
Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files - ericax
https://obsidian.md/
======
ericax
Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta
today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!)

We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge
base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base
gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data
and not rely on any cloud services.

We believe you second brain should work similarly to your own brain and
connections are crucial in thinking. Obsidian supports [[internal links]]
between your notes out of the box, and provide a powerful graph view and
backlink pane to help you understand your knowledge.

We also noticed how personal note-taking and knowledge management is, so we
built Obsidian to be very extensible from the start, and let you put together
your own workflow with plugins like daily notes and page preview as building
blocks.

This leads to our three fundamental values of Obsidian:

1\. Local-first, Markdown plain text based; 2\. Link as first-citizen. 3\. As
extensible as possible.

Obsidian is a powerful front-end for your knowledge, like an IDE for your
notes.

Learn more about Obsidian's features:
[https://obsidian.md/features](https://obsidian.md/features)

Read the story of the project and the team:
[https://obsidian.md/about](https://obsidian.md/about)

~~~
rhezab
Interesting stuff!

I currently use Andy Matuschak's [1] system, using his note-link-janitor
script [2] to generate backlinks and Typora to edit. The only thing Obsidian
adds is the graph view for me, but it seems that Obsidian generates backlinks
using file name, not title. I prefer linking by title. Perhaps this can be an
option? The editor also seems to be lacking a little... for instance I can't
seem to render math. Hopefully some of my feedback will be useful to you.

Overall really cool idea, but probably not going to use for now. Will keep
tabs, and wish you the best of luck!

[1]
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes)
[2] [https://github.com/andymatuschak/note-link-
janitor](https://github.com/andymatuschak/note-link-janitor)

~~~
627467
I discovered andy's notes in the past and has been trying to determined what
he uses to publish those clean yet powerfull notes. The janitor is only one
part. do you also publish your notes as HTML? How to you make use of the
backlinks generated by janitor?

~~~
mathnmusic
It's possible to get a similar system with TiddlyWiki and the Krystal theme
plus a few plugins:

[https://twitter.com/Learn_Awesome/status/1265574525342793730...](https://twitter.com/Learn_Awesome/status/1265574525342793730?s=20)

~~~
rhezab
Intriguing... thanks for sharing!

------
hkh28
As several people have pointed out, both the "Personal" and "Catalyst"
licenses are intended for personal use only, making this quite an expensive
product should I want to use it for work as well. But in the full license
text, there seems to be an even more problematic phrasing:

> The use of OBSIDIAN for the exercise of your own trade or profession (...)
> does not qualify as personal use.

I would interpret this to mean that I as a developer can not use this to
exercise the "trade" of software development. That would in turn mean that I
can not use this to make notes of stuff I learn on my own time, if it is
related to software development.

I would imagine most people not caring about this kind of license limitation,
but it would be interesting if it was intended this way, or if this is just me
being bad at licenses.

~~~
ericax
Hi there! Sorry it's our first time doing a license like this.

If I understand correctly, licenses are usually written more strictly for
legal purposes, but in my opinion your use case sounds like it should belong
to personal use.

If anyone has pointers for us to make the license text more clear, please let
me know!

~~~
_frkl
I would not write my own license. I'd really recommend you get a lawyer look
over the text you have (that shouldn't be too expensive, it's a one time
cost), or look at existing ones that are actually written by lawyers. For a
public license (to restrict commercial use), I'd recommend both LicenseZero
Prosperity (
[https://prosperitylicense.com/versions/3.0.0](https://prosperitylicense.com/versions/3.0.0)
) and the Polyform licenses (
[https://polyformproject.org/](https://polyformproject.org/) ).

For the private license, you could use/adapt the LicenseZero Private license (
[https://licensezero.com/licenses/private](https://licensezero.com/licenses/private)
).

Those are more geared towards developer tools, so I'm not sure whether they'd
be a good fit for your product. But all of them are written in simple to
understand language so you should be able to figure that out by youself, and
at the very least get a few pointers. If not, that is considered a bug with
the license, and both projects are very open to feedback.

~~~
cxr
Obsidian folks: please don't use any of the aforementioned licenses. The
reality is that they're _not_ a good fit (although the author would probably
love to get you as a client to handle your EULA and convince you to use one of
the others for your eventually-open-source plans, and that would be an even
worse idea).

~~~
_frkl
Why are they not a good fit? From a shallow reading, I thought Prosperity and
the Polyform licenses would be fairly similar in intent to the licenses they
have on their page. I can't imagine the authors (not author) of
Polyform/Prosperity would care either way, and since nobody ever claimed those
are open source licenses I don't understand your other ill-made point either.
Maybe you refer to the Parity license? That one would make no sense in this
context at all, and I doubt anybody would suggest it here.

Also, since your post is fairly negative and unsubstantiated overall, would
you care to suggest an alternative?

------
loughnane
I will never again build any kind of workflow for my knowledge on top of
anything that isn’t open source. 5y is a long time and 10y is an eternity for
these sorts of products but its just a fraction of my working life.

My own personal setup is a bunch of markdown files and it’s great, so I like
that approach, but I’m very cautious about investing time for something so
important in a product i don’t control.

~~~
ericax
We'll likely make a formal guarantee to open source in the case of us shutting
down. Didn't realize that was a possibility, thanks for the suggestion!

~~~
ken
"Open source" is both a license and a development model. You're talking about
a license, but someone interested in workflow longevity will probably not be
satisfied with a source dump from a dead company. They're looking for a
community which knows how to maintain it.

As JWZ once said: "You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic
pixie dust of 'open source,' and have everything magically work out." Has
there ever been a case where a company as its last act released their software
as open-source, and a community formed and picked it up?

~~~
bmikaili
You do realize communities can die out as well?

~~~
ken
By definition, that's what happens when its developer community dies off down
to size n=0. A source dump without a community is essentially fast-forwarding
a (potential) developer community to its death. It should be clear why this is
strictly worse.

------
shampto3
I've been using Obsidian for the past week. Here are my thoughts:

I love that this is basically just markdown with wiki links. I'm not too
concerned about Obsidian going out of business and my notes not being useful
anymore. Contrast that with Notion (which is great in many other ways), where
I store my data on their cloud and even though I can export to markdown not
everything is actually markdown (e.g. tables) so they just put a link to their
site instead.

I also love that since this is locally stored, I have control of how I store
my data. I have a private git repo, and just occasionally commit and push my
changes.

I wish it were open source, that way I could feel better about the wiki links
being useless if they go out of business. It's not a blocker for me though,
since my notes are fairly straightforward and I mostly just use the links for
table of contents files.

The downside of being locally stored is that it isn't cross-device capable.
This limits me when I'm taking notes on my iPad. That said, I don't take many
notes on my iPad so if I need to I can just manually transfer my notes when I
get back to my computer. I can understand though that this would a be a show
stopper for some people.

Overall, this solution works for me. I have high hopes that it will continue
to improve and become even better than it is now. Thanks to the team for the
hard work!

~~~
xapata
I store the notes in Dropbox and use iA on my mobile. Works well enough.

~~~
rcarr
I can confirm that both iA writer and 1Writer work great as mobile solutions.
1Writer allows for following links. Both allow you to search through all your
notes quickly, though there's probably a tiny bit less friction with iA than
1Writer.

------
benrbray
This looks great! Good timing too, since Roam has recently closed its doors to
new signups. I've been looking for a new notetaking / PKM / Markdown app
recently, but unfortunately all apps out there fall short in at least one of
the following criteria:

* bidirectional [[wiki links]]

* support for both inline and display math

* customizable themes / CSS

* rich formatting beyond markdown (e.g. wrap content in <div> tags with custom formatting--useful for e.g. placing a box around text, etc.)

