It’s Time to Ditch Evernote for One of These Alternatives::undefined

  • Alsephina@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    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

        • Tangent5280@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          For now. Understandable though - its nearly a brand new project as far as a project of this scale goes, and opening up the codebase for contributions or plugins this early can very quickly derail or redirect any OSS project.

  • AteshgaRubyTeeth@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I’ve switched to Joplin which I sync with my Nextcloud server.

    OneNote is also good, if you’re already in the Microsoft ecosystem.

    • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      If you’re in the MS ecosystem then OneDrive supports application syncing as a thing and so does Joplin including on its mobile clients. It’s basically free seemless cloud syncing once you set it up.

      • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
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        2 years ago

        You’re also giving all of your data over to Microsoft, including to be scanned and fed into their AI models.

        That’s a trade-off that many won’t mind making, but everyone should informed of before making their decision.

  • Drudge@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Lots of mentions for Obsidian. I’ll throw in my favorite for the past few years that’s similar: Logseq! Check it out!

  • haulyard@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • md5crypto@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      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.

      • haulyard@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    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

  • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • Butterpaderp@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      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

  • md5crypto@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Who is still using Evernote in 2023? Everyone I know is using either Notion or Google Keep.

    • Oderus@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      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!

    • Tygr@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Looks like Windows 10 version of OneNote. I use OneNote daily.

      • stockRot@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        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.

      • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I used Evernote religiously five years ago. But I left it for OneNote as well. No issues since.

  • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      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.

      • test113@lemmy.worldB
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        2 years ago

        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.

      • Blades@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        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.

      • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        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.

      • Pyro@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        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.

  • WormFood@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • EvacuateSoul@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I don’t need to take notes for work, but this seems great for documenting the home automation & media setup for my wife.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Same, and I was a paying customer.

      If you change your business model that much and cut out all free, that’s a serious red flag.

      • Flat Pluto Society@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        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.

        • test113@lemmy.worldB
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          2 years ago

          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.

      • TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I mostly ditched them many years ago because of privacy concerns (or lack thereof.) Around when I stopped using Dropbox too (same reason.)

    • BlackPenguins@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      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.

  • Aurix@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    What most note taking apps ignore is OneNote’s strong drawing tablet capabilities, but Obsidian is here to save the day with the Excalidraw plugin. In total it is not as user friendly as OneNote, but the data portability cannot be weighted in gold.