this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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Privacy

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days 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?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days 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 :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This looks amazing, thank you very much!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days 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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Joplin is a classic and was my goto before Obsidian

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days 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/

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

This looks great, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Looks sick!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

I use and recommend crypt.ee

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

I know of these 2. The second i have been using and is very nice.

https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy

https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

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