Smart Connections, and what to use if you don't live in Obsidian
The short answer: if your notes already live in Obsidian, use Smart Connections. It's free, runs locally, and shows related notes while you write. Look elsewhere if most of what you want back isn't in your vault yet: articles, videos, LinkedIn posts, emails and newsletters. Then the hard part is getting it all in one place without copying and pasting, and that's what Digital Notebook is built around.
What Smart Connections does well
- Related notes while you write, in a Connections view beside the note and at the foot of each note.
- Local by default. Its embedding model runs on your machine, with no API key.
- Your files stay plain Markdown,readable by anything, which is one of Obsidian's real strengths.
- Part of a big ecosystem. Links, graph view and hundreds of other plugins.
Where the two differ
- Getting material in.Smart Connections works on what's in your vault. Digital Notebook saves an article, a YouTube video with its transcript or a LinkedIn post with a right-click, and turns forwarded email and newsletters into notes, each with a link back to where it came from.
- When nothing fits.Digital Notebook shows a passage only when it clears a similarity threshold we measured and publish, and shows nothing otherwise. We'd rather show you nothing than noise.
- How your notes are kept.An Obsidian vault is plain files. Digital Notebook's desktop app keeps an encrypted folder, with export to plain Markdown whenever you want it. Plain files are easier to use with other tools; encryption is stronger if someone gets your disk.
- A plugin versus an app. Smart Connections needs Obsidian. Digital Notebook is its own notebook, on your desktop or on the web.
Which to choose
Choose Smart Connectionsif you write in Obsidian every day and your important material is already there. It's free, and nothing else fits into Obsidian as well.
Choose Digital Notebookif the things you'd want back are scattered across the web, your inbox and LinkedIn, and you don't want to maintain a vault to get them. You can import an Obsidian vault to start with. The details of how the matching works, including the threshold, are on how it works.
Common questions
What does Smart Connections do?
It is an Obsidian plugin that shows notes related to the one you are working on, using a local embedding model, so no API key is needed. The free core has a Connections view beside the note and related notes at the foot of each note.
Is Smart Connections free?
The core plugin is free. Some features, such as inline connections for the paragraph you are editing and finer ranking controls, are in the paid Pro version.
Is there something like Smart Connections outside Obsidian?
A few tools surface related notes as you write outside Obsidian, including Reor and Digital Notebook. They differ mainly in how you get material in and where your notes are kept.
Want a notebook that does this?
Digital Notebook is in early beta. Join the waitlist and we'll tell you when there's room.