Obsidian

The best note taking app - hands down

Pros:

Word's cannot express my gratitude to the Obsidian app and the amazing community built around it. I use this app daily on my desktop and mobile with cloud syncing. It has allowed me to take notes on anything at any time, and most importantly, made it easy to review my notes so I can learn from them.

Cons:

Obsidian is unique in that there are new plugins being built all the time by the community. That help the app be more intuitive and feature rich. However I still feel their graph view has a lot of potential for improvement. I think the graph view right now is visually interesting to look at, but not nearly as effective as it could be. I'd like to be able to manipulate it more, and see more clearly the patterns between links, right now it becomes overwhelming as there is too many interlinked notes. It's difficult to gleam insights from them.

Note "Vaults"

Comments: I did like Obsidian and how full it was. I stored notes and segments of legislation that I needed to reference frequently. I could find any note with the open display.

Pros:

Notes are stored in Obsidian "Vaults", this certainly makes me feel more secure! Obsidian asks if you'd prefer internal or external storage, notes can be read offline too. Notebooks aren't displayed in a grid pattern like apps on your phone, they're displayed as dots and can be moved as you'd like. I like this and it's really ideal for a large number of notes. Obsidian can actually function as a knowledge base too. When clicking on a dot, a text preview is displayed. The background is dark and text is white, if your eyes strain easily or you have a lot of screen time during your work day this is great. Obsidian has quick access to most format options and text tools, I like the quick access reference tool.

Cons:

I found it to be confusing, using it certainly wasn't effortless. The icons are very light grey and most of them don't connect to the action you'd expect. I spent a lot of time looking and I deleted notes without meaning to.

Obsidian is phenomenal and Obsidian Sync is worth the cost.

Comments: Great

Pros:

I love that I can structure my notes however I'd like: I can put things in a traditional hierarchy with folders, I can relate notes together with embedded links and connections, and I can create notes associated with neither. For me, I get the benefits of OneNote (hierarchy), Roam Research (association), and Apple Notes (randomly throwing a note in that you can't associate with anything else). Obsidian Sync is by far the best way to sync your vaults. I used iCloud at first, which worked well on apple products, but worked terribly on windows. Sync made it all real-time with no note duplication.

Cons:

To use the great functionality, you have to learn Markup and you have to understand how the software works (vaults, local storage, and sync). Having a normal text formatting tab (like OneNote) and improving the sync interface/wizard would make this app absolutely incredible.