I'm still using Roam, but keep an eye on what is happening out there with the various alternative projects. These are the ones that seem the most promising to me right now:

- Obisian https://obsidian.md/
- Logseq https://logseq.com/
- Liandi https://github.com/88250/liandi/blob/master/README_en_US.md
- Athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
- TiddlyResearch https://kebifurai.github.io/TiddlyResearch/

There are, of course, many other interesting projects out there, but this is my top-5 list. Would be curious what others here think should be on the top five list that isn't here?

Not sure. Maybe Org-mode? Roam seems to have a ignited a bonfire of interest in these types of tools. Here are some others https://nesslabs.com/roam-research-alternatives

bartb wrote:

Roam seems to have a ignited a bonfire of
interest in these types of tools.

There is a reason why Roam is so hot at the moment. It has really nailed some essential features, and for that particular combination there are no alternatives, at least not with the ease of use that Roam has.

I am a long-time WorkFlowy user, and I also use Dynalist, yet Roam has tempted me away from WorkFlowy as my daily task management and short- and (increasingly) long-term memory tool.

One killer feature for me is the automatic daily blank pages appearing on the top of the page at the start of the day, which forces the review of tasks from the day before and facilitates weekly reviews as well, so it helps primarily with prioritisation, which is probably the most important process of any productivity system yet it's one of the hardest processes to manage and it's and often neglected aspect of productivity software (at least regarding the management of the vast accumulation of tasks vis-a-vis the need to re-evaluate, re-order, and choose proirities, or abandon them, which is also important).

The other key feature is the automatic keyword recognition / auto linking / bi-directional linking / auto search or auto filtering or whatever you want to call it. So as long as you have a page or tage created with a word or phrase, Roam creates a list of "Unlinked References" and displays them automatically, which link to every instance and page where that term was mentioned.

This is enormously useful in discovering relationships or understanding the history of an issue or being able to analyse and issue or even to set up future reminders, by linking an issue to a future date page, so that when that day arrives, the automatically displayed date page will list all the related issues that you wanted to remind yourself days, weeks, months, years ahead (by which time you would have forgotten those relationships).

The reason Roam is my main productivity tool now is exactly that I am able to design workflows which other tools are simply not capable of supporting to the same extent.

There are other features of Roam that support the above killer features, such as the granular approach of "blocks," i.e. that each line is essentially the referenceable element, for which its page is the context, so that's another very powerful feature, being able to see each issue within a temporal but also conceptual context, and then in the context of all of its linkages.

Another key feature is the ability to have multiple pages displayed side-by-side, and to have the bookmark bar on the side, which makes pinning important pages easy, and also of the dragging and dropping of tasks from one day's notes into the next, as part of the review and re-prioritisation process. I have never been so consistent with reviewing my daily and weekly tasks than now, and that's down to a large degree to Roam.

There are loads of other sophisticated features I don't even use (such as constructing complex queries and custom filters), so I'm not really a power user of Roam, I'm just using some core features that really hit the sweet spot in terms of being able to manage not only my personal life, but my work life, and then even the lives of family members, as it just makes tracking issues so easy.

You could say it's a detail-orientated control freak's dream come true! ;-)

^ Good post by Dr.

Also thanks to Luhmann for the list.

Thanks Dr Andus. One of the reasons I made this list is a lot of the lists I see are of apps that don't really accomplish any of the things you mention in your post. These don't necessarily accomplish all of them (they have their own visions), but they come the closest to capturing what makes Roam work.

What is missing from the list, for my personal preferences, is a true Apple-native solution that supports MacOS and iOS. But then there isn't even an app in that ecosystem that comes close to Workflowy or Dynalist. (Outlinely looked hopeful for a while, but development was too erratic.) I really think it is a shame that all these apps are primarily web apps, because I still prefer the native app experience - even if the difference is getting smaller. I blame Apple's awful App Store policies ...

Do take a look at x3Note, which is on both the Mac App and App Stores. It’s capable of emulating Workflowy and Dynalist, although there are still some rough edges. It also has a good go at being a NotePlan alternative. It doesn’t do Roam yet, but if the developer keeps at it, maybe that could be on the roadmap.

Cheers,
Bill

Luhmann wrote:

Thanks Dr Andus. One of the reasons I made this list is a lot of the
lists I see are of apps that don't really accomplish any of the things
you mention in your post. These don't necessarily accomplish all of them
(they have their own visions), but they come the closest to capturing
what makes Roam work.

What is missing from the list, for my personal preferences, is a true
Apple-native solution that supports MacOS and iOS. But then there isn't
even an app in that ecosystem that comes close to Workflowy or Dynalist.
(Outlinely looked hopeful for a while, but development was too erratic.)
I really think it is a shame that all these apps are primarily web apps,
because I still prefer the native app experience - even if the
difference is getting smaller. I blame Apple's awful App Store policies
...

