Notion vs Obsidian vs Evernote: which notes app do reviewers fault?
Shared report · refreshed weekly · updated Oct 26, 2026
Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
Productivity · Free · out since 2021 · from the App Store descriptionCrashes at launch are the clearest thing to fix: reviewers describe freezes within a session, a grey screen after the logo and an interface that stops responding.
OneStar read 1,259 App Store and Google Play reviews of Obsidian posted from Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. Of the 1,259 people who reviewed Obsidian in OneStar's sample, 57% complain and 67% praise it. The top complaints about Obsidian are crashes and bugs (26% of complaints), missing feature (20%) and bad update or redesign (13%). In OneStar's sample of Obsidian reviews, 3% of reviewers say they're quitting. OneStar's report on Obsidian was last updated on Oct 26, 2026.
What goes wrong
App is unusable, too many crashes. The app freezes multiple times in a single session. There has not been a single session of my use when this app has not crashed.
Obsidian is good for all. But can not share anything with other and there is default header. So it's useless. Don't download.
I built all my note taking around this app and the latest update has completely broken my set up and made it unusable.
full of wildly useless features, too many steps needed to "write something", and genuinely no instructions on how to do simple tasks.
Looks good on paper and the pro videos but my phone died on me and years of creative work was lost with it.
What goes well
Best. Notes app. Ever.
I just want to say what's true: Obsidian has changed how I work.
Using it with the sync feature has been an absolute game changer for making sure that I always have all of my notes at all times, regardless, if I’ve written them on my phone, my laptop or elsewhere.
My god, never have I EVER had an app so beautifully designed and easy to write on.
amazing app that keeps your notes secured and encrypted
Reasons for quitting
The main complaint of the 34 reviewers who say they stopped or are quitting
Their categories
Yes or no questions the person who shared it asked of each review
Syncing without the paid Obsidian Sync was a pain to set up but I eventually got it.
completely useless as a note taking app, text selection doesn't work at all, it's constantly glitching.
Had this app for a while but just today it locked me out and put up a pay wall.
UI stops responding almost immediately after launch, it's completely unusable. Looking at average reviews it's presumably a new bug but I'll have to uninstall.
Looks good on paper and the pro videos but my phone died on me and years of creative work was lost with it.
What they use it for
119 of 1,259 reviewers said; shares are of them
I know saying that already makes me lose credibility, so I hope acknowledging it can undo some of that damage because I refuse to change the title. I love this app.
As a student I’m using this app for note taking but is there one thing that annoyed me a lot that is when I add tags and sub tags i don’t like to see sub tags in graph view please add feature to...
What a great app! Minimalistic but scalable, great markdown editor, very intuitive UI. Would definitely recommend to anyone. The only flaw is that Obsidian seems to have no widget support.
What they ask for
179 reviews ask for something
Who is saying it
The biggest clear differences between audiences; 6 more with a free account
TenureNew user: say they're quitting 6.1x as often as everyone (17% vs 3%).
Developer replyDeveloper replied: say they're quitting 1.7x as often as everyone (5% vs 3%).
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