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I just cannot understand the appeal of these browser based note taking apps. Notion, Obsidian, Outline? Is it the collaboration feature? Why not just use Google Docs or equivalent?

For notes, I don't see the appeal of having a browser interface. I just put my notes in a text file. No protocol, just search for text strings or text tags. If I need hierarchical organization, I use directories. What am I missing out on?




> What am I missing out on?

1. Non-technical colleagues.

2. Easy and real-time collaboration.

3. Slickness, mixing of multi-media, etc. This is related to 1.

Not arguing against your preference, just answering the "why".


I am currently in the process of switching from using Obsidian to manage local markdown notes/files to using Notion for at least my personal project tracking. I have 2 reasons.

1. Notions "Databases" are easier to use, edit, and manage than any similar setup I could figure out locally. And they have inbuilt integrations so you can sync things like Github/Gitlab/Jira, etc directly into your docs. I highly recommend setting up a personal project inside Notion to try it out.

2. Less important but still useful, the collaboration is good to use with my partner. We can have shared household notes/saved info/tasks/etc all in one place very easily using it.


Have you tried TriliumNext? It doesn't have collaboration for editing but sharing is built in,

It lets you structure your notes in a way that's reminiscent of object oriented programming (you've got templates to define types, inheritance of attributes to instantiate and specialize them, etc). I have hierarchies of hundreds/thousands of notes that for all intent and purposes are as good as Notion's Databases


> I just cannot understand the appeal of these browser based note taking apps. Notion, Obsidian, Outline? Is it the collaboration feature? Why not just use Google Docs or equivalent?

Google docs is also browser based? And obviously not foss or self-hostable.

Are you saying "why does Google have docs app in addition to a note taking app?" (Google docs vs Google Keep, Microsoft Word vs Microsoft OneNote etc?)


I'm saying that there are already collaboration tools like Google Docs or whatever. I don't see how managing notes in such a tool beats having some text files. Working with a browser kind of sucks for write operations. It's fine or even good for reading. But writing into a browser goes through obscure layers so that, what? it can go into a database? Files on disk solve this issue. Grep over files or even a more robust index of searchable data solves the findability problem. There can be other sidecar tools to support discoverability, but I'm just focused on the HCI/UX of a browser for text entry and editing, and find it really poor compared to a text editor with files that you control and can run other tools over.


But google docs is also a web browser app?


Yes, I'm saying that if you need collaboration, sure, but if all you want is personal note management then I don't see the appeal over plain text files.


  I don't see the appeal of having a browser interface.
You can thank work-locked machines removing any app-level flexibility. I'm not signing into any google work account on my personal phone.

Browser level access allows for multi-device multi-context (personal/work) access.

Also google docs/drive is deeply unusable when trying to organize mental spaces.


> I don't see the appeal of having a browser interface. I just put my notes in a text file.

Great until you need an image or more than the simplest table, as examples.


Hmm, I find it easy enough to open a link or even embed an image in a text editor.


I mean, when one text document gets to long, moving sections elsewhere and linking to them.

How do you embed an image? ASCII art?




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