# Obsidian vs Capacities From a Creator's Perspective

The debate of the modern linked-thinking note-taking applications...


I've used both of these tools now, so I think that I'm well-positioned to weigh in with my side of the argument.

This piece is going to cover some comparisons of **features**, as well as my **opinions** on each of these note-taking apps, so you can better make a decision on what's going to help you in your personal knowledge management.

**TL; DR** — like every notes app comparison, Obsidian's better for some things, Capacities is better at some others. **Read on to find out what each performs better at**...

#### Obsidian

This is the **longest-serving** note-taking application that I use, having installed it for the first time almost a year ago. I've loved the time that I've spent using Obsidian — it's carried me through **a year of university study**, it's **started this Medium account** and it's also been where I managed the projects for my **two highest viewed videos on my YouTube channel**.

There is very little predetermined file structure in Obsidian — you're very free to go about organising your work in any way you desire, especially with the **powerful customizability of YAML metadata** that the app offers.

This is what I enjoyed about working in Obsidian. I didn't fit into any of the file structuring that other apps offered, so I relished the chance to build my own **customised system for note organisation**. I invested time and effort into building a system, which means I'm **less likely to switch away from the app just for some new shiny object**.

Obsidian is based on a folder of **markdown files** on your computer, compared to Capacities' online-first approach to storing your notes, which means that you can work on your projects offline as well. This isn't a problem for most people nowadays, but the added benefit of storing your files on your computer is that you own your data — nobody can look at what you're writing.

The obvious advantage of Obsidian is its **plugins**. They allow you to do almost anything within the app, which caused it to rise above other offers for me for a whole year.

I've made use of Obsidian's plugin integrations with **Readwise**, **Anki** and **Zotero** throughout this time, but there are also integrations that you can make with **Todoist**, **Git** and **Pandoc**, to name a few.

As well as this, the plugins create features and workflows within the app, with offerings for **kanban, task management and outlining**. Use of **AI** in the app is possible as well, with really **flexible scripting** and **macro** options.

My app of choice for my **university work** remains as Obsidian, because of the ability to integrate with other apps that I use to create flashcards and long-form pieces. However, the next app I'm going to discuss has taken over the more personal side of my knowledge management...

#### Capacities

This new app only came to my attention a couple of months ago. I started to see some of the work of PKM Beth, who loves the app, and I decided to give it a go.

At the time, I was doing a lot of quite complex university work within Obsidian, because I was deep within the academic year, so **I didn't see the appeal of moving things to Capacities**.

However, once the university year finished and I decided to focus more on my writing, **this changed**...

I wanted something that didn't require such stringent management of the system as Obsidian, and Capacities built-in '**Objects**' method of organisation looked appealing. This seems as though this is an attraction of the app to **a lot of people**.

The notes in Capacities aren't stored by folder — every note is a certain Object. You can create different Objects within your Capacities space, such as notes, books, articles or tags. **They are very similar to what you might call categories**, and indeed I used to organise my Obsidian notes using a YAML metadata property called `category`, so using Objects came naturally to me after the transition.

This creates an effect of giving you the **linking-your-thinking power of a Zettelkasten combined with the more orderly power of databases** and content views, like what's provided in Notion as well as Dataview databases in Obsidian.

What gave Objects slightly more versatility than a combination of YAML and Dataview in Obsidian was the fact that you can view the object content in several different ways, such as **list**, **board** and **gallery**.

You can add different **templates** per Object so that all the relevant fields of information in your notes are included when an object is created as well.

*So what do I actually use Capacities for?*

It's mainly my personal note-taking and outlining for these articles, as well as outlining newsletter issues for Fundamentalised. I moved away from the power and flexibility of Obsidian to a simpler offering so that I could **focus on actually producing work** rather than maintaining a set of plugins just to be able to write words down on a page.

You can **divide Objects into Collections**, adding another layer of organisation if you want a slightly more complex structure to your information. I use this feature when **managing my projects** in the app — I divided the tags Object into projects and topics so that there's a division between tags like '**productivity**' and tags such as '**create-medium-guide**'.

Capacities also has **a built-in daily note system**, which I enjoy using for **interstitial journaling**. When it comes to looking back on the notes that I've taken for a long time, it will be a good way to **check the progress that I've made** whilst taking notes in one place.

I hope you've enjoyed my review of these two tools. **I don't have a clear winner**, so it's up to whether you want a tool that is infinitely extendable with **all the functions you need** to produce work (**Obsidian**), or a tool that is **a simple and powerful manifestation of linked thought and Zettelkasten, as well as databases** (**Capacities**).

Make sure you choose the tool that's truly going to help you **create more work that provides value to the world**.

Until next time!