Comparison
An Obsidian alternative that keeps your notes as files
Inkstone is a native Markdown notes app for macOS 26 and iOS 26. It opens the vault you already have, writes nothing you cannot read in any other editor, and syncs through a GitHub repository you own — at no cost.
If you are looking for an alternative to Obsidian, it is worth being precise about what you are actually looking for, because Obsidian is a good app and most of the reasons to leave it are specific ones.
Reasons people look, and whether Inkstone answers them
| What you want | Inkstone |
|---|---|
| Sync without a subscription | Yes. Your vault pushes to a GitHub repository you own. Obsidian Sync is $4 per user per month billed annually (the arithmetic, in full). |
| A native app rather than Electron | Yes. SwiftUI and TextKit. It launches like a Mac app because it is one. |
| No account, no telemetry | Yes. Nothing to sign up for and nothing sent anywhere. See the privacy statement. |
| Chinese and English set properly on one line | Yes, and this is unusual. Hair spacing at the CJK–Latin boundary, punctuation compression, independent body and code fonts. |
| Your files to stay yours | Yes. No database, no import, no export. A folder of Markdown, which is what it was before you started. |
| Community plugins | No. There is no plugin API. If Dataview, Templater or Excalidraw are load-bearing for you, stay with Obsidian. |
| Windows, Linux or Android | No. macOS and iOS only. |
| Publishing a vault as a website | No. There is no equivalent of Obsidian Publish. |
What Inkstone has
Everything here is implemented and running, not planned:
- Live preview — headings, bold, quotes, callouts, checkboxes, tables and code render in place as you type, with the syntax revealed on the line the cursor is on.
- Wikilinks and backlinks —
[[Note]],[[Note#Heading]],[[Note^block]],![[Embeds]], aliases in frontmatter. Renaming a note rewrites every link that pointed at it, across the vault, in the same action. - A graph of the whole vault or of one note's neighbourhood, with filters, colour groups and force controls.
- Canvas in the open JSON Canvas 1.0 format — the same file the format's other implementations read.
- Properties, tags inline or in frontmatter, nested, in any script, daily notes, a calendar, bookmarks, version history and split view.
- Math, Mermaid diagrams, transclusion, image and PDF embeds.
Is Obsidian open source?
No. Obsidian is free to use and needs no account, but the application is closed source. What is open is the part that matters most: an Obsidian vault is Markdown files in a folder, in no proprietary format, which is exactly why another app can read one.
And to answer the same question about this app rather than let you find out later: Inkstone's source is public but is not under an open-source licence, so the honest word is source-available. You can read every line at github.com/iamzifei/inkstone. If an open-source licence is what you are looking for specifically, neither app is that today — Joplin and Logseq are, and they are honest recommendations if that is the deciding factor.
Trying it costs you nothing to undo
This is the real argument. Because both apps read the same folder, you do not have to choose. Open your existing vault in Inkstone; if you do not like it, close it. Nothing was converted, nothing was moved, and Obsidian will open the same folder tomorrow exactly as it did yesterday.
Obsidian Sync pricing read from obsidian.md/pricing on 25 August 2026. Obsidian is a trademark of Dynalist Inc.; this page is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Inkstone requires macOS 26 or iOS 26 on Apple silicon.