What are /r/RoamResearch's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Obsidian! I recently got into it and conveniently they have the iOS app now after completing a long beta. Some of the best features IMO:

1) It is simply an offline client application which reads a folder containing markdown files and metadata on your device, meaning you own all of your data and you are responsible for it;

2) The community plugin stack has fantastic support thus far, I really like the one for Mind Maps because that’s how I like organizing information;

3) You can theme it however you like, using either your own CSS, or a community provided theme;

4) The client is free on all relevant devices, the only things that cost are their device sync service and publish service. The former will make sure your notes are the same across your devices w/ backups. The latter will generate a static site (look up static site generators) which essentially displays the notes of your choosing on the internet as a static website.

I am really looking forward to the continued growth of the community and the platform as a whole. I’m also really interested to see how applications like Obsidian and Roam change the future of how regular people take notes and use documentation on their computers.

Link for the lazy: https://obsidian.md/

Did you see this list? you will be amazed:

https://www.notion.so/Artificial-Brain-Networked-notebook-app-a131b468fc6f43218fb8105430304709

I personally found reading and taking notes on mobile to be a very unpleasant experience having to switch back and forth copying snippets. I built an app to handle this - if you have an Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.compscieddy.blocks

I would also checkout https://dendron.so - its a local-first roam like open source markdown note taking app built on top of vscode (disclaimer: author here). we just launched our preview a week ago and are making updates on a daily basis

I got on Roam right after Thomas Frank made his first video about it. I thought it was great, but that was the same weekend the service blew up overnight. Lots of people lost data. After that, I started looking for an alternative right away. What an absolute nightmare.

I especially hate being stuck in a browser window taking notes. It makes me feel like I'm on a google doc or something like that. I was born in 1995 and I ctrl-s like it's my only god. Roam and its webpage-only attitude just turns me off, knowing that no matter how much I ctrl-s, my data can still just disappear from under me.

​

Actually there are a lot of options that are duplicating Roam's features. I think Obsidian.md (recently into open beta) is worth a try, at the very least. It has daily notes, as well as a lot more customizability than Roam does. In fact, I'm pretty sure anything Roam can do, so can Obsidian. (Except perhaps the pomodoro.) No, it doesn't have a mobile app yet, but it saves files as plaintext markdown (.md) files in a plain directory, files can be synced and encrypted by any means, and both iOS and Android have reliable markdown editors. It's also a much cheaper service.

Hi.. i had seen this video in yt before reading your post. Great to see that u were quite consistent using roam. Small suggestion - there is better way to do templates inside roam with buttons. see this video from bardia. i think u will like it

https://www.loom.com/share/b0dc26318a1a4e0581d8b90982504975

🍱🍱🍱 Link to the Bento App 🔗🔗🔗

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.compscieddy.blocks

iOS: Not even possible to build. Apple doesn't allow apps to do anything like this.

Sorry to hop on such an old thread, but I have all of the videos. They'll be available for the next 24 hours or 100 downloads, whichever comes first.
https://wormhole.app/E4841#3IK1dHL39tBhbCaIU4iYbA

Interesting topic. Thanks for all of your answers.

What I do currently:

• I mostly use the Daily Notes for new notes and ideas
  • add URL's from the internet, intend block and write notes inside, collapse, add tags
  • sometimes create a new page or link to existing page for 'bigger' pieces of content
• I use a separate page for my journal, and there I tag the date, so it shows up in my Daily Notes as reference.

Some thoughts:

References vs Page Content: There seems to be a difference between (a) adding content in blocks (bullet points) nested under a tag, bookmark, or whatever and (b) adding content on the page itself and adding tags there. This make me question whether I want content to be on the page itself or inside the References. Can't figure this one out yet.. An effect is seen when you want to export a page; References are not inside the export. (But you can still of course copy-paste).

On URL bookmarks: I collect a lot of bookmarks from the internet, currently using Raindrop.io. I've tried doing something similar in Roam, but I don't feel it yet. It's somewhat messier at the moment with more friction to capture, view and organize my bookmarks.

