In-Depth Review
Craft is the kind of tool where your first reaction is "wow, this looks good." Unlike Notion's functionalist design—where the interface feels like a blank spreadsheet—Craft's interface feels like a beautifully typeset magazine. Its default fonts, spacing, card shadows, and color palette have all been carefully tuned, so things look great even without any adjustments. If you care about the "ritual of writing"—like journaling in a beautiful environment, writing book notes, or drafting personal blog posts—Craft is a more "writerly" choice than Notion and Obsidian.
Craft's organizational logic also differs from most note tools. It uses a "document mezzanine" structure—each document can infinitely nest sub-documents inside, forming a tree hierarchy. This is a completely different mental model from Notion's "flat database + page nesting" or Obsidian's "bidirectional link graph." Craft's organization is closer to a book's table of contents—ordered, predictable, easy to navigate. For people who need "structured writing"—like course outlines, product docs, personal wiki—Craft's navigation experience is the best of the three.
Native Apple ecosystem support is another major Craft advantage. It runs as a native app on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS—not an Electron wrapper, not a web shell—which means performance, gesture support, keyboard shortcuts, and system-level integration are all top-notch. Handwrite notes on iPad with Apple Pencil, navigate quickly with keyboard shortcuts on Mac, snap a photo into a note on iPhone—all these cross-device experiences are so smooth you barely notice the transition between devices. If you're all-in on the Apple ecosystem, Craft's user experience is more "Apple" than any other note tool.
But Craft's problem is exactly this—it has almost given up on non-Apple users. While there is a web version, the experience is noticeably inferior to the native app, and features aren't fully synced. If you use a Windows desktop + Android phone, Craft is basically not an option. By comparison, Notion and Obsidian are far more open. Additionally, Craft's plugin ecosystem is essentially zero—you can't install dozens of plugins to morph your note tool into a project management tool like you can with Obsidian, nor can you build a workflow with databases like Notion. Craft is simply a "note tool"—it doesn't want to do more.
Whether to choose Craft ultimately depends on how much you value the act of "writing" itself. If writing is just one step in your workflow—meeting notes, weekly reports, project documentation—Notion is more practical. If you just want a beautiful, focused note tool with a sense of writing ritual, and you're an Apple user, Craft is worth a try.
Pros
- Beautiful design, outstanding typography
- Native Apple ecosystem support
- Good collaborative editing experience
Cons
- Apple platforms only (Web version available)
- Plugin ecosystem far behind Obsidian
- Limited export formats