There’s Nothing Wrong with Notion, So I’m Messing with It (Premium)

Notion has emerged as one of the best apps I use every day. Naturally, I’ve intensified my efforts to replace it with something else.

OK, I’m kidding. Mostly.

Surveying the software and services I use each day, Notion is the rare example of a no-brainer, a nearly ideal tool that just works and has never really let me down. When you think about it, most software is like most people, potentially interesting at first, but also something that will likely disappoint you the more you grow to rely on it. But in this capacity, Notion is somewhat unique. I replaced OneNote–a tool I had used daily since the first beta two decades earlier–with Notion over two years ago, and I’ve never looked back.

Except, of course, I always look back. Well, not back, there’s no version of me returning to OneNote. But I do look, by which I mean I consider alternatives, to everything I use, all the time. And if you were to Google anything about note-taking or Notion alternatives, as I do from time-to-time, you will find that there is a universe of Notion-like apps out there, including Microsoft’s top-heavy Loop. (From an experience perspective, Loop is the anti-Notion in that it lets me down every time I give it another try.) These apps all share the Notion design aesthetic, which is modern and pleasant, but also makes them hard to tell apart. But each is unique in some way, sometimes subtly, with advantages of whatever kind over Notion or all the other me-too apps out there.

As I wrote in Notion is So Sticky It’s Hard to Walk Away (Premium), the bar here is high. Whatever advantages another app may have over Notion, they’re typically small, and things that either wouldn’t impact me day-to-day or would only impact me in minor ways. Why upend the apple cart?

Honestly, I have no good answer to that. Certainly, there are other tools I use that are perhaps more lacking and deserving of attention. On the other hand, I’m looking to the future a bit here, and in addition to a rote testing of things I routinely engage in, I’m also working on this Online Accounts thing, and a key part of that effort will involve me moving to what I think of as a local (NAS-based) storage solution. These NASs (there will be two of them) will be at the center of my storage/backup scheme, so to speak, instead of various online services (like Google Photos/Drive and OneDrive). And … yeah, there you go. There’s a rough rationale for this experiment. I knew I could get there.

☀️ Wouldn’t it be nice

OK, I can do better than that. The thing is, this idea has been in the back corner of my mind for a while now, since before I decided to finally properly organize and manage (declutter?) my online accounts. Notion is terrific. But it’s not quite perfect. And there are a couple of things–I wouldn’t elevate them to “problems”–I consider from time-to-time.

The first is that Notion is good enough as an editor that I could, in theory, use it for general writing. What puts that over the top is that I have a non-negotiable need to copy much of what I write to the clipboard and paste it into the WordPress backend of my blog, and for that to be correct. That is, the content–let’s call it rich text for lack of a better term–has to look right in that it retains all the correct formatting and so on, and, crucially, has to be clean HTML code. There can’t be any extra codes in there.

WordPress almost assumes you’re using Microsoft Word for writing, so when you paste a Word document into the WordPress editor, it’s perfect. The most recent WordPress editor (which we’re not using because of a compatibility issue) also supports Google Docs the same way. I use a Markdown editor called Typora for non-book work, and it supports a “Copy without theme styling” option that I map to the Ctrl + Shift + C keyboard shortcut so I can copy and paste into WordPress cleanly. Here are three paragraphs from this document in the WordPress editor’s visual and text (HTML code) views. The HTML code is clean. It’s perfect, exactly what I’m looking for.

By comparison, here’s the HTML code for the same content, but pasted in from a different app. This is unacceptable: There’s a surrounding DIV block and each of the P (paragraph) elements has a DIR attribute for some reason. There’s too much extraneous HTML code.

Today, I use Notion mostly for note-taking, which sounds almost unimportant, but it’s rather astonishing how much I use this app, on desktop and mobile, every day. Notion passes the WordPress test, so to speak–what you might think of as a workflow requirement–and that’s good. So there’s one good argument for using it even more than I do now.

Except for one thing.

? Files. It was always going to be files

Part of the magic of Notion is that it’s not file-based. That’s good on one level, as there’s nothing for me to manage from a folder and files perspective. I just sign in to my account and all my notes–my content–is there. But looked at another way, this is a problem. For a few reasons.

First, if you consider the YouTube channel issue I had, getting locked out of my own content is now a concern. And at the end of the day, Notion is a black box, an online account that I may one day not have access to. This is a concern.

Also, Notion doesn’t support true offline usage. One of the things I really like about OneDrive and Google Drive (and other similar services) is that I can arbitrarily specify that certain folders and files are always available, even when the PC is offline. And then the services continually syncs this content, making it available not just in the cloud but on any PC (or other device) I use. Because I configure every PC identically in this regard, the content I need is always there. But Notion doesn’t do this. It hasn’t been a huge problem with the notes I currently use it for. But it would be an issue with what I still think of as documents.

Finally, because of how Notion works, the management of content is handled entirely in the app. And this is where Notion breaks down for me, even with just notes. You have a sidebar on the left where you organize content, and so I have top level items–Notion calls everything pages–representing things like Eternal Spring, Thurrott.com, Windows Weekly, and many others. “Inside” (under?) of each of these items are more items. And if the top-level item is involved enough, there can be multiple sublevels of items. For example, Windows Weekly has year items on the second level (2022, 2023, 2024, and so on) that expand and contain numbered episode show note items. As the year goes on, those “folders” (as I think of them) become more and more unweildy.