Navigation and Finding Content: The Daily Notes are not always easy to navigate. For example, the further you go back in time, the less easy it becomes to review the info. For recent notes, this is okay although. But let's say you quickly want to browse through a bunch of notes from 5 months ago; you need to scroll through all your Daily Notes of the last 5 months to get to that spot and review. Alternatively, unless you know what you are looking for, and use a lot of tags, which is more like a targeted search. But reviewing in general and 'stumbling' on serendipity thoughts is less obvious in this case. I am still creating/finding a structure to use in Roam in order to at least somewhat organize big buckets of content like: bookmarks, journals, etc...

Its https://www.zettlr.com/ i had written wrong. Its free open source and the developer will listen your requests. If it dosent fit you try some Roam like programs, some developers are building something similar, just search on github or google

Amplenote launched bidirectional linking today, including a discount for Roam importers. Here's a rundown of how it compares to Roam in general.

If you are using Roam42 Smartblocks you can return a list of todos for today by using:

<%TODOTODAY:20%> (20 being the max number you want returned).

And they have a changelog on the public help database, but I'm not seeing any reference to this. https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/dxTi-iUs2

When you share a link to it. just go ahead and link directly to the "Start Here" page.

https://roamresearch.com/#/app/QuantumRabbit/page/lx2Pt1jDI

Wrt fleeting notes, the way Conor uses "Morning Pages" in Roam (eg) seems promising. Because free association-style notes are under a tag, they're easy to filter out.

I'm currently beta testing Obsidian, and gotta say it's pretty impressive.

https://obsidian.md/

Another one called Hypernote.io , also in the invitation only beta testing phase.

I'm working on something similar.Since using free-text on smartphones is very tedious. I am trying to use bookmarks so the users can just aggregate information.

The app is called Alekha.

Google play: Alekha on Google play .

It is an offline first, Bookmark app with a lot of ways to create, manage and share bookmarks.

The Bookmarks are also stored on your device as markdown so you can view them any time you want.

If anyone has ANY kind of input. It will be really helpful and I'll send you a cat meme. 🙂

It's so new that it's going to be hard to search.

App is called Bento https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.compscieddy.blocks&amp;hl=en&amp;gl=US

I'm trying to find a better way to monetize it so I can offer this functionality for free and then have a premium tier but in the meantime I'm setting it at a one time $5

You can use the roam/js hypothes.is extension to import+sync your annotations to your roam graph (here's a demo of the process). Alternatively, you can use an app like textsniper (macOS) to get a quick copy paste process without importing the pdf in your graph.

Np. I dont speak for Roam the company, but personally I find most things somewhere between the help graph https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help, the slack channel, the slack archive graph (dont have it handy, but you can find it), reddit, or twitter. Good luck~!

Markdown importer.

There's no solid way straight from reddit to roam yet

But this seems like a possible way to go from reddit to twitter https://ifttt.com/connect/reddit/twitter

And then the.rip should be able to unroll tweet thread to Markdown to go straight to Roam.

Having the first one automated and the second as a "capture" kinda works. Or there is also copy and paste.

But while you're on twitter! Say hi to #roamcult

I'm using it sometimes, here is the code with Ctrl+Shift+F hotkeys to toggle it:
https://roamresearch.com/#/app/tuto_and_trials/page/SD8DDmwel

{{calc}} component get the value stored in a block ref (or the result of another calc)
So you can iteratively do
6+{{previous sum}}={{calc}}
12+{{previous sum}}={{calc}}
...

You can also make a template where the needed block refs are already defined in the {{calc}} component, like in the weekly sum template in my example here:
https://roamresearch.com/#/app/tuto_and_trials/page/05-04-2022

There also more sophisticated solutions with Smartblocks and buttons, where you can store variable value.

Memex can now handle PDFs too. Also local files, like Hypothes.is.

The upcoming Readwise reader will also cover PDFs - at least for storage and reading. Hopefully that will mean highlights also.

Not so sure it would handle local PDF files stored in the browser though. But let's see. I don't have a clue about their architecture yet.

As far as I know, Roam Alpha API allows to directly change :block/string, :block/open, :block/heading, :block/text-align, :block/order and :children/view-type .
There is also some UI changes possible (open or close page or sidebar, etc.), methods are listed here: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/developer-documentation/page/kEHOGVQ8L

Hey, Baibhav from the Roam Engineering team here.
We have a M1 migration guide here: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/luVUlB7o8

tl;dr: in most cases, it should work out of the box. In case of local graphs, it would be prudent to take backups before migrating

There's a neat feature that works like the comment section on Reddit where the path of the line collapses all the points within it. So you can click the outermost line on the page to collapse everything. You can also just right-click like this.