* WYSIWYG (crucial for documents with tons of math and rich formatting as above) including wysiwyg editing of tables

Tools I've tried that come close but aren't quite good enough:

* Jupyter Lab / Notebooks

* Typora

* Roam

* OneNote (just let me write $\LaTeX$ math!)

It's actually been quite frustrating. because some apps are __soooo close __to
what I need, but they 're closed-source so I'm powerless to make the small
improvements I need. My current workflow for notetaking uses a pretty
suboptimal combination of Overleaf, Typora, and OneNote. I'd really like to be
able to replace all three with a single tool. At the moment, the only thing
that comes close is a Chrome tab with document.designMode="on".

To the Obsidian team: Please add inline math support and consider WYSWIG!

~~~
imglorp
Since roam was lamented, obligatory boost for org-roam:

[https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam](https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam)

~~~
ihodes
I love this, and used Deft and org-mode for a long while, but formatting and
inline images aren't something that's non-hackily possible to do in Emacs.
Would love to be wrong about this.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
A quick search suggests it's doable
[https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=org%20mode%20pictures](https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=org%20mode%20pictures)

~~~
ihodes
Yep, I did use inline images in my days with org-mode, but I found it to be
rather hacky. It's possible, I just found it unpleasant.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
May I suggest contacting the emacs org-mode maintainers and chat. The emacs
guys are very receptive I know, I imagine the org-mode guys will be just as
good.

------
itsspring
I was about to spend $25 for a one-time/lifetime license, until I read your
license. No commercial or professional use?

I'm not paying $50/yr for that sorry. A yearly fee for this is unrealistic and
is way more expensive than other products like Quiver or SimpleMind which
offers a lifetime product

~~~
Veen
It is quite an odd choice. It makes sense to tier based on features, but tiers
based on how or when people use an app is bizarre. Am I supposed to monitor
myself so I don't read a note in Obsidian while I'm doing commercial writing
work?

(Also, their license page could do with some proofreading)

~~~
ericax
The idea is that if you're creating value with Obsidian, your employer should
expense that, ideally it shouldn't impact you financially. If you're working
for a non-profit for example, it's all free.

> (Also, their license page could do with some proofreading)

Interested to hear more! We did a few rounds of proofreading, did you find any
typos?

~~~
itsspring
> your employer should expense that, ideally it shouldn't impact you
> financially.

You're really limiting your userbase (customer pool) here by expecting only
enterprise users. Many people here are freelance designers, students with
part-time jobs, researchers writing for-profit books, or they work for
themselves. Most employers don't allow expenses for note-taking apps. I would
encourage you to adopt this pricing model: [https://simplemind.eu/features-
pricing/](https://simplemind.eu/features-pricing/)

It looks cool, but I won't buy it until it's a lifetime license.

Edit: Sorry that this came out overly-negative. It's a beautiful product,
congrats on launching it!

~~~
benhurmarcel
I confirm, I could be interested in such a tool for my professional activity,
but I work in a large company and there’s 0 chance they’d let me expense
whatever software I want. I’d be paying from my own pocket.

~~~
_frkl
For what it's worth: JetBrains has a model where they sell cheaper individual
licenses that people can buy from their own money (company credit
cards/expenses are not allowed), and those can be used for work. And more
expensive per-seat licenses for companies/organizations. Also, that also
includes a perpetual license for the version at the time of purchase (and
discounts for people who upgrade). I think that is overall a fair deal, and
keeps the incentives for both developers and customers as aligned as is
possible under such circumstances, IMHO. Yearly licensing like this doesn't
make much sense for such a product, I think.

------
jtbayly
Can somebody help me understand something about Markdown and Obsidian?

Why would I ever want an edit mode and a preview mode while taking notes?
Don't I want to be able to _both_ see my note _and_ edit it at any time?

I mean, I guess I could just ignore preview mode if the edit mode actually
allowed me to see all of the content of my note, but it doesn't. Images are
only visible in preview mode. So all the talk about transclusion seems dumb to
me. I can't see jack unless I decide to stop working and start viewing. I just
don't get it. Is this really what people do? Switch back and forth between
editing and viewing all the time?

Or perhaps they just decide to put all the content of the note on-screen
twice? But why would I ever want to look at the same content twice? We're not
talking about folding, so I can see two different places in the same note.
We're talking viewing the exact same content twice, cutting my usable screen
real estate in half for displaying the content of my note. So I have 50% of
the context I could have... And don't even get me started about how
synchronized scrolling is impossible in this view if you use images in your
note.

I feel like I must be taking crazy pills, because everybody seems to love
using markdown, and I _really_ want to like it, too. I know the benefits of
plaintext. But I just don't get making that sort of usability sacrifice.

~~~
ericax
We're working on WYSIWYG but it's not an easy problem. Eventually we want
editing to feel comfortable to everyone! :)

~~~
jtbayly
That's good news for me, but apparently a lot of people don't feel the need
for it. I'm still confused why. In general, are people switching modes or
doing side-by-side or what?

~~~
ericax
I think most people are used to seeing the source and can basically "imagine"
what it looks like. So they really only switch for double checking before
sending something out I would say.

Many people in our community said things about "staying in the editor" so I
guess that's a common workflow.

~~~
jtbayly
I think I could get used to that in notes where I don't embed images.

------
justtocomment
Can't comment on the merits of the product itself.

That in the first five minutes of this post being online, several users more
or less claim that this has changed their lives in their first-ever comment on
HN strikes me as a little odd however.

(Yes I'm aware that this is also my first-ever comment on HN.)

~~~
ericax
We have been in private beta for a few months already, with 5000+ beta testers
and a community. We did let them know that we're doing a "Show HN" today.

Hope that explains things!

~~~
justtocomment
Thanks for taking the time to reply! I guess it does explain things ...

Best of luck with the product, also +1 to the suggestion of an open source
client from a sibling thread!

~~~
ericax
Yes! We really want people to be able to leave their knowledge bases as a
legacy to their grandchildren, so we'll do everything it takes.

------
cxr
It looks like this isn't open source. If this is supposed to be one's second
brain, please at least consider using a time-bomb FOSS license. Something
like: you're permitted to use Obsidian under Apache/MIT/GPL license either 7
years after a given release, or effective immediately in the event that
Obsidian shuts down.

~~~
ericax
That's an interesting idea and we'll look into it!

We plan to stay in business in the long run, but if things do go wrong and we
shut down, we do intend to open source the app.

~~~
Whil-
I guess we all have an incentive to make you go out of business then ;-)

On a more serious note: I see no issue with software being a service and
costing money if it's built on a standard that leaves the data in the owners
hands and in the owners own structures. I.e. Markdown files synced using
infrastructure like OneDrive/Dropbox/whatever with some nice features on top
of it and a nice UI can cost whatever and no one should complain. Because if
that software goes away the data is in the owners hands and in a standardized
format supported by many other tools.

That should be the preferred way we build software btw. And to take it to the
next level we should create more general purpose (and standardized) database
tools that are user friendly, treat them in similar fashion as files by
syncing with user owned Infrastructure and we might just get to the point
where more rigid data structures can be used in a similar manner as what I
described above for files. That future would be great.

~~~
ericax
Totally agree (except for the first sentence LOL!).

Come to think of it, IDEs are exactly that: a powerful front-end for your code
files. That means us programmers are not locked into any one IDE.

