One is a free plugin that's excellent while Obsidian is focused. The other is a Mac app that works from every app you use. The honest answer is they solve different halves of the same problem.
Features verified against QuickAdd's docs and GitHub, June 2026. We make Capture — every fact below is checkable.
| Capture | QuickAdd | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $7.99 once | Free (open source, MIT) |
| Works from any app | Yes — global ⌥C hotkey | No — Obsidian must be open and focused |
| Works with Obsidian closed | Yes — writes files directly | No — runs inside Obsidian |
| Templates, macros, scripting | Templates only — write your own capture format with tokens and conditional formatting; no macros, no scripting | Yes — templates, macros, JS scripts, AI commands |
| Grabs page URL + highlighted text | Yes — automatic | No |
| Setup | Install app, pick vault folder | Install plugin, configure each "choice," assign hotkeys |
| Tags at capture | Yes — vault autocomplete | Via capture format strings |
| Maintained by | Indie developer, paid product | Open-source community (1.8M+ downloads, actively maintained) |
QuickAdd is one of the best plugins in the Obsidian ecosystem, full stop. Its four tools — captures, templates, macros, and multis — make in-vault workflows genuinely fast: append to a daily note with a templated filename, insert under a specific heading, chain commands and JavaScript user scripts into one keystroke. It's free, open source, and actively maintained with over 1.8 million downloads.
If your day happens inside Obsidian — researchers, writers, people with a second monitor dedicated to their vault — QuickAdd plus its in-app hotkeys may be all the quick capture you ever need. In that situation, honestly, save your $7.99.
QuickAdd's hotkeys are Obsidian hotkeys. They fire only while Obsidian is open and focused — there is no global capture hotkey in the plugin, and that's not a flaw so much as a boundary: plugins live inside the app. The community's workarounds (AutoHotkey scripts on Windows, Shortcuts contraptions on Mac) exist precisely because of it.
So the moment the thought arrives in Safari, Slack, Mail, or your code editor, QuickAdd's deal becomes: switch to Obsidian, fire the hotkey, type, switch back — the very context switch you were trying to delete. Capture starts where you already are. ⌥C floats a small window over any app; you type, tag (autocompleted from your vault), optionally reroute, hit return, and the note is already appended to the Markdown file on disk — Obsidian running or not. Highlight text first and Capture brings the quote, page title, and URL along automatically.
No. QuickAdd's hotkeys are Obsidian hotkeys — they only fire while Obsidian is open and focused. To capture from Safari or Slack you have to switch to Obsidian first. Capture's ⌥C is a system-wide hotkey that works in any app, and writes to your vault's files directly.
If you work inside Obsidian all day, you probably shouldn't — QuickAdd is excellent there. Capture earns its $7.99 when your thoughts arrive outside Obsidian: a global hotkey in any app, automatic page-URL and highlighted-text grabbing, vault tag autocomplete, and per-capture routing — with no plugin configuration.
No. They pair well: QuickAdd for structured, templated capture while you're working in Obsidian; Capture for everything that happens in the rest of your Mac. Both append plain Markdown to the same files.
Templates yes, macros no. Since version 1.5 you can write your own capture format in Capture — tokens like {{note}}, {{source}} and {{date:MMM D}} in Obsidian's own date syntax, for appended captures and new-note bodies alike, and, from 1.5.1, conditional formatting so the punctuation you wrap around a token is written only when that token has a value. What Capture has no answer to is the rest of QuickAdd's system: macros, JavaScript user scripts, AI commands, and chaining several actions into one keystroke. That's real automation and it's QuickAdd's home turf — if that's what you need, QuickAdd is the right tool.
Capture, free for 7 days — for every thought that arrives outside Obsidian.
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