Why I Even Switched From Notion In The First Place
There was a very specific moment that pushed me to look at apps like Reflect and Obsidian: I hit the Notion sync lag spiral. I had a meeting running, typed out a couple of fast bullet points on my phone, and when I pulled it up later on desktop, they had just… vanished. I honestly don’t even know if they failed to save or just landed in someone else’s database universe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. That was the tipping point.
I also found I was constantly remodeling how I took notes. Highlights from articles, business brainstorms, book quotes… they didn’t belong in the same place, but when I kept them separate, I could never find anything again. That’s where I got curious about backlinking — this neat mechanic both Reflect and Obsidian use where instead of folders, you just link notes to each other. Like a hyperlink but for your thoughts.
That sounded perfect. Except then I had to pick between Reflect — which looked eerily calm and cloud-like — and Obsidian — which looked like a Fortnite skin for Excel. I installed both. Mistake? Possibly.
How Linking Works In Both Apps Day To Day
Starting off — yes, both apps use double brackets to link notes. So if I write something like [[Daily Notes]], it becomes a link to a note called “Daily Notes”. Cool, right? But they do this very differently under the hood.
In Reflect, linking is a subtle, gliding experience. I start typing [[ and it auto-suggests note titles based on recent edits and what I’m probably trying to reference. It feels more like chatting to yourself in a calm library. The magic is: if I ever mentioned a note somewhere else (like a note titled “hiring questions”), I can see all other notes where I wrote [[hiring questions]] — even if the note didn’t exist when I linked it.
Obsidian, on the other hand, is more of a click-and-clack experience. You say [[ and you get a popup list too, but if you typo the title, it will just create a whole new file with that misspelled name. That annoyed me a bunch. I had to run a regex search to clean up typos like [[Client touhchpoints]] in five different places 🙁
But on the plus side, Obsidian’s graph view — the one where notes float like stars connected by lines — actually helped me visualize loops in my thinking. Like I saw that half my notes around “product management” were actually tagged under different names, and I consolidated them using backlinks. The graph was a fun bonus, until it wasn’t.
Because here’s what happens. Once you have over 200 notes, the graph view becomes useless — like a tangled hairball of connections. I had to install a plugin just to group themes. Even then, navigating to actual content using the graph started to feel like trying to poke a single grape from a fruit basket with a chopstick.
Reflect doesn’t have a graph view at all. At first I missed it. But after a while, it felt kind of refreshing not to be staring at the chaos. Everything is just in one scrollable, chronological flow — like a gentle timeline.
Syncing And Mobile Access Are Weirdly Important
This was huge for me, and surprising too. Reflect is cloud-based. It auto-syncs everywhere. I can jot quick notes on the web or mobile, and it reflects (ha) instantly. Obsidian, by default, is local storage. That means all your notes live on a folder on your computer. If you want them on the iPhone version, you need to manually sync it — either using Obsidian Sync (a paid service), or setting up your own iCloud folder sync, or using Dropbox which frankly gave me two duplicates and a mild panic attack.
Reflect just works for mobile. Like, I once added a quote on my iPad while waiting at the dentist, tagged it with #ideas, walked to my desk 10 minutes later, and there it was. Could I do that with Obsidian? Technically yes. But getting Obsidian to sync across multiple platforms gave me Vietnam flashbacks of Dropbox conflicts when both devices are idle for a while.
To be clear, if you’re a mostly desktop person, Obsidian’s local setup is fast and snappy. Like everything loads before you even think about it. Reflect’s web-first style means occasional delays (especially on flaky wifi), but I’d take that over data loss.
Custom Templates And Plugins Took Me Too Deep
Obsidian wins *hard* when it comes to customization. I lost a weekend customizing themes alone. Want light mode that looks like a vintage terminal? Done. Want a daily note template that pulls in weather, calendar, and your Goals of Doom list? Also possible. Once I installed the Templater plugin, I could literally write scripts inside notes. Like, real code that generated content.
But then I went too far. I had one thing set up where if I type “/meetingnote” it would auto-generate a note with today’s date, pre-filled questions, and a summary tag. One day, I renamed a folder. Boom. The whole thing broke and just started spitting errors. Turns out the path hardcoded in the plugin settings didn’t update. I only figured it out by inspecting the log — because there were no actual error messages on-screen. So yeah. Fun?
Reflect has templates too, but it’s minimal. You make a template note and mark it as such. That’s it. You click “Use this template,” pick a target note, and boom — it copies over. No script logic, no dynamic fields, no breakage. Honestly,— safer for normal humans.
Collaboration Gaps Still Exist In Both
Neither app is really built for real-time team notes. Obsidian is definitely solo-first. You can share Vaults using GitHub or Dropbox, but everyone needs to use the same config/setup/plugins or you’ll hit conflicts. I tried with a teammate and after one evening she messaged me: “Wait where’s the meeting notes page again?” We gave up.
Reflect has a beta feature called Shared Notes, where you can send someone a link to view one of your notes. That’s useful for meetings or research handoffs. But they can’t edit. It’s one-way, like reading a PDF. If you want real-time collaboration like Google Docs, you’re still out of luck.
So for now, I just keep collaborative notes on HackMD or even Docs. And use Reflect or Obsidian for the thinking-the-thoughts part.
Exporting And Backups Matter More Than I Expected
So here’s what nobody talks about: What happens when you want to leave? With Obsidian, it’s super easy. All notes are literally markdown files inside actual folders on your computer. This means you can drag them anywhere, open them in another editor, back them up on a thumb drive, even run grep on them. It’s freedom in a folder.
Reflect stores everything in the cloud. You can export your notes as markdown too, and it’s fine — except the export doesn’t preserve all the link context the same way. Something like [[John’s Interview]] will still show up that way in the file, but you lose the backlinks and metadata unless you use their JSON export (which is not human-readable).
Not a huge deal if you stick around, but it gave me pause. Like — what if they shut down next year?
Now, Reflect *does* let you export your entire vault, and I tested it. Took a few minutes, zipped it up, looked clean. But there’s something comforting about knowing I can open Obsidian’s entire vault in any text editor if it all goes south.
The Dealbreaker Bug With Reflect Daily Note Links
There’s one thing I still can’t get over in Reflect: daily note linking sometimes breaks if the note wasn’t created yet. I typed [[2023 11 11]] hoping it would auto-link to that day’s note. But if I hadn’t opened Reflect on that day yet, the note didn’t exist, so the link did nothing.
This was wildly confusing. Because I went to “Backlinks,” and I saw that other notes correctly referenced [[2023 11 11]], but clicking it went to a blank screen. Made me think my data was missing. Then the next day I clicked again, and suddenly everything was visible.
So now I have a weird ritual. I open Reflect each morning and manually trigger “New Daily Note” by typing the date, otherwise links don’t resolve. It’s not fatal, but it breaks the vibe. I’d rather have notes auto-create when referenced like Obsidian does.
So Which One Actually Stuck For Me
After a couple months of constant switching, I started using Reflect for fast input and reference — like when life is busy — and Obsidian for deep thinking sessions, where I want to write without distractions and build weird customized workflows.
But if I had to pick one? Reflect wins day to day. I open it more. I trust it more. It saves me from myself more often. My Obsidian vault still exists but it’s more like a long-term archive now.
That said, I still miss Obsidian themes. Those were an unhealthy kind of fun 😛