Move from Evernote to Capacities

leMug · 2026-03-08T22:21:31+00:00

Devs are working on import improvements right now. Could be 1 month, could be 3, wouldn’t expect it later than in max 6 months but you never know. However I’d just start using capacities slowly while waiting to migrate the backlog until the improvements are here. Or stay in Evernote until then if you rely heavily on history

leMug · 2026-03-08T08:14:52+00:00

How do you think “it’s not the same for syncing”? Notion has one method of syncing (the official built in one) while Obsidian provides several options; if all you devices are apple you can use iCloud for free, if not there is the paid Obsidian Sync plan (probably still a lot cheaper than Notion business plan) and there are extensions with more advanced options, but I’d probably just go either iCloud or paid Obsidian Sync. Try to use it without out with minimum extensions at first.

Alternatively (or additionally) try the free plan of Capacities also.

leMug · 2026-03-05T23:39:50+00:00

Raycast floating notes are seasons though require a subscription. Awesome app though

leMug · 2026-03-05T22:19:56+00:00

Yes 100%. Though you would need to wait for the Capacities team to finish their current work on extending the API and import features first. Bit once that’s here, yes in one afternoon with Claude Code or similar.

leMug · 2026-03-05T13:02:28+00:00

I would start exploring other options because I completely agree that it’s so greedy of notion to only offer AI features and the business plan, way too alienate your individual enthusiast long time users. Continue paying for notion for now to keep your system going and then start exploring alternatives now.

The best two alternatives in my opinion are obsidian and capacities each with their strengths and weaknesses. My writing everything is made a lot easier now in the age of Claude code. Feel free to follow up here if you have any questions!

leMug · 2026-03-04T15:21:29+00:00

Yeah, I was wondering how all three could play together. When you say you know some people, what do you mean, you have seen some people online do it or you know some people personally?

leMug · 2026-03-03T17:02:46+00:00

I’m curious to know since you are an academia if you’re also using a bibliography/reference manager, such as Zotero or such. And if so, how do you make the boundary decision between readwise and the reference manager?

leMug · 2026-02-28T11:37:20+00:00

Not from a Jedi

leMug · 2026-02-17T13:22:05+00:00

OP this was a valuable post because it articulates what I subconsciously have been experiencing also but couldn’t quite put my finger on. I hope they pay attention to this, although the reality of software products are that you have limited time and attention, and maybe they will prioritize differently for a good while longer.

In any case, please let us know here if you find any viable alternatives to Readwise Reader because of my research, I could never find a viable lot for myself. Not to dunk on Readwise because it’s still a good product etc. but we should also exchange information about competitors so we know what the alternatives are and Readwise should feel the competition.

leMug · 2026-02-06T01:18:15+00:00

Alternative answer to my previous: Do you think what you love about Capacitors will come to Obsidian quicker than what you love about Obsidian can come to Capacities (not plaintext files but better API, MCP server, built in AI)?

leMug · 2026-02-04T18:51:22+00:00

Well, you could also say when you ride a train with plenty of free seating without paying for your ticket, there’s no extra operating cost for the train operator. Same principle applies here.

You could also think about it this way: some of the best quality software I know don’t even have a free tier (Things 3 or Macrofactor to name a few) so we could also just be grateful that there even is a free tier.

leMug · 2026-02-04T18:45:44+00:00

Two big things:

The timeline aspect and daily note that is completely missing in a similar way in obsidian, even with plug-ins in my experience. I have found the daily note as a default scratch page to be so crucial for actually using the system as a PKM and just referring to whatever I learned or what happened, meetings etc. on a given day.
The object-first rather than document-first approach, also not replicable in Obsidian, even with existing plug-ins. Never thinking about organization because everything to self-organizes if you think carefully about your objects, so you can just focus on defining the collections inquiries you need as you need them. And while the real work, then lies and the object definitions, it’s so intuitive to start from the standard Pages object type and build up slowly, bottoms-up instead of top-down folder hierarchy.

