Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

KeepNote VS Obsidian.md

Compare KeepNote VS Obsidian.md and see what are their differences

KeepNote logo KeepNote

KeepNote: note-taking and organization.

Obsidian.md logo Obsidian.md

A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
  • KeepNote Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-05
  • Obsidian.md Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01

KeepNote features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Support
    KeepNote is a cross-platform application, which means it runs on multiple operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
  • Rich-Text Format
    It allows the creation of notes in a rich-text format, enabling users to use different fonts, colors, and styles for better organization and readability.
  • Tree Hierarchy
    The software provides a tree structure for organizing notes, making it easy for users to categorize and navigate through their notes.
  • Search Functionality
    KeepNote includes a search feature that helps users quickly find notes or specific content within notes.
  • Backup and Restore
    The application allows users to back up their notes and restore them when necessary, providing data protection and recovery options.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source project, KeepNote allows developers to modify and improve the software to better suit their needs.

Possible disadvantages of KeepNote

  • Outdated User Interface
    The user interface feels outdated compared to modern note-taking applications, lacking a sleek and intuitive design.
  • Limited Features
    KeepNote does not have as many features as some other note-taking apps, such as integration with other software or advanced collaboration tools.
  • Lack of Cloud Sync
    KeepNote does not offer built-in cloud synchronization, which means notes cannot be automatically synced across multiple devices without third-party solutions.
  • No Mobile App
    There is no dedicated mobile application for KeepNote, limiting its usability on handheld devices like smartphones and tablets.
  • Slow Updates
    The development and updates to KeepNote are infrequent, which means new features or bug fixes may take a long time to be released.

Obsidian.md features and specs

  • Local-first
    Obsidian stores your notes locally on your device, giving you full control over your data and enhancing privacy.
  • Markdown Support
    Obsidian uses Markdown, making it easy to format text and compatible with many other text editors and tools.
  • Bidirectional Linking
    You can create bidirectional links between notes, which helps in building a knowledge graph and navigating related information more easily.
  • Customizability
    Obsidian is highly customizable with community plugins, themes, and various settings to fit different workflows.
  • Graph View
    Provides a visual graph view of your notes and their connections, aiding in understanding relationships and discovering insights.
  • Offline Access
    Since the notes are stored locally, you can access and edit them without an internet connection.

Possible disadvantages of Obsidian.md

  • Learning Curve
    Obsidian can be complex and overwhelming for beginners due to its extensive features and customizable nature.
  • Sync Limitations
    While local-first is great for privacy, it requires additional steps or third-party solutions for syncing across devices.
  • No True Real-time Collaboration
    Obsidian lacks native real-time collaboration features, making it less suitable for collaborative work compared to cloud-based solutions.
  • Limited Mobile Features
    The mobile version of Obsidian, while functional, is not as robust as the desktop application, potentially hindering productivity on the go.
  • Dependence on Plugins
    Many advanced features require the use of third-party plugins, which could lead to compatibility issues and reliance on community support.
  • Performance on Large Vaults
    Performance might degrade with a very large number of notes or complex graphs, impacting usability.

Analysis of Obsidian.md

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Obsidian.md is an excellent tool for users looking for a versatile and powerful note-taking application. Its unique features such as backlinking, markdown support, and robust customization options make it a favorite among knowledge management enthusiasts.

Why this product is good

  • Obsidian.md is considered good by many users because it is a powerful knowledge management and note-taking application that leverages Markdown for document formatting. It allows for bi-directional linking between notes, which helps in creating a network of interconnected ideas, often described as a 'second brain.' Its ability to support plugins, themes, and robust graph visualization also adds to its appeal. Additionally, it stores notes locally, ensuring privacy and data ownership, while being cross-platform compatible across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Recommended for

  • Knowledge workers who need a powerful tool to organize and connect their thoughts.
  • Students who are looking to create a structured and visually interconnected note system.
  • Writers and researchers who benefit from linking related ideas and maintaining detailed notes.
  • Tech-savvy users or developers who appreciate the local storage and open ecosystem for plugins and customization.

KeepNote videos

keepnote | What is KeepNote | Keepnote for Kali linux | Keepnote for windows

More videos:

  • Tutorial - 03 03 Write Down Your Findings Using KeepNote

Obsidian.md videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to KeepNote and Obsidian.md)
Note Taking
2 2%
98% 98
Knowledge Management
0 0%
100% 100
Todos
100 100%
0% 0
Task Management
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare KeepNote and Obsidian.md

KeepNote Reviews

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Obsidian.md Reviews

  1. The kind of software that may change your life

    Perhaps you know someone who swears by Obsidian, it may seem like a cult of overly devoted people for how passionate they are, but it's not without reason

    I've been using Obsidian for over 3 years, at a point in my life when I felt I had to handle too much information and I felt like grasping water not being able to remember everything I wanted, language learning, programming, accounting, university, daily tasks. A friend recommended it to me next to Notion (of which he is a passionate cultist priest) and I reluctantly picked it and fell in love almost immediately.