The underlying functionality is great, and I paid for the app (https://apps.ankiweb.net/) because of how excited I was by the service. In terms of UX, it's not terrible but it's not great. Synching is easy to screw up, requiring manual refreshes (unless there is a hidden automatic setting somewhere) and the app UI feels decades old, like a Java app or something. Terminology is confusing, and the different questions formats aren't clear.

Look at all the SaaS productivity services out there -- they are professional, easy-to-use and idiot-proof. I'm excited by Anki but it isn't there yet. =)

Thought of another one where you soft indent future dates into one block.
When the date comes, Hold+ALT and drag to create another template on that day.
There's a bit of friction but I like how the soft indented dates kinda pulls up the block, Tests Daily Commitments. Here's a link to a demo.
January 5th, 2022 0217 How Do I create an automatic Tommorow TO-DO List
https://roamresearch.com/#/app/NoteSketches/page/yNVVzGHUy

I tried it out a few months ago and came back to use it again. But I see it is currently not operational as a zapier integration.

https://zapier.com/apps/code/integrations/phonetoroam

I am a Replit Certified Teacher and have used Roam for about two years along with Replit to teach Python programming. Here is a short video that I recorded to show how Roam and Replit could be used together. I usually document a learning plan in Replit and embed them into Roam. Hope it helps.

https://www.loom.com/share/c4b2641ac5bd4459bfd371c85421c8f8

This is one way,
Create a parent block that describes what context are the tasks.
Using time and Date are simplest way I could think to identify what tasks that you've created that day.
So on future dates, block search other contexts tasks you think you remember or it's useful for that future date.
Then just right click and import children (which are the tasks and use shortcut to toggle TODO instead of DONE)
Finish by updating the time and date you create from block referenced template.
https://roamresearch.com/#/app/NoteSketches/page/gorWp5SIK

Use Calibre and convert your .pdf into an .epub. Extract the .epub and open the .html file(s) that are part of the extracted contents with your browser. From there you can directly copy/paste the contents into Roam.

Steps:

1. Make a copy of your document.pdf

2. Use Calibre to convert your copy of document.pdf ---> document.epub with ebook-convert document.pdf document.epub (it's usually this easy, unless your .pdf is unusually complex, then view the extensive Calibre help, and/or use the Calibre GUI to do the conversion, instead of the command-line tool.)

3. Remember .epub files are just .zip files, so change the extension of document.epub so you then can extract document.zip somewhere.

4. In the new folder with the extracted contents, look for an OEBPS folder, which is the standard location for an ePub's .html file(s)—if you don't find that folder, look for them elsewhere in the extracted contents.

5. Open the .html file(s) with your browser, then copy/paste the contents directly into Roam.

Depending on the contents of your .pdf file, you may find a file(s) for things like a table of contents if you have one, or consecutively numbered index files for chapters, an so on.

If you can accept markdown to pdf, then why not just export to markdown and copypaste the markdown to other applications?

If you want to share your markdown page, then definitely https://hackmd.io/. It's sharing and co-editing ability is really the best

I've just started trying Hypothes.is today. It seems a little too big for me, but I really do like the idea of making it easier to save reference notes and annotations as you read. Especially that it stupports PDF

Don't use Obsidian, you have got me hooked! At this point I just ask the resident physician and hide that block from view if they are trying to look over my shoulder at my notes. If I had a graph view I could hopefully remove the titles under the nodes and show look at how many diagnosis come back to this very deadly differential diagnosis. I have been fooling around with queries to try to replicate this.

The other thing I would love to see is that different connections are potentially different types of lines in the graph. I could make every medical specialty node linked with a dotted line, as long as it was tagged with [[[[specialty]]: dermatology]], [[[sepcialty]]:cardiology]] etc.

One could then theoretically look at the graph and show which specialties obviously have the most emergency diagnosis or connections, from personal experience it would be [[[sepcialty]]:cardiology]] but the true sense of scope would be so much clearer to a medical student or resident physician.

Finally a clear graph overview with some of this type of functionality would allow one to make visually pleasing presentations. Something akin to https://prezi.com/ but with my graph would be amazing. Hell content creators not just boring ER docs like myself could make sweet videos for YouTube, zooming in and out of their Roam Graph.

