There are a lot of planners out there, and with most of them, users get bogged down by feature overload, subscription fees, or the feeling that they don't really fit. Obsidian impressed them right away when they first tried it, but what they didn't expect was that Daily Notes—a planner inside a note-taking app—was more effective than any other planner they'd ever used. The same feeling came when they tried the Obsidian Bases plugin .
How does Daily Notes compare to other planner apps?
Obsidian's Daily Notes work really well.
The first time you use Daily Notes, you'll immediately notice how much less disruptive it is to your daily routine. You'll likely identify with this if you use a dedicated planner, where before you even start, you lose momentum waiting for the app to sync, staring at a dashboard full of overdue tasks, or clicking a menu to get started. You can program Obsidian to launch with today's notes, or use the "Open today's daily notes" icon to help plan your day.
Some other scheduling apps cause decision fatigue. Apps like Todoist or Notion require you to think about which project a task belongs to, what tag it should be assigned to, and which folder it should be placed in. Daily Notes automatically adds a timestamped home page to each entry, removing the burden of having to think about sorting in the moment. The date becomes the anchor of the note, helping everything else fall into place.
Daily Notes work independently and connect directly to the rest of your notes. You can record 'client follow-up' and with just two keystrokes, link it to the client's project, and that connection will exist in both places. This is different from most traditional planning apps, where the task is isolated from its context. Obsidian's Daily Notes plugin ensures that the plan and the knowledge exist side by side. So, without having to switch between apps or tabs, you can review yesterday's meeting and understand how it shapes today's tasks.
Flexible scheduling options
Daily Notes outperforms dedicated apps
In my experience with dedicated planning apps, you're often limited to a few rigid fields. These might be priority flags, project dropdown lists, or recurring schedules. But because Daily Notes uses Markdown as its primary file format, there are no limits. You can quickly shape your workflow, combining short-term and long-term ideas into a single note.
What stands out, however, is how Daily Notes connects everything. No dedicated app has ever been able to turn your workflow into a living map like this. But because Daily Notes is a core Obsidian plugin, it integrates seamlessly with other features and plugins like Dataview, allowing you to build relationships that create a dynamic, tightly connected system for all your notes, projects, and ideas.
Planning built on Obsidian
Daily Notes inherits the benefits of Obsidian
Many people love Daily Notes, but it's worth noting that many of their favorite features are actually inherited from Obsidian. For example, Obsidian's vault-like structure allows Daily Notes to sit alongside research notes, meeting notes, and references. This integration makes note-taking seamless because there's no need to copy, export, or switch apps. This central location only gets richer over time.
The second feature it inherits is the ability to save Markdown. If all of your daily notes are text files, you can decide to move or save them as you like. While I don't see myself leaving Obsidian, if you do, there's nothing holding you back. No complicated steps to open and use all of your files.
This makes planning with Daily Notes more enjoyable than with most dedicated planners. It's one of the few times you feel like a product was truly made for you, not just for some organization to take something away from you.
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