Hello everyone I'm Filipe Donadio software
engineer and in this video we are comparing two very powerful note-taking apps Notion
and Obsidian. I really do value your time so I'm going to give you an upfront summary of
this comparison right away to make your choice easier. If you are interested to find out more
please watch the rest of this video. As usual, you can find timestamps in the description below.
If you work in a team where collaboration with your colleagues is an essential part of your day,
if you need to manage large and complex projects, and have frequent access to your notes on
mobile devices, Notion was made for you. Features like kanban boards, comments,
notifications, and the ability to easily share work make all the difference in this scenario.
But, if you value the portability of your content, privacy, more customization options, and a way
to work offline, Obsidian is a better choice for you. Since your data is stored locally, you
own your content and do what you want with it. Several theme options that completely
change the look and feel of the app and plugins from the community are a must for
those who like to customize and make the tool the way they like it. If you ask my choice, I
currently use both. I used to believe that I should use only one app for everything but today
I think that these apps are simply tools created to solve problems and there's no perfect tool.
Each of them solves problems better than the other and both have strengths and weaknesses. And
that's exactly what we're going to talk about now. Notion needs no introduction, it's a
much better known app than Obsidian, and since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020
it has become immensely popular. This is easy to see because literally on YouTube videos with
titles on the line "how I organize my life with Notion" proliferate given the feeling that all
influencers and cool people are using Notion. The proposal is very attractive because of the
flexibility of the tool. According to their website, the app can be used for note-taking and
text editing, replacing Google Docs and Evernote. Project management replacing popular tools
that are used for thousands of teams worldwide like Trello, Jira and Asana. And Wikis promising
to replace tools like Atlassian's Confluence, and GitHub Wiki. Strong points are collaboration and
sharing options for teams that allow you to add comments and mention your co-workers when you need
input. Great templates created by Notion's team are available to be duplicated and the internet
is full of the most varied types with people even selling template packages. Personally, I really
like the toggle function that shows and hides a block of content which is great for studying
and forcing yourself to remember something. Now about the weaknesses. The first one is about
privacy. Our data is not encrypted from end to end and Notion employees have access to your entire
workspace if you need support. Another problem that I recently discovered is that when you add
an image or pdf to a page for example it becomes public available. I tested this to double check
and even opening a link to an attachment in an incognito window, I saw that anyone can view and
download any documents attached to a Notion page. Even though I know that the link is obfuscated and
that's difficult for someone to discover it, I'm not comfortable knowing that my attachments
are public available on the internet. Frequent performance problems especially in large database
and the lack of a way to use it offline are other weaknesses of the tool. When I started to use
Notion I was delighted with the tool because the flexibility is awesome, and in the excitement,
I tried to migrate my whole life to Notion. But soon I started to run into the limitations
of the app and that's when i found Obsidian. Obsidian is a knowledge base and note-taking app
that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. On their website the phrase "a
second brain, for you, forever" is very inviting. Since our brains are not linear because we jump
from idea to idea all the time, a tool that makes it easy to create connections between the
things we write makes a lot of sense. Obsidian's strengths are portability as your data is stored
locally in text files and you are responsible for your content without any dependency on the cloud
or internet connection. The graph view is awesome to have an overview of the whole workspace, check
the relative size of notes, navigate through connections following the graph from a concept
to related notes. I find it extremely useful to remember the context of things and get myself
quickly back up to speed on a topic. There's also the possibility to easily publish the notes
via Obsidian Publish which is their paid service. Themes from the most minimalist to the most
colorful ones are available for free and several plugins that add features such as presentations
directly from the notes, mind map, calendar, and more complete the package of customization
options. On the weak points of the tool the most notable is the lack of an official mobile
app so far, but at least it's known that they are working on an app that may be released soon. The
editor lacks a more user-friendly or visual way to format the notes so you have to remember
the Markdown syntax and add them manually. This may seem simple to someone with a programming
background but can be annoying to the average user. Constantly switching between edit and view
mode can be a hassle for some people. There's no winner in my opinion as both apps offer a lot
of flexibility and are free for personal use. Both have paid features as well. Notion stands
out as a productivity and collaboration tool replacing several other popular business apps and
serves as the center of information that a team needs to work or the hub for managing your life.
Obsidian, on the other hand, is a more personal and portable solution for knowledge management,
more focused on writing notes, and connecting ideas using the graph view which is very useful
for research and studies. And you? Which one did you ultimately decide on? Let me know in the
comments below. More videos about Obsidian and Notion are coming soon, so stay tuned. Thanks
for watching and see you next time. Bye-bye.
