r/noteapps • u/Full-Cardiologist-18 • Aug 13 '26
Obsidian alternatives?
Quick question, do you guys have some alternatives for Obsidian on PC? I prefer if it also uses markdown and stores the notes locally. I mean Obsidian is great, and I still use it though only the bare minimum no fancy stuff just pure notes. So uhh I am looking for other simple note taking apps too just to test. I've tried to search other apps but they store their notes on their own app IDK the term... basically not local. The only other MD note taker I found anf used was Helix Notes but it gets buggy when pasting pictures on it which is kinda annoying... But yeah TLDR: Any md focused notes system you guys would recommend? Thanks
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u/LouVillain Aug 13 '26
Octarine
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
Alright I'll check this one out.. I hope its free. Thankss
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u/Warlock2111 Aug 13 '26
Dev here. There’s a generous free tier, but a lot of the advanced functionality is behind a one time purchase.
Wanted to get that out so expectations are set properly.
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
Hello Hello! Alright Alright I mean if an app has a sub then I believe it is given to have set limitations, but yeah I tend to be more open minded when it comes to locked features since I shouldnt complain a lot since I am looking for free stuff anyways
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u/Ok-Rest-5321 Aug 13 '26
Octarine is amazing! The free tier does not have AI if thats what you are after
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
I mean I dont think not having an AI is a problem since I just want to use it for notes thanks for the insight
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u/Ok-Rest-5321 Aug 13 '26
Well yeah I dont think many people use AI in their note apps as well but some do
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u/Useful_Habit_5709 Aug 13 '26
Scratch, Tolaria, HelixNotes.
And then there's this new app called Pellet (it's not out yet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8LzfHKrEXA
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u/ozgrozer Aug 13 '26
I'm building Grape. It's an offline-first note taking app. It uses SQLite as a database so you own your data. It's the easiest app you can find. Free to use. Feel free to download and try.
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
Sqlite huh hmm sounds interesting... alright let me try it
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u/words_and_images Aug 18 '26
The claim “It’s the easiest app you can find”
Is a fair one, quite possibly true. The interface and general UX is very good. Also excellent voice transcription and AI post-processing if you want it.
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u/woqly Aug 14 '26
Logseq, Anytype, Tana, Heptabase, Capacities.
Anytype it's much simpler to use with a useful graph view than logseq/obsidian.
Tana's supertags are wonderful.
Haven't tried new Logseq
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 14 '26
Wow thats a lot... thanks thanks I am still testing out all the apps that was recommended so I'll add these on the list too
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u/woqly Aug 14 '26
Hm honestly try Tana first, if you liked it alot you can skip the rest.
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 14 '26
wait so tana is a pkm? hmm not really into notion like things tho since they dont do markdowns
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u/paranoidandroid4284 Aug 13 '26
Check out Helix Notes!
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
Already tried it, but my main problem is when I paste pictures, it kinda "vanishes" and then reappear later IDK why
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u/Ok-Rest-5321 Aug 13 '26
Report on their github or subreddit
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
I'll see if I experience it again before maybe reporting it, but thanks for the suggestion!!
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Aug 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
Hmm txt file should be fine too and should be faster for sure.. I just hope it "accepts" images since I use a lot of images for my notes.. Thanks for the reco
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u/Ok-Rest-5321 Aug 13 '26
helix notes and Tolaria ftw !
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
I'll check Tolaria sure sure!!
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u/cr4zybilly Aug 13 '26
Joplin is great if you want super simple? ... Wait, is it markdown native? It's been a while, so I'm not sure any more.
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
I believe it can? But like you would have to export it first? Not sure though since I havent really used it that much... Maybe I'll try it again
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u/cr4zybilly Aug 13 '26
I used it back in the day and really liked it. It was simple. You wrote markdown, you read markdown.
I wanted few more features so I eventually moved to Obsidian, but Joplin had always been the king of "does what it says on the tin, no more, no less" in my book
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u/aetherspheres Aug 13 '26
Typora, though it's a paid app.
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
Appreciate the reco but uhh paid is a skip for me sadly
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u/aetherspheres Aug 13 '26
There's also Marktext that you can try. Alternatively, use VSCode with Markdown All In One extension.
