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Obsidian VS Sol

Compare Obsidian VS Sol and see what are their differences

Kanera
Plan work on flexible boards, connect projects through Global Work and Portfolio, and keep reporting, notes, automation, API, and AI access together. sponsored
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Obsidian logo Obsidian

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.

Sol logo Sol

Replace your macOS command palette tool with an open source version, all the perks of advanced tools like raycast or Alfred at your finger tips
  • Obsidian Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01
  • Sol Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-19

Obsidian 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

  • 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.

Sol features and specs

  • Open Source
    Sol is available on GitHub, allowing for community collaboration, transparency in development, and the ability for developers to contribute to the project or customize it for their own needs.
  • Cross-Platform
    Sol is designed to work across different operating systems, which enhances its versatility and usability for users on various devices.
  • Modern UI
    The application offers a sleek and modern user interface, providing an improved user experience that aligns with contemporary design standards.
  • Feature-Rich
    Sol includes a variety of features that are useful for users, potentially including productivity tools, integrations, or settings that enhance its functionality beyond basic offerings.

Possible disadvantages of Sol

  • Potential Bugs
    As with many open-source projects, there may be bugs or stability issues in Sol, requiring users to potentially troubleshoot or wait for community-driven fixes.
  • Limited Support
    Users may not have access to professional support, relying instead on community forums or documentation that might not address all specific issues or provide timely assistance.
  • Learning Curve
    Users unfamiliar with open-source applications or the specific features of Sol might experience a learning curve, making initial use potentially challenging.
  • Developer Resources
    The availability of features and updates depends on the time and effort contributed by volunteer developers, possibly affecting the frequency and richness of future improvements.

Analysis of Obsidian

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.

Obsidian videos

+ Add

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Sol videos

+ Add

The Best Hyzer-Flip Mid Range? | Discraft Sol Disc Review

More videos:

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Obsidian and Sol)

Obsidian

Sol

Note Taking
100 100%
Note Taking
0% 0
Productivity
0 0%
Productivity
100% 100
Knowledge Management
100 100%
Knowledge Management
0% 0
Mac
0 0%
Mac
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 and Sol

Obsidian Reviews

  1. MTRG15
    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. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    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...
Source: www.theverge.com
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 it’s easy to link to an Obsidian note or an OmniFocus project, he can seamlessly navigate back and forth...
Source: medium.com

Sol Reviews

We have no reviews of Sol yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian seems to be a lot more popular than Sol. While we know about 1523 links to Obsidian, we've tracked only 6 mentions of Sol. 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 mentions (1523)

  • Which Markdown editor to choose
    Inline preview, usually called WYSIWYG. Obsidian's Live Preview mode hides the syntax except where the cursor is. Obsidian is a far better personal knowledge base than anything else on this page, with backlinks, a graph and years of plugins, and if that is what you need the question of what its editor is called does not matter much. - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • I Built a Self-Evolving Knowledge Base — Here's the Architecture
    The stack is all open source: Obsidian, GBrain, Horizon, PGLite, and a couple of small Python scripts for the state machine and quality gates. None of the interesting parts are proprietary — the interesting part is the discipline. - Source: dev.to / 21 days ago
  • 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 / about 1 month 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 — just a local folder. - Source: dev.to / 2 months 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 / 3 months ago
View more

Sol mentions (6)

  • The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era
    I replaced Raycast recently with Sol[0], but SuperCmd[1] is also really good. And I’m testing Helium Browser[2]. It’s based on Chromium, but has changed a lot and I’ve been daily driving it. Also replacing CapCut with OpenCut[3]. I’ve also completely ditched Codex CLI with Pi[4] and now am trying OMP[5]. 0. https://github.com/ospfranco/sol 1. https://github.com/SuperCmdLabs/SuperCmd 2.... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Copilot Edited an Ad into My PR
    It's becoming clearer and clearer that open-source is our only hope against enshittification. Everything that is VC backed will become enshittified, it's just a matter of time. At least with open-source, you can fork it and remove the "features" or point your agent to it and have it write the feature in your tech stack. Hell, I just saw an amazing open-source alternative to Raycast[0] and just replaced it the... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Introducing React Native macOS 0.71
    Yes, via react-native-macos you can make your existing react-native apps work on macos as native desktop apps - or just build a new desktop app directly with it, such as https://github.com/ospfranco/sol. Source: over 3 years ago
  • 🚀 Announcing the Release of Verve v0.1.0 - A Lightweight and Blazingly Fast Launcher for MacOS
    Another one https://github.com/ospfranco/sol. For both of them, success hinges on plugins and a nice, native UI. Source: over 3 years ago
  • macOS Ventura is now available
    Check this: https://github.com/ospfranco/sol. - Source: Hacker News / almost 4 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Obsidian and Sol, you can also consider the following products

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

Alfred - Alfred is an award-winning app for macOS which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more. Search your Mac and the web, and be more productive with custom actions to control your Mac.

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

Raycast - Fastest way to control Jira, GitHub and other web apps

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.

Timezone.io - Keep track where and when your team is.

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