Roam vs obsidian reddit. Those apps treat every line as a bullet that is an addressable block. Obsidian runs faster and produces cleaner and more interoperable markdown documents. I paid to be an Insider and will subscribe Similar to Notion and Obsidian, it serves as a robust note-taking and knowledge management platform. RESEARCH!) and dear heavens was it a mess. I moved to Obsidian from Roam for speed reasons back in March '21. My reasons are that Obsidian has the app, sync feature, useful plugins, and of course local storage. Any seemingly "new" features offered by these new tools (e. I need something with end to end encryption which I see Roam offers. We're trying to develop a new medium for representing powerful ideas, this is a place to help the team and the community augment our collective intelligence! Jan 6, 2025 · Among the frontrunners in this space, Roam Research and Obsidian have emerged as two distinct powerhouses, each catering to different preferences and workflows. When Roam finally went into production and announced their price points, that plus the lock-in to cloud nudged me over to Obsidian. Otherwise, you could use Obsidian any way you like. Every block is its own unit; this means you can link Roam is great! But the single thing that I can't live with it is the search engine and how I can search for my relating notes when I need them (both on web app and phone). Roam is an outliner. Roam had made a lot of improvements in speed up to then - and has probably made more since. While in Obsidian this is a default. Some Obsidian users request Roam Research type capabilities. There are far more plugins (nearly a thousand as of this writing) and themes (over 100). That can be helpful, for instance, if we like to work in outlines and lists like I may need to do on some projects. While both tools help structure ideas, they We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Notion can I'm officially switching from Roam to Obsidian. . After about 2 days of research I ended up narrowing down 2 apps: RemNote and Obsidian (other notable-pun intended-mentions include Notion and Roam Research). It’s much better for longform writing. I started using Obsidian around the same time. I also got to enjoy and experience Roam while it was in beta. I find many other apps for that demand, and Obsidian, as I know up to now, has the most powerful and fastest search engine for the notes I took. I also like that Roam seems to offer better integration currently with Todoist. Also, Roam's interface stayed at the level of circa 2005, while Obsidian is sleek and modern. However, RemNote has a desktop app that offer local-only storage For around a decade I used a series of org-mode files as the base of my personal note keeping system, but never got into the more advanced features like agenda and appointments. PDF annotations helped me a lot. Superb article, Niles. Esp. And I used queries and properties to figure out tasks for the video. You'll get the biggest community and most support here. Although it is electron and whatnot, it looks visually appealing and overall a good program. User Interface: Roam Research’s interface bears some similarities to Obsidian’s, emphasizing the interconnected nature of your notes. 27 votes, 12 comments. I was initially impressed by the features (automatic back-links, custom properties, queries, PDF annotations, YT video thumbnails etc. Both apps have developed cult-like followings among users looking to organize information and thoughts more effectively. Finally, unless you pay some crazy monthly fee and get @conaw to give you API access, you won't control your files with Roam. Roam Research debate. My main reason was I wanted something better than being forced to use limited The Obsidian Excalidraw developer in 2021 said he was releasing a Roam Research version of Excalidraw. With a good system, I can quickly see whatever I save in it. When you search for discussions on these two tools, you’ll find a variety of opinions based on users’ personal preferences and needs. Here's a screenshot of my Obsidian setup so far. Capacities - If you've used Notion and love the way it looks and feels but want some Roam Overall I'd say they are hard to compare because Obsidian does something specific really well, while Notion can do what Obsidian does + a lot more stuff, although not as well (IMO). I customized my exports to both PDF and HTML, export flashcards to Anki and I also use Emacs for programming. PKMs right now is a game of trading security and privacy for features. Craft: The app I eventually settled on. That's the most Also the most expensive option by far. Pro: free, modular/customisable. So basically a texted based outline system based on folding headings. org-roam is solid not-electron way more satisfying keybindings/chords on emacs vs obsidian evil-mode is much better than obsidian's vim bindings org-mode text outlining features are just better and they still can't get close to replicating it in obsidian. This is the official subreddit for Roam Research, the tool for networked thought. Oct 6, 2025 · Our analysts compare Obsidian against Roam based on a 400+ point analysis, reviews & crowdsourced data from our software selection platform. Aug 15, 2024 · We visited Reddit to see where people land on the Obsidian vs. But Obsidian is utterly, blindingly fast - in terms of pure speed, there is no comparison. A few months ago I switched full-time from Emacs Org-Mode to Obsidian. All in all, we recommend Obsidian over Roam Research. I left roam for obsidian due to lag and the inability to work offline. Can Obsidian be a alternative to Roam? Seems that Roam will become paid and I need to find a alternative. I want to know which one is the best for PKM; Obsidian or Emacs with org-mode + org-roam? Mar 18, 2025 · In the digital note-taking space, Roam Research and Obsidian have become go-to choices for those looking to organize their thoughts effectively. ). Con: Markdown editor (dealbreaker), difficult to sync (though they might have improved on that in 2021). g. The desktop application is available for Mac and The lack of blocks If i have a page on North Korea in Roam, there may be very little on the page itself, but instead Roam will show me where NK has been mentioned As a result, i would have to 'look' for the information on the North Korea page in Obsidian rather than instantly finding the aspect of North Korea as i would in Roam at the atomic level. The app itself has been in stable release for a while, and long before that it was less buggy than Logseq is now in my experience. The consistency of performance from Obsidian when I need it has been the reason I have stayed with Obsidian. Obsidian: Similar to Roam in its fundamentals, Obsidian also targets users who don't mind a less consumer-friendly UI. I have used Roam and Obsidian. I know that Logseq also offers this via Obsidian sync but I haven’t looked further into this (I am also not sure what they mean by “Obsidian sync”). The block/bullet vs prose thing is of personal preference. Since Logseq is similar to Roam, maybe Logseq or Athens could support an Excalidraw plugin. I found Obsidian while looking for note taking tips and it looked cool. Oct 27, 2020 · The most recent Obsidian advances prompted me to explore in greater detail my switch from Roam and resulted in this 6000 word article highlighting the differences between the two applications that I find most interesting: Aug 14, 2024 · Roam Research and Obsidian have emerged as two of the most popular note-taking and knowledge management apps in recent years. I like both products and think anybody could be happy with either. ) However, once I realized what made Roam unique I've come to the conclusion that Roam is on the whole a more useful app. Obsidian will probably feel pretty weird coming from evernote but will be more similar to what you'd use evernote for if that makes sense, actually writing in notes and creating//capturing information. A lot seems to prefer Obsidian (me included) for it's offline capability and non-proprietary format. Obsidian seems to have both features and security but do you really want to download 50 plugins just to have feature parity with notion? oh and if you are mobile/tablet user then you will constantly have stuff not working, while notion works as expected on all platforms Hi! I've been taking all my notes in Org-Mode + Org-Roam since the beginning of the year and I like it. Another issue of concern is data privacy. Obsidian seems bullet-proof. Roam operates in the cloud and can be accessed online. In Logseq, for instance, We can rapidly create blocks by simply creating indented child records where each indented child I'm brand new to Zettelkasten and Building a Second Brain methodology. I never got the sense while using obsidian that it was a place for me to any serious work. Logseq - if you really want to get a taste of Roam, try this one first as it's virtually identical but free and open source. Roam, at that point, was far more powerful than Obsidian. Logseq is similar to Roam. Did/would you For example, Obsidian has extensions like Mind-maps, Kanban boards, Excalidraw, Sliding panes and other GUI extensions. Apps like Obsidian and Roam have the ability to help people use those PKM techniques effectively IF someone chooses to do that. I don't know if Emacs has these. Obsidian - the first big competitor and is currently by far the most popular of the "new wave" of notetaking apps. Remnote differentiates itself by offering a feature to create flashcards from your notes. Logseq AFAIK takes inspiration from Roam and Obsidian. But you can break bigger notes into smaller in Obsidian with the "extract to" feature. Meanwhile I've been testing Obsidian (and by "testing" I mean "actively trying to break it") and I didn't even come close to this level crappery I've seen/heard of in Logseq. (I like them enough that I have a Believer account for Roam and a Catalyst license for Obsidian. Roam, Obsidian, Remnote) can and have been implemented in Org mode (see org-roam) because of how extensible it is. I was on the fence for a while. qekb byixsl m0ke2j u3 eikksfn 0i cb woduw mmo rrg8apv