###Update###

I tried a bit of Notesnook. While it wasnt bad it didnt quite fit the expectation that obsidian created for me for what I want. Maybe it was user error but I honestly can’t say what specific aspect bothered me.
For now I decided to stay with what I have experience witg and bought a year of Obsidian-sync for 1 Remote-Vault

Thanks to everyone that suggested me solutions to my really specific problem. I appreciate that and I love(d) the discouse I seemingly sparked in this post.
Please continue commenting. Maybe someone else still hasnt found their solution yet :)

Original Post:

Hello fellow lemmy users, for the lack of a better fitting community I hope my request for help fits here the best.

I am a bit of a scatter-brain, have some notes in Google Keep, OneNote, Obsidian and in GitHub or other places. This is partially multiplied by splitting my work stuff with my home stuff.

What I like about every app I use so far

  • OneNote: I like the way I can write on something like a canvas. Very useful if the note does fit the general theme of the page but not at the exact position. Also helps by utilizing the big space of a horizontal monitor. Also it now sports a very good mobile editor.
  • Obsidian: So easy to backlink between notes and I love the graph view. I also like the extension “code styler” which lets me format inline code blocks with syntax highlighting (e.g.: `{powershell icon} Get-ChildItem -Path C:\Path\To\Folder -Filter XYZ*`).
    I like to learn scripting but I also use obsidian for RL-stuff and technical non-code like keeping track of configs, settings, wishlists etc.
  • Google Keep: I bastardize the check-box feature to keep track of (online) shop orders. Mostly the only reason is that checked items get hidden in a collapsed section

    Any other program that let’s me to that (even with plugin/extension) is a valid replacement candidate

What I dislike:

  • OneNote:
    • Quite difficult to link between notes (unsupported on mobile)
    • Limited to 1 folder deep notes. Currently work around that by using the horizontal space or multi notes.
    • A bit clunky to edit bigger notes
    • By microsoft.
  • Obsidian:
    • No native way to have everything on a server outside of using the obsidian-sync service for $4 or the community plugin which requires me to use some novel type of db called couch-db (ugh, another service to keep updated/troubleshoot). I can stomach the $4 but am limited to only one vault which I don’t really like.
  • Google Keep:
    • Google
    • No real way to have everything backed up. Only use it for quick notes or for my shipment list. Everything else is probably exported to Obsidian/OneNote if I feel like doing house-keeping.

How I currently manage/store my files:

  • Right now I use
  • OneNote which is stored on OneDrive (I like how Outlook (classic) works and I got 1TB of cloud storage),
  • Obsidian which syncs with the plugin “remotely sync” to my OneDrive folder.
  • Google Keep: Dunno. Probably some account storage on google

What I want:

  • A primarily server-side setup or with a native sync feature that works like on OneNote: The true source is my server or the cloud, the client only streams/caches the data locally. I have no problem with individual markdown files.
    I just dislike the general need to sync them manually with external tools like syncthing.
    I already have a good backup solution on my main server and secondary server (For the curious: Veeam backup and replication that backs my proxmox VMs). No need to manage another set of backups. Another reason I want everything in one spot as I already have everything scattered.
  • A tree view of my notes like obsidian and OneNote does. Plus point if the app can even do sections like OneNote does.
  • (Optional) A way change-log of the edits done. Some apps do it by implementing git or have a very rudimentary way to manage that
  • Mobile/desktop companian app: PWA is okay but I would probably miss out on the caching feature. I would prefer an actual (android) app on my phone. Same for Windows.

What I found so far but have issues so far:

  • silverbullet: Server-side but seems to miss the side bar with the tree view (which can probably be added by another extension). Seems like the best candidate so far
  • Joplin: Seems alright to use but I can’t use callouts which (to me) is mandatory to use with coding/scripting tasks.
  • Obsidian: Fits best of all I found but I dislike the $4. But still miles better as the former option which was (i believe) $15 monthly
  • BookStack: I bit limited how it manages the change-log. Seems okay
  • Outline: No way to sync it without paying beyond manual sync. Didnt try it out much but I like how it looks.
  • Logseq: Same issues as with obsidian: Paid sync. Didnt look much beyond
  • Joplin: Sufficient but no callouts :(
  • Trilium Notes: Maintenance mode. Not a deal-breaker but I don’t want to migrate something that could maybe die :/

Thanks for reading the wall of text and I wish you a good start into the year of 2025. ✌️

  • @NibodhikaEnglish
    2•4 days ago

    Let me give you an example, I have a page with this:

     ```template
 | Name | Keywords |
 |-----------|-----------------|
 {{#each {recipe}}}
 | [[{{name}}]] | {{keywords}} |
 {{/each}}
\ ```

    Then each recipe page has a header, so for example if I have a file named Recipes/Steak.md with the content:

    ---
tags: recipe
keywords: beef easy
---

# Ingredients 

Yadda yadda yadda...

    So that table gets populated with all of the recipes wherever they are and I can add other columns or info there. It’s very neat and customizable.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      1•4 days ago

      Looks very cool to automate but also a high learning curve for someone just starting out with scripting ;)
      Atm probably not for me.

      • @NibodhikaEnglish
        2•4 days ago

        No scripting involved in the above example though.

        • @[email protected]OPEnglish
          1•3 days ago

          Nah, I mean the how it’s written looks close to a for-loop.
          Right now this would require me to pay active concentration to write and utilize something like this vs just writing in markdown as I have already memorized part of the syntax.

          Don’t get me wrong though, this is very good and impressive to automate.
          I am a fan on how MS Word automatically creates the table of content, complete with formatting when just configuring the formatting correctly for the levels. This basically blows it out of the water.

          • @NibodhikaEnglish
            2•3 days ago

            In that sense it is a bit of scripting, it’s a templating language similar to Jinja, so you put things you want to display between {{ }}, for example {{name}} will get rendered as the content of the name variable. [[ ]] is the way Silverbullet habgles links, so [[Something]] is a link to the file Something.md, so [[ {{ name }} ]] is a link to the file with the name from the variable.

            Also that’s because I wanted a custom view, a very similar thing could be done with:

            \```query
recipe
\```

            BTW, you can have a table of contents on Silverbullet by just putting a block named toc, i.e. ```toc and closing it on the next line.