Comparing apps for Zettelkasten

Trying to figure out which app to use for my Zettelkasten, I got lost in all the options, so I decided to make a little overview to help me decide

I included Bear, Obsidian, Roam, SublimeZK, Zettlr, TheArchive, FS Notes, NValt, iA Writer and Ulysses.

Of those Obsidian, Roam, SublimeZK, Zettlr also work on Windows and Linux.

The criteria are listed most to least important (left to right).

I decided to use Bear 🐻 in the end, because of the beautifully consistent experience across desktop and mobile. It’s one of the few options where mobile offers the same experience as desktop (including autocompleting and auto-updating wikilinks).

If I would be only on desktop, I would probably go for Obsidian. Obsidian works with markdown files, which play pretty nicely with 1Writer on iOS, but 1Writer has a slightly different interpretation of wikilinks (it doesn’t recognize wikilinks to files in sibling or parent folders) and there’s no autocompletion, so that really degrades the mobile experience. Obsidian is only just starting however, and there might a mobile app at some point, so I’m definitely keeping an eye on that.

Let me know if you miss any apps or criteria!

Click to open Google Docs