Dynalist Revisited
Started by Daly de Gagne
on 1/17/2026
Daly de Gagne
1/17/2026 5:40 pm
I have carped about this before - that is about development of Dynalist being halted. As a result I am hesitant to use it for some projects.
Having said that, my experience is that Dynalist is one of the best outliners I have used. It is both easy and fast, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, by which I mean it is really easy on the eye. Apart from easy, fast, and aesthetically pleasing my experience with Dynalist is that it is great for working out ideas, keeping information, and planning.
I wonder if there is any possibility at all that the developers of Dynalist would again support the program.
Any thoughts?
Daly
Having said that, my experience is that Dynalist is one of the best outliners I have used. It is both easy and fast, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, by which I mean it is really easy on the eye. Apart from easy, fast, and aesthetically pleasing my experience with Dynalist is that it is great for working out ideas, keeping information, and planning.
I wonder if there is any possibility at all that the developers of Dynalist would again support the program.
Any thoughts?
Daly
Paul Korm
1/17/2026 9:23 pm
The Dynalist developers, Erica Xu and Shida Li, created Obsidian, and that's when Dynalist went onto the back burner. If Dynalist's forum is an indicator, where there is almost total silence from the owners for nearly five years, I'd say don't expect any upgrades to Dynalist.
cicerosc
1/17/2026 9:44 pm
It is such a shame that they won't open source it or someone develop a FOSS clone.
satis
1/18/2026 8:35 am
Daly de Gagne wrote:
I wonder if there is any possibility at all that the developers of
Dynalist would again support the program.
There's "any possibility at all" that almost anyone can change their mind about anything at any time. But since Obsidian was opened to the public in 2020 the devs made explicit that Dynalist is in long-term maintenance mode, development has been paused for years, and they're only fixing critical bugs. The usual direct alternatives with more support are the long-discussed Logseq, Workflowy, Checkvist, Roam Research (gag), and Obsidian+plugins+setup.
moritz
1/19/2026 4:11 am
After the slowdown of Dynalist updates I went back to Workflowy - they have in recent times picked up speed of development Workflowy is quite similar to Dynalist in many ways, no surprise considering that Dynalist was 'inspired' by Workflowy back in the day ...
Daly de Gagne wrote:
Daly de Gagne wrote:
I have carped about this before - that is about development of Dynalist
being halted. As a result I am hesitant to use it for some projects.
Having said that, my experience is that Dynalist is one of the best
outliners I have used. It is both easy and fast, as well as being
aesthetically pleasing, by which I mean it is really easy on the eye.
Apart from easy, fast, and aesthetically pleasing my experience with
Dynalist is that it is great for working out ideas, keeping information,
and planning.
I wonder if there is any possibility at all that the developers of
Dynalist would again support the program.
Any thoughts?
Daly
jaslar
1/20/2026 12:04 am
It's been my daily driver for years. I don't actually need it to be developed. It does what I want it to, although I'm poking around emacs org-mode quite a bit more lately.
Paul Korm
1/21/2026 9:56 pm
This I agree with. Sometimes devs keep deving enhancements that no one needs much. Maybe it's refreshing when a dev says "done".
jaslar wrote:
jaslar wrote:
It does what I want it to