> And to take it to the next level we should create more general purpose (and
> standardized) database tools that are user friendly

Yep, but I wonder how we can get there. Hope someone figures it out! It's
always hard to set standards.

~~~
mbreese
I too see no problem in a closed-source application so long as the data files
are open. I like the IDE analogy here -- you can edit source code with a bunch
of different tools. Some open, some closed. But the important thing is that
the source code is readable by all of them.

------
alexmingoia
For the people complaining it’s not open source: Why does that matter ? It’s
not like your markdown disappears if they do. You would just have to write
software or purchase another software with the same conventions.

~~~
milofeynman
Joplin is open source and basically the same application minus the linked
graph. For people complaining, use that. I do.

------
BoysenberryPi
I was using Obsidian in the beta and it's pretty great but I stopped using it
when the licenses were released. I like the product and I'd like to support it
but is quite the leap from $25 one time fee to $50 a year for commercial
especially since I'll be using it for side projects alone. Getting a proper
commercial license is a must for CYA reasons and I don't see myself paying $50
a year for it.

Also, the $25 catalyst license seems odd to me. It's called a license but you
get a Discord badge and nothing else really changes from the personal license.
I would reconsider how these are structured.

------
qppo
I actually get a lot of value from cloud hosted solutions, I bounce between
2-3 machines daily and multiple OS installations several times a week, and
would like for my notes taken on one machine to just be there when I write
notes on another machine.

Another thing I need to do often is type up design docs collaboratively, we
use google docs for this currently but it sucks for our use cases.

And finally, I read and write a lot of GH wiki pages and various markdown
notes in git repos for open source collaboration, which isn't really helpful
for cross referencing information.

Is there any way to do this with obsidian? I'm all for owning my data but tbh,
a lot of the powerful features you demonstrate only make sense for me if I can
throw my data up on a server and make it accessible from anywhere with an
internet connection.

~~~
mjedmonds
Definitely can use across computers using a cloud sync provider (dropbox,
etc).

You can also have multiple vaults, and if you want to collaborate, you can
share that vault with someone.

Realtime collaboration may be a bit dangerous with syncing over a cloud
provider. They are also planning a subscription with note hosting - perhaps
that will include some form of collaboration.

If you put all of your GH wiki pages into a single vault, that may be a
solution (though I don't think it's possible to create a solution to your
setup in the most general setting - you'd have to be able to link to any file
on your OS).

But you can throw your data up on a server and make it accessible from
anywhere with an internet connection

------
katktv
It's not exactly Roam, but the thing looks promising still. I like that it is
offline-first and Markdown based, really feels like the crew has got some
ideas in what direction to lead this project to. The bi-directional links in
themselves are quite a killer feature that makes many note-taking apps like
Evernote feel obsolete.

~~~
maurelian
Curious what it's missing that Roam has? I liked the Roam concept, but didn't
use it for long before moving to Obsidian because of the privacy model, so I
never really got a good feel for it. I still feel like I'm not getting the
most out of the bi-directional link functionality everyone loves so much
because I keep forgetting to create them.

~~~
katktv
I think Roam's graph is flawed, but it's much better that Obsidian's, which
you can't even zoom out of. Also Conaw experiments with some neat things like
to-do lists that double as backlinks, Kanban boards, Pomodoro timer (ok that's
overkill but it was added recently anyway). Daily note-taking is also pretty
streamlined in Roam with new notes created every day that can be referred to
in a neat fashion, and perhaps also allow for SRS.

Idk, Roam feels too familiar to me as well, so I doubt that I'll drop it
anytime soon (we'll see how will I handle the future $15 price tag).

~~~
ericax
Interested in hearing more about the graph view!

As of the latest release our graph view can be zoomed in and out, and we've
rewritten it to generate the graph with WebGL rather than SVG, so it's a lot
more performant for 1,000+ notes.

~~~
joshuahutt
Love it. Would also love to be able to search/filter in the graph view!

------
greenpizza13
The comments here are so positive, I had to try this out. After reading
through all the built-in notes and customizing some shortcuts, I have to say
this is some very slick software.

I tried Roam before but didn't get into it, but the similarity between this
and VSCode makes the barrier to entry very low. The formatting is very nice,
the linking is fantastic. I am going to attempt to make this my daily driver
for notes.

Great work Obsidian team!

------
geraltofrivia
Obsidian is a crazy project, and I would recommend you all to give it far more
weight when deciding to use it or not. Before I switched to Notion earlier
this year, I used to maintain my notes in a Github repository. A folder with a
bunch of markdown and txt files. I then used some editor like Sublime Text to
easily switch between pages and to write. And sometimes, I would render them
using a combination of
[Markserv]([https://www.npmjs.com/package/markserv](https://www.npmjs.com/package/markserv))
(to convert Markdown to static HTML files), and [Live Reload
Addon]([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/live-
reload/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/live-reload/)) to pull
those HTML files from disk every second. It was ugly, but it worked for me for
years.

Obsidian fits this workflow __perfectly __. I use Notion now, but I believe it
's got too many bells and whistles, syntactic sugar, and non-native text
editing experience, which makes me focus more on the interface than the
content. I'm making the shift back to my previous way of managing
notes/knowledge (going to take weeks), only because of this Application. I
recommend you keep a close eye on it.

I am not in any way involved with the project.

------
bnlxbnlx
I wonder how this could be connected to some flash card system. I've been
using anki for some months now to help me rememer things better (apps on
linux, iOS and OSX and syncing via ankiweb). My notes are not linked so far as
I have been looking for a solution that allows me keep all my notes in plain
markdown files while linking them.

I'm syncing the md files across all my devices via a self-hosted rpi-nextcloud
and I want to be able to add new notes through my mobile. So obsidian.md looks
like a good fit for me, I will definitely give it a try. Thanks for putting
this together, erica & shida!

However, I want to transfer as much of my second brain into my first brain, by
actually memorizing linked notes. So the plugin 'open a random note'
([https://youtu.be/cFYaWC_86W0?t=547](https://youtu.be/cFYaWC_86W0?t=547))
goes a bit this way, but to optimize memorization it would need some system
that makes use of spaced repetition and active recall like anki.

Anyone, ideas? Or do you actually have plans that go that direction, erica?

~~~
mfranzs
Although it's not markdown based, we're building
[https://www.remnote.io/](https://www.remnote.io/) for this purpose; it lets
you take hierarchical, nonlinear, linked notes and internalize them with
spaced repetition.

~~~
mandliya
+1 for remnote! I really love its research based spaced repetition
functionality!

------
flarg
Isn't this basically a very slightly slicker version of Zim desktop wiki? Zim
is based on plain text files, has links, to-dos, backlink pane etc. Oh, and
it's Foss.

------
karakanb
Genuine question: what exactly are you taking notes of?

I have tried using tools like this before, but in all of my attempts I have
found that I actually don't have much to take notes for; for example, I have
never felt like "I wish I had taken notes of this", because I feel like any
kind of search engine is doing this on a much larger scale, practically for
combined notes of millions of people in a much efficient way than I probably
could ever do.

I am genuinely asking this to learn more about and maybe adopt note-taking as
a habit, any input is appreciated.

~~~
komali2
I'm making up for a terrible math education in Khan Academy and take notes in
org-mode using org-roam. Here's an example file, in .md. If you click this
link, a download dialog will launch, fair warning
[http://calebjay.com/examplenotes.md](http://calebjay.com/examplenotes.md)

To answer your question re: search engine. I can't just google, like, every
single elementary math concept up through calculus to magically know it. I
need the learning/notetaking process to get Chunks of math knowledge in my
brain and begin forming neurological patterns between those chunks. This is so
I can later apply these chunks during my self-teaching of computer science
(another thing I'm very elementary in despite my profession). The notes help
me do things like create anki decks and etc as well.

