Hi, I have played around with Anytype for several days, and I’m considering to import my notes into it.
I know Anytype is under development and there are many bugs, but I’m still very excited to use it as my main PKM app.
The only and the most important thing that I concern is whether Anytype is stable enough for data security (for now). I mean, I’m afraid of data loss caused by, like sync problem or some interesting bugs.
Btw, I usually have two even three backups.
I’d appreciate it that if you could give me some advices.
Some people have been using, and claim it’s working fine. But several report sync issues, and general bugs here and there (not so much data loss).
A lot of big changes are coming too, which is one more reason to wait - that way you won’t have to rethink your system once new features arrive and things change around.
Having said all that, if you still decide to go for it, please do share your experience.
I’m also very eager to adopt AT fully for my PKM, but decided not to until Beta at least.
Honestly it depends on your workflow and how your current system is working right now or how you’re planning to implement your workflow into anytype. As @qualquertipo mentions, a new big change in the form of relations as objects and inline sets are coming and it may or may not change how you think about your PKM.
Personally, I’ve successfully integrated my workflow into anytype for about two months now and everything is going great. I’ve revised it a couple of times and none of the bugs mentioned in the community bothered my flow so I wouldn’t worry about that too much . Trust me I’ve tried every possibly productivity app out there extensively for about 9 months now and none of them offer the feature suit of Anytype; Actually let me rephrase my sentence : I believe only Obsidian and maybe Logseq can give you what Anytype offers you if you’re willing to spend god knows how many hours into creating and customizing a custom CSS theme in order to into turn these apps into a much more desirable and beautiful UI of things such as Anytype or Coda/Notion for that matter; on the other hand many people dig Obsidian’s ultra minimal design so again it’s up to you. But If you don’t want to spend that much time, Anytype is basically without any direct competitor that can match its philosophy and capability.
Regarding sync issues, having anytype on two different devices isn’t necessary for me but nevertheless I didn’t have any major issue so far except one time that I restructured some of my notes while being outside so it hasn’t got the chance to sync the new changes. When I got back online, the 0.29 update was out and I put it to download the update and installed the new update before it had finished syncing and upon booting again all my new restructuring have been gone. I think that’s on me but yeah other than this occasion, I haven’t had any issue with sync.
I think everybody asking if Anytype is ready as their PKM should ask themselfs a few these questions;
1. Does Anytype do everything I need from it at THIS moment?
Don’t base this awnser on future promises, only on what the app can do NOW, as if this is the final product.
2. How comfortable am I with storing my data in Anytype?
This can mean a lot of things like:
Security, does it suit my needs and data
Stability, is the app stable/fast enough for my use / bug free
Data recovery, can I recover corrupt files
Accessibility, can I acces my data when I loose my password/acces key
Export, can I export my data if needed for any reason
3. Do I have faith in Anytype’s long term future?
This can mean things like:
Development (won’t be the first alpha/beta app getting discontinued during development)*
Scalability, can this app handle my amounts of data, will it still perform with large amounts of data/notes/links
Affordability, for example, I was very active with the free Alpha/Beta for both Roam Research and Coda but these apps are too expensive for me while the free version is too limited for my needs. So I am glad I never went “all in” before I knew this information.
For me, I am not yet going “all in” with Anytype but I really strongly believe in Anytype and that it will become my daily note taking and PKM software within a year (or two).
Ps. I do not think Anytype will be discontinued, not at all! I am only saying these are things to think about.
Thank you all guys! I have learned a lot from your advices.
I rethought about my situation and made a summary according to your posts.
What I want most is data safety, while the speed of syncing doesn’t matter for me now. Actually, I have ever thought about dumping all data from AnyType at regular times as a workaround, to “overcome” the temporary sync instability , but there is not a method to backup so far. I could use the export function to get all the markdown files, but I am not sure whether there is anything lost, like tags. Besides, now it just provides an import approach for Notion, which means I can not recover my dumped md files to their original status.
As @qualquertipo mentioned, a lot of big changes are coming too, maybe infrastructure or new features, which make me so excited. I could accept the big changes as long as my old data are still there, and I will manually (perhaps automatically?) transform them.
Considering all above factors, I decide to wait for the beta release (maybe at the end of this year?). Meanwhile, I will transfer some files, which are not that important, into AnyType and think about how to implement my workflow. I suppose this is a good trade-off for me now.
I’ll definitely go along with that! I have been searching and trying various apps for a long time. They all have their own strong suits, but sometimes I’m kind of paranoid, and want an app which matches all / most of my needs.
I think if markdown export and import were fully functional (a.k.a. you could actually fully restore the internal database structure of AnyType objects and types and relations from a markdown export) then you would be able to use it as a PKM app. But that’s not here yet. Without that reassurance, it would be a lot of work to backup and/or rebuild your knowledge graph.
I understand your concern and it’s your right to own your data. I think if you want the absolute peace of mind you have to go the route of bare markdown with the likes of Obsidian and Logseq. But if not you have to either wait for Anytype to enter beta and such or as @Jeroen said you could start by importing parts of your notes.
Hello everyone The main point to decide is it ok to start using Anytype now is do features provided right now is enough for your personal flows.
For other concerns I want to share my inside-anytype point of view:
For all future updates on architecture or feature sides we will provide at least automatic migrations for new data structures. It means if you will update your app to the new version the data structure will be updated automatically. If fact it was already done several times as we enrich our system.
All features on our roadmap till public release will be fully compatible with current product and we are not going to break or significantly change. Only enrich and add more layers / polish and update ux of current layers.
We will introduce export to common formats of data till our public release so your data will be free to migrate or backup.
Sync quality will be updated with our new sync infrastructure eta Q1 2023
P.S. Thanks every one for such a robust discussion here. I really feel the community vibes here
: I believe only Obsidian and maybe Logseq can give you what Anytype offers you if you’re willing to spend god knows how many hours into creating and customizing a custom CSS theme in order to into turn these apps into a much more desirable and beautiful UI of things such as Anytype or Coda/Notion for that matter; on the other hand many people dig Obsidian’s ultra minimal design so again it’s up to you. But If you don’t want to spend that much time, Anytype is basically without any direct competitor that can match its philosophy and capability.
The main point to decide is it ok to start using Anytype now is do features provided right now is enough for your personal flows.