Not many software comparisons start with the recommendation that both tools are good, but this one does. Apple Notes and Obsidian sit at opposite ends of the note-taking universe, and which one you should use depends less on feature checklists than on how your brain organizes information. One is a blank sheet of paper that happens to live on your phone, synced silently through iCloud, demanding nothing from you. The other is a personal knowledge management system that some people spend more time configuring than actually writing in — and those people will tell you, at length, why the configuration is worth it.
The choice got more interesting last month when Apple Notes gained section links in iOS 27. As 9to5Mac reported on June 25, the feature lets you link directly to specific sections within a note — something that has been table stakes in tools like Obsidian for years but was conspicuously absent from Apple’s offering. It’s the kind of addition that suggests Apple Notes is quietly evolving from “the app you use for grocery lists and the Wi-Fi password at your parents’ house” to something professionals might actually use for work. The question is whether it’s evolved enough.
The case for Apple Notes
Apple Notes is free, it syncs instantly across every Apple device you own, and you already have it installed. Those three facts alone make it the correct choice for most people most of the time. If your note-taking needs are “remember what the plumber said,” “keep a running list of books to read,” “store the recipe your friend texted you,” and “jot down gift ideas before your anniversary,” Apple Notes handles all of it with zero friction and zero dollars. You don’t configure anything because there’s nothing to configure.
The iOS 27 update adds a genuinely useful power feature. Section links mean you can create a master note that serves as a table of contents, linking to specific sections in longer documents. This matters because Apple Notes has historically been bad at handling long-form writing — notes get unwieldy, there’s no outline view or collapsible headings, and finding things in a 3,000-word note required scrolling and squinting. Section links don’t fix all of that, but they fix the navigation problem, which was the most annoying part for anyone trying to use Notes as more than a scratchpad.
Apple Notes also benefits from deep operating system integration that third-party apps can’t match. You can create a note from the share sheet in any app — Safari, Photos, Files, Mail — without switching contexts. You can scan documents with the camera and they appear inline, searchable. You can draw with Apple Pencil on iPad and the handwriting becomes searchable text automatically. Quick Note, accessible by swiping from the corner of an iPad screen or hovering in the corner on a Mac, captures thoughts without even opening the app. None of this requires setup, accounts, or decisions. It all just works, which is the Apple promise and, in the case of Notes, a promise they’ve actually kept for several years now.
The downsides are real and distinctively Apple-shaped. You can’t use Notes on Windows or Android in any practical way. The iCloud.com web version exists but is slow, feature-limited, and clearly an afterthought. There’s no Markdown support — you’re stuck with rich text formatting, which means your notes don’t export cleanly to other tools. There’s no plugin ecosystem and no community themes, so what you see is what you get, permanently. And your notes live in iCloud whether you want them there or not. For journalists, lawyers, or anyone handling sensitive information, the iCloud dependency is either a mild concern or a complete dealbreaker depending on your threat model.
The case for Obsidian
Obsidian is built on a single, almost radical idea: your notes are just Markdown files sitting in a folder on your computer. That sounds boring. It’s the opposite of boring. Because the files are plain text — .md files that any text editor can open — you control them completely. You can sync them with Dropbox, Google Drive, or Syncthing if you don’t want to pay for Obsidian Sync ($5/month). You can back them up with any backup tool you already use. You can version-control them with Git. No vendor lock-in, no cloud dependency you didn’t choose, no company that can change the terms, shut down the service, or hold your notes hostage behind a subscription paywall.
The killer feature, though, is the linking. Obsidian lets you create bidirectional links between notes — mention one note inside another using [[brackets]], and both notes show the connection automatically. Over weeks and months, this builds a web of relationships that turns a folder full of disconnected files into something closer to a personal knowledge graph. If you’re a researcher tracking sources across a thesis, a writer developing ideas across multiple articles, or a developer documenting a complex system, this linking model changes how you think about note-taking entirely. It’s not just storage. It’s structure that emerges from use.
The plugin ecosystem is vast and slightly overwhelming in the way that only open-source-adjacent communities can be. There are plugins for kanban boards, spaced repetition flashcards, calendar integration, advanced tables with spreadsheet-like formulas, custom themes that change every pixel, and dozens of niche workflows built by people with very specific opinions about how notes should work. The community has produced themes that make Obsidian look like anything from a minimalist distraction-free writing app to a full-featured project management dashboard with Gantt charts. The tradeoff is time: you will spend some of it configuring things, browsing plugins, and tweaking your setup. A lot of time, if you’re not careful about drawing a line between “setting up a notes system” and “actually writing notes.”
