Why I'm leaving AnyType

Talk
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1

I’ve been using AnyType for well over a year, and these are my final thoughts before I move on to an app that really aligns with the values it claims to have:

1. Data Export Quality
The export functionality is still a big issue. As it stands, the exported data contains formatting issues that prevent it from being imported into most other Markdown editors and similar knowledge tools. The response that “other apps should build a compatible importing tool” doesn’t address this problem. a personal knowledge management app should ensure its data can be reliably exported in a clean, interoperable format , as this looks like locking a user in without them realizing it .

2. Prioritization of AI Features
For a product that positions itself as a privacy-focused, personal knowledge tool, the decision to prioritize AI feature development over core functionality improvements is baffling to say the least. and the next point coming after this proposed addition make even less sense and shows a lack of direction.

3. The AnyTwo Transition
The introduction of AnyTwo is the straw that broke the camel’s back. now i have to relearn an entirely new workflow (one that appears to be as convoluted) immediately after settling into the existing (still beta) workflow of AnyType. To make matters more concerning, the new app does not even offer full feature parity with the original. Relaunching a new application when the previous one hasn’t yet reached a stable 1.0 release is another aimless swing from my user perspective . and is this AnyTwo gonna be open-source? I doubt it.

Conclusion

I’ll leave this final though here:

the current value proposition is:

subscribe to our plans for “not really” open-source beta private personal knowledge app , if you don’t mind your data not being exportable and this app being relaunched and the old one being abandoned and open sourced "why did we not open source it from the beginning? IDK :man_shrugging: " . but trust us! this AnyTwo will be the real deal!

TLDR: Prioritizing AI and shiny new relaunch instead of fixing actually required features such as exporting my personal data cleanly and building a truly open-source privacy-respecting paid app until 1.0 release to me looks a system forever stuck in a limbo.

This is my way of saying adios . After a year of use, I give up on this app.

Thanks for what it provided while I was using it.

P.S: Incase anyone wonders what did i choose to go to? its Trilium Notes (Hosted on VPS) , it has AnyType Import but as expected the format is busted so had to stitch things manually, thanks guys!.

2

Hey @sumUsr!

As someone who’s stuck around since the alpha phase of the app, I want to note that you have some valid frustrations, and I can’t lie that I share some of them.

The data export aspect of things is problematic at best. If I remember correctly, I originally tried reimporting all my data from the Anytype alpha app into the Anytype beta app just to have it transfer so poorly that I started all over from scratch. This is frustrating, especially since the alpha app was pretty much entirely left in the dust so you kind of “had to” migrate to the beta app. I do hope the team prioritises this at very least for those who want to migrate from Anytype to Anytwo, but also needs to do so for going between other apps. I don’t think any of us are asking for perfect exports, but I think we are asking for useful exports that don’t require more work to reorganise than just starting our knowledge databases from scratch again.

I think I also share a similar level of concern with the use of AI in the app. In fact, for my cases, I haven’t really found the best place for it in my workflow. I do ocassionally turn to AI as a study tool (like in the case of using NotebookLM and Notability’s baked-in AI-features to study for Microbiology exams which are content-heavy) or also have used it to figure out to better take care of my acne-prone skin (which has been surprisingly helpful granted that skincare is a mess) and as a tool to guide preliminary research into different subjects. To be honest, I have a more nuanced perspective towards AI than what I once had as shown by this reply and subsequent replies in this thread. While some of my initial feelings still remain, especially that the stability and development of features be prioritised over sloppily throwing AI into a half-baked app (which still feels like the case, unfortunately), I am cautiously optimistic for how Anytwo could actually give us a useful, sustainable vision for how AI can be used to augment what we do, rather than replace it.

After watching the demo, I slightly feel your concern about the new workflow. While I can’t say this concretely, I will say that the new workflow already looks more polished and useful than the old workflow in the Anytype app. I am, once again, cautiously optimistic that the less-half-baked design of the new app will give me more reason to use it with regularity than the old app. The old app never really gave me a reason to use it like I could have because it was less-than-intuitive and took so much effort to build it into something workable. I hope they prioritise making the new app more intuitive and easy to learn just by playing around with it, rather than making the logic overly cumbersome, and difficult to work with.

I agree, in many ways with the concerns that the Any team has been not really fully settling on one iteration of the app, and I think this really needs to be a priority – that they will stick with what they’ve built with Anytwo – or otherwise, I see the past ~6 years of what they’ve built becoming a bit of a flop. I’m hopeful that Anytwo gives them more of a vision for what they want their app to be going forward, for the sake of all of us.

