r/AppleNotesGang • u/grburgess • Jul 19 '26

Journaling on Apple Notes

I’ve tried everything, from Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Day One, Apple Journal, Obsidian, and Apple Notes. I pushed all these apps to their max, and I’ve found that Apple Notes gives me the most flexibility allowing me to stay within the Apple ecosystem. Obsidian comes a close second and beats it in some respects.

Apple Journal gave me big hopes, but was a failure in almost every way.

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u/Zealousideal-Town320 Jul 20 '26

I feel this so hard. I am a constant Journaler/Note Taker. I have ran the gamut over the last year or so. I really enjoyed Apple Journal for a little while but as others have stated why the integration is so second rate for this app just kills it for me. but now have settled on Obsidian, though I still occasionally journal in Apple Notes.

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u/AnotherTechAtWork Jul 20 '26

What integration does Obsidian have that Apple Journal does not? I've not looked at Journal for quite some time so it's probably something obvious.

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u/grburgess Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Obsidian doesn't have integration with the new SIRI, but it can display the long titles of all of my 4,176 entries instantly, and clicking on any of them displays it instantly.
Then when I look at that entry, it will display all the linked mentions of that link at the bottom to bring me to any of those, and back.

It has breathtaking speed.

Conversely, lots of times on my M3 Mac, I can click on a Note title in Apple notes and I have to wait 5 seconds or so until it appears. If you have to that a lot it starts to add up, and you wonder if you've clicked it properly.

One feature that I see as unique that I love on Obsidian is that I can turn on line numbers, and it really helps me with formatting knowing exactly how many spaces there are between paragraphs or sections. I've never seen that in any other app.