Kira Herdman

After I finished setting up my Lenovo laptop with a new install of Debian along with the main applications I use, ThiefMD, Nextcloud Notes and Typora, I had one issue I wanted to sort out: my dairy.

My Current Setup

Before I overhauled my system last week, I was using Day One. I’ve been using it intermittently since its beta release but have been a dedicated user since 2024. I own a lifetime plus licence thanks to buying it when it was in beta, but it has limitations. You can only have ten journals and take one photo per day. However, you can use it on as many devices as you like. There are three issues with this setup.

1. My data, although encrypted, is on someone else’s server.
2. The program is not open source and has restrictions placed on it.
3. There is no native client for Linux, only a website.

Moving away from Commercial Systems

I have wanted to move all my computing needs to open source for years.

The main reason why I want to do this is I got burnt about four years ago when I had a Synology NAS, the DS115j. Synology took away Synology Office in DSM 7.1 as they said my NAS was too old, despite it having been supported for years before. My NAS is now a self-built one running TrueNAS Scale.

I also want to be in total control of my data. If I have to put it on a server that is one I do not control, so not my Application server or my TrueNAS server, then it has to be end to end, or E2EE, encrypted.

With that in mind I am using only 2 companies to store my sensitive data that I create on, Apple and Proton.

Apple as I have ADP, or Advanced Data Protection, the Apple way of saying of E2EE, turned on. It is also insanely cheap at £0.99 per month for 50Gb iCloud Drive space, custom domain email, ‘hide my email’ and private relay. The main downside of iCloud beside it being an Apple service is no client available for Linux.

Proton Drive by default E2EE, and the servers are based in Europe, not the US. You get 2Gb of free space, which is way more than I need for a backup. Proton is currently working on getting a client for Proton Drive released for Linux.

If you want encrypted email, calendar or drive space, then I would recommend Proton. If I did not have ADP on my Apple account then I would be using Proton email as well as drive and I would be paying for it, though it is more expensive at £4.99 for 15Gb per month for the email plan.

I am currently only using two programs that do not fit into that mould of being open source daily, Typora and Day One.

Another thing I want to get away from is using propriety file formats. These type of file formats lock you into an application and I want the freedom to move application if I want to in the future.

Typora uses markdown files, Day One uses its own thing.

Besides gaming and mobile devices, I want everything else to be open source as much as possible, that includes the programs I use. I do however still use Apple Computers, and will continue to use them until they are no longer supported. After that I will be fully switching to Linux as my primary OS so any programs I use will have to support macOS and Linux as well as the mobile devices.

What is Obsidian?

Obsidian is, in its basic form, a note-taking app. Some people also call it a second brain as it can be used for advanced note taking like the Zettelkasten Workflow.

Unlike Day One and Typora, Obsidian is completely open source, which means the source code is available for anyone to examine and modify. It also uses markdown files to store all its data.

Obsidian is built by a group of volunteers, so it is not controlled by any one company. If someone doesn’t like the direction Obsidian is heading, they can simply ‘fork’ the project and alter it to the way they want it to work. Think of when Oracle bought OnlyOffice and that got forked into LibreOffice in response.

Obsidian also has a large community around it, good documentation, loads of tutorials online, and a thriving plug-in community.

Obsidian is free to download, and you can donate to the project to keep it running.

I will be making a donation to the project.

Cross Platform

I currently use devices that use different operating system. macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

Obsidian is available for all the major operating systems, I have installed it on all my devices apart from the Google Pixel 6a. I only want my notes on the Pixel, not anything to do with the blog, diary or my scripts for TransRadio UK, so I didn’t install it on this device.

What will I use Obsidian for?

My main aim is to replace Typora and Day One. While ThiefMD is very good, it’s not perfect and I still use some Apple Devices, like the iPad Pro M4 13” where ThiefMD is not available for.

So I have been experimenting with Obsidian in the background for about a year. My main problem with it is that while there is a client for Android, it is hard to get it working unless you use Obsidian Sync, if you don’t want to use Google Drive. This is not a fault with Obsidian, but as usual big tech trying to make everyone use their own ecosystem.

As I have stated earlier in this blog post, I don’t really want my data on any third party’s server like Obsidian Sync’s unless I have to. I don’t mind donating to the Obsidian project but I won’t use their sync service for this reason.

I also really want my notes on all my devices: my Google Pixel, iPhone, iPad Pro, Mac and Linux.

I solved the notes problem a while back by moving all my personal notes from Apple Notes to Nextcloud Notes.

Nextcloud Notes has a native client for Linux, Android and iOS. For ages I couldn’t find one for Mac but recently I discovered an app called the Nextcloud Notes Client. It was last updated in 2020 but still works. You can download it here.

Nextcloud Notes also stores all it’s data on my own server and in markdown files.

So I want to use Obsidian to replace Day One as a diary and Typora for writing scripts, blog posts and other projects.

