I recently posted a toot that I might move away from using Obsidian and go back to Nota.

And I actually did.

There was nothing to migrate since Nota keeps everything in markdown format as well. All I had to do was 1) open the app, 2) select the folder saved in my iCloud, and 3) use it.

Some people asked why I'm moving away from obsidian. There are couple reasons.

Too many plugins

Currently there are about 1.5k plugins available in obsidian. Some of them are super useful, some are just really cool, and others which I don't even know what they're for.

This is the problem. I'm not saying plugins are wrong. But when things are available to you, you tend to utilize it. I'm not really good at stopping myself from plugin-shopping for hours.

So how do I stop myself from doing this? Move to an app where there's no plugin. That's Nota.

But Nota isn't completely plugin-free, because you can create a custom command using bash. I just created this simple unique-id generator using current date so that I can use it as a prefix for my permanent notes.

#!/bin/bash

# get document's unique id
date '+%y%m%d%H%M' | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy

I think this is little different than obsidian. Because, you have to make in on your own. There's much more friction than just searching and installing it (technically this is still possible by googling it or utilizing LLM but you get the idea).

Customization

When it comes to PKM or Second brain or Zettelkasten or whatever note taking/smart note system you trying to set up, making it look pretty is not the goal and you know that. But in obsidian, it's too easy to get in this bad habit of organizing and prettify-ing your note system. They even provide custom themes.

Once again, same as plugins, there's nothing wrong with the theme. It's just me who have to use different theme every now and then just because it's there.

In Nota, I think I can use css to customize some part of it but I'm not 100% sure. I haven't looked this up. But just looking at the settings and possible command options, I don't see anything to customize the theme, which is perfect for me.

Graphs

The graph view is probably the number one or two reasons why people started using obsidian. I was one of them.

Here's my current vault's graph. It's pretty cool... and now what?

I've read how people are using this graph, how people are getting benefits from it, and how it can be useful. But that's not me. At least, not with how I'm taking notes.

I've never looked at the graphs. Do I need it? Probably not.

Sync

I've never used obsidian sync. I simply used iCloud and it worked perfectly fine.

So, bye Obsidian

These are primary reasons why I moved to Nota. Nota is minimal, lightweight, and makes you do what you suppose to do.

I fully support them 😀

If you're looking for something light and minimal, why don't you give Nota a try?