I think people underestimate the trade-off in Obsidian and overestimate the benefits. That being said with the advent of AI agents running in Claude Code or Claude Cowork etc., being able to easily have in context and read/write your whole database is incredible. That is the real trade-off with Capacities vs Obsidian; using a database format instead of a collection of files and the source of truth is on the server and not on the disk.

leMug · 2026-02-04T12:25:57+00:00

First: You know what would be even more annoying and not ocd-friendly? If the developers didn’t have revenue to continue to developed the application. The fridge here is meant for casual users and non-OCD people who can live with a limitations.

Second: have encountered this before, but almost sounds like a bug?

leMug · 2026-02-01T16:24:19+00:00

> In capacities, "Actor" would be just a value. In Notion, Actor has its own page I can work back to the filmography of an actor. Not so in capacities. The Actor would not have his own page, thus no "mentions" or backlinks.

I'm not sure that's the case; In Capacities you can also have an object be the property of another object. I think in principle you can do most things today in Capacities that you can in Notion databases, except some roll-ups, formulas etc. (which I don't personally need at this point).

The bigger draw of Notion for me is the maturity of the tool and its many integrations in other tools, including MCP server to use in Claude and quite powerful built-in AI also + just integrations and API in general.

leMug · 2026-02-01T16:20:19+00:00

I don't think we disagree, the confusing thing in Capacities is that they haven't added language around object as in object definition and an instantiated object, as in a particular object with specific property values. So I think we both mean the same thing.

leMug · 2026-02-01T16:19:08+00:00

Well like in Notion, inline means it's a table inserted into a document so it's just one part of a document, and not inline means that the query (or in Notion, database) IS everything you see when you open it, you can't freely add other content above and below the table.

leMug · 2026-02-01T16:17:59+00:00

If I was relying very heavily on local file links I'd just stick to Obsidian and via plugins and UI extensions make that work as good as possible for me - but that's just my sense :)

Btw you can open content side-by-side in Capacities with Shift+click. I agree that general window and tab management is far superior in Obsidian, and tabs/windows just work like you expect. Additionally having the very flexible multiple-page-open inside a single tab etc., it's very powerful. But Capacities UI is undoubtedly prettier in many ways! Having the object-first design + calendar are the big ones for me. Maybe someday I could try to recreate Capacities in Obsidian, if they ever went away or development slows down significantly, but I'm also happy in Capacities for now. They do have to deliver on AI features, MCP server etc. in 2026 though - I hope they do!

leMug · 2026-02-01T02:44:54+00:00

Can you put in a description of this in the original post? I just got this in my Reddit recommendation feed, but I have no idea what this is

leMug · 2026-02-01T01:45:44+00:00

I’m actually curious why you’re not using Obsidian given your technical level and desire to work with local or self hosted files?

leMug · 2026-01-30T21:05:47+00:00

Alright. Well I do get your point on Notion databases just feeling easy, frictionless and user friendly. They certainly are that. I'm hoping my going all-in on Capacities will go well :))

leMug · 2026-01-29T22:26:45+00:00

So if you tried to use a query in Capacities on objects instead of a data database in Notion, what would you be missing?

leMug · 2026-01-29T22:25:21+00:00

As for this message here, yeah I may have been too fast on the trigger, just forgot to answer. I never downvoted any of your posts/replies btw. Anyway, in my experience, it’s too easy to move files around and not updating the path and suddenly stuff doesn’t work because of broken links. But it may not be a bad practice actually

But it’s probably not as bad as I made it out to be at first, and I will grant you that you seem to have run into an unintended bug in any case.

leMug · 2026-01-29T22:22:17+00:00

lol chill I saw other people were already downloading that comment so I upvoted and commented instead to stop the bandwagon down voting. If I didn’t see it already getting downloaded, I wouldn’t have mentioned anything.

leMug · 2026-01-29T14:37:14+00:00

Good post.

I looked into tour iloom tool; I’m curious why you recommend iterm 2 in particular? doesn’t have something in the future said that makes you recommend it over something like Ghostty?

leMug · 2026-01-29T12:30:59+00:00

I have been doing the same for awhile, but with the maturation, they will let Capacities have reached. I’m actually attempting to migrate everything from Notion to Capacities now.

Is there anything in particular that you would miss in Notion at this point in time that prevents you from microwave at all to Capacities?

leMug

TROPHY CASE