Trilium Notes vs Obsidian: features and self-hosting

Trilium Notes is a personal knowledge base with a hierarchical note tree and a rich text editor. The walkthrough explains how cloning lets one note appear in multiple branches without duplicating its content. It also covers Markdown auto-formatting, code highlighting, per-note encryption, automatic versioning, queryable attributes and scripting through a REST API.

The speaker describes an offline desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux, with notes stored in SQLite. A self-hosted Docker server provides browser access and sync between desktop clients. Publishing is built in, but syncing across devices means maintaining your own server. The desktop app uses Electron; the project uses the AGPL 3.0 license.

The Obsidian comparison centers on storage and workflow. Obsidian keeps plain Markdown files on disk and has native mobile apps, while Trilium combines a database with built-in server features. The speaker notes that Obsidian's core is closed source and its Sync and Publish services are paid. Trilium's mobile interface runs in a browser, and the speaker cautions iOS users about its polish.

The video also recounts the community fork after the original creator announced maintenance mode in January 2024, followed by the repository handover. It cites version 0.104.1 as a July release and attributes the claim of handling more than 100,000 notes to the team.