Still, chats and discussions aren’t requested as much as those you mentioned or the ones I mentioned, you see my and others’ point here? Chats and discussions specifically are the least priority for most users and still they’re the top mega feature priority for the team.
As long as the feature improves the workflow even for the least amount of users, I agree with prioritising it but not too much that you start to delay other features/improvements that align with the majority of users’ needs.
I know that Anytype team is trying their best to come out with a product that doesn’t use any templates/libraries/modules previously made, you’re prioritising building the whole thing from the gound up so that it becomes sustainable and scalable. That’s a plus for Anytype.
I didn’t say that, you are actually very much competent and provide way much better features, reliability and performance compared to other competents.
My point is, chats and discussions are much appreciated, and -to my knowledge- none of the competents could achieve what you did with chats, but don’t make it your main priority that some highly requested features and basic bugs are still not solved for months if not years now.
I agree that chats is not a highly requested feature (at all, in fact) compared to other features. By the framework of ‘we should prioritise what is most requested’, we have certainly failed. To speak frankly: while there’s a lot of alignment between what the community wants and our product vision, there are situations when it’s not the case. I’d like to provide some clarity on those moments (such as chats).
The mostly happens because we sometimes make decisions that align with our vision for the future and hope that people actually want to use it. We may be right, but very well could be wrong. There are many companies that build products in order to serve a market and make some money, they don’t have much opinions on what they build—they simply go with community demands. Anytype is not quite like that. We have a vision that nobody is explicitly making feature requests for, but we believe it’s necessary product to exist in the world. Of course we want to build stuff people use, but it might not always be exactly what is requested.
A clear example of this are seed phrases for login. Most people actually want regular login with email and password with all the standard recovery features, device management, etc.—which is much easier to build than we we did. However, this directly conflicts with our vision for a permissionless and decentralised product where Anytype is not the central authority. Today, this product vision hasn’t manifested yet because there are many more features required to make that level of user sovereignty a reality. But we take steps here and there towards that future, recognising that the feature in isolation looks like a silly choice. It will certainly make no sense to the average user trying Anytype for the first time.
A big failure on our part is explaining a lot of these product decisions and priorities—especially when the gap between what the community wants is large. There’s no excuse for that and hopefully we’ll get better at that. Again, I recognise that there can be frustration when features being released aren’t what’s being requested. The purpose of my post here isn’t to dismiss how shitty it feels, I get it. I simply want to express the reason why isn’t because we’re not listening per se, but rather we are making decisions based on what we see are strategic imperatives in a rapidly changing software landscape. I think everybody can see that software is very different in 2026 compared to when we started many years ago.
I don’t want to brush off this conversation with a hollow, “we’re listening and we’ll get to it.” I want to give an honest answer even if it’s not what people want to hear. Sorry for the mouthful, not sure if that’s what you were looking for. Reminders are actively being worked on.
I see, so your main focus is on things that may look irrelevant at the meantime but have high chance to become relevant and be wanted in the future, i.e you’re trying to stay one step ahead of competitors, kinda of “we already implemented it” when others just have started thinking about it. This approach is really good as long as it doesn’t cut too much of the meantime-needed features.
Anecdotally, I was very negative about the chats feature, especially since I don’t like the current editor.
But the chats are excellent for quick musings on the go, they are very nice for small teams, and in my case for me and my partner, because tech isn’t obvious to all people, but a chat interface is quite easy to get into. So now I have 2 people using Anytype in a way they feel comfortable!
I also was really looking forward to reminders, in the hopes that with a great API(the API currently is decent), I can also dump my task manager, but that seems to be postponed. But what the community wants can be very biased towards people that are the most active on here. You won’t see people happily using/selfhosting Anytype on here.
What I like is the transparency and communication around it. A team that improves consistently and incrementally worth the benefit of the doubt.
Not trying to say your issues aren’t valid(I largely agree with them!), but Anytype are solving difficult problems while trying to make this sustainable, while developing in the open.
No rush! Personally, I am used to postponing useful (for me) functionalities. You can ignore this opinion, I finally went with Obsidian (+Joplin for quick notes + Super Productivity for project management).
In the end, I decided that open source, easy synchronization with cloud services, and an open format of data that is on my computer and I can always transfer to another service if something happens to the provider, is what is important to me.
Exciting roadmap direction. The focus on performance and cross-platform sync is exactly what power users need.
Slightly off-topic but related to self-hosted setups - I have been building a solar-powered home server to run tools like Anytype locally. Matching the right panel capacity to your actual power draw matters a lot. I used solar panels price listings to compare wattage options and cost per watt before choosing panels for my off-grid rig.
Anyone else running self-hosted productivity tools on renewable energy?
Thank you for the update!
Just on the roadmap I see ‘Local File System Integration’ - is this what I think it is i.e instead of uploading a pdf to anytype, it links into the pdf file I already have on my computer?
But lovely!
The fact is: Anytype isn’t perfect, and shit happens sometimes. We all now that.
I can forgive much, much more (and even more dramatic) flaws if the team is honest and admits that, compared to the sugar-coating that I’ve earlier seen here too often, bevor @Kaye came.
Agree here, block reminders are delayed, but every release is a step in the right direction.
They are being more transparent with the shared roadmap, it seems like a demotivating move to then give unconstructive feedback on it?
I’ve seen some other cool stuff(and bugfixes) in the release of the desktop client and Android client, so I’m looking forward to the next release, which I hope happens in April still.
Besides the available note taking options that have these options:
source available
mobile clients that are performant
local-first
peer-to-peer sync
reminders(or even planned to implement them)
API available
self-hostable
are…none? I’m glad Obsidian is here, but I think AnyType offers a more interesting environment.
Alright, in the minority here but even as a solo user who is (currently) not paying, I’m glad to see they added chats because in the future, I very well might need them to coordinate stuff for a project. Or I may be able to help an org move to Anytype at work because it can replace multiple products, due to it having both knowledge management and chats. Having that feature complete and robust before I need it is ideal.
I’m glad to see they’re working on reminders - getting that in place will make it so that Anytype as a todo list manager is entirely doable.
Collections 2.0 sounds cool, I wasn’t able to play with the prototype (website wouldn’t load) but I think streamlining sets and collections and all the various ways of grouping objects in Anytype is a step forward.
Will the Github board view of the roadmap be updated with status for the items that did or did not make the April release? There are items in there (aside from Reminders) that seem like they were not included. I really like the board view as a place to see the status of features. And I appreciated the fact that Reminders were marked as delayed. Thanks!
As mentioned in the latest town hall (recording now live), we will actively ask for community feedback on the roadmap first before making another update to align prioritisation.
