Switching from Obsidian: a five-minute migration guide

There is no migration

Most app switches start with an export. This one does not, because Obsidian never locked your notes away: your vault is an ordinary folder of markdown files on your disk. Jotura works the same way. Point it at the folder and your notes are just there.

That also means switching is reversible at any moment. Jotura guarantees round-trip fidelity, so opening and saving a note without edits leaves the file byte-identical. You can run Obsidian and Jotura against the same vault while you decide, or go back next month with nothing lost.

The safe way to try it

1. Copy your vault folder. Not because Jotura will damage it, but because a copy makes trying anything zero-risk.
2. Install Jotura with one command from the download page: curl -fsSL jotura.io/install.sh | bash on Mac and Linux, irm jotura.io/install.ps1 | iex on Windows. It is free with no account, and the installer also sets up the CLI and AI agent integration in the same step.
3. Open the copied folder as your vault.
4. Write for a day. If it sticks, open the real vault.

What just works

• Every note. Markdown is markdown. Headings, lists, tables, checklists, code blocks all render in Jotura’s editor, which formats as you type with no visible syntax.
• Your links. Wikilinks between notes keep working.
• Your folder structure. Jotura shows the same tree, and any change you make is a normal file operation any other tool can see.
• Attachments and documents. PDFs, Word files, and spreadsheets in the vault get a searchable text mirror, so you can find a document by what it says inside. Obsidian does not index those.
• Daily notes, tasks, and tables, without installing anything. What needs community plugins in Obsidian is first-party in Jotura.

What does not transfer

Honesty matters more than a sale, so here is the full list:

• Community plugins. Jotura has no plugin system. Dataview queries, Templater templates, and Excalidraw drawings will sit inert in your notes as plain text.
• Graph view and canvas. Jotura has neither.
• Your theme. Jotura has its own look.
• Obsidian Publish sites. Jotura has no publishing feature.

If any of those are load-bearing for you, stay on Obsidian. It is a good app, and your files being plain markdown means the door stays open in both directions.

What you gain

• Sync that includes people. Jotura Sync is end-to-end encrypted like Obsidian Sync, at a similar price, but it also lets you share folders or single notes with other people, with automatic merging. Obsidian Sync only covers your own devices.
• Three years of version history with attribution, against one to twelve months on Obsidian Sync plans.
• A real memory for your AI tools. Jotura ships a CLI that gives Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and Copilot a shared, persistent memory stored as plain notes in your vault.
• On-device semantic search. Ask for the note about the boiler quote and it surfaces, even if you never wrote those words. No API key, nothing leaves your machine.

For a full feature-by-feature table, see Jotura vs Obsidian.