I have a goal in 2025 of reducing the number of subscriptions that parasitize my bank account. Towards that end I searched for an alternative to Evernote, a note taking app that I used to keep track of everything from financial information to bike tire sizes to combinations for locks. Sometimes it’s handy to have this information both on your laptop and your phone but I became disenchanted with Evernote over the years due to the yearly cost.

Thanks to the YouTube algorithm I came across a flock of what I’d call “rise and grind” life optimizer bros pushing a program called Obsidian. While I may not vibe with their (atomic?) habits, these dudes were right about Obsidian. While it took many hours of tutorials to get it to do the things I needed, I’ve been impressed with the results with a few caveats I’ll get to. And Obsidian is free for non-commercial use.

Use Cases
So far I’ve used Obsidian to:

• Create a list of books I’ve read and books that I want to read.
• Keep track of movies that I’d like to see or have already viewed.
• Clip web articles to read later.
• Keep track of the aforementioned random bits of info, for instance, when I pick up a heater filter at the hardware store and need to remember the size.

Graph view from example on web.

One of the features that I did not expect to use but has ended up being transformative for me is the graph view, which shows, visually, connections between notes. It seemed like a gimmick until I used it to integrate two related sets of information for a project I’m working on. Immediately, I started to notice connections that I hadn’t seen in the spreadsheet I had been working from. The graph view also seemed to, unexpectedly, affirm some of the ideas in the Fredric Jameson book I’m reading now, The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present, especially the importance of contextual relationships in understanding information.

My book list made with a plugin that searches a book catalog and creates my own personal Goodreads.

A lot of people use Obsidian for daily note taking but I prefer a pen and paper diary for this. If you prefer a computer I think it would be great for this purpose and you can even integrate your notes with a calendar. Obsidian is highly customizable if you’re willing to sift through documentation.

There’s a few downsides. Obsidian makes heavy use of user contributed plugins. Some are great and some cause instability. I also had some trouble at first sharing information across my laptop and iPhone but managed to get it working using my iCloud. Obsidian offers a paid cloud based storage sync option but that involves a subscription which, as I said at the beginning of this post, I’m trying to avoid. I’d also suggest going with the official documentation for Obsidian and its plugins not the aforementioned YouTube tech influencer bros, because if the video isn’t up to date you can run into problems.

My movie list made using a plugin that grabs images and descriptions from IMDB.

Perhaps the best feature is that the files Obsidian creates are .md markdown files, plain text files that can be read by any computer. If Obsidian goes out of business all my files will still be readable now and in the future. If you’re jumping ship from Evernote, there’s a handy plugin to convert your notes to .md files.

Alternatives
Obsidian is far from the only note taking program out there. Zettlr is one that I’ve heard is more stable, likely easier to get started on, but has fewer options. Wikipedia has a long comparison table of note taking software on Wikipedia.

If all you want to do is generate interactive graphs and are comfortable with a command line interface on your terminal app, Cosma is impressive. The Cosma documentation is so well written that, if you go through it patiently, you’ll have a better grasp of what’s “under the hood” of your operating system, another goal of mine in 2025.