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About the survival of our Data ( when Apps die )
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jun 21, 2025 at 01:17 PM
So I encountered a real world example of how work can be stranded in an app. I work for a publisher. We are updating our web store to show which of our other titles are related to each title. You, know, “If you like this book, you may be interested in these.” Anyway, I chose to do this in Workflowy, because after I imported the list of our titles, I could easily nest the related titles under each book. That worked fine. But then, when I wanted to export the data and import it in a usable way into Excel, I just couldn’t. I dropped the list into Dynalist, and had the same problem. I dropped it into OmniOutliner. No help. Ultimately, I put it into Craft, an app I already use to share documents with my colleagues, and I think this will work.
I am not looking for a solution here—some of you might have helped me figure it out, but that’s not my question. My question is, which app do you trust the most with keeping your information and gives you confidence you can get it out and into other apps? I know this is a fluid question, which depends on the type of information being stored (narrative text vs. outlines vs. structured data), so I don’t expect an exact answer. I’m just trying to learn generally which apps this group is confident in.
Thanks in advance for those daring to venture into this conundrum.
Steve Z.
Posted by Mike
Jun 21, 2025 at 02:27 PM
My personal list of note-taking app requirements to ensure longevity of stored information:
- Only use open-source software. Period. Even if the main developer stops working on the software, you can find and pay someone to add features and fix bugs because the source code is available. You could also improve it if you know or learn how to code.
- Only use apps that save data in open formats. Bonus points for tried-and-true text-based formats such as XML, plain ASCII text, markdown. I’m also OK with SQLite databases because it’s open-source, portable, and there’s a plethora of ways to extract the data from it.
- No web-based tech which immediately rules out Obsidian. Any program that uses Electron will be a memory hog and be at the mercy of the javascript ecosystem (Node.js, Chromium, etc.), OS compatibility, and could be a security risk (any vulnerability in Chromium or Node can potentially be exploited). Not to mention, if something catastrophic ever happened in the world, running Obsidian or Logseq on low-end hardware would be near impossible.
- Desktop first! While having a mobile connection to my notes is convenient, it’s not as important as having a solid desktop experience with the ability to intuitively export data, import data, and organize it as I see fit. Bonus points if it’s cross-compatible with all of the major desktop operating systems.
After trying many many programs over the years (and still searching), I landed on CherryTree for the foreseeable future. It saves data as XML or in an SQLite database and notes can be exported as plain text or HTML. It’s actively developed and open-source. Several years ago the developer rewrote it in C++ (from Python) which improved performance greatly and C++ is a well known programming language. It’s simple to outline, organize, format, and find notes. Similar to Obsidian, you can quickly jump to notes by typing the name of the note/node. It’s not perfect and lacks some functionality such as easy web clipping, mind mapping, etc. but I can live with that knowing my notes will be around and accessible for a long time.
Posted by satis
Jun 21, 2025 at 02:44 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>when I wanted to export the data and import it in a usable way
>into Excel, I just couldn’t. I dropped the list into Dynalist, and had
>the same problem. I dropped it into OmniOutliner. No help.
Surprised. Workflowy’s OPML should have let OO export to .csv or .xlsx, giving you a nice nested spreadsheet in Excel.
>which app do you trust the most with keeping your
>information and gives you confidence you can get
>it out and into other apps?
“Information” casts a wide net, so I’ll restrict my answer to documents. I want apps I can trust for portability, security and no lock-in. So, any textfile-based app would fit, of course, especially one whose files are distinct and either exist as textfiles outside a database or can be easily found within an app’s database. For the most privacy and file transparency I suppose the more hardcore options would feature open source apps like Obsidian, Logseq and Joplin.
But text files can too disadvantageous for much use, for many reasons due to its lack of rich features and manual overhead in managing files.
I’ve never had a problem with a commercial app with mode full-featured file formats as long as they have had good export to open formats like Markdown, JSON, csv, pdf, plaintext - and that includes Microsoft’s and Apple’s apps. That would also include apps like Notion, Zettlr, Bear and Standard Notes.
Bonus points for apps which support APIs or integrations like Zapier, or services which let you easily download your entire archive.
As far as OPML goes OmniOutliner has proven itself over decades even if the app has been marginally supported in recent years and is in maintenance mode. It’s powerful and bommbproof and I have tens of thousands of words in it even though I’ve increasingly found it clunky to use and I came to dislike writing in it in recent years. I have even more issues with other outliner apps, though. (I like Dynalist but not its pricing, and anyway it too is in maintence mode.)
Despite those preferences about apps I most trust my main writing app Ulysses, with *hundreds* of thousands of words in it, uses a proprietary database, and although one can use it with external files that are local or cloud-based, I don’t, instead relying on the app’s internal, cloud-synced database (which would be a bear to retrieve files from) to make greatest use of rich formatting and metadata capabilities from it custom Markdown flavor. But it’s never been a problem. It is very robust, and I have other priorities like requiring iOS/macOS cross platform sync.
So I don’t act on this particular concern. Most people don’t, and most don’t have to.
Posted by Amontillado
Jun 21, 2025 at 05:39 PM
Future proofing is something I thought a lot about yesterday. I discovered a couple of new-to-me functions in vim. I stared into the rabbit hole and the rabbit hole stared back. I spent all evening exploring things stuff I’d never seen in vim before.
Vim is ugly. The different modes, Visual (block), Visual (stream), Insert, Replace, Command, Binary, and Normal, might as well be designed to confound the unwary.
At the same time, it’s awesome. I may even grow a neck beard, it’s that great.
Anyway, plain text is about as stable as cuneiform. A reasonable second choice is ability to export to accepted and open file formats. As long as an app will do either of those, I’m happy.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 3, 2025 at 08:20 AM
Yep, agreed – and that’s why I now use Obsidian exclusively for all my PKM needs. Everything saved out in text (markdown), excellent tools for web clipping (Obsidian’s own, plus plugins like e.g. Slurp – and others), totally cross-platform (works very well on mobile), and thanks to constellation of plugins, hugely flexible.
And it looks nice (unlike VIM)!!!
Coupled with the outstanding plugin “Various Complements” (a ridiculous name for something so powerful), which (a) suggests words as you’re typing but far more importantly, (b) suggests links to notes in your Vault as you’re typing – in a pleasant, unobtrusive way – Obsidian is also the perfect Zettelkasten solution. Again, there are other plugins which offer “classical” Zettelkasten functionality (numbered/dated/timed notes, etc.), but I prefer the enormous flexibility provided by Various Complements.
There is even a growing number of non-Obsidian-proprietary syncing solutions.
And if Obsidian eventually dies, well, that’d be tragic, but all my data would still be accessible. Giving me a good excuse to turn to another favourite app (desktop only, alas): Octarine, which I use to edit my personal notes on our Nextcloud system.
Cheers!
Bill