I don't want to know _all_ math, just the very good curriculum that Khan
Academy has set out.

Please don't make fun of how elementary my math level is lol. I'm trying.

~~~
synista
That's pretty impressive, using org-mode and org-roam but lacking in math
education, props. I myself have no music education, so I'm using it for that.

------
elric
I'm sure it's intended to look nice, but that website is so dark I can barely
read it. I hope the application ships with a readable theme?

From what I can make out, it seems to draw some inspiration from zettelkasten
tools, which looks promising at least.

~~~
ubercow13
It seems to support custom CSS and there are a few user-submitted themes you
can choose from

------
kepano
Obsidian is crazy good for how new it is. And the team is moving extremely
fast. It seems like they really know what they want out of this product.

I've tried dozens of knowledge management tools and settled on TiddlyWiki a
couple years ago. It took a lot of customization to get anywhere close as
useable as Obsidian is out of the box.

Here's what I love about Obsidian:

\- Local files, syncs via iCloud/Dropbox/etc makes it future proof

\- Markdown with [[ ]]] bidirectional links and - [ ] checklists.

\- Automatically updates all old links if you rename a file(!)

\- Compatible with 1Writer on iOS

\- Really nice keyboard shortcuts

\- Runs as its own app (in a wrapper), but can be styled via custom CSS

\- Automatically parses external URLs (don't necessarily need to use the
markdown format for simple .com URLs)

\- Great editing experience, e.g. auto indenting bullets

\- Autocomplete for everything (tags, linked pages)

\- Lots of extra nice touches like graph view and the pane system to open
multiple files at once

~~~
kixiQu
Yup, I've got my Tiddlywiki in a place where the portability makes me not itch
to try this (sort of the opposite of local-first; a raspberry pi in the sky
holds my Markdown files) but this seems like it will be something like an IDE
for markdown notes, which is very, very cool.

------
colinjoy
Sad to see that the only way to use it for work related note taking is a
subscription. I know a lot of people will just ignore the license and happily
use the personal or catalyst version, but I wish there was something in
between the $0 one time fee and perpetual rent payment. I’ll pass.

[https://obsidian.md/pricing](https://obsidian.md/pricing)

------
rrherr
What I'm looking for:

1st priority: macOS & iOS apps that always sync, open FAST, and look clean, to
enter new notes with no friction. Like Bear (which I currently use) and
Simplenote (which I used to use).

2nd priority: Bi-directional links. Like Roam and Obsidian. Transclusion. Like
Roam (and Obsidian?)

I'm willing to pay up to $15/month. Like Roam.

Are there any solutions that give all of the above?

~~~
Eugeleo
Ad 1: You’d have to try it yourself, but to me, Obsidian works flawlessly on
Mac. As another commeter said, it has a certain VS Code feel to it. No iOS app
yet, but I think it’ll come sooner or later — you should keep an eye out.

2nd: Obsidian can transclude whole files or whole sections (afaik). No block-
level transclusion, as there isn’t any concept of blocks in Markdown, but that
shouldn’t matter much.

~~~
rollinDyno
It matters enough for me to stay with Roam.

I like how Obsidian is doing PR better than Roam, yet I can’t switch without
block transclusion.

~~~
Eugeleo
I’m curious what do you use block transclusion for? When I used Roam, I did
occasionally have a need to link to only a small part of some note, but that
happened so rarely that I happily traded that in for the Obsidian-specific
features (md based, offline-first).

~~~
rollinDyno
Most serious writing I do will consist of remixing the same ideas over and
over again until it its practically unrecognisable. Roam is the perfect tool
for making a collage of text while also keeping a reference to the primary
sources.

A simple search on youtube will show you how people use block references btw.

------
justindirose
I did a first look run-through of Obsidian on YouTube if anyone would find it
helpful. It's a top-of-the-list recommendation for personal knowledge
management software in my book. Kind, helpful community around the software
too.

Video: [https://youtu.be/cFYaWC_86W0](https://youtu.be/cFYaWC_86W0)

------
amflare
I want to like this application, and the little time I was able to spend in it
certainly displayed a lot of promise. But it only worked for one day. Since
then, it will not display any of the files. I know it is still connected since
I can make new files and folders and see them appear in my directories, and
before I tried to refresh the vault I could still see my tags. But Obsidian
refuses to show anything in the file explorer, and unfortunately, that renders
the product useless.

~~~
ericax
Could you please reach out on our forum or Discord so we can help you debug?

Link to forum and Discord:
[https://obsidian.md/community](https://obsidian.md/community)

------
tonyhb
A fork of visual studio to only work with .md files, with an NPM plugin to
render markdown as a preview, and pull out links between the files as a D3
map.

:thinking-face: I'm not sure about this one. Maybe for others, but not the UI
for me. Good luck to you all, in any case!

~~~
ericax
Thanks! For anyone who's curious, not a fork and we wrote most of the core
code from scratch.

------
dangom
Looks really cool. For those who are more comfortable taking notes in org-mode
rather than md, check out org-roam [1].

[1] [https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam](https://github.com/org-roam/org-
roam)

------
bravura
How do I browse and edit my notes when I’m on mobile?

Desktop only is a non starter for actually going all-in on a notes solution.

~~~
O_H_E
A mobile version is planned in the long term. Your notes are in plain markdown
files though, so you can use any markdown editor your phone supports. I have
seen 1Writer (ios) and Markor (Android) recommended a lot.

------
mjedmonds
This app has changed the way I take notes - markdown, local files, wiki-style
[[backlinking]], and Latex support has made it fun to build a personal
knowledge base.

I never liked the hierarchical structure of most note taking systems, and
backlinking just lets you write - you navigate the network structure later
(you can also still use a hierarchy on top of the network structure if that's
your thing).

Highly recommend checking it out!

~~~
sevensor
I've had a lot of success with even less organization -- writing one giant
append-only markdown file per project. Search for the thing you want and it
usually comes up. Notes have a timestamp and they're in order, so it's not
hard to determine whether they're still relevant.

~~~
cxr
Sounds like a blog. Maybe you should publish those notes. Most people won't
find it useful. Some people might.

~~~
sevensor
I wish I could! Proprietary work pays my bills at the moment.

------
tsp
Not very impressed with this, because:

\- Rendering of files takes quite long (a couple of seconds) \- Interface
looks dated \- Graph view is not very usable, it just shows a bunch of words.
No idea how to get any meaning out of this. \- Backlinks did not update in my
test

Typora [0], another markdown editor is light-years ahead with the basic
features – being able to edit markdown files and search through them all at
once.

I appreciate the competition, tho. Good to have another option.

The price is quite high for such an editor in my opinion. More polished note-
taking apps like Bear [2] or Notion [3]
[https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/) are even cheaper. They are
proprietary, so not using markdown files directly, but I think it is fair to
compare them anyways.

[0]: [https://typora.io/](https://typora.io/) [1]:
[https://bear.app/](https://bear.app/) [2]:
[https://notion.so](https://notion.so)

~~~
ericax
Hi there! It certainly doesn't sound normal for the app to take a few seconds
to open files.

Would you join our community to give us a chance to debug the issue?
[https://obsidian.md/community](https://obsidian.md/community)

We're still currently in beta so we'd really appreciate all the help we can
get to polish any hiccups in the app.

As for the editing experience, we're only about 3 months in so there's a lot
of catching up to do, and Typora-level editing experience is something we're
shooting for.

