I am a relatively latecomer to note-taking services. Previously, I used to take notes on OneNote and local markdown files, but after a while, I found it inconvenient. There were instances of note loss on OneNote, and its functionality was also quite basic. Managing local markdown files was also chaotic. So during the three years of the pandemic, I started looking for a new note-taking service.
The first cloud note-taking service I encountered was Notion. It's quite funny how I came across it. I saw many people recommending this note-taking app on Twitter, and some had created beautiful templates.
I thought to myself, "Wow, this is my dream note-taking app!" So without hesitation, I registered an account.
After registering, I realized that making my Notion homepage look aesthetically pleasing would require a lot of time and effort. It felt troublesome to copy templates and make minor modifications, especially since my design skills were terrible. Moreover, at that time, I didn't know how to make the best use of this cloud note-taking app (I couldn't find a suitable use case), so for a long time after registering, I left it unused.
Later on, I noticed that many articles easily disappeared from the Chinese internet. So, I decided to use Notion as a backup for my notes.
- It has a built-in image hosting feature.
- Its search function is powerful.
- It is easy to use in conjunction with the Simplified Chinese extension.
In this way, Notion took on the responsibility of backing up my notes against 404 errors. Although I had the idea of using it as a personal blog, whenever I looked at the page, I felt overwhelmed. It seemed more suitable for long-form text-based work. My blog couldn't achieve long and elaborate posts for every entry, and at that time, Notion hadn't yet launched the feature of custom public domain names. If I were to customize it myself, it would require additional time and effort, so I decided against it.
Obsidian, on the other hand, is my choice for a local markdown writing tool. Previously, I used Typora, but after it started charging for the official version, I thought, why pay when I can find an open-source alternative? So I tried several open-source markdown applications. For general text-based note-taking, these applications were sufficient, but I always felt that managing files was not very convenient. Just as I was contemplating whether to spend money on purchasing Typora, I came across China's first open Luman note-taking app. It allows you to see more knowledge points related to a specific topic in the knowledge map. As someone who was new to bidirectional note-taking, I found this quite impressive. I thought to myself, "This note-taking app is really convenient. When I look at my own knowledge map masterpiece, I will definitely be satisfied." So, without hesitation, I downloaded it.
However, just like the first time I saw Notion, I was attracted by its fancy features, but when I actually wanted to use those features, I found it troublesome. As a result, my knowledge map has not yet taken shape. But I also realized that when using a note-taking service, I don't have to fully utilize all its features to consider it as being used. I can choose to use only the features that suit my needs. The main focus of a note-taking app should be on the content of the notes, rather than solely making them visually appealing.
Obsidian is great for handling plain text content and serves as an excellent writing tool. There are many plugins available to further extend its functionality. Now, on my xlog blog, I can easily import my Obsidian notes into blog articles and publish them.
Notion is suitable for handling tasks with long content and images, making it convenient for my note-taking and sharing.
Google Keep is used for daily inspiration fragments and for excerpting sentences and paragraphs. It handles small amounts of text.
Although there are still many new note-taking products being launched, Obsidian and Notion already fully meet my needs.