Recently stumbled upon this note-taking app called SiYuan, but it honestly looks a bit too good to be true(?). Has anyone here used it or got any experience with it? Trying to replace Obsidian is a difficult task, and I’ve been through almost all note-taking apps there are out there, however this one looks fairly similar.
Link to Repo;
https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan
Link to project;
Looks dope, but it seems like the Docker container has some very unfortunate limitations:
- Does not support desktop and mobile application connections, only supports use on browsers
- Export to PDF, HTML and Word formats is not supported
- Import Markdown file is not supported
This kinda makes it unusable for me. :/
Edit: I just installed it and … you have to login and pay for a subscription in order to sync between devices. RIP
Edit 2: It’s not a subscription, just a one-time payment. Might be worth it for some!
Thanks for taking the time to investigate a bit and sharing it! 🌻
Export to PDF, HTML and Word formats is not supported
Their readme says otherwise. https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan?tab=readme-ov-file#-features
It literally says it in their readme’s docker section: https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan?tab=readme-ov-file#docker-hosting
Limitations
- Does not support desktop and mobile application connections, only supports use on browsers
- Export to PDF, HTML and Word formats is not supported
- Import Markdown file is not supported
I’ve tried it on and off. It appears to have more potential than obsidian in some ways, but obsidian’s plain text files are hard to beat1. If you’re willing to put in more effort into your notetaking, especially if you’re a programmer, it may be worth it. It has nowhere near the plugin ecosystem at the moment obviously, not being as popular.
Compared to logseq, which I haven’t tried super extensively, resource usage and performance are much better, on par with obsidian.
Also a lot of the interface and plugins are in chinese, so if you don’t read that it can be a bit of a pain.
[1] siyuan is markdown too but but it’s stored in a database, not your filesystem.
[1] siyuan is markdown too but but it’s stored in a database, not your filesystem.
This is a hard pass for me, then. At the moment I’m using Silverbullet, which uses plain markdown files which I can also edit with my preffered editor in CLI.
Thanks for the input! The fact that it doesn’t store the files in plain md files makes it a no go for me personally.
Yeah I saw this yesterday when I was installing Heliboard. It looks interesting but I think I’m going to run with silverbullet next.
How come?
Honestly I’ve been thinking about this and I think I might try to mix the two. I really like silverbullet’s built in query feature and being able to bake the results into the note with a command. That seems better than how dataview does it and might work well for automating my day-to-day file handling.
I use zim. Its fantastic!
Could you provide a link please?
Thank you
What a joke - calling itself privacy first with one hand while offering openAI integration with the other
well if it’s not enabled by default and not used when the user does not want to - it is privacy first, with optional non-privacy. no?
Even having it there tells le that privacy is not a primary focus.