------
joaogui1
I've migrated from Roam to Obsidian and it's really awesome. I have ownership
of my files, there are constant updates with newer features and bug fixes and
the community is really nice :)

~~~
programmarchy
I haven't gotten my invite to Roam yet, but isn't an aspect of Roam that you
can network with others to aid in collaboration and discovery?

Privacy is great, but for collaborative research, Obsidian's model seems to be
at a disadvantage.

------
kmtrowbr
I have wanted an app like this for so long -- I love it just hooking into a
local folder of markdown files, and making editing and navigating those files
better. Little touches like, prepending the date in, sort order format, e.g.
2020-05-27 at the beginning of new files, for things like that, it's like
you're reading my brain.

Basically, in order to win me over, you're competing with JetBrains. JetBrains
is so good, so wired into my brain, they have good Markdown support, they just
miss the little touches such as the easy linking and backlinking.

But primarily when I get into my giant collection of notes, I need to be able
to find things very quickly -- this means navigating via keyboard shortcuts
and having very rich file management, as well as close integration with the
OS.

Things this doesn't have: * Really good keyboard navigation in the file pane,
using the arrow keys. For example if I navigate down to a folder, then I want
to be able to press the right key to open the folder and navigate into the
folder. This doesn't work, so I have to open the folder using the mouse. *
It's great that you have the [[quick links]] -- but why not work really hard
to make the regular inter-linking work? E.g. if I have [my link](./my-
file.md), that should work too, but it doesn't. * Say I find a file, and I
want to open it up in the finder. JetBrains has a right-click action to "Open
in enclosing folder" and it pops up the Finder. Something like that
acknowledges that a tool is a part of an ecosystem & provides an "escape
hatch" to interact with the files in another way.

Overall this is the best attempt I have found. I will spend more time with it
trying to organize my notes using your excellent inter-linking features.

Git repo of markdown files is the best way I have found to keep notes. A game
changing tool to to make that even more awesome will come along one day -- you
are on the path. Thank you for your work.

~~~
milofeynman
I use Joplin which is similar to this, and it has a hotkey, Ctrl-E I think,
which opens the external editor of your choice

------
agambrahma
Probably worth mentioning that if you're looking for "all this and more", try
out Tinderbox
([https://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/](https://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/))
too.

\- local storage

\- notes can be "namespaces" within documents

\- "zip links" that are the equivalent of the `[[...]]` style common to both
Obsidian and Roam, showing Inbound, Outbound and "suggested" links, for each
note

\- ad-hoc linking between notes on top of all this

\- switching between "plain notes" and a Map view, or an Outline view, or a
Timeline view

\- viewing the resulting graph in different ways, auto-arranging it, etc.

\- Ad-hoc "decorators" (colors, labels, tags, icons) for notes

\- Ad-hoc "backgrounds" on all or portion of the graph view

\- Ad-hoc "note queries" (that allow you to collect notes matching certain
metadata, having certain text etc)

\- ... and more that I haven't found time to use yet :-)

~~~
pandatigox
Ive been trying to get into tinderbox but there is no easy manual to follow.
how do you get started with tinderbox?

------
_virtu
Self promotion:

I maintain an open source visual studio code plugin that organizes plaintext
(md, tex, html you name it) files with a simple directive `@nested-tags: tag1,
some/hierarchy/you/want`. I have been pretty lazy in regards to actively
adding features to it though. I do have plans on adding a graph based
visualization and to add more detailed views to simplify workflow. If you're
interested in obsidian but don't want to be locked in, check it out.

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscode-n...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscode-
nested-tags.vscode-nested-tags)

------
alexktz
I tried out Obsidian in the closed beta and also Roam Research before ending
up learning org-roam as part of org-mode in emacs.

I won't deny there is a heck of a learning curve with org-mode but once you
make the jump I doubt you'll ever look back.

------
drcongo
OK, I love this already. I have a couple of feature requests though. 1. Allow
scrolling past the bottom of the document - see the way Sublime Text and a lot
of code editors do this. I find it _really_ uncomfortable writing with my
current line anchored to the bottom of the screen. 2. Allow some (all?) of
these markdown extensions [1] - our current knowledge base docs make heavy use
of them, and a few are pretty critical for technical docs.

[1] [https://facelessuser.github.io/pymdown-
extensions/](https://facelessuser.github.io/pymdown-extensions/)

------
ymolodtsov
Obsidian is one of the best apps I discovered recently and almost immediately
become a core part of my workflow despite its early stage.

It's a personal knowledge system built to last: proprietary formats provide
advantages but end up locking you in it – especially when it's about a monthly
subscription.

Obsidian is built on plain Markdown files that can be accessed by any app and
are unlikely to become obsolete. The files are local, though you can put them
in any cloud (in the future Obsidian will provide an additional paid sync
option).

The devs are great and have been great at receiving feedback and adding the
right features.

------
slightwinder
Why is it that most of this apps are all following the same road feature-road?
Some markup-language and a preview or a low richtext-mode and some simple
filesystem-like organisation or even worse. The better ones have sometimes
ability for internal linking or nowadays alternate views like graphs. More and
more comes some basic plugin-support, mostly for editing or simple stuff, but
hardly more.

How is it that none of them are offering advanced feature for automation? Or
mature levels of organisations? Or some serious interface-ability?

~~~
tin7in
Could you elaborate what you have in mind as automation?

Context: I'm working on a document editor that can resurface relevant
information across different sources (docs, notes, emails,chats) while writing
a document.

~~~
slightwinder
Notes in an application are just semi-structured databases. There is the
structure of how they are saved, how they relate, but also the data they
contain. Apps could offer ways to quer notes by certain constrains, like any
other database, but also tools to parse the content into a generic data-
structure and then have views to work on them manual or programatic. Keyword
for this would be DOM and structured editing.

Usually a document has an internal structure to some degree, like header and
body, different paragraphs, sentences and blocks, etc. For some welldefinend
formats like there is the DOM (socument object model), but this is something
limited to specific formats and purpose. Why not give people thenability ro
parae data as they which and then have tools working on it manuel or
programatic?

Personally I use some ancient outliner for notes which has a very open
scripting-support. It's really nasty garbage and quite limited. But it gives
me a tree which is kind of a database and the ability to run scripts over the
whole tree and manipulate individual notes.

I use this to import documents or whole folders, break it into pieces,
transform the tree by hand or with a script and then export the document
again. This is very handy, especially the ability to explore the structure and
change by hand when neccessary. For notes this is helpful because I can mass-
change them, add properties, change content as I wish and so on.

Though, this is also quite limited because at the end its just an outline with
a text-view, not more UI. And alls automation must be written by myself. A
proper community could biold new tools, views, parsers, exporters and other
automations. But for some reason, automation is hardly used in this space.
Emacs org-mode is the only working in that area. But well, it's, emacs..

------
sdedovic
My two biggest issues, skimming the website:

\- this does not seem to be open source or free-as-in-speech. That worries me
- especially when it comes to longevity. It's the reason I wouldn't use this
product if it was by Google.

\- i don't see an easy way to export my data in case I would like to migrate
to a different service.

That being said I am definitely going to try it out and see what it does for
me! There is definitely a gap in knowlege-mapping software in my life

~~~
mjedmonds
You don't need to export your data. Your data is stored in plaintext markdown
files on your machine. So if it does shut down, you still have all of your
content in a format that can be readily read by many, many editors

~~~
Horita
I dont think many can read properly

~~~
ahel
it's just markdown and [[two way links]]

------
KingMachiavelli
Seems like a more polished version of the Zettelkasten-based system "Neuron".
[1]

I suppose there are benefits having a dedicated editor and viewer but I kind
of like the simplicity of Neuron. Although I will admit that install it can be
a pain since it depends on having the Nix package manager setup.

