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I think for your use case, Anytype is good enough, but it’s not FOSS. Obsidian is also not FOSS. I’m not a purist, quite the contrary (in fact I use Notion), but maybe you want to check what’s behind.

Also, to help you make sense of your confusion and take a better decision, you’re comparing a bit apples and oranges.

Some of the tools, like Obsidian, are purely knowledge-management software with some productivity features sticked on top (like kanban visualizations).

Coda, Appflowy and Notion are primarily tools to build software, which can be knowledge-management software, productivity software or other stuff. They operate on a higher level of abstraction and flexibility, but out-of-the-box, for a single user, they are also probably worse than stuff like Obsidian.

If you like Obsidian, and FOSS, you should try LogSeq. It is very similar, and is FOSS. Here’s a comparison and some pretty cool tutorials for Logeq

Org mode - Your life in plain text

I have been through many setups, almost started using Markour… But then something about bullet journaling and the pen/paper relationship just had a magical touch to it… Then almost bought supernote… Then actually bought Boox Go 10.3… And I do my journaling BuJo style, my manga and book reading, and some writing with Bluetooth Logitech keys to go on it. You could sync to cloud but I kinda use it as a paper notebook and reader/writer so I keep my backups local. Might do PDF backups to one of the clouds, they give you some options. But then again, a lot of my handwritten things get OCR/written into a document anyway… And after a year is done I rarely go back to the same diary anyway. And the important ones I save as PDF anyway…
This kinda setup is working for me so far. You might be different… As we all are.

Obsidian is not FOSS, but you can switch to it for now because the whole idea is that it’s just a folder of markdown files. I recommend shopping around by pointing each app at the same markdown folder, so you can see your same notes without having to worry about complex migration. Being able to look at all your notes gives you a better idea of what will suit you.

Also, I recommend Pandoc for translating between document formats. It’s not not absolutely perfect, but it is wildly good at dealing with the complex problem of translating.

The simplest thing you can use, IMO, is Marktext. It’s basically Notepad for markdown – no file manager, no special features on top of the markdown syntax, etc. Beyond that you start getting into what features you want on top, at which point you really do just have to test them out for your use case.

As far as options go, you have basically two options as far as systems go:

• A built-in sync in the program between the desktop and phone version of the same app (i.e. obsidian, Joplin)
• Use a tool like syncthing for sync between devices, which allows you to use any app you want for actual note-taking, and allows you to use different apps on phone vs. desktop. I do the latter, and use Zettlr on desktop (more document than note-centric) and Markor on android. The issue with the former is that a great desktop app might not have the best phone version. Also, the apps that do sync typically use an internal database that you can export as a folder of markdown files (i.e. Joplin), and don’t actually just look at a folder of files. This makes testing out different editors kinda hard, unfortunately.

The other wierd variable is that some apps are literally just a WYSIWYG markdown editor (Marktext, etc.), whereas most of them are markdown editors with Other Stuff On Top™ (Obsidian, Zettlr, LogSeq, etc.). Not all apps implement the same flavor of markdown (which can be maddening, but you can use pandoc to change markdown flavor), but if you rely on a specific app’s special flavor of garnish on top of markdown, it becomes harder to switch to another app in the future if you prefer its functionality or UI. Just something to keep in mind.

For me personally, one of the make or break traits is a good table creator. Making tables by hand in Markdown is a maddening, so having a GUI way to do it makes a huge difference if you end up needing to make a lot of tables. That is really hard to find because it is hard to automate Markdown table formatting in a foolproof way. As far as I know, the table plugin in Obsidian is the best way to do that by far at the moment. The Zettlr devs are working hard on rewriting theirs from scratch to be way more robust, but that is WIP.

tl;dr Just pick a Markdown editor, and you can shop from there as long as they store their files in a simple folder.

I used to use google keep, and also struggled to find something which would work between my phone and desktop.

Eventually Nextcloud notes improved enough to be the replacement that satisfies.

It’s all markdown, existing as files in your nextcloud folder. That meant exporting my google keep was easy.

The desktop and mobile app are both simple but sufficient IMO. Make sure to install the rich text editor app for nextcloud, or you’ll have to write plaintext markdown.

The downside is that if you don’t already run nextcloud, setting it up is beyond overkill. Then again, you may find use for the many, many other things it can do, too.

I use trilium for work and docs and memos for memos.

Trilium is like a FOSS app similar to obsidian but with some less features. I prefer it but it has its drawbacks

Haven’t used them all, but Obsidian rules.

So, you can use Obsidian and sync the folders on your computer with the ones on your phone using your favourite sync software or you can spring a couple of bucks for the sync feature.

I’ve been using Anytype for project management and some collections, like my favorite art pieces, an archive of memos/random notes and writing planning.

I use markor for reminders (QuickNote) and sometimes to convert files to PDF since I mostly use Markdowm for everything.

I haven’t found a perfect workflow, but I haven’t tried using Anytype for serious note-taking, though it seems very capable.

Anytype if they can figure out how to publish and share individual pages instead of entire spaces