PKM Weekly - 2025-04-06
A look at the latest Personal Knowledge Management PKM news from the past week.
Hi Everyone,
We are back with another episode of PKM Weekly. Let’s see what is in store for us today.
Obsidian
If I Had To Start In Obsidian, Here's What I'd Do
It has been a while since I showcased something from Nick Milo, so I am very glad to share his latest video (another great production) on what he would do if he had to start from scratch in Obsidian.
“If I were starting in Obsidian today, this is exactly what I’d do. No folders, no imports, no pressure. Just five notes, one simple prompt, and a whole new way to connect what matters most to you. In this video, I walk you through a joyful way to reset your thinking system from the inside out. It’s not about the tools. It’s about the connections you make.”
More Control Over What Obsidian can Access (Android)
At the moment, Obsidian for Android requires full file access permissions because it's necessary for certain third-party sync tools and interoperability, but some users prefer narrower permissions.
In an upcoming release they are adding the following option:
How Obsidian Canvas is helping me restore an old Apple IIe
You may ask, " What is Canvas / what is the point in it?" Well, here is a great demonstration of how Vlad uses Canvas to organise and find information about a project or topic.
Great video Vlad, and thank you for the showcase.
Vlad also did a video on How I'm using the Homepage plugin in Obsidian - Do you feel like you need that one spot in #Obsidian where everything important is at your fingertips? From the very beginning, I knew I would need a #dashboard showing all my work in progress and, at the same time, providing me with access to relevant resources. Learn how I built this using the Obsidian Homepage plugin by watching today's video.
One major dealbreaker of Obsidian
OP posted “So far, it seems to be amazing. Except for one major flaw: You cannot handwrite over your notes to annotate it with a stylus.
If anyone has a solution for this, I’d love to hear it. But since your notes are .md files, you can’t annotate it. Or draw anything at all for that matter. You have to install a plugin that will open a new note, ready for you to draw. But you can’t ANNOTATE notes. It’s a non-negotiable trait I need for note-taking… I have written notes, and I annotate them with my iPad. Or I have questions, typed, (usually maths) and I answer them with writing on my iPad. From my understanding, obsidian doesn’t have this feature.
Does anyone know a possible solution? Otherwise I would just have to not use Obsidian as my main note-taking software”
There are a number of responses (including a few plugins) but one that rang true was - if handwriting is indispensable and you need to rely on a plugin, then take things with care as there are no guarantees the plugin developer will continue to maintain it.
Capacities
I finally started using Capacities, and I should have sooner
OP posted their thoughts on their note-taking journey “I have always been on the hunt for the perfect digital workspace. I want to create a place where ideas seamlessly connect, information is easily retrievable, and productivity flows effortlessly. Like many, I tried countless note-taking apps and PKM systems, each promising to be the answer. Yet, something always felt missing.”
Seems that the answer was potentially Capacities. Check out the full blog post here.
Why Obsidian Users Are Flocking to Capacities in 2025
OP did a write-up on how they see the lay of the land at the moment, especially as they spent more time customizing Obsidian than actually using it — Capacities changed that.
Since I started using Obsidian, I’ve always liked how it helps me arrange my ideas and thoughts. It is often hailed as a “second brain,” and appropriately so.
However, I’ve been drawn to Capacities recently. Its pre-made structure and user-friendly features promised to improve my productivity without requiring constant setup.
I can be productive right away using Capacities, unlike Obsidian, which needs some tuning. It works whether I oversee research, organize tasks, or collect inspiration.
Check out the post here.
Do you agree that more people and jumping ship from Obsidian is it just an illusion with people saying they are using this / that app but then putting their tails between their legs and doing the walk of shame when they return to Obsidian?