I don’t blame you, however, for requiring a level of stability in your tools that Anytype hasn’t been great at providing so far. They shouldn’t be surprised that some of their users might start to recognise that other, similar software works better for their personal workflows. Yet, I do think that the team really needs to rigorously prioritise these issues that affect the overall usability and long-term adoptability of their software. In many ways, the team needs to settle on a specific course of development, rather than endlessly chasing after new ideas that require rewrites from scratch. I understand, in this case, that it doesn’t make sense for them to optimise an already clunky system, but they need to desperately future-proof whatever they continue to build going forward.

These are just my added two-cents of someone who is sticking around (with, of course, cautious optimism) but could end up never really finding a good place for tools like Anytype in my workflow. So, I invite the team to prove me (or rather us) wrong and show us that they are actually invested and willing to take pride in what they continue to build, rather than remaining stuck in an endless loop of shipping unstable beta software.

3

Guys,
forget about all the year-long frust with Anytype.
For AnyTwo, everything has changed!
The new faces behind it have made all difference!

And understand where we are: the team has just opened the door a very little for the first time just a few days ago to let the first few Alpha testers in.
And as one of them, I can tell you, this thing is (or will soon be) what you and we all have always dreamed about!

Actually AnyTwo did already outgrow Anytype in many aspects.
Some other aspects are still behind, but give them only two weeks more and there will be barely no reason anymore to talk about that.

They announced the release for “til the end of year” and I have this time not the slightest doubt that this becomes true.
I was always honest when the spotlight shined on the flaws and the low development speed in Anytype. So trust me: AnyTwo is a whole different story!

I believe that I “know” the reasons why it is so, and what has happen behind the veils, but it’s not worth to speculate too much in the open.

Who wants to go: nobody can hold you, nobody will try that.
But from my humble point of view (and I’m only a normal user, although a highly active one) it is the worst possible time to go, ever!

After all the looong time of waiting even for slight improvements, they finally did the only right thing and started new, based on all the experience, all what they have learned, and all what was already good.
– This was the only possible way to finally get rid of all the old ballast and all the endless many old flaws with one single but mighty stroke!

It’s fully clear that AnyTwo is THE way to go and its arrival is already very close, you can already reach it with one hand.
And it is also clear that they want that we users stay with the company and that as much of us as possible migrate to the new made and much better product.
– So, what’s the problem?

They finally made the right thing and they want that we become happy. Why complaining?
“Baaah, I need to learn a new GUI”
– YES! After Windows 98 came Windows XP. And after that came this and that and then Windows 10, and so on.

It will need some days to become familiar with the new GUI, yes.
But after that, it will spare your precious time every day, because of the very increased efficiency.

If you was always riding a bike, it did need some days or weeks to learn driving a car, YES.
But, after that: wasn’t it worth?

4

Just drink the Kool-Aid and everything will be magically fixed! gimme a break.

these are valid criticism of paying customers that you can collect plenty of posts about.

believe all you like , it wont un-ring the alarm bells .

5

TLDR: nothing worthy here, read it on your own risk or let it be.

You don’t need to answer anymore, I’ve already given you up. It’s hopeless.
But in case that anyone is interested in my opinion about the start post:

  1. Data Export Quality
    This is the only valid criticism in his post. No one doubts that.
    We all know that.
    – BUT: It is about the situation with Anytype. As stated, AnyTwo is a different thing!
    (Although the is no Export yet, but they have explained a little about what comes here and I’m convinced – for good reasons, based on my own experience with software development for B2B.)
    .
  2. Prioritization of AI Features
    – I would call this point “pure bullsh…”.
    It was often enough and long enough explained from the team what they make and how they make it.
    But if someone is strictly against AI, no good argument could ever convince him that this bad religion from hell wouldn’t burn his soul if it sleeps in the house on the other street side.
    .
  3. The AnyTwo Transition
    Here I’m even completely on the other side with my opinion:
    They did the best possible thing, both for us as users, as well as for themselves!
    And I believe I can guess more reasons for that then they have communicated.
    I’m absolutely convinced that nothing else could have been a better decission!
    – Anyone who regards their own maximum demand as the absolute minimum will of course never be able to understand that. Hey, just by the way, the company must survive. Otherwise they cant deliver you dream product.
    Oh yes, I know, the band carried on playing on the Titanic no matter what …

If an 18 year old boy complains, because someone explains to him that he needs to make a driver’s license although he would prefer that “they”:

  1. Make the rusty bike (that he rides since long) nice looking.
  2. Replace the worn-out ball bearings.
  3. Make the bell’s sound better and louder
  4. Integrate a motor to the bike for less need of muscle power
  5. Make the seat more comfortable
  6. Do something against the water from above when it rains
  7. … and so on and so on …

… then I would ask why on earth this guy dosn’t make a drivers license so that he can drive the brand new car that someone is trying to give him to the half as a present and to the other half for an apple and an egg?

