Why I Switched — A Deep Dive into Roam vs. Obsidian
I switched from Roam to Obsidian.
As as soon as I discovered Roam Research, I was blown away. It's exactly what I wanted, but I didn't know I needed it.
The bidirectional linking is the difference between Roam, Notion, and Evernote.
This is the most prominent feature in Roam Research and Obsidian — sorting through unlinked references and seeing where you mentioned your page's topic in other areas. That is how original ideas and thoughts form.
It can be developed in a much more structured way that makes you such a creative genius as you are.
I've been using Roam Research for years, and when Obsidian came out, I requested beta access; I got it & poked around a little bit.
However, I was not too fond of a few things about Roam Research, so I wanted to keep my eye on it to see how those would develop the community and the people around that would form.
So let's jump to why I switched from Roam research to Obsidian.
Before I get started, I want to say they’re both incredible apps, they’re both compelling, and I don’t think one is better than the other.
This is Why I Switched.
The three main reasons I switched from Roam to Obsidian are
- The people
- Privacy
- The future of the app and the notes that are taken in it.
1. The people.
Culture and the community are essential to me. Therefore, I want to support a product that encourages helpfulness and humility.
There are some interactions that I've seen with the Roam community that just rubbed me the wrong way.
Many responses to people asking questions on Slack or Twitter were just not very kind or helpful.
I'm not saying this is how everyone is, but it seems this is the culture that users like and I don't.
The Obsidian community has been great so far. A public discord channel encourages question-asking with responses from various people, no matter who asked it.
I've had multiple positive interactions with their Twitter account and support channels. Just an all-around great community of people who genuinely want to help others take better notes and learn from them.
In short, community and culture are significant to me, and I enjoy Obsidians more.
2. Privacy.
Your file= your files.
All the notes I take are locally stored on my machine in simple, plain text files. No servers, no cloud, and all are private.
Although this wasn't a major driving force behind my decision, it was a factor.
The downside is that your notes can't be accessed if you aren't on your machine. Of course, there are workarounds with backups to carry from laptop to laptop, but Roam did have a great way to access notes from a mobile device or your work or friend's laptop.
3. The future of Obsidian.
As I mentioned, every page is locally stored in plain text files on your machine. What this means for the long term is that if Thanos snaps his finger again and the devs disappear, you'll still have access to your notes.
Why and What Does Obsidian Lack?
In all honesty, Obsidian lacks a lot of things.
Reference Blocks.
You can't reference blocks, which I know is essential.
And one of the things that the founder loves to talk about is the fact that you can reference blocks, and he talks about how big of a deal they are in Roam, and I believe they are.
It's an elegant feature, but Obsidian doesn't have that.
Embedding Blocks.
You can't embed blocks in Obsidian, so you can't nest blocks underneath each other, or you can't embed blocks from a different page.
Page as a Markdown File.
Obsidian treats each page as a complete markdown file.
So whenever you make a new page in Obsidian, it makes a new markdown file with that name on your laptop. Each page is referenced to the other, unlike Roam, where each block is its sort of information, which can be accessed solely on its own.
You can't do that in Obsidian.
Working with References.
In Obsidian, you cannot filter, link, or unlink references. I know that is a massive deal to some people.
If they have a ton of unlinked references on a page and want to filter those out, you can't do that in Obsidian.
To get around that, I do command or control+F, find the word or words I'm looking for, and then go through it.
Kind of a lengthy process, not as ideal, but this is just what Obsidian lacks that Roam has.
Honestly, the community is a big reason I switch. I want to support a company in a culture that I believe in and that values humility and inclusiveness. I think Obsidian does that well.
And as most people have said, shout out to Benji on discord for saying it so well.
“To be fair, Roam and Obsidians serve very different purposes, and there is sometimes little comparing an MVP with a sports car. Both our cars have wheels and doors and take you from one place to another, but saying one is better than the other doesn’t make much sense.”
I'm not saying Obsidian is better than Roam research.
I'm simply explaining why I switched from Roam to Obsidian and some of the things I found more attractive about Obsidian than I did Roam.
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