Being in the App Store doesn’t mean it’s a native app. Workflowy and Dynalist both have apps, but the experience is not as nice as a true native app like Bear… Many of these are electron apps, which doesn’t give the same experience as tools built natively for Apple.

Interesting post by a user who loves Roam but is a frustrated because new features are added, while annoying quirks don't get fixed.

https://medium.com/@catominor3/quo-vadis-roamresearch-delta-or-beta-4c598d463e86

Franz Grieser wrote:

Interesting post by a user who loves Roam but is a frustrated because
new features are added, while annoying quirks don't get fixed.

https://medium.com/@catominor3/quo-vadis-roamresearch-delta-or-beta-4c598d463e86

Yes, I think that's a generally recognised problem with Roam.

But to be fair Roam never claimed to have exited the beta stage. My understanding is that they turned on the payment option to be able to service the huge number of beta users who wanted to sign up.

So now they are in this weird situation that paying customers who who were happy to pay to get access to the beta are now demanding a non-beta product.

There is probably some kind of a lesson there about how to manage the beta stage.

On the other hand it's a nice problem to have for a software developer to have thousands of people begging you to take their money for an unfinished product...

Dr Andus wrote:

On the other hand it's a nice problem to have for a software developer
to have thousands of people begging you to take their money for an
unfinished product...

:-)

Nevertheless, I'll wait for a desktop version. In the meantime, I'll give Obsidian a try.

Hey guys

Long time lurker, first time poster - thank you all for the enlightening and interesting discussions here, I have learned a lot from reading your arguments and discussions!

I am in a very similar position as the OP - currently trying roam and also looking for alternatives. After playing around with many of these, I currently gravitate back to roam because it seems to find the right balance of feature set, solid functioning, and ease of use (I am not a programmer, and even installing things from Github is quiet the adventure for me).

I think that RemNote (www.remnote.io) should be on the top 5 or even top 1 list; in my experience it is actually very close to roam and in some regards “better” (in the sense of more powerful and has more features).

It actually preceded Roam and is developed by a very enthusiastic and modest guy / team (nice antithesis to the "Roam cult"). It's still early days, but the foundation seems solid, and the updates appear in breathtakingly short intervals. It is extremely sophisticated - RemNote can do (almost, just to be on the safe side ;) everything that Roam does, and then much more. For example, it has, besides being conceptually very similar to Roam, powerful tools for spaced repetition.

Unfortunately, there is not so much talk about it, and it seems to mainly target students. Which is a pity, because all the things for a fabulous PKM tool are there (backlinks, transclusion, etc.). As opposed to Roam, there is no differentiation between blocks and pages; in RemNote, everything is a rem (=the smallest unit, equivalent to blocks in roam). In my experience, it is a bit more complicated, offers more options and I have not yet figured out all the conceptual details (at times, RemNote seems to be a bit “nerdy” in the sense that the programmer is clearly a – ehm – programmer), but the added complexity also makes RemNote potentially more powerful than Roam. The flipside is a steeper learning curve. The documentation / help / tutorials is much better than in Roam.

I have experienced some bugs here and there, but nothing drastic until now.

So yeah, I think if you like Roam it might be worth having a look at RemNote.

I am not affiliated in any way with the devs, I’m just speechless that RemNote does not get more attention - there are quite a few tutorials on Youtube and some blog posts, but nothing close to the hype that Roam has currently generated, and I have no idea why.

Best, Oxy

Listing alternatives to Roam - I think I hit the motherland! (just keep scrolling down)

https://www.notion.so/Artificial-Brain-Networked-notebook-app-a131b468fc6f43218fb8105430304709

Thanks. I had posted that link earlier in a separate thread, but I came up with this list because I strongly feel there are diminishing returns in lists that are too long or whose criteria are too vague. I wanted to suggest a limited number of projects that, while perhaps different from Roam in key areas, are nonetheless viable projects that I feel could give Roam a run for their money on the long run. I just don't think there are that many projects that fall in this category...

RE: @ Oxytoxine

Yes, Rem Note deserves to be on the list. Thanks.

Oops ... must have missed that link.
Good point about narrowing down a list for desired features.
To me, its just a little crazy how many active projects are occurring in this field!

bartb wrote:

Listing alternatives to Roam - I think I hit the motherland! (just keep
scrolling down)
https://www.notion.so/Artificial-Brain-Networked-notebook-app-a131b468fc6f43218fb8105430304709

And still no mention of ConnectedText? That's unforgivable! ;-)

bartb wrote:

Listing alternatives to Roam - I think I hit the motherland! (just keep
scrolling down)

https://www.notion.so/Artificial-Brain-Networked-notebook-app-a131b468fc6f43218fb8105430304709

Nice, this list has been updated. Thank you for posting it.