This Note-Taking App Hits Different: Capacities
Tool Finder did a review on Capacities
TANA
Tana Updates 2025
First up is the latest video from the Tana team sharing Every New Feature You Missed – BIG Tana Updates (2025):
A few other changes and updates were announced by the Tana team this week. first up is New version of Tana Desktop app is rolling out (v1.0.25), which includes;
The title bar now matches the colour of the app background
Meeting notifications react better to screen changes
Changed menu items - Add Undo/Redo, Fix ordering and capitalisation, (Mac) Show All for windows and remove unnecessary Window entry
Fix: preventing the window going to sleep in background
Fix: Bug where global voice capture shortcut did not work (please report if you still experience it)
Windows+Linux: Improvements to the app's menu in titlebar
New button to use the app's menu on the titlebar
You can spawn the menu with the Alt key.
The colour scheme is the same as the sidebar and reacts to changes to dark/light mode.
Added keys to the category menus (so you can type Alt then F to get the file menu).
The changelog was also updated - A few fixes, a few improvements and a few info updates.
Changes to the meeting agent and auto-tagging meeting notes
We are making major changes to how meetings work in Tana—including bot-less meeting notetakers, smoother transcripts, and more accurate summaries and extractions of tasks and follow ups. To do this we need to make some changes to how the current meeting agent works.The following changes will be implemented early next week.
The Meeting agent will now suggest action items and recognized entities (e.g. persons, companies, countries) instead of automatically tagging them.
We want to give you more control of what gets tagged, and avoid messing up your graph with tagged items you don’t actually want.
We recommend reviewing your meetings immediately after processing and tag the things you want to keep
The meeting summary will temporarily not link to the transcript quotes.
The current implementation is not accurate enough, and the navigation is clunky, so we believe it’s better to remove it altogether while we’re building a better solution.
Project Dashboards for Tana Template
Simon launched their first Tana Template: Project Dashboards for Tana! Manage multiple projects and clients with:
🏠 Hubs
🔍 Widgets
⚙️ Micro Apps
The template is available (free) here, and you can see how it works below:
Logseq
Improve perf of DB importer
CLD Walker worked on improving the importing of files to the DB version and commented: “This PR addresses the largest bottleneck RCmerci found while importing a large ~4k page graph. I observed a 25% drop in the docs graph test”
LogSeq Plugin MVP showcase
Want to chat directly with your notes? Check this out:
AppFlowy
Self-host ALL your data now, plug into LLMs later — a guide (using AppFlowy)
OP provides a post: In this post, we’re gonna go over the step-by-step, as well as any extra tips and recommendations I have for your own self-hosted AppFlowy Cloud minimal instance on DigitalOcean, creating a generalist knowledge management system that’s:
AI-ready: Structured for easy integration with LLMs and other AI tools
Secure: Completely under your control, with no third-party access to sensitive information
Scalable: Able to grow with your team and adapt to changing needs
Cost-effective: A fraction of the cost of premium SaaS subscriptions
Tag along and let’s build a knowledge infrastructure that serves as the backbone of your AI-augmented workspace!
Full post available here. Finally, an easy to follow guide on self-hosting something.
AnyType
A user showcased their homepage - though to share because if you have not heard of AnyType or do not know what it is capable of, this should hopefully give you an idea.
Heptabase
In the latest version of our mobile app, you can take voice notes and transcribe them in real-time! Currently, each user has a total transcription quota of 5 hours per month, allocated as follows:
Converting voice notes into transcripts: 3.5 hours
Generating transcripts from audio/video cards: 1.5 hours
https://x.com/Heptabase/status/1907416866047373704
RemNote
In the latest update, you can enable text-to-speech using premium elevenlabs voices on your tables. These read with accurate pronunciation - perfect for language learning or learning vocab.
Thymer
In their latest update, the devs posted about Query Filters.
Very useful to create for example a Kanban board (or table, calendar, gallery, etc) that only show items related to specific people, projects, tasks.
Thymer checks your filter as you type, so you'll know if you made any typos :)
https://x.com/jdvhouten/status/1908158823484813734
That’s all for this week. Thank you very much in advance for reading and I look forward to bringing you more PKM news next week.
Thank you so much for mentioning my video.
Thank you for your service to the PKM space 🙏🫡