Stepping in and out of these mini-hierarchies isn’t great. It’s not an ideal way to manage lots of content. It’s OK–not great, just OK–for notes. But it’s incompatible with how I organize documents. Archiving things inside of this mess–a mess in which an item that Notion calls a page can have content of its own and sub-items (pages) “within” it–is a non-starter. Dragging and dropping items inside the Notion sidebar is not a good experience.

What I really want is a Notion that works with files and folders in the device’s (usually the PC’s) file system. This would solve both of the issues noted above. The content could be stored folders in Google Drive or OneDrive and synced everywhere. And I could manage that content using File Explorer, as I do now.

?️ What I want does exist

This thing I want, a Notion-type app that works with the local file system, does exist. In fact, that is the key benefit of many of the Notion alternatives I’ve tested. And I’ve tested a lot of Notion alternatives.

In many cases–AppFlowy, Anytype, Craft (which is Apple-only), Supernotes, many others–the user experience fell apart immediately for one reason or another. Maybe they don’t work with the file system. More often, the copy and paste experience into WordPress was a non-starter. Eliminating choices is easy enough, and it usually happens pretty quickly.

To date, two of the options I’ve examined, Obsidian and Joplin, work well enough to warrant further exploration. Neither is perfect. If one was, that would be the subject of this article.

Each supports Markdown, which is huge for me. Markdown is plain text, open, easily machine-readable, and there are many excellent editors, like Typora, that understand it and work elegantly. Having the content be created in Markdown is, to me, a form of future-proofing. If I go in whatever direction and it doesn’t work out, no problem. I can move on to the next thing easily. (Notion will require some kind of export/import work on my part for me to switch)

Each of these options can be used with the local file system, so they can be synced between PCs using Google Drive, OneDrive, or whatever else, and that means they can work offline. As with Markdown, this is key and non-negotiable. I’m not moving off Notion unless this is the case. Here, Obsidian makes more sense, as Joplin “syncs” the local file system (or various cloud services) and what it syncs is not clean Markdown files in folders.

Each supports plugins, which can help overcome whatever limitations the core apps have. And each has limitations, so this is important too. The unacceptable HTML code I showed above is actually output from Obsidian, using a community plug-in called “Copy document as HTML.” This is necessary because Obsidian, unbelievably, does not offer that obvious feature natively, and this is the best I could find. It’s not quite good enough.

Each is cross-platform, with apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iPhone/iPad. This isn’t strictly necessary in some ways, but it’s nice to have.

And each comes with a bit of a learning curve tied to their flexibility and feature sets. I will say that, for now, Obsidian is far more interesting, though it’s also not without its issues. Some of which are specific to me, of course. But that’s sort of the point.

?This isn’t about paying

To be clear, this potential change has little or nothing to do with cost, I don’t mind paying for tools I use if the cost is reasonable and the utility is there.

That said, Notion is free. This has never made sense to me, and while there are paid plans, I’ve never once run into a limitation or prompt explaining why I might want to–or have to–pay. This is curious, and will inevitably change. But so far, at least, it’s difficult to explain why this company doesn’t ask more of me. Looking at their paid plans now, however, I don’t see any that apply to me. The next step up from free is a Plus tier for small teams that adds unlimited file uploads (vs. 5 MB per month, though I don’t need this), 30 days of history (vs. 7), and other features that I just don’t need.

Obsidian is free for personal use, but its makers expect you to pay $50 per year for commercial use. Legally, my usage falls into the commercial category, so I would need to pay. The flexibility I see in Obsidian makes that perfectly acceptable.

Joplin is also free (and open source). Its makers offer Joplin Cloud plans with various storage tiers, but because I would use Google Drive or OneDrive, I don’t need such a thing. That’s obviously nice. But the complexity/weirdness of Joplin is a downside.

? This is about writing, not about taking notes

Any of these apps is fine for note-taking. But I split my time writing between two apps today, and each has a specific use case.

I use Typora for most writing. It’s a pleasant, word processor-style Markdown editor with obvious keyboard shortcuts, and it meets my needs as a standalone app. There’s a little bit of configuration work I need to do with each new install–I use a script to automate that–and there’s an activation issue that I deal with because I use so many PCs. But it’s a great app.

I use Visual Studio Code for the books, each of which is a folder of Markdown files with subfolders that contain images. Visual Studio Code is ideally suited to this because it manages “projects” at the folder level, and it understands Markdown natively. It also supports extensions, some of which make Markdown work better for writing, and those sync through my GitHub account. So I sign in, it syncs, and I’m good to go.

Short-term, replacing Typora–if I do so–would mean one less app to install and configure, which is a small positive that may be outweighed by how much I like using it. Longer term, I do think about switching to a more conventional book writing tool, in part because one of the books I’m now working on is a collaboration with my wife. And my developer-like Markdown focus is a negative in that case.

Anyway. I could use Notion for general writing, but then my content would not be in files and not be available offline. Or, I could switch to a Notion-like app with file system and offline support. and maybe use that for general writing too. Is it enough to just replace Notion? Is it necessary?

I don’t know. I think so. But that’s the process. And there is likely some other Notion alternative out there that I’ve not run into that may meet my needs. Or one I did test previously that was more recently updated and is now more interesting.

I will keep looking. It’s what I do.