Why I Migrated from OneNote to Obsidian

Being a recruiter for the past decade, I take a lot of notes. Close to 600MB worth of text to be precise. I was introduced to OneNote at one of the large recruitment firms I was working at and it served its purpose for the longest time (8 years?), until I came to realize how limited it was, especially using MacOS. For the better part of the decade I was working around the limitations, while trying my best to keep it tidy and organized. What kept me around is that OneNote is backed by Microsoft, and Microsoft, doesn’t have a reputation of abandoning products and is known for its legendary backwards compatibility. As a matter of fact, backwards compatibility and overall stability are the main reasons why Microsoft dominates the corporate world.

One limitation that I just couldn’t get over is OneNote’s inability to have more than one tab open at a time. For a couple of years I was regularly checking in on their product roadmap and it seemed like OneNote team wasn’t ever planning on implementing this “feature”, if you can call it that.

I started looking at alternatives. Notion was the gateway drug. But I really disliked having all the notes I’ve taken over the course of my career depending on one company, and its decisions and investors. Stating the obvious here, but nothing prevents a corporation from a drastic change in its product’s pricing, just as nothing guarantees that all of your data won’t be gone forever in an instant for reasons ranging from simple employee error to system vulnerabilities being exploited. Don’t get me wrong, Notion is a solid app, in fact it is super solid, but I’ve trust issues.

I won’t be going into detail about the features of Obsidian, many people have already done a far better job than I can in that regard. I will however go over the things that I like, and things that could use some work.

Here’s what Obsidian does right

Your notes are stored in plain text

If you want your data to be readable 50 years from now, use a file format that was readable 50 years ago.

Not to be blunt, but Obsidian, the app, the company, they don’t really matter that much. What matters is if the company goes down or becomes something you can’t get behind, all you have to do is migrate your notes to the next Markdown text reader/editor with file system functionality. This is a painless process since all of your notes are stored in folders, in .md text files on your computer – which brings me to my next point.

Obsidian is local first

All of your files and their enclosing folders are stored on your computer. To sync your notes to your mobile device you have the choice between either paying for Obsidian Sync, or using free alternatives such as iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and everything in between. I personally use iCloud for syncing with my iPhone, and intermittently backup my Obsidian vault on Github in a private repository.

Customization

There’s a ton of community plugins and themes to choose from, to make your Obsidian vault function exactly how you want it. The application itself is very unopinionated, which is great if you’re a person that prefers to spend some time tweaking things for the tool to follow your workflow, instead of optimizing your workflow to fit the tool. All in all, I’ve yet to come across something I didn’t like in the out of the box experience that I couldn’t change using a plugin. Another thing, since Obsidian is built on top of Electron, you can execute JavaScript code in it.

Here’s what Obsidian could do Better

I had some things in mind for this section… And after giving it some thought, none of the inconveniences aside from maybe a few UI tweaks that are easily fixed by using community plugins, can be blamed on Obsidian.

Synchronization with iCloud being a tad slow?
iCloud deletes files proactively to free up space on your device.

Automatically tag a file when a it’s moved from one folder to the other? I understand Obsidian’s decision not to include this feature out of the box, for the sake of not overwhelming new users with options.
Fixable with the Automatic Tags plugin

Kanban Board?
There’s Kanban

You get the gist. Pretty much every minor annoyance is fixable with a plugin.

The only thing I truly wish was available as a core feature is a toggle to open a file in a new tab when the file is clicked on in the sidebar. A toggle.

Final Thoughts

Obsidian may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely a top choice for people that value the hell out of heavy customization, privacy and the safety of their data – in other words, tech inclined people. I’ve yet to meet a non technical person that cares about either customization or how their data is stored!