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! 🌻
This app seems similar to logseq
But logseq doesn’t have the same limitations listed here.
Logseq does let you import markdown (uses markdown as its notes format by default also supports .org) and export to PDF and HTML.
As for syncing I just use syncthing to sync all my Notes and that works fine.
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 downloaded and tested it for a bit and it does look a bit too good to be true. The source code is licensed under AGPL, and the F-Droid app page didn’t show any anti-features. And I also really liked the app itself.
However, while it does enable self-host of the same data (and it’s pretty easy too. you can even self-host from your phone! I wish more note apps did this) and manual exporting/importing, the cloud syncing (even to a third-party server of your choice) is locked behind a paywall. While I do understand paying for a service to save my data, it does bother me that I can’t sync with my own servers, which should not require any service from their part.
The app also includes a login feature that lets you use a specific text-oriented Chinese social media (that also seems to be fully open source and AGPL licensed!). Honestly, I wouldn’t be bothered by it especially since it’s opt-in, and doesn’t seem to do anything with your notes unless logged-in. Though I don’t know how self-hostable it is, and even if it were, the app does not give me the option to enter my own server.
And to top it all off, it has a bullshit AI feature (that seems opt-in). I don’t think I need to explain why this is very icky.
Considering everything, it seems like an awesome app for people that use the specific social media it is optionally coupled with. But anyone that doesn’t and prefers to sync your data to a self-hosted server will be left without options. Also, you must consider that it apparently doesn’t seem to phone home, according to F-Droid, though it is very strange that the network, social media, and especially AI features are not mentioned at all as anti-features. So if you would want to be sure, I’d recommend you to read the source code and deduce yourself if it doesn’t phone anywhere you haven’t allowed to by default.
I personally wouldn’t use it myself, but if you trust it doesn’t phone home, don’t care about manually exporting and importing your data, and isn’t bothered by the weird network features, I’d say it’s a great notes app.
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.
Trilium? I don’t know your requirements are, but it’s what I use for about 3 years now. Self hosted sync server, browser or local client, encryption, and no third party services.
I’m aware. Maintenance mode, not dead.
I did try it ages ago, before having my own server. And at the time it was a bit early stages i think. But probably something I should revisit again now that it has had some time to age plus me getting a server for sync. Thanks!
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.
A github project that actually includes in the description screenshots of the app they want you to install??? That does look too good to be true.
Hahaha right!?
I use zim. Its fantastic!
Plus one for zim. No lock-in, cross platform, etc.
Could you provide a link please?
Thank you
Yeah I saw this yesterday when I was installing Heliboard. It looks interesting but I think I’m going to run with silverbullet next.
also looks like a good option
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.
It really looks too good to be true, but I think I’ll give it a try these days.
Looks like you can host the syncing yourself. That would put it above Obsidian for me assuming it supports templates and images as well.
Yeah just seen that too, even has an Unraid template too.
You can sync Obsidian yourself too, it’s just a bunch of files, so anything that’ll handle them works.
I have it syncing with nextcloud but I get permissions issues that prevent me from actually using it on android. I can only view my documents on my mobile devices. Wasn’t able to find a good solution to that.
I’m using syncthing, but I think I recall the sort of issue you mention. Android locks down cross-app access quite hard, but if you move the files to your SD card (or tge emulated one if you don’t have one) it acts as shared storage and your sync program and obsidian can both read and write to it. On my device, the path is
/storage/emulated/0/Documents/<whatever>DUDE. I had it on the SD card but in the other /storage/0000-0000/android/media path. Just changed it to the one you suggested and it’s working now. Thank you so much. I’ve been looking for an answer to that on and off for like 2 months
I still have to find something better than Orgzly Revived
Hmmm, dunno. Seems well made but also the web page seems kinda full of hype.
Thats the impression I got too.
Hmm:
“Does not support desktop and mobile application connections, only supports use on browsers”
Regarding Docker deployment. It’s unclear if the application package for Linux supports usage together with the apps because that is a needed feature for me, to have everything centrally stored but easily edited via phone, and from experience the browser experience tends to be rather miserable.
I’ll for sure test it out when I have the time though, looks pretty feature complete if a bit overboard for just note-taking. This is not OneNote, this is more like Confluence.
My dream is something that can handle both seamlessly, I want to both take quick notes and have them easily searchable and indexed automatically while also supporting structuring knowledge in pages and sub-pages with rich content support.
There is an app on F-droid but maybe it’s just a web wrapper
I’m going to keep this page open to see how the discussion develops throughout the day. This looks interesting and I might try it out. Thanks for highlighting it!
