I'm using both Obsidian and Apple Notes, both on my iPhone and MacBook, and that's also the main thing I'm missing in Obsidian and keeps me partly on Apple Notes: it's faster and easier to create a note in Apple Notes, retrieve it (as they as are sorted from most recent by default, and also I can pin some notes), search, and navigate in folders (especially on mobile, navigating across folders is so much better with Apple Notes than Obsidian). I'd really like to see Obsidian takes some inspiration from Apple Notes there and improve his. Otherwise, it is fantastic tool and it's really good to know that everything is stored locally in plain text.

Preface: I am a massive Obsidian fan and use it everyday.

The problem is they wanted it multi platform on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux so they made it using electron. Unless they either do native versions for each platform (5 apps!) or rewrite the entire application in something quicker like Tauri it’s never going to be as fast as apple notes, and will only get worse every time you add a new plugin.

My interpretation of their word “faster” was in terms of UI design, not physical app speed.

Please, we don’t need to have the electron rant every single time an app that uses it is discussed.

You can't just declare your interpretation of faster to be correct and then denigrate someone else's interpretation by classifying it as a rant. The comment:

> it's faster and easier to create a note in Apple Notes, retrieve it (as they as are sorted from most recent by default, and also I can pin some notes), search, and navigate in folders (especially on mobile, navigating across folders is so much better with Apple Notes than Obsidian).

Yes there are UI elements at play here. But even UI elements are dependent on the language and framework you have decided to use. For example, it is common on Android to use an expanding sidebar whereas on iOS it is more common to use a dropdown menu. If you are developing a one size fits all app then design choices that feel native on one platform are going to feel non-native on another.

And in addition, physical app speed matters. If you want to create a brand new note and you're not already in the app it takes significantly more time until you can start typing with Obsidian than if you use Apple Notes, 1Writer etc. If you're doing it multiple times a day this time adds up.

If you don't think physical app speed matters then why do you think big companies spend thousands optimising webpages to reduce latency? It is because the consumer gets bored of waiting and goes elsewhere. If another app comes along that offers the same functionality of Obsidian but is noticeably faster, people will migrate to it. Everything is a tradeoff, but pretending framework performance isn't a relevant factor does not help anybody.

Part of the reason on iOS it takes longer, at least in my vault set-up, to begin throwing in a new note is that Obsidian has to finish syncing and show me notifications (that I wish I could turn off) from a plug-in I value before I can begin navigating to a "new note" screen.

Not just for the speed, but also for (personal) mental simplicity, this is one of many reasons I use [Drafts](https://getdrafts.com) for so much writing. I also use a few other notes apps in concert with Obsidian, and if I just hit Drafts on my iPhone or Apple Watch I can start getting the idea down. If it's going to Obsidian, it's an action from Drafts to just dump it in there without using Obsidian's interface at all. If it's not going to Obsidian (and instead going to Bear or OmniFocus or into an email or a text message or appending to an existing note or a million other things) then it's just a different action.

> You can't just declare your interpretation of faster to be correct and then denigrate someone else's interpretation by classifying it as a rant.

I'm not declaring anything. I gave my interpretation of the intended meaning, which didn't mention speed or electron at all. Thus, there were two options:

- My interpretation was correct, and it was _the exact same rant every electron app thread ever has_

- Your interpretation was correct, and it was _the exact same rant every electron app thread ever has_

As it happens - it was the first.

The electron rant is about as useful an opinion as the "Python 2 to python 3 migration was botched" that is brought up in every single thread about python.

Your interpretation is correct: I meant "faster" (and easier) in terms of UI/UX, not app speed. I'm confident the problem I'm experiencing can be fixed only by improving the UI/UX within the current technical stack. No need for a rewrite or a port to native apps, Tauri or Flutter.

Huh. It's almost like writing native guis with cross-platform bindings was a thing for a reason.

They could consider rewriting it in Flutter/Dart. My understanding is that Flutter is faster than Electron.

Dart/flutter sound good and I have heard good things. The downside is you’re rolling the dice on whether it will still exist in five years because it’s a Google project.

A lot of companies would be really upset at Google if this happened.

Besides Google, who re-wrote several of their own apps with Flutter, like Pay and their Home devices (which some are apparently running fuchsia now?), there's BMW, eBay, STAIR (US Department of Veteran Affairs), Nubank, and plenty more.

> A lot of companies would be really upset at Google if this happened

There's lot of projects that Google has killed for which this is the case, though. Stadia had people building for it, and Reader had people building atop it to name maybe the two highest profile ones. Of course, the cost vs value of maintaining those for Google was a very different question, but on its own, other companies' interests don't seem to move the needle much for Google when it comes time to kill a project.

It’s open source, so it will likely exist in some form.

GWT still exists and had a release last year. It’s been 9 years since it fully transitioned to an open source project. I’m not sure at what point Google stopped contributing since I see old team members in the commit history.

There are community-extensions for this. "Vault Changelog"recently edited files, and "Recent Files" recently opened files. Not sure how well they work on mobile.

But true, a google keep like tile-view with auto-layout and filters would be a useful enhancement for obsidian.

Could probably do it with obsidian dataview + embeds which would work on android at least. Not sure how they deal with community plugins + app store policy though on iOS.

If you look at the Quick Switch view on desktop or mobile it will show you most recent.

Also, if you use a 3rd party storage solution instead of Obsidian Sync, you can view recently modified/created notes in the Recents on there.

If you wanted to see the content of all recent notes, you can write a custom query for the dataview extension that attempts it.

I had the exact same problem. I ended up writing a small ios app. It only contains one textarea and sync text between devices.

It was rejected by appstore for simplicity. But works well for me.

Seems interesting ! What did you use to sync the text between devices please ?

Would adding a setting for the backend server sufficiently increase the complexity to get it published?

Agreed - I have the very same issue as well. Google Keep is my goto mobile app for most of my note capture just due to its speed and ease of use. Now I have a few github utilities to download my Keep notes to markdown for Obsidian use later - but that isn't really ideal yet.

PS - all I can say about Canvas is 'wow'!!! Awesome feature!

Drop these quick notes into a folder (can be automated with Templater). Create another note that uses the DataView plugin to show you a table of all the files in this folder sorted by the creation date.

I use Nextcloud Notes for that. It has decent mobile app and works great with few notes (Nextcloud Notes doesn't work as second brain very much).

I have two notes in there - Buffer and Shopping list. Buffer is one note for all the small stuff you mentioned. I also have widget on phone homescreen for that note so I can access it pretty seamlessly. Of course, it also means, you need to access some Nextcloud instance (I run my own).

Edit: I use Obsidian synced with Nextcloud for all the "second brain" things.

I use Craft for this. Short term notes or stuff like receipt scans. Then (where relevant) I copy paste into Obsidian for longer term linking or whatever

I search for 'path:/' and sort by 'Modified time (new to old)' which isn't quite what you want, but improved things for me.