Also thanks to Luhmann for his updates.

bartb wrote:

Listing alternatives to Roam - I think I hit the motherland! (just keep
scrolling down)

https://www.notion.so/Artificial-Brain-Networked-notebook-app-a131b468fc6f43218fb8105430304709

Wow! Thanks for posting. It seems we are entering a new golden age of software development...

Another interesting alternative to Roam is SiYuan:

https://b3log.org/siyuan/

A bit like Obsidian, but seems to have solved the problem of treating markdown paragraphs as blocks. Haven't tested it yet.

Luhmann wrote:

- Athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

Athens is interesting in that the dev interviewed with Roam, and apparently after failing to gain employment fairly quickly wrote this open-source version using Clojure. And he later secured $1m+ in financing for it.

Another open source Roam clone to consider is Foam.

https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

I am sure those links are meaningful to some people if they're into programming and coding. For the rest of us, I wonder if Athens and Foam have their own web pages which aren't quite as esoteric as what is posted on GitHub.

satis wrote:

Luhmann wrote:

>- Athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

Athens is interesting in that the dev interviewed with Roam, and
apparently after failing to gain employment fairly quickly wrote this
open-source version using Clojure. And he later secured $1m+ in
financing for it.

Another open source Roam clone to consider is Foam.

https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

I answered my own question.

From the link Satis provided to GitHub I found this link explaining Foam - https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

A Google search lead me to this link for Athens - https://www.athensresearch.org/ The website doesn't say much, and is very preliminary, though it drops some names.


Daly de Gagne wrote:

I am sure those links are meaningful to some people if they're into
programming and coding. For the rest of us, I wonder if Athens and Foam
have their own web pages which aren't quite as esoteric as what is
posted on GitHub.

satis wrote:

>
>Luhmann wrote:
>
>>- Athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
>
>Athens is interesting in that the dev interviewed with Roam, and
>apparently after failing to gain employment fairly quickly wrote this
>open-source version using Clojure. And he later secured $1m+ in
>financing for it.
>
>Another open source Roam clone to consider is Foam.
>
>https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

A note of solidarity, Daly: I too find GitHub baffling.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

I am sure those links are meaningful to some people if they're into
programming and coding. For the rest of us, I wonder if Athens and Foam
have their own web pages which aren't quite as esoteric as what is
posted on GitHub.

satis wrote:

>
>Luhmann wrote:
>
>>- Athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
>
>Athens is interesting in that the dev interviewed with Roam, and
>apparently after failing to gain employment fairly quickly wrote this
>open-source version using Clojure. And he later secured $1m+ in
>financing for it.
>
>Another open source Roam clone to consider is Foam.
>
>https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

Thanks, Stephen. I appreciate the solidarity!

Daly

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

A note of solidarity, Daly: I too find GitHub baffling.

Daly de Gagne wrote:
I am sure those links are meaningful to some people if they're into
>programming and coding. For the rest of us, I wonder if Athens and Foam
>have their own web pages which aren't quite as esoteric as what is
>posted on GitHub.
>
>satis wrote:
>
>>
>>Luhmann wrote:
>>
>>>- Athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
>>
>>Athens is interesting in that the dev interviewed with Roam, and
>>apparently after failing to gain employment fairly quickly wrote this
>>open-source version using Clojure. And he later secured $1m+ in
>>financing for it.
>>
>>Another open source Roam clone to consider is Foam.
>>
>>https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

So do I. I consider it a completely different software experience, altogether.

And I won't say it's unwelcoming, but to me, it's overwhelming. From the first page of whatever software you're looking at, everybody's speaking a different language. They all seem to know what they're talking about & they're all set.

That's fine, it's just where the fun ends for me.


Stephen Zeoli wrote:

A note of solidarity, Daly: I too find GitHub baffling.

Daly de Gagne wrote:
I am sure those links are meaningful to some people if they're into
>programming and coding. For the rest of us, I wonder if Athens and Foam
>have their own web pages which aren't quite as esoteric as what is
>posted on GitHub.
>
>satis wrote:
>
>>
>>Luhmann wrote:
>>
>>>- Athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
>>
>>Athens is interesting in that the dev interviewed with Roam, and
>>apparently after failing to gain employment fairly quickly wrote this
>>open-source version using Clojure. And he later secured $1m+ in
>>financing for it.
>>
>>Another open source Roam clone to consider is Foam.
>>
>>https://foambubble.github.io/foam/