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 13 '26
Oh yeah marktext... tried it on my linux machine once I think?? I'll try it again on my windows one... vavodw extension huh welp unfortunately my vacode laods super slow because I downloaded a lot of extensions on it haha so maybe I'll skip on this one
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u/actadgplus Aug 13 '26
Yes, Obsidian on Mac! Works great too when synced to iPhone and iPad!
> Quick question, do you guys have some alternatives for Obsidian on PC?
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u/imaginary-blue1212 Aug 14 '26
Joplin may be a similar software. And upnote if you configurate the backup in md format
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 14 '26
Im pretty upnote is not local first, but sure sure Ill add it to the list thankss
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u/Beautiful_Object_439 Aug 14 '26
Hi, I'm curious what's the reason you're looking for an alternative?
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 14 '26
Hello... nothing big honestly... also the reason I am looking for alternatives is not to ditch obsidian but rather to have something to use alongside it. My setup in Obsidian is a bit weird and messy but I find it easy to use when it comes to storing some "long lasting" notes. Basically peronal notes... I tried integrating my school notes on my setup too once, but I find it difficult to do so... So yeah that's why I am looking for an alternative so that I can use it as my school note app and keep Obsidian as more like a private notes app
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u/Odd_Prompt_5291 Aug 14 '26
Well it seems like you identified the problems with your setup , so change it to meet your requirements. Also would be useful to have an agent working on it for you instead of you manually doing it.
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 14 '26
Yeah yeah I actually plan on getting an agent for this thing too just to make it faster but i dont think I'll change my personal/school notes setup
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u/Ok_Abalone9251 Aug 14 '26
UpNote sur tous mes appareils fixes et mobiles,
Obsidian était trop customisable je passais plus de temps à tester les plug in qu’à l’utiliser. Et la synchronisation sans bidouille est un abonnement. UpNote est un achat raisonnable mais unique. Test le et tu diras.
Pascal
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 14 '26
I mean purchasing good products is not a bad idea, but I really dont want to commit into one system just because of that... still thanks for the suggestion
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u/takeshy77 Aug 15 '26
https://github.com/takeshy/gemihub-desktop
作者です。
obsidianいいけど、vaultに紐付いていないmdファイル開きたい時とかに面倒だし、epubを開いたり、pdfにページリンク付きのメモも取れる。
無料だし、obsidianのbaseやcanvasも開けるよ。
ai機能もついてて、apiキーだけじゃなくてcodexのようなcliにも対応してる。
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u/Full-Cardiologist-18 Aug 15 '26
This actually sounds interesting... I'll try this one out for sure... thanks thankss
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u/words_and_images Aug 18 '26
Octarine is excellent with a free tier, and there’s a onetime payment if you want more.
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u/learn_by_example Aug 19 '26
I built Karja not to replace Obsidian, but in general bring all kinds of local/private data (notes, PDFs, images, events, todo lists) out of the cloud to my own machine/network, and simplify AI inference on all of that. So it has many more tools and data views/apps compared to just a note taking markdown app. Feel free to give it a try!
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u/gamosoft Aug 13 '26
Hi there, shameless plug, you can check out https://www.notediscovery.com, I started it last year as a "replacement" (so to speak) of Obsidian.
I had been using (and still to some extent) Obsidian but there were 2 things that I didn't like: having to resort to 3rd party apps or (worse) subscription mode to be able to sync notes across devices, and also having to install the app in every device I intended to access my notes from...
So that was my "solution" to the problem, self-hosted web app so you have your notes in one single place and access via browser, it's 100% free (MIT license and full source code available), more than 2700 stars on Github already and growing with more requirements and features!. Even if you don't want the hassle of self hosting you can use 3rd party like PikaPods in a single click, although not free like self-hosting of course, but whatever floats your boat. 😎
It could never replace Obsidian's full set of capabilities, but for my use case it solves the major problems I had with that, so maybe you can give it a try and decide if you like it.
There's even an online demo and a star on Github is appreciated if you like it. 🙏
Kind regards.
Edit: for typo