Obsidian, Reader, Readwise: I had filed everything, I could find nothing

My notes were in Obsidian, my reading in Reader, my highlights in Readwise and my links in bookmarks. I had spent hours — sometimes days — organising it all. The result was genuinely good. But when an idea came back to me, I still did not know where to look for it. Synthiz was born from that problem.

I consume a lot of digital content: articles, videos, podcasts, documents and all kinds of posts.

Like many people, I started by saving what interested me. An article in a reading list. A video in bookmarks. An important passage in a note.

Very soon, saving was not enough. It had to be organised.

Hours, sometimes days, configuring Obsidian

Obsidian is extremely customisable. That is both its strength and the start of a rabbit hole that is easy to fall down.

I spent hours — sometimes whole days — thinking about folder structure, properties, templates and plugins. I would try an organisation, find it promising, then discover a method that seemed even better.

The result was genuinely pleasant. My notes were mine. The links between them were visible. The whole thing matched exactly how I work.

But the tool meant to save me time had gradually become a project to maintain.

To have the same space on my phone and my computer, I ended up choosing the official Obsidian Sync. It is paid and syncs notes, settings and various file types across devices. Other methods exist — iCloud, Syncthing, Git or various cloud services — but I did not want one more setup to maintain (official Obsidian documentation).

Sync worked. My Obsidian followed me everywhere.

But it only synced Obsidian.

What the Zettelkasten taught me

While exploring Obsidian, I also discovered the Zettelkasten method, popularised by the sociologist Niklas Luhmann.

Its principle taught me a lot: a note does not become useful because it is perfectly filed, but because it is clearly worded and linked to other ideas.

Luhmann's Zettelkasten held around 90,000 cards. Its organisation did not rest on a hierarchy alone. References linked distant cards and brought out connections between different subjects. The archive even explains that a new card did not always have a single, obvious place: the cross-references were what rebuilt the relationships (Niklas Luhmann archive).

This method changed how I thought about my notes.

I understood that a personal memory should not just store information. It should let ideas meet.

But the Zettelkasten started after manual work: reading, understanding, rewording, writing a note, then linking it to earlier ones.

What happened to an idea heard in a two-hour video if I had not thought to note it? An important passage in an article read quickly? An explanation found again months later, without the author's exact words?

The method was valuable. The material that should feed it remained scattered.

Reader and Readwise solved other parts of the problem

Reader was better suited to reading. Articles, newsletters, PDFs, ebooks or videos could be gathered and annotated in one application (official Reader documentation).

Readwise gathered highlighted passages and brought them back regularly. It helped me review what I had already judged important (official Readwise overview).

And for anything that simply had to be kept quickly, there were browser bookmarks.

Each tool did its job properly:

• —Obsidian to write and link my notes;
• —Reader to read and annotate;
• —Readwise to review my highlights;
• —bookmarks to keep a link quickly.

The problem was in none of these tools taken on its own.

It was between them.

I remembered the idea, not where it was

A few weeks after reading or watching something, an idea could come back to me.

I knew I had come across it. Sometimes I could reword part of it. But I no longer knew whether it came from an article saved in Reader, a passage resurfaced by Readwise, an Obsidian note, a podcast or a video in my bookmarks.

To find the idea, I first had to find its address.

Which app had I put it in? Under what title? With which words? Had I even taken a note?

The more complete my organisation became, the more places it created to search in.

Filing is not finding

For a long time I thought I needed better organisation.

Better folders. More precise tags. A stricter naming convention. A new plugin. One more automation.

But every improvement added a rule to follow.

For the system to work, I had to know from the start why a piece of information would matter and how I would want to find it months later.

Yet my memory does not work like a folder tree.

I remember a concept, a sentence or a connection. Rarely the exact title of the document or the app I filed it in.

What I was really looking for

I wanted to start with the search bar.

Find an idea heard in a video without knowing the video's title. Go back to the exact passage of an article without remembering where I had saved it. Link a new source to an older line of thought.

I also wanted every result to lead me back to its origin.

A summary should not replace the sources. It should let you return to them. An idea should stay attached to the passage it came from.

I did not need a new tool to file better.

I needed a shared memory for my sources.

That is how Synthiz was born

Synthiz brings content of different formats into one workspace.

Videos and podcasts can be transcribed. Documents and articles become searchable. Their content can be searched, summarised and linked to other sources.

Synthiz does not ask you to know the right folder, title or keyword in advance. It starts from what the sources contain.

It does not necessarily replace other tools:

• —choose Obsidian to build a highly customisable notes space;
• —choose Reader to centralise and annotate your reading;
• —choose Readwise to regularly review your highlights;
• —use bookmarks when a link is enough;
• —use Synthiz to find and connect what your sources taught you.

For those who always start by searching

If your first reflex is to open Spotlight, hit Ctrl+F or type a few words into a search engine, Synthiz was designed for you.

You do not need to remember where you filed an idea.

Search for what you remember. Synthiz takes you back to the content and its source.

Prefer search bars to folders? Come and try Synthiz.