Why I'm Moving Back to Notion from Obsidian for Personal Notes

DISCLOSURE: If you buy through affiliate links, I may earn a small commission. (disclosures)

I tried switching to Obsidian as my daily driver PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) system for 6 weeks but I've now decided to move back to Notion.

Here's why.

Why I'm moving back to Notion

Obsidian has no built-in collaboration features

I wanted to share a note with my wife comparing my work's insurance offerings but that proved impossible via Obsidian itself. I'd have to copy / paste to another service - Notion, GDocs, Email - and send it that way.

With Notion, I can share the note directly to a given email address and only have that account view it. Or I can make it public and have everyone view it. This is just not something Obsidian supports, and likely never will.

I didn't think I needed this collaboration feature and for 95% of docs I write I don't but for those 5% it is very useful.

Obsidian handles media poorly - files, images, etc.

It seems weird saying this because Obsidian is just files and media is just files so it seems like everything should just work. But IMO the way things like images are handled and embedded in docs is subpar.

It makes sense - Obsidian is offloading a lot of the parsing, playback to the OS - but I was looking for a system that was a bit more ergonomic in how I can display and manage media.

With Notion, I just don't have to think about it.

Got a screenshot? Paste it in.
Got a PDF / doc? Upload it.
Got a video? Pop it in there.

It just works and, theoretically, you get unlimited uploads.

Obsidian requires a LOT of customization to be usable

I've previously written about how much tinkering Obsidian requires to even be usable. At first this was fine and I found it kind of fun - like building my own website. But eventually it started to get frustrating.

"Ugh here's another thing that doesn't quite work like I want it to". Then go search for a workaround, usually involving a plugin install and some settings tweaks. Welp now it works on my desktop but some of these settings aren't getting synced over to my mobile app and laptop. So I need to go retweak this thing.

And that's if you find a plugin that actually does what you want it to.

I was finding myself trying to replicate some of the ergonomic features Notion has but just couldn't find a plugin that actually did that. After 3 plugins I started to feel that my whole setup was getting unwieldy. And if I pursued it further, I'd basically need to write and upkeep my own plugins which just didn't seem worth it for me.

Some examples of things I'd like:

A template for new notes in a base - this is possible with Templater and other plugins but the setup is annoying
Templates shouldn't have to live in a templates folder - I like to colocate my files and templates cause it keeps things organized but I could NOT find any method to do this via base Obsidian or plugins so resorted to just copy / pasting files to achieve what I wanted.
Ability to sync the collapse state across my devices - This is a big deal for me because I use collapses liberally as a way to hide info but still make it available when useful. I access my notes regularly from 4 different devices so the loss of collapse state is very annoying.

Notion comes ready to go for most things out-of-the-box which meant less tinkering and more writing for me.

Notion has a superior editing experience

A lot of people are likely going to come for me for this but I personally think Notion comes with a superior editing experience out of the box. It does have its slow parts in terms of searching and loading files initially but once they're open they're rarely a bottleneck for me.

I particularly like a few quality of life things like * to turn a line into a bullet, [] for making a checkbox, and > for a dropdown. Of course Obsidian has hotkeys you can add but these little features make writing on both computer and mobile just that much nicer.

Another example is how blocks of code get indented in lists. I found the format in Obsidian to be atrocious and it often forced me out of a list just to copy in a block of code and have it be readable. I do this a lot for my software notes so this became annoying fast.

Things like copy/pasting links and turning text into links aren't built-in so I had to reach for a plugin. Not the worst thing in the world but still another papercut.

These aren't that big of a deal on the surface but they're examples of papercuts I ran into regularly. With time I'd get used to them and things would be fine but with Notion so recently on my mind, these paper cuts really stacked up and started weighing on me.

I prefer web interfaces for knowledge work

This is super subjective but I realized that I prefer notes and references to live in a web interface (I even use Slack via web, not native app). This is largely due to my workflow, how I like to organize tabs, and hotkeys I've become accustomed to but I find that if they're all web tabs I can easily organize them in groups in Chrome and know where everything is / how to get to it.

You can do similar things with desktop workspaces and obviously you can tab through your open windows but there's smth to seeing all your open tabs in one window and visually clicking back to them that I like. I also like that my bookmarks can all live in one place and my pages are often searchable via browser bar w/o first having to open the app.

With Obsidian being local first (and therefore running as a native app), I found myself tabbing through both browser and app windows to find stuff. This is fine but broke my habit and slowed me down.

Web has its problems but I think it's one of the best UI technologies we've come up with and I love how I can move tabs around, bookmark them, and see where everything is. For me and my workflows, having information tabs up in web is a must-have. That's just how I like to work.

What I'm taking with me from Obsidian

I don't think this 6 week experiment was a waste and if anything it showed me a lot of things I was both missing and taking for granted in my original Notion setup.

Missing:

Simple workflows and bases - Obsidian has a much simpler database system which forced me to build simpler workflows and I found that SUPER refreshing. I was writing a lot more temporary, rough docs just because it was so easy to spin up new ones and start writing. So I'm simplifying many of my Notion databases to be simple lists with statuses.
An organization system for general knowledge - I was largely using Notion to take notes on my projects and life systems. But I noticed in the general PKM communities that many people are using it to help grow general knowledge. I hadn't thought of doing that myself but think it's a cool idea so I've built myself a simple "Knowledge Garden" that's a mix of the zettelkasten and digital gardening methods.

Taking for granted:

Web means you can access knowledge anywhere, no apps required. This means I don't need to install an app, can access via my browser, and any new device I'm on has it by default. It also means other people can access it in similar ways which is a useful thing in 2025 where most everything is digital.
Notion workflows are powerful. They're so powerful that you can easily overcomplicate things. But the beauty of this is that it's super flexible for whatever you want to build. So you can just uncomplicate it.

So I'm moving back to Notion and I'm happy about it. I like Obsidian and generally am a fan of all these alternative note taking apps - I think notes / writing is super important for humans and love to see innovation in this space (see Why I Write Online). I could see myself switching to some other app if a better one comes around or Notion continues down the VC enshittification process. But for now, I'm happy with Notion so that's where I'll take my notes.

If you liked this post you might also like:

Want more like this?

The best way to support my work is to like / comment / share for the algorithm and subscribe for future updates.