I’ve gone through a lot of notes apps in my time. I’ve used SimpleNotes, Joplin, Obsidian, and Apple Notes. My requirements are relatively simple: notes must be fast and easy to enter, I need to be able to search through them expeditiously, I need to be able to organize them by nested folder structure (e.g., work > meetings > clientX), I need to be able to edit them offline, and I need them to sync between my desktop (MacOS) and my phone (iOS). I need them to be encrypted if the notes are sitting on someone else’s server.

There are a bunch of other features I’d really like to have too: ordinary text files, easily exportable to a portable format (pure text ideally, markdown acceptable, Word or PDF as a last resort), local encryption or password protection of notes, versioning. I’d like the program to be free or a one-time payment; I don’t want to be stuck with yet another subscription. Other ideal-but-not-absolutely-necessary features would be scriptability, support for “to-do” style lists, F/OSS.

For various reasons, every year or two, I get frustrated with the note program I’m using, and painfully switch. Most recently, I went from Obsidian to Apple Notes.

Apple, however, has been annoying me. They’re stuffing AI and “Apple Intelligence” into everything, and I’m old, and cranky, and believe in the benefits of human creation, and I just don’t want it. I want a platform that respects my wishes rather than tells me what’s best for me. I know, I know, Apple has always had their own opinion of what I wanted, but for many years it was close enough that I was willing to go with it. But the mandatory AI is crossing the Rubicon.

Despite the fact that Linux ecosystem source code is now widely being written using AI, I still have the ability to turn it off on the user side. But if I switch to a Linux desktop, I have a new requirement for my notes: they need to be cross platform. (Also, dunno what I can do about switching to a non-AI-ridden phone. Maybe it’s time for a dumb phone.)

Anyway, I’m moving back towards Obsidian.

I’ve always used a shared filesystem approach to syncing Obsidian: my “vault” was stored on in an iCloud directory. This isn’t perfect, but works so long as I’m careful not to edit on two devices at the same time or the same note when devices are offline. However, if I go cross-platform, iCloud will no longer be viable. I could probably move to Dropbox — there are clients available for Linux. The Obsidian app on the iPhone can access that through additional plugins, but then I’m beholden to yet another 3rd party service. Maybe it’s time to install my own file-share/sync.

I’m currently working on setting up a VPS with Seafile. If all goes well, I can try syncing Obsidian across platforms using this Seafile community server instance and the Seafile-sync plugin. I’ll report back here if I get anywhere.