Obsidian

What’s the deal with note-taking apps?

DISCLAIMER: Technically, I am talking about personal knowledge management (PKM) tools, which act like your own little personal Wikipedias, and not just plain note-taking apps. My main purpose for using a PKM is note-taking, though, and I make the rules here! Am I using a hammer instead of a screwdriver? Probably. Read on, anyway!

I love fiddling around with new stuff. It’s why I have three mice sitting on my desk (computer mice, not the living kind) and a bunch more stored away. It’s why I have more keyboards than I could ever need in five lifetimes, stuffed into drawers and scattered about my place.

And it’s why I’m a sucker for a shiny piece of new software, which leads to this post’s topic: note-taking apps.

Even if you have absolutely no interesting in note-taking apps, you probably still have one, anyway, whether it’s Notepad on Windows, the Notes app on Macs, or some built-in app on your iPhone (Notes again) or Android device. They are ubiquitous. And now, with the whole second brain1Go ahead, try looking up what a “second brain” is. Your actual brain will explode. thing being the new hotness, note-taking apps have started popping up like bunnies. Note-taking bunnies.

I noticed that after expressing some interest in technology on Medium (via my preferences), it started offering me stories on note-taking apps. I believe there are roughly a trillion of these articles on Medium, which nearly matches the number of note-taking apps themselves.

I thought to myself, “Self, you need to be more organized, somehow. For some reason. You need a note-taking app that will let you consolidate all your notes in one place, so you never need to figure out where your notes are. This future of unparalleled organization will be awesome.”

It’s a good theory. My notes were previously scattered all over. I used:

  • Paper. Actual paper, like cave people used to do
  • Drafts. An app on my iPhone that can send to other apps.
  • OneNote. I kind of stopped using it a few years ago and I’m not sure why.
  • Microsoft Word. Because I had it, so why not?
  • Apple’s Notes app on various Apple platforms. Because it’s there.
  • iA Writer. Not really built for notes, but…
  • Ulysses. See above, plus a subscription. Ew.

There’s more I’m forgetting, and this was all before the current explosion of note-taking apps. Since then I’ve tried:

  • Craft
  • Notion
  • Obsidian

And contemplated a million others, while absolutely only positively ruling out a few, like Evernote, usually due to what I deem excessive pricing.

For a time I thought I had settled on Obsidian. It supports markdown, is free, can work between Mac, PC and (somewhat) with iOS (it really wants you to use iCloud for your “vault”). On (virtual) paper, it provides everything I’d need in a note-taking app and also has all the second brain stuff, like backlinks and things.

I feel like I’m grossly under-utilizing it by not making proper use of links (back, forward or any other direction), tags and other means of keeping things organized. I mean, look at this guy wax poetic about how useful Obsidian is. It makes me want to install it again right now!

While I’m clearly not tapping into Obsidian’s potential, I am big on bullet lists, because I love lists. So now, as I think about whether to stick with Obsidian or not, I wonder: Why do I take notes? The answer is in a list. Right below!

  • Track ideas. These can be ideas for:
    • stories
    • blog posts
    • game design
    • comics
    • drawings
  • General reminders (I have moved these to actual to-do apps)
  • WIP stuff on my newsletter (five issues so far, published very intermittently)
  • Book and movie reviews (that get posted to my blog, Goodreads or elsewhere)
  • Random tips and tricks, usually associated with tech
  • Everything that doesn’t fit into the above

And Obsidian has worked reasonably well here. I’ve added plugins to expand on what it can do. Look how organized everything appears to be (I have redacted a few items, but it’s nothing scandalous, like panda porn or something, just stuff regarding the condo or other personal yet banal items):

And yet I feel like:

  • I am underutilizing Obsidian to the point where I probably could just use Notepad, for all the difference it would make
  • Maybe I don’t have the kind of personality to connect the dots, or in this case, the notes?
  • Maybe I actually don’t have a compelling reason to use backlinks and I’m overthinking things, as is my way

But it all seems so useful. There are so many articles! I want to do more! Yet I am not feeling there is a yawning chasm in my life because I have only clicked a backlink maybe once in Obsidian, and that was just to see if it worked (it did).

Anyway, have a look, there’s plenty to choose from!

Obsidian + iCloud Drive + Mac + PC = Bad

I have been reasonably pleased with Obsidian as my note-taking app so far. The interface is minimal and gets the job done, even if the UI doesn’t look at all native whether on Mac or PC.

I’ve been using it primarily on my Windows 11 PC, as that’s my main machine, but have also used it on the iPad (no issues) and Mac (no issues, but with a big fat asterisk, as I will explain right after this parenthetical).

