Roam vs Obsidian

Today a “huge update” was announced for Roam. It included encrypted graphs, unlimited graphs, and 500 MB file size limit (up from 100 MB).

Obsidian has already had encrypted Sync. Because it’s local first, it also already had unlimited vaults, and the file size is only limited by your hard drive. Notion has unlimited file uploads with a Pro plan, and I’ve been using it to archive Zoom recordings.

There was nothing in this update that would draw me back to Roam. I’ve talked about my disappointment with Roam when I was trying out Logseq. Another point is Roam still has glitchy markdown parsing when combining bold, highlights, italics, and links together.

With Obsidian’s recent Live Preview mode, and the beautiful LYT Mode theme, it is a lot easier to use. I’m still used to the block structure of pages and unlimited block indentation and mixture with headings from Roam and Notion. But I’m figuring out the more Evernote or Google Doc-esque page setup with Roam-style backlinks.

The biggest plus for Obsidian is how fast it loads on mobile and can work offline. I feel more secure about my data being local-first, and then encrypted in the cloud with my own key using Obsidian Sync.

I’ve already recommended Obsidian to my clients.

More about this:

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Migrating from Roam to Obsidian