Importing Day One data to Obsidian

What about getting my data out of Day One? Well, after messing around with Obsidian, I came across a community plugin called Day One Importer. As Day One lets you export all the data to a JSON file, it’s easy to import that file into Obsidian via this plug-in.

The plug-in’s instructions are straightforward so after about five minutes of fiddling I’ve successfully imported 462 diary entries into Obsidian, each entry as their own markdown file.

I had to manually go through each of the files to remove unnecessary data like file properties and rename them, since the filenames included the date and time I simply wanted the date. At least now all the files are in markdown and stored on my own server.

It has taken me a few days just plodding along stripping all the unwanted data out of the files. That has been fun, to be honest, reading all my old entries for the 1 1/2 years since I started using Day One regularly.

Using Obsidian as a Diary Program

Now I have all my diary entries properly formatted and filed to how I like them, what about creating new entries?

Well I could just create an note in the file structure manually but of course, Obsidian can do something better.

There is a feature that comes with Obsidian called Daily Notes. When you configure this, you can point it to a folder in your vault to create new entries and create a file with the name that is the current date. You can also assign a hotkey to edit the current daily note. If there is no daily note, it will simply create one with the correct date as the file name.

After a few days, I found a community plugin called calendar that can track in a calendar view what days’ notes are in the diary folder and display a dot under the date in a calendar view if there is one. To view a day’s entry, all you need to do is click on the date. If there is no entry, it will ask if you want to create one. The configuration for this plugin is very easy, as it uses the same folder as you used when you set up Daily Notes.

Could I replace Typora/ThiefMD with Obsidian?

The simple answer is yes. Again the excellent community that Obsidian has comes to the rescue thanks to a community plug in that allows you to upload directly from Obsidian to WordPress, which is what this blog runs on. This plugin is simply called WordPress.

As Obsidian uses markdown files like I have been using for about five years now, I just copied the files I already had into the new vault, or folder, I created when I first started to use Obsidian.

I have also customised Obsidian to suite my needs with a theme and some hotkeys to hide the left and right panels, and to go full screen as I like to write blog posts and scripts when there is only me and the text.

Replacing a spreadsheet

I use a spreadsheet called sheet thats part of Libre Office mainly for lists like Serial Numbers and so on.

Well, as the notes in Obsidian is made up of markdown files, and markdown can create tables, I am also transferring all the lists I have in Libre Office to Obsidian.

Why? Simplicity of backing up, and again, using a very future proof file type, markdown, as the basis for everything. It also means everything is in one place, no need for multiple apps.

Obsidian Webclipper

Obsidian also makes something called a web clipper. It is a plugin for all the popular browsers, I have it installed on all my Vivaldi desktop versions. Basically this can clip, or copy, any website you are currently viewing and put it into a folder in your vault. I have a folder called Scrapbook and anything I clip goes into there.

It is good for research purposes and I think a very good value addon to the Obsidian ecosystem.

Backing up

Using Obsidian for my diary, scripts, blog and other things has also simplified the backing-up task I do every day. Although my Nextcloud server backs itself to my NAS every night, I also want to back things up offsite for the important stuff.

So I use a program called FreeFileSync, which is an open-source file syncing program, that I have supported by getting a licence for it. FreeFileSync is available for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

This excellent program allows me to sync all the data from Nextcloud to iCloud and Proton Drive on systems that support the relevant client’s. The total data that I sync every day is only 142Mb, thanks to using markdown for everything. This includes every entry on this blog, four years of scripts for TransRadio UK, and currently 1 1/2 years worth of diary entries at the time of writing this post. It takes less than 10 seconds per day usually to sync the changes. FreeFileSync only syncs changes since the last sync, not everything every time.

The Obsidian folder that gets backed up includes the data and the configuration of Obsidian, so if for example you change the theme on one device, that theme will change on all your devices.

Conclusion

I have been watching a lot of videos on YouTube recently about people using Obsidian, how they customise it, even to make it act like a to-do app, replacing commercial applications like Things and even Notion.

Obsidian is an insanely powerful open-source application that I am only using 10% off, if that. I will be looking into doing more advanced stuff in the future as it is a really good app, once I got into a system on how to use it.

This program has replaced quite a few of the commercial programs that I used to use in one go, like iA Writer, iWriter Pro, Typora and Day One, as well as some other open source apps.

Obsidian, Nextcloud Notes, and FreeFileSync are the only apps I use daily now, and they are all open source, which has been my goal over the last year.

Thanks to Obsidian and Nextcloud Notes, I am still using the markdown file forma. So if I ever wanted to leave these apps, it is very easy to do so.

For those interested in my current Obsidian setup, the theme I am using is called Dark Castle and the font I am using is called JetBrains Mono. The community plugin’s I am using are called WordPress, Better Word Count and Calendar.