I definitely agree with you here. I love Roam Research, i have such a cool graph going of poetry and random thoughts but I never want to title them with the date... and I find it exceptionally annoying that when you load the page it automatically creates a note that you then have to delete later...

https://www.notion.so/pricing

I'm thinking the ability to selectively share notes with others is a really good thing. That send to start at $4/month.

Actual collaboration with others is $8/m/person which is still cheaper than the $15/m with Roam

I watched that video and ran the open source project locally. It is not close to usable yet.

Based on the [roadmap](https://www.notion.so/Athens-Roadmap-096427f189b648729ae0acbdcefd4c6f) I would say the project is about 50% through the first of six major phases.

It's interesting. I'm trying to decide if I want to invest in contributing or just settle on `org-roam`.

I would also second that. Notion is fantastic for publishing pages. For example I am writing and publishing my weekly newsletters that way.

You can do so much and its really fun to put together. You can find an example here that might give you some inspiration:

https://www.notion.so/GrowthBay-Weekly-Episode-One-Love-is-in-the-air-5592cf623edb439685ffcb1a988b2e77

Just looking at this and I see there is no point charging more than 5$ per month. I would pay a annual subscription of 50$, but not 15$ per month. (my opinion)

Is this what you are looking for $$H_2 + \frac{1}{2}O_2 \rightarrow H_2O$$?

If so, here are some useful links

• LaTeX Reference guide
• LaTeX Online generator

If you're on a Mac and you want to try something at your own risk, have a look at Unite - it creates a "native" wrapper for online apps.

I have not tested extensively, but it functions quite well on my MacBook Air. I haven't had any sync problems so far.I've tested making changes offline and they've synced back to the site when the network comes back, but I don't know how reliable that is.

I guess there are equivalents to Unite for Windows and other Ones, if you need them

For anyone curious, I emailed Roam support and they said there is no shortcut for this currently.

So, as a workaround, I remapped `ctrl+'` to be the same as `ctrl+rightarrow`, and I simply `ctrl+'` to skip the formatting without leaving the home row.

I'm on windows, so I used the free 'Microsoft PowerToys' (https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys) to remap the shortcut because it has such a simple UI.

I believe Macs have native key remapping, so it's probably even easier on them.

Cheers

Queries are what you want.

There's a lot of subtlety you can achieve with them.

I think of the references as the catch all bucket for [[movie]]. Which allows you to go through and link any unlinked references, which you can't do through queries. Think of it as a query that ONLY searches for the page's title. It is powerful in that you can link references through the whole graph, but it has a single parameter.

Queries are more flexible and embeddable in may places. Big thing is they are customizable. But you gotta make 'em yourself. The reason why I nest the queries like this is for performance: you can hide them and know what the query is searching for.Here's a demo for you of why the differences with Queries and Linked References are useful.

https://www.loom.com/share/01d7163d3bbb41778b144b626f51703a

Here's a demo:https://www.loom.com/share/3789285ae5ed4109b57a4e3fff8a1377

This allows you to have granular control of how things are filtered on particular pages. You can keep done visible one place while hiding it elsewhere.

From Roam support: The Allow custom components toggle is useful for developers who want to create custom buttons and other components inside roam using clojure :)

Conor has just pushed a loom demo on custom components

You can check it out here to check out how it works :) https://www.loom.com/share/4f546ce050d04db993aa63832975e7dc

Anything else, let us know :)

Here’s a video of the Roam CEO demoing the template function https://www.loom.com/share/fc8b3706af5e40d88814ed0195200595

I don’t know what you mean by “note”. Roam has pages and blocks in those pages. This can be on any page.

Roam has a steep but quick learning curve - good luck.

Wow that's a solution I like!

However it doesnt seem to work from my end :(. I created a video where i tries to setup.

What am I doing wrong?

https://www.loom.com/share/db5321954a744c72b966dde6f371a249

Many thanks!

I recommend something like BitWarden or 1Password even for storing things like that. Make it a habit to put any passwords or other sensitive information in there.

Sorry to add to the chaos, but you might also consider a tool like Workona to help you organize the tabs in your browser for later review / capture / digestion.