[1] [https://neuron.zettel.page/](https://neuron.zettel.page/)

------
christiansakai
Nothing is forever.

Especially if it is not free.

Especially if it is not open source.

If personal use is free forever but not open source, how am I supposed to
believe that it will be free forever?

Color me skeptical.

~~~
goodsignal
Healthy skepticism is great! But every post of yours is perfectly fitting the
troll recipe. But just in case you're being genuine, here's my take.

The software is already nice and very usable, even at this early beta stage.
There's going to be a million users within a couple years. One thing I've
noticed about the PKM community, is that there are a lot of really smart and
ambitious people here. You know what that means? Community capital. Guarantee
or not, if Obsidian ceases to exist, you possess your data in an open format
structure in an open standard, and the latest software you had downloaded will
work until a handful of those million users create an open source equivalent.

There's nothing proprietary about backlinking. It's not rocket science.
Obsidian is just leading the way with a very enjoyable UX for it.

And I hope they succeed. It seems like they are genuinely seeking a nice
balance between creating value for themselves and the community.

~~~
christiansakai
I don't know what is it about every of my post that fits troll personality.
Maybe because my first language is not English?

As for the rest of your post, fair point.

------
rodneyzeng
Some comments after testing it for the first time:

I am looking for alternatives of Typora since it is not open sourced. Obsidian
is new and close to it (same feature to paste image from system clipboard) but
still needs more work -

1\. Font size and equation font size are not easily configured. 2\. Inline
Latex is not supported yet. 3\. Equation numbering are not supported yet

And it is not open sourced either. Good work and keep going!

~~~
mackrevinack
have you looked at marktext? I think that's fairly close to typora, but i
hasn't used typora much so I could be wrong

------
O_H_E
A few amazing things the site is not doing justice _yet_

\- Everything transclusion: just like you can show images in Github-MD,
obsidian allows you to view PDF, Audio, or even other notes inside a note.

\- Header-level linking: You can link a note using [[note_name##sub_heading]].
Therefor, you can embedded a section of a note inside another.

\- CSS modding is AMAZING. The community is getting creative with modding
obsidian to fit different workflows. From Andy Matuschak mode[1][2] to
minimalist theme[3].

[1] [https://forum.obsidian.md/t/andy-matuschak-
mode-v2/170](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/andy-matuschak-mode-v2/170)

[2]
[https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes)

[3] [https://github.com/kmaasrud/clean-theme-
obsidian](https://github.com/kmaasrud/clean-theme-obsidian)

------
crooked-v
Four bits of feedback:

1\. How do I select the font to use? The variable-width default font feels
entirely out of place for me with Markdown.

2\. This could dearly use integration with Prettier
([https://prettier.io](https://prettier.io)) or a similar tool for those of us
fussy with formatting details.

3\. The lack of Multimarkdown syntax like cross-references
([http://fletcher.github.io/MultiMarkdown-5/cross-
references.h...](http://fletcher.github.io/MultiMarkdown-5/cross-
references.html)) is painful for those of us with elaborate note-keeping. It's
doubly painful that Obsidian apparently has its own invented syntax instead of
using what's already been around for years and years with MMD.

4\. How in the world do I link between files? Nothing I do works, and there's
no help document and not even a "copy as link" on the right click menu.

~~~
ericax
Sorry for the confusion! Help docs are in Settings > Help.

~~~
crooked-v
Also, I'm annoyed that this labels itself as supporting Markdown, but
apparently can't actually handle actual proper Markdown links between files.

This is kind of a sticking point for me, because one app after another has
gotten this wrong (see Ulysses' bizarro link editing, for example), and I'm
just not going to use an app if it wants to make me convert all my files to a
proprietary version of the syntax.

~~~
ericax
Plain Markdown links should work just fine if you use relative paths to files
within the vault folder selected.

Is it not working for you?

~~~
ericax
I can't reply to your post further down, but it seems like space characters
aren't allowed by Markdown spec. Apparently you have to convert it to "%20" :(

~~~
crooked-v
For deeply nested posts, you have to click on the "X minutes ago" header to
get the reply option to show up.

It looks like when I add the angle brackets that CommonMark allows to
circumvent the spaces thing, some variations still don't work:
[https://i.imgur.com/nqiQnl3.png](https://i.imgur.com/nqiQnl3.png)

For one more note, the obsidian.css thing for styling is deeply unintuitive,
because you can't edit it from inside the app: if you make a note named
"obsidian.css" at the root level, that gets ignored because it's actually
obsidian.css.md, so you can only edit the styling with a separate app
altogether to create/edit that file directly.

~~~
ericax
Thank you for the tip!

------
tkainrad
My first impression is very good. With one exception:

The .desktop file that is generated on Linux has the wrong StartupWMClass set.
The correct one would be lowercase obsidian (VS Obsidian). Because of this,
the application cannot be added to the favorites which is important for me to
be able to start it via a super+NUM shortcut.

------
ryantuck
This is sweet. I've been building and working in a markdown-based zettelkasten
locally for a while, and this does provide the added killer benefits of the
graph visualizer and pretty-preview functionality that I'm currently missing
in the terminal. Nice job, looking forward to playing around with it!

------
rement
I'm considering using this but I'm having the same issue many others are with
Obsidian itself being closed source. To any obsidian employers or stakeholders
have you thought of an open core model for Obsidian?

Open core would help any cautious users and give your community the ability to
help maintain your product.

------
rhlala
This is really the best, just what i wanted, already moved all my notes there,

I just miss one thing, working with images and making area screenshots, was
easy in evernote, just use the hotkey and select the area and a new note with
the image get created,

Now, i am using greenshot for trying to replicate this, i set my favorite save
folder into Obsidian, Problem is , an image get created, if i want to write
some stuff down , i have to create a note, insert the image.

Would be perfect, if we could set a 'special' folder, and all images coming
inside get automatically a note created, (the real picture is in attachment
folder)

Or we can right click or a picture and convert to MD note,

Resizing images in preview too, i think it is important.

Thank you for your work.

~~~
luckman212
I like your ideas about images/new notes. Would help a lot moving to this from
Evernote which currently has very good support for image editing / annotation.

------
roel_v
Is it possible to do inline video, or is it possible to write a plugin that
does it? I have a highly specific note taking application in mind, if you'd
like to have a somewhat concrete use case for a specific market and you'd like
to talk that over with me, feel free to contact me. (I'm using tiddlywiki now)

I think this is in general a problem with note taking apps - their market is
too broad. Not many people want to 'take notes', they want to 'track the
research for my book' or 'track references of the papers I write' or 'collect
recipes'. It takes an engineer's mind to naturally abstract that into 'note
taking'.

~~~
ericax
Yes! You can use the embed syntax ![[video.mp4]] to embed videos in Obsidian.
The video should show up in preview mode.

I think you would really enjoy our active discord community where a lot of
people share and discuss their use cases and specific workflows.
[https://obsidian.md/community](https://obsidian.md/community)

------
pedrocx486
I _was_ an user of their Windows app until recently, had to stop using when
they added the license for business use. Sadly, the company I work for only
allows in their computers software they bought with their money (I can request
them to buy software for me, but it can't be software under 'pre-release', has
to be an stable software.) because of the audits they get, so to avoid
problems related with piracy they decided to block softwares with user-owned
licenses.

And since I used to use both at work (mostly for personal notes) and on my
personal time, I moved to completely to another solution. (My own thing, made
in (get ready for it) Electron.)

------
dudeinhawaii
Great idea! I have to admit the UI reminded me of what I do presently --
VSCode + notes in a folder in Markdown. I'll take it for a test-drive and see
how it compares to VSCode + git. If it speeds things up, I'll be a buyer!

Bear in mind that what it looks like you're competing directly against is an
editor (VSCode) + versioning (Git) + sync (GoogleDrive/OneDrive). That's
probably a harder sell to a techy individual since those are all free (or
already subscribed to) but if you make the editing and management process
better, seamless, hassle-free, I'd buy the editor (like pyCharm, goLand,
Sublime or Linqpad).

------
prostheticvamp
Counteroffer:

I use Kiwi to create a personal wiki on my phone. It sits in a Dropbox folder
I always have open as a project in Sublime. It’s also the folder that my
NotePlan app uses - so my todo list, calendar, and wiki are all the same set
of markdown files.

It’s super portable (just a pile of markdown docs in a Dropbox folder), does
knowledge base management, and ties my knowledge base directly into my
todo/project management/time management. And it costs peanuts (kiwi is buy-
once; I don’t remember what I paid for NotePlan).

People remember wikis, right? “Interconnected markdown” isn’t some new
feature, and sure isn’t worth a monthly subscription fee.

