The “original” tool (that I know of) is known as Roam Research, however, it’s a web only tool currently, and it’s a paid service of $15/month. This makes it slightly undesirable as I would prefer if it’s something that I could potentially migrate/export out of the system. I also wish that there exist a free option that I can try out to see if this second brain business is something that I really want.
I checked out 8 different not taking tools to see what works for me and compare across them.
Candidates
- Obsidian
- Foam
- Roam Research
- Walling
- Relanote
- Remnote
- Amplenote
- TiddlyWiki
These are the note taking apps that I’ve found across the web that has at least some mass of users for it to be worth trying out.
Shortlisted
Obsidian
Pros
- It’s under heavy active development, the user base is growing
- Markdown file based, can be synced with any cloud/NAS you want
- Supports all desktop platforms
- Has graph view
- Style customizable through CSS
- Can link to headings
- Free! There are paid sync plans but I don’t need it
Cons
- No mobile app
- Unable to link to block of notes, only headers
- Still in beta
- Cannot run from within Windows WSL2 natively (folder cannot link)
Foam
Pros
- Markdown file based, can be synced with any cloud/NAS you want
- Built on Visual Studio Code (all desktop platforms)
- Has graph view
- Comes with VSC niceties (themes, shortcuts, etc)
- Can be ran from Windows WSL2
- Free!
Cons
- No mobile app
- Cannot link to sub headers or blocks, only articles
- Still in beta
Walling
Pros
- Beautiful interface, similar to notion
- Has collaboration features
- Designed as a wall of information for visualization
- Has AI supported search for notes/images
- Has a free plan to test things out (but won’t be enough)
- The graphs seems to be auto generated without me having to explicitly link to another block
Cons
- not markdown file based
- it’s really $4/month if I want to use it properly
Rejected
- Roam Research: extremely powerful, probably the most feature rich of all but it’s not cheap, plus it’s only web.
- Relanote: seems extremely easy to use, but only web app for now, there are plans for all platforms but as of now, it seems to be an extremely early WIP product
- TiddlyWiki: powerful wiki like tool, extensible with TiddlyMap for generating graphs. However, I’m just not a fan of the interface and it doesn’t use markdown files.
- Remnote: more of a memorizing tool, you can link between concepts but there are no graphs and it USP is more for flash cards.
- Amplenote: mobile first, looks beautiful, but it isn’t what I’m looking for, unable to build a second brain with a hierarchical type of note taking app.
Conclusion
I decided to go with Obsidian after trying it out for the research of the tools as well as for writing this article.
- It has pretty much all the features that I am looking for
- It’s free
- I want to keep VS Code separate from something like this so that it’s easier to manage my windows and work plugins.
- Customisable themes
- The interface has been extremely responsive