    Obsidian seems very simple, like a notepad with folder interface, similar to Sublime Text, but the ability to link files together in a Wiki style allows you to organize ideas in any way you want, one file may lead to a dozen or more ideas that are related

    If you want to do something specific, Obsidian has a plethora of community created plugins that expand the functionality, in my case, I use obsidian to organize my classes both as a teacher and as a student, using local databases, calendars, dictionaries, slides, vector graphic drawings, excel-like tables, Anki connection, podcasts, and more

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: Notion, Evernote
    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Awesome community|Custom plugins|Local hosting|Beautiful themes|Highly customizable|Cloud storage|Becomes more useful over time|Markdown support
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Seems complicated/complex at first|Takes time to set up your personal workspace|Overwhelming for first time user
  2. Stan
    ยท Founder at SaaSHub ยท
    My personal knowledge-base of choice

    I've been using Obsidian for more than a year. It's been great. I think it offer a great balance of control, flexibility and extensibility. What is more, you own your own data, that's been a must-have feature for me. I just can't imagine putting all my knowledge into something that I don't have control over.

    I think two of the most popular alternatives that people consider are Logseq and Roam Research. Although Logseq is a bit different, it's considered compatible with Obsidian. Supposedly, you can use them with a shared database (files. Both use simple text files for storage). I tried that once, a few months ago. It worked, yet it messed up a bit my Obsidian files ยฏ_(ใƒ„)_/ยฏ.

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: Logseq, Roam Research

The 6 best note-taking apps in 2024
One thing to note: Notion bills itself as an Evernote competitor for personal users. It can beโ€”but it's too much for most people, and its offline functionality isn't the best. If you love the idea of Notion, go right ahead and try the free Personal Plan, but for me, it's really best as a team notes app or an AI-powered notes app. Something like Obsidian (which we'll look at...
Source: zapier.com
The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data
This app is the kind of thing that, if youโ€™re into it, will have you exploring its various ins, outs, and add-ons for days and weeks on end. Obsidian uses the Markdown format for its notes (which means they can be used on a variety of other apps). Your notes and other media are kept locally in a Vault (in other words, a main folder). There are ways to sync between devices...
The 5 Best Open Source Miro Alternatives in 2024
However, it's important to note that Obsidian's whiteboard functionality is not as robust as dedicated collaboration tools. While it lacks real-time basic collaboration features, Obsidian compensates with its vibrant plugin ecosystem, empowering users to customize their experience.
Source: affine.pro
The best encrypted note taking apps
For a consumer coming from Evernote, Notion, OneNote, or a similar product, we would advise trying Obsidian along another product on this list as it has the largest learning curve. However, if you are an expert with markdown, experts, linking, and graph views, Obsidian could be an excellent choice. Like many other configuration options, Obsidian leaves end-to-end encryption...
Source: www.skiff.com
Supercharge Your Productivity: Three Recommended Tools for Thought
One of my AP Productivity: Cohort mentors has a powerful system pairing Obsidian with OmniFocus. In OmniFocus, he builds his project and task structures, and in Obsidian he develops and organizes the project support materials as well as other relevant information. Because itโ€™s easy to link to an Obsidian note or an OmniFocus project, he can seamlessly navigate back and forth...
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian.md seems to be a lot more popular than KeepNote. While we know about 1521 links to Obsidian.md, we've tracked only 4 mentions of KeepNote. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

KeepNote mentions (4)

  • How do you guys learn all linux commands/ programs?
    - for organized topics, for example, if I am learning something, I use keepnote (http://keepnote.org). Source: over 3 years ago
  • What makes people hate electron ?
    There's exactly one non-webapp Electron-based application that I like and use semi-regularly -- Notable, because it has a skilled developer behind it, enough feature improvement to lure me away from KeepNote, and uses standard markdown files, so there's no lock-in to worry about. Every other Electron-based desktop app I've tried has been a fast uninstall. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • How do you take notes during online training?
    I use KeepNote. Very simple to use, Great for complex note taking. Even better when combined with GreenShot (Powerful screenshoting tool). Source: over 4 years ago
  • Is there a software where i can write a wiki and upload files? read post for detail
    Lots of applications allow you to link to files. Click on the file and it opens. Wikidpad is a local open source free app http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net Zimwiki , Connectedtext, (no longer in development, but runs on windows 10) Keepnote (fee can run as a portable app) Http://keepnote.org/ There are also a number of notebook /information managers that do this: Ultrarecall, Myinfo, Whizfolders... Source: about 5 years ago

Obsidian.md mentions (1521)

  • A Second Brain Your AI Agent Can Read
    Obsidian is a note-taking app that stores everything as Plain markdown files. It lets you organize and structure your notes in a Flexible way, and because the files are plain text on disk, anything that can Read a directory can read your notes, including an AI agent. - Source: dev.to / 3 days ago
  • Bringing Notes, WeChat Reading, and Zhihu into Obsidian: My LLM-Wiki Knowledge Hub
    Install Obsidian: Download the client from obsidian.md and create a local Vault โ€” just a local folder. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?
    Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/) Honestly its not huge and most are probably obvious, but those are what I immediately install on my machines. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Turning Kiro Into a Leadership Coach With Meeting Transcripts
    A place to store the feedback - I keep mine in an Obsidian vault, organised by type (interviewing, facilitation) and date. This makes trend tracking trivial. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Best Markdown Editors for Developers
    Option 2: Dedicated markdown app.Typora, Obsidian, or similar. Better editing experience, but now you're context-switching between your code editor and your docs editor. Copy-pasting paths, losing mental context, duplicating effort. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing KeepNote and Obsidian.md, you can also consider the following products

CherryTree - A hierarchical note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file.

Notion - All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

TreePad - A free and lightweight outliner, only 465KB in size.

Logseq - Logseq is a local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base.

OneNote - Get the OneNote app for free on your tablet, phone, and computer, so you can capture your ideas and to-do lists in one place wherever you are. Or try OneNote with Office for free.

Joplin - Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor.