Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
Notion is one of my favorite tools. From databases to to-do lists, tracking restaurants I wanted to check out, and so much more, I’ve dabbled in it for years until I finally made the switch to Obsidian. That’s mostly because of Notion’s one fatal flaw. The moment you lose internet, the app effectively becomes useless.
The moment you lose internet, the app effectively becomes useless.
I’ve learned that the hard way on flights, cafes with rocky Wi-Fi, even when wanting to check a washing machine’s maintenance schedule in my basement laundry without a cellular signal. It’s what pushed me towards Obsidian, a local-first markdown-based app that has never failed me when I just needed access to my notes. For a very long time now, Obsidian has been my safety net. But now that Notion has finally fixed that fatal flaw by rolling out offline mode, it might be time for a rethink. Perhaps it’s time to ditch Obsidian and go back to Notion. Here’s why.
Are you team Notion or team something else? 150 votes Notion all the way 53 % Evernote/Obsidian/OneNote/others 34 % Just pen and paper 13 %
Why offline mode makes such a big difference
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
For anyone who has used Notion long enough, the lack of offline access was not a minor inconvenience. It was effectively a dealbreaker. The whole app was designed around its well-defined structure and cloud-first experience. So when you lost access to the internet, you also lost the app’s utility. You could be staring at the prettiest dashboard in the world, but if you wanted to check your notes during a flight or in an area without a signal, it was effectively useless.
Obsidian's local-first approach doesn't care whether you have internet or not. It just works.
For me, that was the gap Obsidian stepped into so neatly. With its markdown-based files living on your local storage, it never mattered if the internet was on or off. I could take my laptop on a long-haul flight or my phone into a low-signal zone, and my notes were always there. Obviously, I couldn’t sync files across without the internet, but my work so far was right there and ready to be accessed. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been mid-thought on a flight and wanted to add something to my project tracker, only to stare at a blank Notion screen. Obsidian solved that, but at the cost of giving up Notion’s powerful databases, templates and collaboration tools. Now that Notion promises to work the same way anywhere, it feels like the balance is bridging the gap in the feature set. As someone who is frequently on the go, I needed that kind of reliability, and Obsidian has been the place where I keep anything important.
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