Of course, I tend to accumulate groups of tabs as well... but still find that the ability to return to a set of thematic tabs allows me to better organize my sessions.

Not sure what you mean by "active blocks." If I have no other them code blocks set for css and if I put Carmine first in the list, ought it not take precedence over other blocks below?

BTW if you haven't explored the customizable effects of Dark Reader (suggest enter the experimental mode) for Carmine and other themes, it is pretty awesome used judiciously.

Dark Reader

I'll circle back to this issue, Carmine looks interesting enough to explore. Thanks for your help!

I use Dropshare (https://dropshare.app) and point the storage to an S3 bucket. It is a screenshot type of app, with support for more general uploads as well. When I clip a section of the screen it uploads to S3 in the background and puts the URL in my clipboard, same for when I drag a normal file to the drop icon in menu bar.

If you want a tool with focus on data security that runs offline, but also has some roam features such as wiki links while maintaining a very traditional GUI, feel free to check out Zettlr (FOSS)

Depending on the operating system, you can also try out an OCR utility that copies to plain text. It works with anything, not just PDF. On Win there’s http://capture2text.sourceforge.net, free, on Mac there’s https://textsniper.app, $7.

I just dipped my toes in the Roam waters, but I'm going to stick with Notion. I'm starting a new graduate program this Fall and wanted to build a zettlekasten within Roam, but I think I will use the standalone Mac app The Archive for my zettelkasten needs and keep everything else in Notion. It kind of sucks, because I was hoping to go iPad-centric, so I may just stick with Roam for this with the .edu discount, but I agree with the OP's assessment.

Sorry for not being clear. This is what I was referring to:

> We are currently building out a hosted software service that will start at $6/month. (Source)

I'm also curious to learn more about your experience with the local version — are there any major gaps compared to Roam?

Thanks!

https://github.com/athensresearch/athens/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

This is a link to how to install it. I haven't used it yet, I think I will wait until it is more fleshed out. Sorry to hear about the data loss, I haven't lost any data yet in Roam, but I am constantly anxious about it (which already makes Roam not worth using). I backup every day and have tried to not write too much in there for the time being, but you can only do so much with markdown files without the bidirectional links in case your database goes bust. Might give Zettlr a try again. I downloaded it a few days ago but ended up uninstalling it because I didn't have time to learn how to use it.

Give Amplenote a try. It's similar to Roam in a lot of ways but it's focus is more on the productivity side of things. They have support for rich reoccurring tasks and views that allow you to measure and track progress of habits and goals. Seems like it might be a better fit for your use case.

I'm not affiliated with or even someone who uses Amplenote. If using it blows up your life don't blame me.

>As a Product Manager at an E2EE SaaS: you can't overestimate how hard is to implement features with end-to-end encryption

Agreed! And yet, Amplenote has quietly built a product that does that, along with bidirectional linking and help setting/reaching long-term goals.

We're not active on Reddit/Twitter so no one talks about us, but we would love to start hearing more ideas on what to build from new users.

Roam is a novel product. I was hoping you'd consider a novel pricing scheme as well. Please take a look at how Gingko handles it: https://gingkoapp.com/p/pricing/

Pay what you want, from $2-$21 per month. Roam could go bigger to say $5-$30. I have a lot of respect for the Gingko dev going this route. It is the most inclusive scheme I've come across while allowing those who can pay more or value the product more to reflect that with their support.

Take a look at hypothes.is and Diigo. They hold highlights and annotations in context + allow you to explore those highlights into Roam and give you a link where you can see them in context. I expect there will be more players in this annotation-layer-over-the-web space.

Was planning to do exactly this in Bubble. Would be easy to create a nice interface and link to the Hypothes.is API. Generating the Roam-friendly output would just take some more steps, but sounds like you've got that part sorted out.

Open to collaborate on this - think it would be very useful for the community. Roam + Hypothes.is would be powerful

Not a full answer but I've been contemplating the same question and one thing I'm planning to do is make extensive use of namespaces pages for this, e.g. `[[Imports/nvALT/Some note in nvALT]]`, `[[Imports/Hypothes.is/Some Article in Hypothes.is]]`, etc.

You could probably do something similar with your Evernote folders.

