Personal Knowledge Management Systems

I've liked Capacities a lot but never used it as my main PKMS because it was online only and didn't have a mobile app. They've been on a roll recently, adding a very polished mobile app, and now the latest update has added offline mode. I've tested on my cell phone by closing the app, turning off all radios, and opening again. It works like a charm! I then edited a note, closed the app, turned on my data and opened the app again and it handled it just as expected. very impressive!

The mobile app needs some love though it is still pretty new. I would say Capacities and Anytype have similar app experiences, with Logseq and Obsidian being somewhat less refined.

The syncing is also very fast - capacities takes about 4-5 seconds, while obsidian (with obsidian livesync and a selfhosted couchdb) takes 3-4, and anytype being just a touch faster usually being around 3 seconds to sync. Logseq gets a dishonorable mention here, often taking over 15 seconds to sync, and often requiring opening and closing the app the sync. between anytype, obsidian, and capacities, startup time is pretty good. logseq takes a dogs age to start up and then finish syncing. This could be because I have a larger graph with logseq, but I would say it's small-medium if anything.

Capacities also has editable transclusion which is a prerequisite for me to check out a PKMS. it allows you to embed a note within another note and edit right there. Logseq has it built in but the implementation is very very clunky, especially on mobile. It takes up a lot of extra space. Obsidian doesn't have it out of the box, but the Make.md community plugin is unbelievably good! It's one of my favorite implementations of transclusion, and it works on mobile. I especially like that any link can be expanded to view its full content, just by clicking an arrow to the right of the link. you can also make full embeds as well. Capacities has really nice implementation of transclusion as well with one major caveat. embeds are not viewable on the mobile app! I probably will wait to switch over until this is addressed. Transclusion is unfortunately not supported on anytype at this time.

This adds another polished app that fits 4 of my primary criteria for a PKMS: cross-platform, offline capable (full read and write), fast syncing under 30 seconds, and editable transclusion.