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FSNote5 is exclusive to macOS and iOS, so if you don’t have one of those devices,
unfortunately, you can stop reading now.
T aking notes on a computer is good. But taking notes on a computer with
markdown is better. The formatting happens “on the fly”, and editors oftentimes
offer additional features which make note-taking frictionless and a powerful tool for
content creators.

Image by author

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FSNotes5 was released on the 22nd of August. Originally, Oleksandr Hlushchenko, its
author, released the first installment of FSNotes on GitHub in 2017. According to him,
it was a terrible application at the time. Over the years, he kept working on it, and
today, in its fifth revision, FSNotes5 packs over 100 features and is translated into 12
languages. Talk about tenacity…

To best determine which one of the two markdown editors is better, let’s compare their
key features side by side.

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For a better overview, we will look at the key features as separate headings, and
determine if and how these features are supported by both editors.

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Links can be hyperlinks to external websites and homepages. Copying and pasting a
link into a note within FSNote5 or Obsidian reopens the website when the user clicks
on it. Backlinks, on the other hand, are links within your notes. They are typically
initiated by a pair of square brackets holding text, e.g. [[Text]] . Both, Obsidian and

FSNote5, support links and backlinks.

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Ah yes, markdown. After all, it’s the main selling point of these editors. If you happen
to not know what this means, look here for more information.
Besides formatting the text with marked-up commands like # for heading 1, FSNotes5
additionally supports keyboard shortcuts. For example, you can edit a line as heading 1
by pressing cmd+1 (on Mac).

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As stated above, FSNote5 offers a multitude of keyboard shortcuts to format your text.
It is designed for use without a mouse, provided you know all the shortcuts. Don’t
worry. Detailed documentation is in the ‘welcome’ folder. Obsidian, however, can’t
offer this navigation feature due to a simple reason. And that is the graph view.
 &H408092M4)K79A/)F03@J)!;>43)G;7)29F0K950;2)73N>0738

Above, you can see my small vault of notes in Obsidian. Here you simply can’t navigate
with a keyboard alone. Zooming and swiping through the map of notes happens with
the mouse. If you hate switching between mouse and keyboard, then you have a clear
winner.

You want to read more blogs? Become a member and support me and thousands of
other writers directly. If you use my link I get paid a monthly commission, however, to
no extra cost for you.

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FSNotes5 has a hierarchical order of folders and subfolders that treats them as
projects. The number of possible planes is indefinite. Nesting folders and building
hierarchies works with Obsidian just as well (thanks to Terry Bain for the correction).
Additionally, the backlinks you use in your notes visualize the hierarchical order in the
graph view. The more often a note is linked to, the bigger it appears. In my opinion,
this is a far superior visualization style. Not only can you detect hierarchies better, but
it is also easier to see which notes are interconnected as multiple notes can refer to the
same topic. For research purposes, this is extremely helpful.

@#A2
Tags can be handy to ‚label‘ notes for future searchability. This feature is covered by
both apps. In addition to tags, FSNotes5 also supports the use of subtags. In other
words, this is a hierarchical order for tags. And even here, the number of planes is
limitless. For example, you could nest tags like this: #blogging/productivity/fsnotes5.
FSNotes5 treats them as separate tags, where fsnotes5 would be a subtag of
productivity, and productivity would, in turn, be a subtag of blogging. Obsidian,
however, would treat them all as one single tag.

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If you wonder about the support of Mermaid in both apps, chances are you already
know what it is. If not, read here for more information.
Mermaid is natively supported in both apps. Detailed documentation on how to use it
in FSNotes5 is located in the welcome folder. For Obsidian, you can find an example
here.

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The same is true for MathJax. If you want to know what MathJax is, refer to this link.
You can use it in both apps natively.

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Having backups of your notes can be quite handy. FSNotes5 has a range of settings
using Git that let you create timed backups once every hour, for example. You can even
create backups of backups, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole.
Obsidian doesn’t offer this feature natively. However, there is a plugin that enables it.
You can find the plugin here.

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When you take notes in FSNotes5 or Obsidian, chances are you’ll include not only plain
text but also different data types like images, diagrams, or files. This package gets then
stored as a container — more specifically, a textbundle. At least FSNotes5 does that.
Textbundles offer a seamless user experience when exchanging plain text files, like
Markdown or RTF, between applications. Furthermore, if you have references to
external images, a previewer (if you want to read your text without the markdown
annotations) needs explicit access to every single image file. Texbundle files bundle
the Markdown text and every referenced image into a single file.
As of writing this blog, Obsidian doesn’t support textbundles. However, there are plans
to create a community plugin or even native system support. Unfortunately, there is no
release date announced.

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Another important topic for a lot of users, and hopefully for you, is safety. After all,
your notes could contain sensible data. Again FSNotes5 got you covered. It supports
the following encryption standards:

AES-256 encryption

CBC mode

Password stretching with PBKDF2

Password salting

Random IV

Encrypt-then-hash HMAC

Open and cross-platform

Obsidian’s safety measures are a bit bland in this regard. Your files are saved locally on
your machine, so highjacking is rather unlikely., but then again, you’re missing a sync
feature. I, for example, have my notes stored on iCloud. So if it gets compromised, my
notes are completely unsafe. Well, in case this happens, I have more severe problems
than my notes being pried open, lol.

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Plugins are extensions of an already existing feature set of an application. FSNotes5 is
open source, so theoretically, you could build your plugins and integrate them. But
there is no dedicated store or website where you can browse through a catalog of
plugins.

Here comes one of Obsidian’s major strengths. Although it got released in March of
2020, there is an abundance of plugins from the Obsidian community to choose from.
They can easily be installed and can enrich your user experience massively.

If you are looking for a list of plugins to turn Obsidian into your Idea Factory, then I got
you already covered:

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So these are some of the major feature differences between these two applications.
You’re still unsure which one is better? Maybe this will help you:

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FSNotes5 isn’t free to use but extremely reasonably priced. For macOS, you’re looking
at a one-time purchase of $4,99 and on iOS $2,99.
Obsidian is indeed free to use. However, if you want synchronization, you’ll need to
purchase a license that follows a monthly subscription. But, of course, this wouldn’t be
a Beyond Boundaries blog if I didn’t know a workaround. You’ll find it in my other blog
about Obsidian. Just keep reading ;)
If you want my two cents, I will stick to Obsidian. Don’t get me wrong, FSNotes5 is a
great piece of software, and I enjoyed using it thoroughly in the past couple of days.
But I missed the graph view feature from day one. So it’s back to Obsidian for me.

If you liked what you read, I would appreciate a clap , and don’t forget to follow me
on Medium and Twitter for more blog posts.

You have feedback, complaints, want to collaborate, or anything you want to ask me?
Please don’t hesitate to write me a DM on Twitter or an e-mail at [email protected].
Or just leave a comment on this blog.

If you would like to further support me, you could buy me a coffee. Thank you very
much for any kind of support!

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