Why Obsidian Won — Fifteen Years of Note Apps

Evernote was once my most frequently used app. Its slogan was “The Second Brain,” which could store your daily life and promote a “paperless” movement. Receipts, business cards, web pages, expenses, daily thoughts—everything was put into Evernote, and its powerful search function could retrieve the needed information at any time. Since 2008, I had accumulated a large amount of data in Evernote, but was it useful? Yes, Evernote did help me find records from 10 years ago when I moved. But no, because Evernote’s updated interface became slower, and as other platforms caught up and even surpassed its search capabilities, “The Second Brain” gradually became a data warehouse. Although it now has many new features, the closed cloud storage has become a concern, prompting me to seek a new platform. This post aims to explain why, after trying various options, I eventually chose Obsidian and the changes in mindset after using it.

Choices at Different Stages

Technological development and daily needs drove me to find suitable tools. From handwritten notes in middle school to Word and PowerPoint in college, to later cloud-based tools, two that left a deep impression were Circus Ponies Notebook (Pic) and TiddlyWiki.

Due to my habit of text-based notes, Circus Ponies Notebook’s tabbed structure made it easier for my brain to transition from paper to digital. Additionally, its synchronization between Mac and iPad (a not yet popular feature at the time) made me enjoy taking notes on different devices. TiddlyWiki had good features, but like other wikis, it was easy to get lost in endless links. With an Android phone and a Mac OS computer, cross-platform tools like Evernote and OneNote became the most frequently used software: Evernote for daily life’s “Second Brain,” and OneNote for study notes. Why allocate them this way? Because Evernote had upload limits and its editing and table functionalities were not powerful enough at the time, I kept my study notes in the familiar Microsoft environment.

By 2018-2019, Evernote’s reforms became unstable and unusable and its convenient but closed cloud storage pushed me to seek alternatives. The replacement needed to meet several requirements: cross-platform, reasonable monthly fees (free is better), suitable editing features (especially for tables), and the ability to import fifteen years of Evernote data. After trying Bear, Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, and Logseq, Evernote with added AI, task, and calendar features still aligned well with my habits, but its high monthly fees and closed cloud storage made me decide to leave the platform. I was not considering which app had the most features, but which one could let me use it comfortably for the next ten or fifteen years.

Why Obsidian

Four reasons, in order of importance:

• Files in Your Own Hands—Obsidian’s notes are pure Markdown files stored in folders I control. There are no export tools, no closed databases, and no company roadmaps between me and my notes. I can decide where to store them and don’t need to rely on Obsidian to read my files.

• Suitable Linking and Outline Features—Markdown files are simple, but Obsidian can link notes together. Due to Evernote’s limitations, I had to split long documents into multiple files. Adding headings in Markdown allows easy navigation through a long document using an outline.

• Plugins to Supplement Core Needs—A large community plugin ecosystem allows the software to adapt to workflows, rather than the other way around.

What Migration Truly Taught Me

The migration process was not smooth, and the final route was exporting from Evernote, converting to Markdown via Bear, and then importing into Obsidian. Although I started using Obsidian Sync from the beginning and rely mostly on basic features with a few plugins, it still took over two months to get used to the change. These two months were not just about changing tools or habits, but also about changing my mindset towards collecting data. Transferring over a decade of notes revealed many surprises and made me rethink the role of the “Second Brain.” Previously, I stored information without revisiting it, and it remained just information, not knowledge. The root of the problem was not Evernote, but my motivation for storing data: due to Evernote’s convenient search and capture features, I had gotten used to casually adding data to Evernote. When switching to Obsidian, I added a layer of consideration about the impact of each piece of data. Changing the habit of collecting data greatly increased its usability.

Three Years Later (2026)

Over the past few years, I have occasionally tried different plugins, but I mainly use basic features. The biggest change has been the use of “Daily Notes.” Combining Daily Notes with the Dataview plugin effectively organizes daily fragments into useful records. Additionally, Markdown notes make me worry less about being “trapped” in a single platform. The idea of “files in your own hands” became a theme here; for the same reason, the entire blog moved to my own hardware. But that is another story.