I mostly use my personal tool for fine grained knowledge management as none of these tools support reliable attribute/property features at a block/fact level. https://logseq.com/ may be another one you're interested in as it's open source and they have support for attributes via block properties. Unfortunately it's not well documented currently so you have to mess around with it. Hopefully one of these tools will eventually serve as a solid foundation for organizing knowledge down to an individual fact/block level

Glad to see you have found a workflow! I think Org-Mode, or Org-Roam, is certainly a great solution for those capable and willing, but probably not for everyone. You can replicate many features in other programs, too. I was able to cobble some functionality together in Bear.app (macOS/iOS) that replicated many of the topline features. If you are in education or in a few other special categories, the devs have declared there will be discounts.

Thanks for your reply. I have deleted it but it is still in dark mode for some weird reason. The only css I still have is Bear (forced light mode) : https://roamresearch.com/#/app/css-system/page/DB7vDXUDu

N.B.: I assure you I did not get the Bear (forced dark mode) by mistake. :)

There's a project to use python notebooks inside Roam but it's quite involved and learning JS is really the way to go for now. I didn't know JS or Clojure before starting to build on top of Roam and it was pretty easy to get started

That was a long speech, but one that I enjoyed reading. I get how you feel, but at some point you’ll have to choose what matters to you. I don’t think Roam will change communication wise (although they might in the future), it’s just the way they are. However not having a roadmap isn’t a dealbreaker I think. Also, does the tweets of Roam or Conor really matter that much to make tou leave ? Who cares really. The few times I reached support, they were very kind and professional so that’s all that matters to me, knowing support got my back. If you love the product and you feel it’s the best for your needs that’s all that should matter (just my opinion).

Also the possibility to change your email and name has been added just recently, there’s now a “my account” setting in Roam. You can learn more about that and know about the latest updated and new features on their changelog.

Regardless of what I said, just follow your heart and use whatever app suits you the most according to your criteria.

I convert highlights into literature notes as soon as possible and then remove highlights. I've noticed that if I focus too much on the highlights, I start paraphrasing instead of writing a literature note in my own words.

Also, it seems crucial to use propositional titles for the literature notes. It helps me to keep links to all literature notes on one page. I can read through them often to catch similarities, patterns, and meta-ideas.

Here is the link to my literature notes feed: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/GetContent/page/Y6Ga7vFrQ

Roam isn't backed by a graph database. Depending on when you created your graph and what kind you created it's stored in either Datomic or Google Firestore. It is a graph in the sense that it stores blocks as nodes with "directed edges" as references to other nodes in a dynamic hierarchy. Roam's White Paper covers this concept and its advantages in detail

https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/dZ72V0Ig6

Being pedantic, but I think you mean a roadmap. They do have a changelog if you're looking for one, it's here: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/dxTi-iUs2

When I get there in the development, you may find the story/Customer Feedback SmartBlock with dialog feedback type interesting as it will be implementing a somewhat similar concept of processing todo items from an external source.

You also might find the discussion with Mat McGann interesting: Mat McGann: Roam for Teamwork, Health Horizon (thatsthenorm.com)

There are two [[roam/js]] extensions I would recommend:

• David Vargas' Page Synonyms which lets you define whatever aliases you want and then action them with a shortcut in a block
• Tyler Wince's Unlink Finder which gives you a button in the topbar you can toggle on/off to highlight exact match, partial match, fuzzy match (including plurals), and redundant matches.

I've been working on a little theme side project. I'd really appreciate some feedback, especially from someone who is very sensitive to ugly UI ;)

https://roamresearch.com/#/app/theartofroam

Custom CSS Hashtags in Roam. One example below. A lot more [[roam/css]] examples in the Book Club graph

https://roamresearch.com/?vgo_ee=GGfqZ%2BJDwHMInTnSnq%2BaE735hO7C%2FF3J%2FgQB9Uu3XAY%3D#/app/roam-book-club-2/page/f1Le2PKcb

/* Custom Tags */

.rm-page-ref-tag[data-tag="42SmartBlock"] { color: rgba(0,0,0,0.7) !important; font-weight: 600; padding: 3px 6px 4px 4px; border-radius: 5px; background-image: linear-gradient(to left, #DA53EEAD, #FE7FBFAD, #FF9580AD, #FFFF80AD, #8AFF80AD, #92FFFFAD, #9580FFAD ) }

You can also:

{{iframe: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/the_URL_of_your_[[favorite_books]]_page}}

Yes, you can use an iframe to "embed" a Roam page inside a Roam page.