Why did I write this?

-- Because I’ve worked through all the night and I’m totally exhausted and my brain doesn’t work anymore, but I still can’t sleep!
That was the reason, there is no better reason, sorry.

Now I go to bed, ciao.

6

Thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts and feedback. You could’ve just left (with your frustrations), but sharing your reasons gives us a better opportunity to learn.

We also appreciate that you gave Anytype a try.

I hope that works out well for you.

7

It didn’t work out so well , because most of my Anytype data is useless as i cant open or use them in any other app. I have to start from scratch.

here is your app stuck loading one of my spaces that has the most data , and wont even load my membership so i can increase the storage incase that’s the issue .

it has been this way for the past 2 hours

I hope others realize that their data is stuck in your app and there is no way for them to export and leave it. what a garbage way to run a product and this is a paid product .

8

Exporting your data is not tied to membership whatsoever, so that’s an entirely separate issue.

Can you describe what problem you’re having with exporting your spaces, maybe we can help you here? We have no desire to lock you in and we apologise for the bugs, but we’re here to help. I’ve been able to export my entire space with thousands of objects into markdown without issue.

You seem to be angry, which is understandable. However we’re here to help and resolve the issue. Then you can move away from Anytype.

9

Sorry, I didn’t have time to respond to your thoughtful post until now.

We agree with pretty much what has been said. But agreeing is not enough, we should take action. And this is exactly what we did with Anytwo. It cannot be understated that re-doing our infrastructure to completely remove middleware and build a new system between the product and syncing protocol to the database is precisely to address the issue of data reliability. Now, the client and sync protocol both interact directly with the same database. I may share a post on the forum to explain it in more depth.

TLDR: Anytwo’s infrastructure changes were made to directly address many data related issues. While we cannot guarantee there will never be issues in the future, we’re literally operating on a different paradigm now.

10

Desktop App on Windows 11 , on the latest version on Anytype, 0.57.0

From my understanding, membership dictates how much Sync storage there is, so i figured it could be solved by upgrading it but i cant. these channels can now only be accessible via my Android App and whenever I try and open my vault in a the Windows app this particular vault (the most important one, with lots of notes) gets stuck as shown in the video.

as for the export to markdown , this is the mess that the app spews out:

anytype-dev-zone-untitled-2026-09-30-130857.874.zip (13.0 KB)

nothing that resembles any markdown that other apps can interpret and import , i tried with Trilium, Joplin .

11

Membership dictates how much storage you have on the remote backup node, but you can exceed your limits on each device—they just won’t sync across to your other devices. If you have all of your files on one instance of your device, then exporting from there should work.

I’m getting a little confused by your situation. Is it that you’re unable to access your vault or your space? We don’t have keys to your vault, so only you can perform the export—which is currently available on desktop. So you will need to gain access to your vault on a desktop. Since you’re signed in on Android, you can use the recovery/seed phrase there to log into your desktop. Once there, you should be able to export your space.

If you have access to your vault, but can’t access a specific space, then we’ll need more details such as your AnytypeID to see if something is happening. You may prefer to diagnose this issue privately, if so then just DM me and we’ll continue there.

12

then this caused the issue , since the space on the Android phone might exceed 100 MB and when attempting to access the vault’s spaces on a Windows App I get the issue of constant loading the space and incomplete sync.

image
image276×289 8.73 KB

this is the exact issue , 2 out of the 3 spaces is accessible on the Windows 11 app , the one with the issue cant be opened or accessed on desktop for export.

I’ll DM for the private details of the space.

13

Hi, thanks for sending the debug info. Your Windows app hasn’t been able to reach any of our servers, so the space can’t finish loading and your membership can’t load either. Your storage limit has nothing to do with it.

Something between your computer and our servers intercepts Anytype’s encrypted connections and swaps in its own security certificates. Anytype won’t connect to a server that can’t prove it’s ours, so it rejected every connection.

The usual causes are:

  • antivirus “HTTPS scanning” or “scan encrypted connections” (Kaspersky, ESET, Avast, Bitdefender and similar)
  • a VPN, proxy, or work or school network filter
  • filtering by your internet provider

Your Android app seems to be on the same network, and our servers haven’t heard from it either. The newest copy of that space is probably only on your phone, so please don’t log out of or uninstall Anytype there.

Your devices can also sync directly over Wi-Fi. Put the phone and the PC on the same network, open Anytype on the phone and keep it in the foreground, then restart the desktop app. Once the space opens on desktop, you can export it. We can’t promise this will work in your case, though, because whatever intercepts the connections to our servers may also interfere with the connection between your devices.

To get syncing with our servers working again, turn off encrypted-connection scanning in your antivirus (or add Anytype as an exception), and switch off any VPN or proxy. You can also try another network, such as a mobile hotspot. If Anytype connects there, the problem is your usual network or provider.

