Looking for an Obsidian alternative for tasks and notes?
A note on scope: this page compares Obsidian and tingdo as tools for managing your tasks and the reference notes attached to them. It isn't a comparison of Obsidian as a whole. Obsidian is a knowledge base, a writing tool, a thinking environment. tingdo doesn't try to replace any of that. What tingdo replaces is the part of Obsidian where you're trying to keep track of what to do next, and the project notes you need next to those tasks.
If that's the part of Obsidian that's been costing you energy, read on.
Where Obsidian shines
Obsidian is genuinely great at a lot of things, and we don't want to pretend otherwise.
- ·Linked notes and knowledge work. Building a personal knowledge base where ideas connect over time.
- ·Long-form writing. Drafts, essays, research, books.
- ·Local-first ownership. Your notes are plain markdown files on your disk. Nothing locked into a cloud.
- ·Plugins for everything. A deep ecosystem that adapts the tool to almost any workflow.
If you're using Obsidian for any of this, you probably shouldn't stop. Keep Obsidian for the things it does well. This page is only about the task and project-note side.
Where the friction lives
GTD has a few specific demands that an open note-taking tool can't quite meet.
You become the configurator, not the user. In tingdo, you open the app and see your next actions. In Obsidian, you first decide which plugin handles tasks. Then how files are organized. Then what tags mean. Then how queries surface your next actions. The first weeks go into setup. The next months go into rebuilding it when a plugin changes or your needs shift. The method is supposed to free your attention. Instead, the tool absorbs it.
Capture depends on which note is open. Quick capture matters in GTD because friction at capture means thoughts never reach the system. In Obsidian, capture means opening the right file, navigating to the right line, and typing in the right syntax for your plugin of choice. tingdo captures with a title and nothing else. Everywhere. Every time.
Tasks and notes scatter across the vault. Obsidian can hold both. The problem is they end up in different places: tasks as checkboxes in daily notes, project notes in project folders, reference material in topic folders. Pulling them together for one project means writing queries and maintaining conventions. In tingdo, the tasks for a project and the reference notes for that same project live inside the project itself, captured with + for tasks and * for notes. See how tingdo combines tasks and notes.
The weekly review is on you. GTD's weekly review is the thing that keeps the system trustworthy. In Obsidian, the review is whatever combination of queries, notes, and habits you've built for yourself. Most people don't sustain it. tingdo's weekly review is a guided path, one step at a time, that exists without you having to build it. See how the guided weekly review works.
There's no "next action" structure. Obsidian can hold a checkbox. It can't, on its own, tell you which task in a project is the next physical action you can do. That's a GTD concept that has to be encoded, by you, into how you write notes.
None of this is a bug in Obsidian. It's just that Obsidian was built to be open, and GTD wants a sharp edge.
Where tingdo fits, as a tasks and notes tool
| Obsidian | tingdo | |
|---|---|---|
| What it's built for | Linked notes, knowledge work, long-form writing | GTD task management with notes |
| Setup time | Plugin choices, file structure, query design | Open and start capturing |
| Capture | Open the right note, type in plugin syntax | One field, title only, everywhere |
| Tasks and notes together | Scattered across the vault, pulled together by queries | Same project, + for tasks, * for notes |
| Next action concept | You encode it into your notes | Built into the home screen |
| Weekly review | You design the ritual and queries | A guided, step-by-step path |
| Contexts | Tags, queries, plugin conventions | First-class concept, built in |
| Overdue tasks | Depends on the plugin | No overdue. Deadlines only when real |
Use both, if it fits
This isn't an either-or. Obsidian is a great place to think, write, and connect ideas over time. tingdo is built for the question Obsidian was never meant to answer: what should I do next, and what notes do I need to do it?
A lot of tingdo users keep Obsidian for their knowledge base, drafts, and long-form thinking, and let tingdo own the next-actions list and the project notes that go with it. Each tool does what it's actually good at, and you stop paying the tax of forcing one to do both.
Switching from Obsidian
If you've been managing tasks in Obsidian and want to try something built for it, you don't need a migration. Open tingdo and capture whatever's on your mind right now. The tasks and project notes already living in your vault can stay there as background reference, or you can move the still-relevant ones over as you encounter them, using + for tasks and * for the notes that belong to a project. Most people find the move itself clarifying. A lot of what was scattered through the vault turns out to be old, done, or no longer relevant.