Until they implement this, you can use Maggie Appleton‘s Leyendecker CSS theme as a workaround. You can customise tags and assign colors to them, should help give you a better visual clue.

Basically, when you click the reference counter on the right you can immediately see all references (previously it opened in the sidebar). Example.

It can be used for all those examples you mentioned, anything really.

This app seems to be nothing more than a browser wrapper. You might as well open Safari, login to Roam and then share 'Add to Home Screen' to get an icon you can call up.

If you are looking for quicker ways to add into Roam than try this (on newer iPhones and IOS14) so then with 2 back taps on your iPhone Safari is called with Roam ready for 'Quick Capture':

1. Open Shortcuts App and add a new “Add Block” shortcut
2. Choose Safari ➡️ Open URLs
3. Enter “https://roamresearch.com/#/app/YOURGRAPH”
4. Go to Settings ➡️ Accessibility ➡️ Touch ➡️ Back Tap
5. Select “Add Block”

Bonus round: 1. Say "Hey Siri" 2. say "Add Block" 3. Happy roaming! 😜

Nope, it couldn't log in. Make sure you're not using a Google login for your Roam account.

Here's a suggestion on how to troubleshoot:

• Open Notepad (or other plain text note app)
• Copy/paste the name of your database into Notepad. For example, from my Roam URL https://roamresearch.com/#/app/everruler-test — the database name would be "everruler-test".
• On the next line in Notepad, type your Roam email, then on the next line type your Roam password.
• Log out of your Roam account, and try logging in by copy/pasting the login info from Notepad.
• If successful, then try updating the roam-backup Secrets by copy/pasting from Notepad.

I use the Dark Age theme as my base. It’s one of the few that only changes font colors, and starts off with a pretty vibrant set. It’s very cleanly written with a comment for each variable, so it’s quick and easy to change the colors for highlights, italics, etc. All of my text styles have wildly different colors.

Recently, I was looking for a way to reproduce the multiple-highlighter system for marking up latin declensions I used back in school, and after almost too much effort found Cato Minor’s solution. If you use this as granularly as I do, it will make the text hard to read in edit mode, but I imagine you’ll be using this for entire sentences.

I have the tags themselves set to display: none, and the highlighted text immediately following gets rendered in css-defined colors.

You could easily mark some text as #clarification or even #[[learn more]] and have both the style changed and nice page that tracks all of these developing thoughts.

I created a large test database and I have to say it works, but I noticed a slow down, especially with block lookup. I think performance tuning is still needed for Roam, and the perfomrance for block lookup will be a difficult problem to resolve for large databases.

I imported a dictionary with about 100,000 definitions. (one definition for one block, spread across multiple pages).

However, for most day to day work, I don't see performance being an issue.

There is a note about this here:

https://roamresearch.com/#/app/roamhacker/page/V2sclOMcW

I have no idea other than possibly something to do with spaced repetition? The search window I'm still exploring...

There used to be a [[Hidden Features]] page that collected these types of things. The best list I've found is the one at the roamtricks Roam Shortcodes page.

Thanks. Yeah I’ve definitely seen all of these. This has been the life saver https://roamresearch.com/#/app/roam-tricks/page/OE16pbHJn

My comments were more about disappointment from the Roam team. No reason to outsource you documentation to the community. They’re essentially just guessing what is possible, which seems insane. Roam could just tell us...

Not sure, but in addition to the lower right pop up help menu in Roam itself, there's some breakdown here: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/roam-tricks/page/OE16pbHJn

between query works on any page as long as you use specific dates in it. But relative dates like today/yesterday/tomorrow/last week/last month/next week/next month only work on Daily pages.

Also, between clause has to go last in the query.

Here is a reference: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/RoamTutorial/page/rGQtGsDho

Yeah, the offline graphs are listed under hosted graphs, you can create as many as needed https://roamresearch.com/#/app

So you create the graph and use it, very simple. No image attachments though yet.

First, here's the official "documentation": https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/4v_siS_uv

It's the exact same browser experience, just that behind the scenes it saves data locally. So it's specific to the browser, and subject to being erased if you clear your cache. Therefore, you have to remember to do a daily export. Speed seems the same, though I don't have a large graph to test the difference.

