Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Obsidian.md VS Dash for macOS

Compare Obsidian.md VS Dash for macOS and see what are their differences

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.

Dash for macOS logo Dash for macOS

Dash is an API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager. Dash searches offline documentation of 200+ APIs and stores snippets of code. You can also generate your own documentation sets.
  • Obsidian.md Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01
  • Dash for macOS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-22

Obsidian.md videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Dash for macOS videos

Dash for macOS

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Obsidian.md and Dash for macOS)
Knowledge Management
100 100%
0% 0
Productivity
70 70%
30% 30
Note Taking
100 100%
0% 0
Software Development
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

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

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

    🏁 Competitors: Notion, Evernote
    👍 Pros:    Awesome community|Custom plugins|Local hosting|Beautiful themes|Highly customizable|Cloud storage|Becomes more useful over time|Markdown support
    👎 Cons:    Seems complicated/complex at first|Takes time to set up your personal workspace|Overwhelming for first time user
  2. 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 ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

    🏁 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 be—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 you’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 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 it’s easy to link to an Obsidian note or an OmniFocus project, he can seamlessly navigate back and forth...
Source: medium.com
Logseq vs Roam Research vs Obsidian: which one should you choose?
Block Reference and block embeds: Adding block reference and block embeds in Logseq is simple. You use double-open parentheses (( and type to search the block you want to link. In Obsidian, you have to first add the link to the note and then use # to embed headers and ^ to embed blocks.– Obsidian also makes it hard to see the origin of block references, as they are only...
Source: medium.com

Dash for macOS Reviews

  1. One of my favourite productivity tools as a software developer

    Once you get use to it, you won't be able to imagine your life without Dash. It will save you a bit of time every day. Many times.

    As a bonus you can use the "snippets" feature as a generic text-expander. That saves me tons of time when writing emails, too.

    p.s. aText is not exactly a direct competitor; however, I replaced it through the snippets feature of Dash.

    🏁 Competitors: aText

Best Text Expander apps for MacOS
Dash offers one of the most simplistic ways to start adding your own snippets. Dash 3 offers a set of language documentation at the side and this is something that will help you with rules and references. The tool allows you to create snippets by simply copying the phrase. Alternatively, you can also create custom snippets using keyboard commands. Dash allows users to setup...
Source: techwiser.com
What's a good alternative to Textexpander for Mac?
14DashView Productajimix4Written 4y agoIf you are a developer, Dash is your choice. It also does text-expanding and works great!🙏 helpful 3CommentsShare

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian.md seems to be a lot more popular than Dash for macOS. While we know about 1457 links to Obsidian.md, we've tracked only 85 mentions of Dash for macOS. 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.

Obsidian.md mentions (1457)

  • From Chaos to Clarity: My Journey with Obsidian
    The article definitely assumes you know that 'Obsidian' is a reference to the text editor found at https://obsidian.md/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 days ago
  • How to remember everything for standup
    I've encountered a lot of engineers who keep a journal and pen around, but you could also use a note-taking app like Notes, Obsidian, or Notion. - Source: dev.to / 5 days ago
  • HTTP request from Obsidian notes
    Are you an Obsidian user looking to elevate your note-taking experience with dynamic data integration? Look no further than APIR (api-request) – an Obsidian plugin designed to streamline HTTP requests directly into your notes. - Source: dev.to / 14 days ago
  • UX Case Study: Markdown Heading
    The closest editor that follows our first principle is Obsidian editor:. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • I switched from Notion to Obsidian
    The solution was already installed on both my computer and my phone: Obsidian. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
View more

Dash for macOS mentions (85)

  • DevDocs
    This is awesome!! I use something similar on MacOS but it's a native app with offline support. The offline support is a neat feature but honestly these days if the internet is down I just don't do any development work... - https://kapeli.com/dash. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • DevDocs
    Not a complete answer, but I hope Markdown is or becomes the standard for offline docs and text for local/offline consumption. I only ever write in markdown anyway (usually with http://obsidian.md). The closest thing I know of for a service like RSS to download documents is [Dash for macOS - API Documentation Browser, Snippet Manager - Kapeli](https://kapeli.com/dash). - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • At Least Skim The Manual
    There are so many great sources of information out there and tools to improve the developer experience of documentation. Dash can make some of these online resources local for instant search and access on-the-go, if you prefer. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Show HN: I automated 1/2 of my typing
    Https://kapeli.com/dash Somewhat similar tool to Autokey for MacOS that I use as a text expander. Allows for great customization - appending ; to a phrase ensures you don't accidentally expand a keystroke into a phrase/URL/etc ";url" expands into "whatever string you configure". - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Custom Instructions for ChatGPT
    This reminded me that I needed to settle on a good system-wide Snippets manager for MacOS. Having waded through the morass of buggy and subscription-only services many times in the past, I thought to give the open-source Espanso another go, but its last commit was many months ago and I simply could not get it to recognise Ventura permissions. It was then that I remembered that the excellent Dash... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Obsidian.md and Dash for macOS, you can also consider the following products

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.

Zeal - Zeal is an API Documentation Browser.

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

DevDocs - Open source API documentation browser with instant fuzzy search, offline mode, keyboard shortcuts, and more

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

Velocity - Velocity gives your Windows desktop offline access to over 150 API documentation sets provided by...