~~~
johntash
Can you link to the Kiwi you're talking about? I found
[https://github.com/danielwertheim/Kiwi](https://github.com/danielwertheim/Kiwi)
but it hasn't been updated in 7+ years, so I'm not sure if it's what you're
talking about..

NotePlan looks interesting though. It's not free, but it's on my list of
things to try now.

~~~
prostheticvamp
[https://github.com/landakram/kiwi](https://github.com/landakram/kiwi)

I don’t know when it was last updated, but as far as I can tell, it’s feature-
complete for my needs (with zero lock-in).

I actually just tried out OP’s Obsidian and ... it’s nice. In my workflow it
would replace Sublime, as the desktop wiki editor sitting on my existing
folder of wiki files.

There isn’t any of the lock-in I was getting concerned about from peoples
posts here, and personal use is free. I’ll continue to play with it.

------
atfzl
The graph view seems cool but I don't feel it is much useful in the long term.

It has a wow factor in the initial use but it is just a mingled web of links.
It is like creating a graph of the www but I don't see how that could be
useful.

~~~
programmarchy
If the links between node could be directed and annotated, then it'd become
much more powerful, though. Similar to how TheBrain works [1]

I see that the public plugin interface is a long term goal at this point [2]
but it'd be amazing if plugins could expose ways to mark up graph
relationships!

[1] [https://www.thebrain.com](https://www.thebrain.com) [2]
[https://trello.com/c/Z7qqKVXd/19-public-plugin-
interface-v10](https://trello.com/c/Z7qqKVXd/19-public-plugin-interface-v10)

~~~
atfzl
Still not sure if having a mind map would make it more usable. Do you feel
having mind map like this would help you ?

~~~
programmarchy
Well, I don't really mean mind map; I don't think those are very useful at
least not in the traditional sense.

But yes, I think directed graphs would help me. Take the use case of modeling
social relationships: each node is a person or company with a short bio, links
can include "funded-by", "worked-with". Suddenly you have a tool that you can
use to traverse professional relationships to find a connection to an investor
funding a certain type of company. You can sort of do this with LinkedIn and
Crunchbase, and it's possible with TheBrain although its UX is very tedious.

------
BasilPH
I've been using The Archive ([https://zettelkasten.de/the-
archive/](https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/)) to browse a knowledge graph
of markdown files i.e. a Zettelkasten. It's one-time $19 and worth every
penny.

I use it to browse my notes. There is a shortcut to open them in VIM. It's
powerful and simple.

Shameless plug: I created a CLI tool to visualize a set of linked markdown
files, print stats, and display orphans. See
[https://github.com/BasilPH/vizel](https://github.com/BasilPH/vizel)

------
dcsan
This looks really cool, but:

Is there a reason this doesn't work with plain markdown links? I have a local
working kbase already as a bunch of markdown files. If I use the obsidian
markdown importer I guess it will destroy any links in that KB for any viewer
or rendered that does NOT support GFM style [[links]]. Perhaps related to how
Obsidian uses backlinks?

Ideally I could use Obsidian for structuring links / overview of a Knowledge
base, and plain page editors for actually editing individual content pages. As
it is though it can't be a combined/overlay usage, it has to be a cold turkey
switch.

~~~
ericax
Plain Markdown links should work just fine in Obsidian, but you might need to
convert space characters to "%20" according to Markdown spec, since space is
not allowed.

------
mstijak
Shameless plug here after a failed HN post. For people interested in taking
many quick notes using markdown please check
[https://tdoapp.com](https://tdoapp.com). The app allows you to organize tasks
into boards and lists and use keyboard to quickly navigate. Also, CSS and
regular expressions are used to highlight tasks. The code is available on
GitHub - [https://github.com/codaxy/tdo](https://github.com/codaxy/tdo)

------
peterwwillis
I've come to accept that Markdown is time-consuming and difficult for
documents more complex than a README. I now truly appreciate Wikis with
WYSIWYG interfaces and complex macros. Would love to see extensions to
Markdown to give it more complete functions/macros, without any Jinja-esque
"markdown programming".

If Markdown supported a modified HTML4.01 without all the unnecessary syntax
fluff, that would do for most of my needs, and I could use a WYSIWYG to
craft/organize the rest.

------
supersrdjan
Looks great. Would be amazing if I could use it as an alternative frontend for
my vimwiki, which is also markdown.

Only thing missing is that links like these should work:

[anchor](path)

As that's the way vimwiki generates them :)

~~~
jibcage
+1 for vimwiki! As a matter of fact, you can get almost all of these features
with vimwiki, minus the fancy graph visualization. Plus, it's open source :)

------
satoshikenzo
Very interesting! I'm glad to see more development in the field of Personal
Knowledge Management. There's a lot of cool features Obsidian has which are
essential to me:

1\. Markdown 2\. Ability to create a Zettelkasten 3\. Backlinks

What it currently lacks for me is: 1\. native iOS app (one app for all note-
taking. This is why I can't see myself using Roam Research right now, despite
it being a pretty cool project)

Good job to the dev team and will keep a closed eye on this project :)

------
jpinnix
For me the biggest benefit of Obsidian over several other PKM tools is that it
uses local Markdown files rather than outlines/blocks. It still has bi-
directional linking, and bubbles up unlinked resources like Roam. The pace and
responsiveness of the developers is remarkable, and the community has been so
friendly and helpful. No egos!

[editing to add that I'm using iCloud for my vaults which allows for very fast
syncing and the ability to edit on iOS]

~~~
neal_jones
Can you expand on the "...allows...the ability to edit on iOS"?

~~~
jpinnix
You can create Obsidian vaults wherever you would like. I created my vaults in
iCloud Drive on my Mac. As these are just Markdown files, you can use any
Markdown capable iOS app (that has access to the Files chooser which includes
iCloud Drive) and make any edits or modifications to those files. It doesn't
automatically make link suggestions while editing it in an iOS app, but once
you are back on your Mac you can easily update those links or just use the
suggested unlinked references tool in the side panel. Does that make sense?

------
gexla
How does this compare to Trilium? Looks similar.

[https://github.com/zadam/trilium](https://github.com/zadam/trilium)

~~~
unqueued
Trilium is really cool, I especially like its note cloning feature. The thing
that held me back was the back-end it uses.

~~~
luckman212
Can you elaborate on this? What is the backend used and why is it problematic?

------
arduinomancer
I feel like I've seen a lot of similar apps like this posted to HN but as
usual the main blocker for me is no mobile support.

A personal knowledge-base is a great idea but you need to be able to easily
reference it wherever you are. If I had a second brain I wouldn't leave it at
home ;).

