Switcher 2026: The Quest for a Notion Replacement ⭐

I use Notion every day, but I’ve also been trying to replace this “everything app” with something else for years. This has proven unworkable, at least for me. But I keep trying. Here’s where I’m at circa early 2026.

Figuring out what you need

When it comes to Notion alternatives, there are two obvious points. The same alternatives–Obsidian, Joplin, and Anytype typically–seem to always emerge at or near the top of recommendation lists. And there are a ton of Notion alternatives out there, which makes this kind of thing difficult. It’s almost as diverse a set of choices as are Linux distribution choices.

But you can fine-tune the choices by knowing what you want. In my case, I like and now require that I can use Markdown syntax while writing notes. And while the sidebar-based organization of notes doesn’t scale well in my opinion, which can make finding or just navigating to specific notes tedious, it is what it is, and I’m not really aware of a better approach. And though the issues I have with Notion are small and today aren’t getting in my way, I do have some concerns. And they can be clearly stated.

• Notion is a black box that you sign into to access your workspaces and notes. I would prefer for each note to be stored as an individual Markdown file that could be opened immediately in the app of my choosing when desired.
• Notion doesn’t offer a real offline mode. I would prefer to save the files underlying this thing locally so that they could be synced to the cloud storage of my choice, whether it’s Synology Drive, OneDrive, Google Drive, or whatever else.

Put even more simply, while Notion is Little Tech and not Big Tech, it’s opaque. It’s a cloud-based service in which your notes are stored in a cloud storage system I do not control and cannot access directly. I would like a version of Notion that is file-based and can be synced through any service of my choice (i.e. “self hosted”).

More generally, free is always preferable. And open source, while not a personal requirement, is good too. So the ideal Notion replacement–for me, your needs may vary–would be a free, open source, and Markdown file-based solution that I can sync to the service of my choosing.

This seems simple enough.

Using the above as criteria, I can examine any alternative and see how well it meets my needs. Obsidian, for example, is free, open-ish but not open source, and it’s based on individual Markdown files I can sync to the service of my choosing. So it’s at least in the running. Likewise, Joplin is free and open source, and it’s based on individual Markdown files I can sync to the Joplin Cloud (which I would pay for) or the service of my choosing. So … also good, at least on paper.

There’s just one problem: It’s not that simple. As it turns out, I have other requirements for a Notion alternative that weren’t immediately obvious when I started trying to figure this out. These are the things that occurred to me only after certain alternatives seemed to make sense.

The first is a mobile client, which will prove problematic for a file system-based app like the ones I’m considering. Obviously, if those files are synced to a place I can access on mobile, then I can view the notes or even edit and create new notes/files on mobile somehow. But it’s not as seamless as just using Notion or some other integrated experience.

Another concern is sharing. I share my Windows Weekly show notes in Notion with Richard and several people from TWiT, I share my Eternal Spring notebook in Notion with my wife, and I share other notebooks and notes with others as needed. Whatever I use for notes needs to support that functionality, too.

Round and round we go.

A new alternative emerges

Getting past the most obvious and popular alternatives, I recently came across a new solution called Tolaria that holds promise. It is free (forever, its maker promises), open source, and based on Markdown-based files that can be synced using whatever service I prefer. It looks clean and very Notion-like, and it seems to address my key needs and concerns.

And Tolaria is new: It was announced first for the Mac back in April and the codebase is available on Github. By the time I discovered it in May, there were Windows (x64 only), Mac (Apple Silicon and x64), and Linux (x64) clients available. What’s missing, of course, is an app on mobile.

There were a few little wrinkles installing Tolaria on Windows, too. I got a SmartScreen warning when I tried to run the installer, and then a prompt to send Tolaria anonymous crash data that you can at least reject.

You’re also asked to choose an AI, which is interesting. In my case, Tolaria detected that Claude Code was already installed, but I could also choose Codex, Gemini, or some open/local AIs like OpenCode and some others.

And you can connect the underlying vault to Git, which is another way to sync, I suppose, but also a way to handle file versioning. (To be clear, you don’t have to use AI or Git at all.)

The app itself is quite nice. It’s professional looking, works logically, and is pretty customizable. But one of the things that might put Tolaria over the top for me is that it works well as a Markdown editor, which means it could kill two birds–well, two apps–with one stone. So to speak. I find that desirable, assuming both sides–the organizational structure of a note-taking app and the Markdown editor–are high quality.

The default view in Tolaria has three panes (or panels as the app calls them): A Sidebar (navigation) pane with different views and folders, a Notes pane with the contents of the selected view/folder, and the note editor. (You can also open two other panes as needed, for Properties and AI.)

Tolaria uses easy to remember keyboard shortcuts to control this view. You can type Ctrl + 3 to go to the default three-pane view, Ctrl + 2 to display just the Notes and editor panes, or … wait for it … Ctrl + 1 to just view the editor. In this view, Tolaria looks and works like a nice Markdown app.

There are a few minor issues.

The big one for me is inserting hyperlinks using the Ctrl + K keyboard shortcut: Oddly, Tolaria has assigned this shortcut to two actions, opening the Command Palette, which looks and works much like a similar UI in Visual Studio Code, and inserting a hyperlink. And the Command Palette shortcut takes precedent, so you have to insert a hyperlink using a little pop-up toolbar that appears when you select text. There’s no way to customize keyboard shortcuts that I can find, so this is clearly just a bug and/or missing feature.

I don’t see a way to share notes with others in view only format let alone the coauthoring functionality I use for Windows Weekly and Eternal Spring, especially. I don’t want to use different apps like this for different purposes.

The other less problematic issue is that the Mac nature of the original app peeks through sometimes. For example, when you right-click on a note in the Notes pane, you get a “Reveal in Finder” option instead of “Show in File Explorer” or whatever. Not a big deal, of course. But still.

In any event, Tolaria is quite new, is clearly being updated regularly, and I like what I see from its maker and his blog, Refactoring. It’s so close for my needs even as-is, so I will keep an eye on this one. Tolaria is interesting.

But wait, there’s more

If you’re looking for a Notion alternative, it may be worth browsing through the AlternativeTo website and experimenting with some of the suggestions. Here, for example, you can see that Obsidian, Anytype, Joplin, and others do have mobile clients, if that’s a concern.