If it still won’t connect on another network, send us a fresh debug info and we’ll keep looking.

14

On lock-in: we take this seriously, and it’s a big part of what we work on.

The Anytype data format is open and MIT-licensed: GitHub - anyproto/any-block: Protocol describing data structures used in Anytype software · GitHub

We recently finished any-block v2. It’s more compact, fully documented, and lossless, so an export keeps all of your data, including object types, relations and links between objects: any-block/format/v2 at main · anyproto/any-block · GitHub

Anyone can read the spec and write an importer for it, whether that’s another app, a script, or you.

Markdown is lossy by design, and every app reads and writes its own flavor of it. Trilium, Joplin and Obsidian each handle links, attachments and metadata differently. To carry more than plain text, our Markdown export writes properties as YAML frontmatter and includes a schema for your types. Obsidian displays that frontmatter, but many apps don’t read it. No single Markdown export can import cleanly into all of them, which is why we put our effort into an open, lossless format.

15

I made a converter from Anytype’s Any-Block v1 to obsidian-style markdown for scenarios like this. I have tool-hopped several times and wanted to make sure that my Anytype exports were not garbled, missing anything, or requiring extensive touchups to be usable. It might be useful, though I haven’t used Trillium and am not sure how well it would import from Obsidan-style markdown

16

I largely agree with you, though the Markdown export isn’t as bad as you say. It’s tedious, but it is possible to import Markdown exports from Anytype into Obsidian or even Capacities.

I’m not saying it’s a one-click process - some post-processing is definitely necessary - but with Obsidian’s importer plugin, for example, it’s entirely possible to import content from Anytype into Obsidian.

17

Confirmed the membership page bug and created a post here.

18

Thanks for your positive post, that is what will give me confidence. Real user experiences from those testing the alpha. Hopefully I as a nightly will join the testers soon as well. :crossed_fingers:t2:

I have voiced my concerns (why would this time be different, can the team maintain multiple apps, how can I recommend Anytype/AnyTwo when we are going from one unfinished beta into another and how will new pricing / old perks work).

Your post already lessens my first and third concern quite a bit and if development really goes faster for the upcoming weeks/months well there goes all but the pricing concern (which is still very much up in the air) from my end and I will be fully onboard Anytype again!

These conserns/critisism always came from points of frustrations which origin comes from the passion for what the product can become (but still has not reached). Because I see the vision/place for Anytype in the PKM space and with all ongoing shit in the world a local private app with multiplayer becomes even more important so I am really rooting for Anytype’s succes.

19

it seems to be this is the culprit , my network has Fortnite firewall so it might have messed things up, i switched all the devices on mobile hotspot and it worked instantly . thanks for the help!

regarding this point , i strongly disagree that a user should just hope that someone builds a proper importer to export his data in a standard markdown format.

i understand its a lossy one but it not working as an import to other apps means it didn’t do the job it supposed to do.

I found the below tool to be somewhat useful in salvaging some of the less complex notes :

Good luck on the future of the project.

20

I’m glad that this was resolved for you.

For posterity purposes, this issue showcases the complexity of data integrity and lock-in very well.

  1. User opens Anytype app successfully on multiple devices, but can’t access a space or export data.
  2. User feels like Anytype is failing them.
  3. User complains on the internet that Anytype is locking them in.
  4. But the issue turns out to be firewalls, VPNs, etc. which Anytype has no control over.

It’s totally understandable why this happens and users feel this way, because the software is not behaving like they expect—and that expectation set from cloud app behaviour. However, the issue would not have gone down in the same way on a cloud app in the first place because you can’t access the entire app at all if it’s being blocked by a firewall. So the user more likely calls into question network issues for cloud apps, rather than the product itself.

In the case of Anytype, being local-first means you always have access to your data—even if a firewall is blocking syncs. And thanks to the fact that Anytype works peer-to-peer, the user could still access their data and resolve their issue outside of the firewall put in place. I would call that a win for local-first software. Unfortunately, the way this scenario transpired, when Anytype fails to perform due to external reasons, the blame falls onto the product and not something else.

Firstly, we need to improve the product’s user experience so these scenarios can be better resolved—in app notices, tooltips, etc. No doubt there are things we can do better. The purpose of this post isn’t to say, ‘user-error’. On the contrary, the user reaction is totally understandable. The point is to say that the unique benefits of Anytype can actually look like flaws because it’s disguised as a cloud app, but is actually local-first.

Had Anytype not loaded at all on the user’s desktop and stated ‘check your internet connection’, it’s likely this whole situation would’ve been avoided. But the fact you could still access your data beyond the firewall led to this issue.