Another caveat is that no attachments are possible right now.

That said, it's still *great* for me to be able to use Roam for Work stuff that I previously couldn't upload to the cloud.

I copy-pasted the code snippet you provided into a fresh Daily Note

The rendering once I'm out of edit mode yields the query line along with the resulting TODOs

In a perfect app there would be a way to hide that {{query...}} folding line or hiding it behind a name like, "Open TODO items". I think showing the actual query text is something new within the past 2 months.

The help database has more information under https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/GM7GgD0AQ

I've been using NeuraCache for space repetition in Roam Research. You can check out the how to guide here.

It's obviously not native and requires some manual intervention to get running but it does the job well once set up.

I hope, but doesn’t seem like that’s how they do business.

You can kind of try it here. Allows you to play around with Roam but your content won’t save:

https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/1wnq-ZAAN

Sure, here's the GitHub: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

And the Creator's FAQ page (on a public Roam db, no less): https://roamresearch.com/#/app/ego/page/OaSVyM_nr

It's very much a pre-alpha prototype right now, but the creator even has a YouTube video showing how you can export your Roam DB and import to Athens while maintaining link structure (it requires a bit of query-based work-around though-- the native JSON export doesn't include 100% of the fields you need to reconnect in Athens).

"Although, their privacy policy is probably something you should look into. I believe they have the right to distribute anything you enter into the website for their own gain."

Hi u/SetKuy, interesting points.

Could you highlight which part of the policy has you worried?

As u/Calhistorian mentions below, I understood that we owned our own data, they (Roam) commit not to access, let alone monetise, unless forced to legally.

I do see a section where you grant them a licence for information in public workspaces, and I don't fully understand whether this is onerous or standard for public aspects of such services, but since I'm working privately right now, I have not been too worried. (Paragraph 6 under Content: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/y7wOdeUpZ) ... [ If only we could hyperlink directly to the block ;) ]

My current reading (not a lawyer!) would be that information in private workspaces would not be subject to a right for them to monetise.

I use it to store a definition for a word or phrase with which I am unfamiliar.

For example: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/KJF_DB_1/page/B81TYQRZa

From my understanding, creating a tool that helps you learn, is in the founders' interest.

two extracts from the white paper:

from 4. Knowledge graphs as nodal networks 

>At the simplest level, Roam’s structure makes it inherently easier to store, recall, and cross-reference ideas. This is the primary proposition for students, writers, self-directed learners, and users of existing note-taking apps.

from 8. Collaborative problem-solving

>While the individual use case for Roam stands on its own merits, the ultimate goal is to create a platform for collaborative research and learning."

I would be interested in their ( u/Conaws ) thoughts on this feature and the technique itself.

Open up a new browser tab. Head over to https://roamresearch.com/#/secretinvite

You should be able to create a new database name associated with your account. I like to have a tab open for each database.

Okay so I got it to work. Thanks for the pointers.
However I find that its very fragile. It breaks if I try to make alterations to the query based on my specific needs. For example, the following works perfectly:

{{[[query]]: {and: [[TODO]] {not: {or: [[This week]] [[Later / whenevs]] [[Waiting]] [[query]]]}}}}}

But then I realised that I did not only want my TODO's to appear, but also any item related to [[NB / Today]]. I couldn't get this to work. I tried a few different combo's for this such as

{{[[query]]: {and: {or: [[TODO]] [[NB / Today]] {not: {or: [[This week]] [[Later / whenevs]] [[Waiting]] [[query]]]}}}}}}

The above syntax display the correct items but it once again displayed queries from other pages as well..

Another thing I seem unable to do is to hide completed tasks.
Instead of me getting help on each scenario I face, perhaps you can advise on how I would learn this syntax myself? The [[Query]] page on the Roam help site does not go into detail https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/XtoPZtxye
Is this syntax specific to Roam or is it a standard that comes from somewhere else (like SQL or Python or something?

That's weird... when I type in https://roamresearch.com/#/app/&lt;myname>

I am able to see everything on my page, even when I am logged out and in incognito mode. Must be something specific to my account. I'll reach out to them to see how I can change this.

IMHO - Don't cross the streams (Ghostbusters reference) between work stuff and private stuff

Create an independent second database for work via https://roamresearch.com/#/secretinvite