Antholier compared with Obsidian

Antholier and Obsidian both edit ordinary text files in a folder on your disk. They do not lock your notes in a private database. What differs is what each app is built around.

Obsidian is an app for linking notes and growing a place for knowledge. Antholier is a macOS app for keeping today’s memo and topic notes going in the same place.

• The real record is text files on disk. Change apps and the files remain.
• You can write Markdown: headings, lists, emphasis, links, checkboxes, and more.
• You choose the folder. Backing up means copying that folder.
• New notes get a YAML front matter block at the top (title / created / updated). Antholier reads and writes this the same way Obsidian does. Lines other than title and the timestamps are left alone.

You can move between daily notes and topic notes without reopening the app.

• Daily is one file per day. The name is Daily/yyyy-MM-dd.txt and does not change. Open a day from the calendar, Yesterday / Today / Tomorrow, or holiday display.
• Notes live under Notes. Expand and collapse folders, create, rename, and move by drag. Pin pages you return to often.
• Search covers body text, file names, and folder names. History is kept. ⌘P Quick Open also spans daily memos and notes.
• Editing stays plain text. The side preview shows how it looks, and the heading list jumps to the matching place. Checkboxes in the preview update the body.
• ⌘B / ⌘I / ⌘K insert bold, italic, and links.

The base folder looks like this:

(base folder)
├── Daily/          … daily memos (one file per day)
├── Notes/          … notes and subfolders
└── Data/           … pin and holiday data

• Graph view, Canvas
• Renaming a file and rewriting [[ ]] links in other notes in one go
• Community plugins and themes
• Antholier on Windows, Linux, iPhone, or iPad
• A sync service of Antholier’s own. To sync, put the base folder where you already sync files

You can also use daily notes and folders in Obsidian. Antholier puts those two screens side by side from the start, and treats the calendar and pins as standard controls.

You can open Antholier’s base folder as an Obsidian Vault. The files are ordinary text. If you use both, these differences help:

• The first time Antholier saves a note that has no header, it adds YAML at the top. Opening alone does not rewrite the file. The editor shows only the body; YAML appears on the Info tab.
• Obsidian also reads leading YAML as properties. Antholier sets title, created, and updated.
• Line breaks look different. Antholier’s preview keeps about one editor line as one line. Obsidian’s reading view follows common Markdown and treats text until a blank line as one paragraph.
• Daily memos sit in Daily as yyyy-MM-dd.txt. Point Obsidian’s Daily notes folder and date format at the same layout, and both apps open the same files.
• Antholier can also leave Joplin YAML as it was. If that block is not at the top, Obsidian may show it as part of the body.

If you want today’s writing and topic notes in one macOS window, Antholier fits. If you need the graph, plugins, or other operating systems, Obsidian fits.

Either way, the contents are text in a folder. You can start in Antholier and open only the pages you need in Obsidian.