I am currently using Obsidian. I like it; it is great. The graph is a bit of a gimmick but very rewarding. The formatting is easy. The search can be great and powerful, but Markdown can also be a letdown sometimes; it is just so limiting sometimes.

I think Obsidian is almost boring. It works, and my main gripe is syncing it to my phone. I have tried using Syncthing, but I often get clashes with versions of notes or even lose notes, even when using Syncthing versioning.

But then there is Notion. Let me first say, I have not used Notion at all. I made an account, saw all the great stuff, especially the database feature and all the APIs, but something felt off.

Of course, I researched the privacy of Notion and realised it is a complete dumpster fire.

My work is confidential; I really can’t use something like Notion. But then, for my personal stuff, I also don’t want AI to be trained on it or used for marketing to me or on me.

Are there alternatives to Notion that someone can recommend to me?

  • Tundra@lemmy.ml
    20·
    1 month ago

    I believe you will happy with anytype:

    https://anytype.io/

    the source code is made public and your notes/database are encrypted by default. You can even sync locally from your phone/laptop without internet.

    The only two negatives I have found are that the mobile app has 1 tracker embedded into it (amplitude) and you dont have a choice about your encrypted data syncing to their servers.

    • scintilla@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      6·
      1 month ago

      This looks amazing thank you for this. Never would have thought about switching before I saw this.

    • idoit@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 month ago

      Looks cool, but what do you mean about encrypted data syncing to their servers? Why is that necessary if there is a local sync feature?

    • Angular@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      1 month ago

      This looks amazing, thank you very much!

      • mmhmm@lemmy.ml
        2·
        1 month ago

        Support if you like it and can. I use it everyday and can’t say enough nice things. They have a great telegram channel that is very active

    • tkw8@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      That is something that a pihole can sort completely, no?

    • Heals@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      1 month ago

      If you’re a little into self-hosting and can follow a readme on how to start a Docker container then you can even get around having any of your data on their servers and use a private sync server :)

    • Angular@lemmy.mlOP
      31·
      1 month ago

      Joplin is a classic and was my goto before Obsidian

  • whatsgoingdom@rollenspiel.forum
    8·
    1 month ago

    Not really unfortunately. I use Joplin with my notes living on my nextcloud at the moment, but its still not quite what I’m looking for. Notesnook might be another one worth looking at. I think you can also self host it, but I haven’t tried it yet.

    https://notesnook.com/

  • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
    81·
    1 month ago

    Logseq can be run locally (without any “cloud”) and is free & open source.

    • Loucypher@lemmy.ml
      4·
      1 month ago

      But considerably different compared to Obsidian in a lot of small ways. It was a deal breaker for me

    • ctenidium@lemmy.world
      41·
      1 month ago

      I came here to recommend Logseq. It has quite some plugins for different use cases, too.

  • AntY@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 month ago

    Org-roam for emacs is an alternative. It doesn’t have a phone application though.

  • knfrmity@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    I write notes in markdown (I’m not attached to any particular editor) and push them to a self hosted git server. Git therefore also helps handle any merge conflicts between devices.