on using for synchronization. Also, you cannot work on the same document on two devices simultaneously. Otherwise, it works as you’d expect.
It’s definitely messier than the Obsidian cloud, but for my needs, syncing it via Google Drive is more than enough.
Unless I misunderstood “cloud service functionality”, an Obsidian vault can be placed almost anywhere on the file system. For instance, a remote/WebDAV drive or even the Dropbox/iCloud Drive/Google Drive directory.
Migrating is as easy as moving the vault directory from one location to another, and pointing Obsidian to it.
As always, on iOS, there are some caveats as it lacks a traditional file system. So, the Obsidian app cannot access the vault directory on, say your Dropbox. But there are workarounds for it, like hosting the vault on a remote Git repository - which is what I ended up doing. Of course, this is a non-issue on Android.
Obsidian has a help page that goes in detail about what I just said.
As for the Git repository workaround, I referred to this article to arrive at my current workflow.
As an aside, I would like to touch upon my experience with using the inbuilt sync on apps like Agenda and Joplin - both offering syncing using iCloud and Dropbox while the latter offering a whole lot more. It is a flaky experience at best, wherein a significant number of notes never really sync between the devices. This forces me to use my phone to view a particular note while my computer for another. This is where the plain text file foundation for apps like Obsidian and Logseq wins me over.
I’d happily pay a one-time fee to be able to use my own cloud service like Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud.
You can do that without paying. Obsidian vaults are just plaintext files on your disk. Just make a vault in your GDrive/OneDrive/iCloud sync folder and it’ll be synced.
There’s likely a extra hoop or two to jump through if you want mobile access, but it’s not too much extra effort.
There’s a custom extension to sync Obsidian with a Git repository if you’re familiar with that. Let’s you sync up your notes as long as you have an Internet connection and access to whatever source control you use.
Syncthing-ing the vault works for me. P2p instead of cloud.
Don’t go to Notability. They went full asshole at the top of this last semester. Changed the entire interface as people were starting their first week of class. They nuked features that made note taking for class nice. They clearly don’t respect their users and will most likely do the same thing again.
I always felt that Evernote was a confusing mess line OneNote I would try to use it every couple years thinking it would different only to give up a little later and go back to Notepad++
Wait what? One is a note taking app. The other is a text editor…
Did I miss the implied /s?
Notepad++ works great for taking notes. Besides, it’s open 24/7 anyway so dedicating a tab or two (or dozen lol) feels pretty natural.
I only use Joplin if I have some “very structured” notes about some topic, and while that is also open 24/7 np++ is always my go-to because “it just works” without having to care at all about formatting nor anything fancy.