Where I have run into problems is with the sync when using iCloud Drive.

My main vault (folder) for Obsidian is on iCloud Drive, and it works fine on the PC, saving and updating seamlessly. If I open the vault on the Mac, it also works fine there (as expected, since iCloud Drive is an Apple service).

The problem arises after a few specific steps when using Obsidian:

  1. Access files in vault on PC
  2. Access files in same vault on Mac
  3. Access files in same vault again on PC

When Step 3 happens, Obsidian will pop up a message saying it is downloading files or indexing files. The latter is a one-time operation, per the pop-up.

Notification dialog (of doom)

Downloading files happens each time when a file is presumably changed in Obsidian on another machine. Note that I tend to close Obsidian on one platform before accessing its vault on another, though this is not strictly speaking necessary. The issue happens when I do not have the vault in question open before Step 3. I haven’t tested with the vault still open on the Mac before opening it back up on PC.

After downloading, the vault on the PC will now show the original file, along with one or more duplicates, with (1), (2) etc. added to the filenames. These files will not open and clicking on them will pop up the Automatic file downloads dialog again, like the circle of life except in this circle nothing actually happens and everyone probably starves. It’s a mess. Here’s a shot of how the file appears in the vault list:

No opening permitted!

If I open the Obsidian folder in iCloud Drive where this vault lives, Windows 11 will indicate that it has a sync pending. The contents, as expected, reflect what Obsidian is reporting:

Double-clicking one of these files will try to open it in iA Writer, which is set as my default Markdown editor in windows. This dialog appears:

I don’t sync so!

If I return to the vault on the Mac, the two files are gone. They don’t show in Obsidian, and they are gone from the related vault folder in iCloud Drive. Something is clearly happening when the vault is accessed on the PC after being accessed on the Mac where the sync is failing. Maybe it’s a limitation of iCloud Drive. I’m not sure.

I tried a few experiments with new vaults, and found I could replicate the buggy results easily.

My current solution has been to create a folder on the PC and share it over the local network with the Mac. This seems to be working so far and has the added security of keeping things off the internet. This means I won’t be able to access the vault from the iPad, but that’s an acceptable loss.

I want to blame Apple for this, but I’m not sure who the real culprit is. It does make me hesitant to use iCloud Drive for anything other than basic file storage, though–certainly not for file-sharing. Part of me wants to dig deeper into this to determine the cause, but working on the file shared locally through my own network is probably a better solution, anyway. If this also blows up, I’ll update this post.

In conclusion, technology has a ways to go. I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs would be yelling at someone right now if he were still alive.

UPDATE, May 26, 2022: Since I have forsaken using Obsidian on the iPad, I decided to move the main vault to OneDrive, where in the subsequent months it has worked without issue on both Mac and PC. So now I am a bit more willing to give Apple the stink eye.

Using Obsidian to try to keep myself organized

Not actual obsidian, though it would be totally cool if I could find some way to make an igneous rock keep my life organized.

In this case, it’s the Obsidian note-taking app, which promises “a second brain for you, forever.” This sounds suspiciously like promising immortality, but I’ll settle for just keeping all of my notes in a single location, so my current and only brain has an easier time remembering to find things.

Why Obsidian. Well, let’s face it, it’s a new (to me) app and I like new toys, so I had to try it out. There’s a mobile version that can sync over iCloud Drive, allowing me to make notes from any device, which is convenient. So far this doesn’t sound much different from other note-taking apps like OneNote or Evernote, but Obsidian also uses a plain folder structure and text files, so everything is portable and accessible through simple apps like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). Because nothing is proprietary or stored in the cloud (unless you choose to put it there), your data is secure and yours alone. Obsidian also supports Markdown for quick formatting and has some features that promise to expand it beyond just a random collection of notes, such as:

  • Backlinking. Obsidian allows you to easily create links between notes, expanding what notes can do.
  • Plugins. Both core and community-made, extending the capabilities of the app.
  • Graph view. This visually shows relationships between notes.

Really, if I can just stick to Obsidian for all my note-taking, that would be a huge improvement over having to search for notes in OneNote, Ulysses, iA Writer, Drafts, the iOS Notes app, Notepad, Notepad++ and whatever else I’ve used over the years. None of these are bad programs–some of them I really enjoy using! But scattering my notes over all of them just makes it harder to find things, and stuff gets lost or forgotten. Or both. Lostgotten.

We’ll see how it goes, but I am cautiously optimistic that this is the beginning of some actual organization on my part and will usher in 2022: The Year of Really Fantastic Organization.