Kola vs Obsidian

Choose Obsidian if

You want plain files you control
Writing is the point
You like linking your own pages

Choose Kola if

You want the people rather than the pages
You want mail and calls in it too
You cannot write all of it down

What Obsidian is for

Local either way, filed by person.

Obsidian is a local notes app. By default your notes are plain files on your own disk.

Kola starts from the same place and organises around the people rather than the documents.

What	Obsidian	Kola
Made for	Writing and linking your own notes	Remembering the people in them
Reads	The files in your vault	Email, calendar, messengers, recorded calls and your notes
You end up with	A vault of pages you wrote	A page per person, mostly written for you
Who it suits	People who write a lot down	People who cannot write all of it down

Nothing stops you keeping both. Obsidian for what you write, Kola for who you know.

Local, and yours

One SQLite file on your Mac. No server holds a copy of your notes or your network.

Filed by person, not by folder

A note attaches to the people it mentions and comes back when you ask about them, whatever folder it is in.

It reads what you never wrote down

Mail, calendar, messengers and recorded calls arrive on their own, so a person is more than the notes you made about them.

Kola's Notes screen: a folder tree, a list of notes showing the people on each one, and one open note with a person mention chip

Filed by the people it mentions, not by folder.

Switching

There is nothing to migrate.

Kola does not import from another tool, and it does not need to. It reads the same accounts you already connected elsewhere and builds its own picture from them.

1

Install Kola.

One download, signed and notarized by Apple. Nothing to export from Obsidian first.
2

Connect an account.

Start with the mailbox and calendar you live in. Kola reads them in the background and fills itself in.
3

Keep both for a while.

Nothing forces a decision. Run them side by side and keep whichever earns its place.

Questions

Before you switch.

Can Kola read my Obsidian vault?

No. Kola reads mail, calendar, messengers, recorded calls and its own notes. A vault of markdown files is not one of its sources.

Is Kola local too?

Yes. One file on your Mac, and no server of ours that receives it. The features that do send data out are named on the security page.

Do I have to import anything to get started?

No. Connect the same accounts you already use and Kola builds itself from them. There is nothing to export from anywhere else first.

Which accounts can it read?

Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, Google and Outlook calendars, Google and Apple Contacts, Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. Connect only the ones you use.

What does it need to run?

An Apple Silicon Mac. Kola is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens with a normal double-click.

Ask an AI to compare them

These open a chat with the question already typed, pointed at this page. It asks for a balanced answer, including where Kola is the wrong choice.

Get started

Never forget who you know.

Install Kola and connect an account. Kola builds your contacts from there.

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