The learning curve is the main reason people bounce off Obsidian, often within the first hour. It doesn’t do anything for you out of the box. It’s a blank folder with a powerful editor attached. Building a system that works takes effort — you have to decide where your vault lives, how folders are organized, whether you use daily notes or topic-based notes, which plugins to install, and what your tagging conventions are. If the idea of organizing your own folder structure and learning Markdown syntax sounds like a fun Saturday project, Obsidian is your kind of tool. If it sounds exhausting, Apple Notes is waiting for you with no opinions and no demands.
Head-to-head comparison
Cost: Apple Notes is free with any Apple device, no exceptions, no tiers. Obsidian is free for personal use, with paid options for Sync ($5/month, or $50/year) and Publish ($10/month per site, for sharing notes publicly). The free version of Obsidian is fully functional — you only pay if you want cloud sync through Obsidian’s servers or a public-facing website. You can avoid both costs with Syncthing or Dropbox for sync, and static site generators for publishing, but that requires technical effort that Apple Notes users never have to think about.
Platform availability: Apple Notes is Apple-only — macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and a barely-functional web version at iCloud.com. Obsidian is everywhere: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android. If you use a Windows PC at work and an iPhone personally, Obsidian is the only option that works across both. If you’re fully embedded in the Apple ecosystem and have no plans to leave, Apple Notes’ platform limitation is irrelevant.
Ease of use: Apple Notes wins this by an unbridgeable margin. You open it and type. There is no setup process, no plugin browser, no theme gallery, no decision about folder structure. Obsidian requires you to make decisions before you’ve written a single useful note. For people who want their tools to get out of the way, Apple Notes disappears more completely than Obsidian ever will.
Power and flexibility: Obsidian wins this by a margin that’s just as large. The plugin ecosystem alone — with community plugins for PDF annotation, Excalidraw whiteboarding, advanced tables, and data querying — puts Obsidian in a different category. Apple Notes doesn’t compete here because it’s not trying to. It’s a notes app. Obsidian is a platform for building a notes app that fits your specific brain and evolves as your needs change.
Privacy and data ownership: Obsidian’s local-first architecture means your notes never leave your device unless you explicitly sync them somewhere. Apple Notes stores everything in iCloud, which uses end-to-end encryption for notes but still means Apple holds your data on their servers. For journalists working with confidential sources, lawyers handling privileged communications, or anyone with a threat model that includes corporate data access, Obsidian’s model is clearly superior. For the average person storing recipes and to-do lists, the difference is theoretical.
Collaboration: Neither tool excels here in the way Google Docs or Notion do. Apple Notes lets you share individual notes or folders with other iCloud users, who can view and edit. Obsidian has no native real-time collaboration — it’s fundamentally a single-user local tool. You can share a vault folder via Dropbox or Git, but that’s version control, not collaboration. If you need multiple people editing the same note simultaneously, neither of these apps is the right choice.
Which one should you use?
If you primarily use Apple devices, your note-taking needs are straightforward, and you want something that works without any configuration whatsoever, use Apple Notes. The iOS 27 section links make it better than it was, and the gap between it and power-user tools is smaller than it used to be. Most people will never outgrow it.
If you need cross-platform access, want full control over your data, think in terms of linked ideas rather than linear documents, or find yourself frustrated by tools that make decisions for you, use Obsidian. The upfront investment in learning the tool pays off if you take enough notes for the organizational overhead to matter — which is to say, if you’re writing notes every day, not every month.
If you’re unsure, start with Apple Notes. It costs nothing, requires nothing, and if you eventually hit its limits, the transition to Obsidian is straightforward — your notes export as text, and Obsidian can import them. The reverse migration is harder. Obsidian’s structure, once built, doesn’t translate cleanly back into Apple Notes’ flat folder model.
The honest answer is that most people should use Apple Notes and never think about their note-taking app again. But if you’ve read this far into a multi-section comparison of note-taking software, you’re probably not most people — and Obsidian was built for exactly the kind of person who reads this far.