I mostly use Notion and just as an example say you're at the mechanic and they
say "hey you got the VIN for your car handy?"

I pop open notion and its right there.

~~~
kixiQu
I use Tiddlywiki 5's node server to host my wiki. I can use it on anything
that can take my Yubikey :)

------
mmchicago
I like what I see with Obsidian in my test drive but it's a proprietary tool
with a license that only protects the company, no terms of service, no privacy
policy or even a statement about data usage and collection.

I get that the md files are stored locally, but I have no way of knowing what
information about my files is collected and stored.

I'd like to use it but I'll need a little more on the transparency side of
things.

~~~
ericax
Nothing is stored on our servers. The app does not upload anything at all.

------
jsplit
This is a great product if you want to take advantage of all the latest (and
more) features in note taking + personal knowledge management software. Bi-
directional linking, graph view, plugins, community themes. But the kicker is
you own all your own note files in plain text (.md files) in a folder of your
choosing on your computer (and can also sync your database with something like
Dropbox, iCloud, etc.).

------
jcun4128
I'm glad the demand exists for this/it's a thing, I've made several of my own
so that's cool other people make similar tools

------
logicprog
I've been using a Fandom Wiki [1] to hold my world-building notes, since I
couldn't really find anything better. It's pretty annoying though, I might
have to really think about using this instead. Although, getting my work _out_
of the Wiki might be annoying.

[1]: [http://ceremony-universe.fandom.com/](http://ceremony-
universe.fandom.com/)

~~~
logicprog
Downloaded Obsidian and moved my notes (and plot outline too, since it
supports interactive task lists!!) over, and man this thing is wonderful. Good
job!

------
durbodert
Landing page looks like a cheap knock off of
[https://linear.app/](https://linear.app/)

~~~
fastball
The inspiration does certainly seem quite strong.

Geez even the wireframe graphic thing is the same.

------
mleonard
Very interesting I'm going to try it out.

What's the app written in? It has a VSCode feel to it (which is great!)... Any
chance it's built in typescript like VSCode too? I'd love to write a
JavaScript extension or two to customise it in the future if that's the case.
Can you share what it's built with and what the future extensions will need to
be built with? Thanks!

~~~
ericax
Yes, it's TypeScript and we're loving it! :)

------
jarodise
I've never been involved in any software testing until I stumbled upon
Obsidian a couple weeks ago, been testing it with a bunch of other PKM nerds
and #Roamcult refugees ever since, it's been a quite exiting and rewarding
experience. Really looking forward to the plugin ecosystem, no doubt it is
going to become one of the most promising PKM solutions in the future.

------
ComodoHacker
Local Markdown files are nice. Can it also use my local browser, instead of
bloating my system with yet another Electron instance?

------
ahel
I tried it today. I already had a directory full of .md and .adoc so it was
nice to see those in a new editor. But of course the graph is just a bubble of
unlinked dots. I did started to link some but I don't see the benefit.

Took a shower and my enthusiasm got cold: how can I know my data is safe aka
not getting uploaded somewhere?

There is an AutoUpdate feature after-all. :(

~~~
ericax
We'll add an option to disable auto-update soon!

If you don't trust us, technically you can also use firewall rules to block
internet access (or monitor network and see what Obsidian is doing).

------
lmayliffe
It's freaking me out that Obsidian is capitalized most places but in the MacOS
client in the tool bar, it's:

Hide obsidian Quit obsidian

~~~
ericax
Oops, will fix! Good catch!

------
zachguo
If you don't need to render your notes as a graph, try VSNote out, or simply
write markdown-based notes in your favorite editor and store them in your
dropbox.

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=patrickl...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=patricklee.vsnotes)

------
dpc_pw
I've been recently working on something similar (but much more primitive)
[https://github.com/dpc/tagwiki](https://github.com/dpc/tagwiki) if anyone is
interested. It's an async/await Rust project too, which might be interesting
to some.

------
StonyRhetoric
This is amazing - I have a homebrew version of this - markdown only, with some
scripts to wire-up the links, relying on unique file names.

This is miles better that what I have, and I look forward to using it.

A feature request - mermaid JS support please! This would allow me to import
my ~3k existing markdown files without modification.

------
dvt
Is there any reason why so many Electron apps (this one included) don't
disable "Ctrl-Shift-I" to bring up the Chrome developer tools when they
distribute their binary?

It's trivially done with `devTools: false` in the main window bootstrap code.
It's kind of a pet peeve and just seems lazy.

~~~
ericax
We don't want to prevent people from looking at the DOM to make custom CSS:
[https://github.com/kmaasrud/awesome-
obsidian](https://github.com/kmaasrud/awesome-obsidian)

It also makes it easy to debug issues with users since we're still in beta.

~~~
dvt
This is a fair point, congrats on your launch!

------
jpettersson
The app looks promising!

If I understand the license correctly there's no way of trying it out for free
in a commercial setting. The only use-case I would have for this is as a work
tool, but since the license requires me to pay up front I'm not going to try
it. A trial period or similar would be nice.

~~~
ericax
Updated the pricing page to reflect the trial period, sorry about the
oversight!

------
tevino
Timestamp-based ID is missing the point of Zettelkasten IMHO, here's an
opinionated approach to a digital Zettelkasten:
[https://www.tevinzhang.com/digital-
zettelkasten/](https://www.tevinzhang.com/digital-zettelkasten/)

------
yt-sdb
Can anyone who uses cross-referencing speak to the benefits? I take notes
using a simple web server-based Markdown editor and organize them with
directories. I link between files occasionally using URLs. Does quick-linking
between files or graph views really help? Any examples?

~~~
ymolodtsov
I think the Daily Note is the best example here, in both Obsidian and Roam. It
makes it easy to jot down quick notes about the things you read/learned
without thinking too much where to put it. You just highlight a few key words
you find reasonable and then you'd be able to find that piece using any of
them and then follow the graph around.

Now instead of just reading articles in Pocket I always take quick notes and
save the most important parts for me.

------
tobias2014
Am I the only one that has never before stumbled upon AppImage or Snap? I had
to "google" to see that it's basically just chmod +x.

I suppose when the appimage doesn't work out of the box the user is
knowledgeable enough to figure out what to do with it anyway.

------
SimplGy
This is a beautiful app, thank you for making it.

I can't find how to use a fixed-width font: are community themes the right way
to accomplish that?

Markdown is a whitespace sensitive format, it might be that fixed pitch is a
candidate to be a first class setting, even the default.

------
m-p-3
Jeez, 50$/user/year for commercial use?! That's almost as expensive as G
Suite.

------
killface
I've been taking notes in Markdown for years. Your search and linking
functionality to make it a great hybrid nodes-wiki system is fantastic. I'm
gonna give this one the 'ol college try. It seems to hit my sweet spots.

------
poryg0n
It undoubtedly looks great, but it's hard not to be a bit put off by their
landing page which seems, just slightly, inspired by
[https://linear.app/](https://linear.app/)

------
SimianLogic2
This is basically how I use notion now -- mostly "code blocks" full of
Markdown. The split panes look really impressive. This is definitely worth
keeping an eye on if I ever decide to bail on Notion (which just went free).

------
scrypter
I want to say that I clicked on this without any intent to actually download
this, but decided to solely due to the fact they understand the fear of cloud
services shutting down, getting bought or changing their privacy policy.

------
Karunamon
Minor gripe: The planned extras do the dark pattern of "per month, billed
annually".

It's either $4 a month or $48 a year. If you're charging me $48, you're
charging me $48. Obfuscating that is scummy.

------
sneak
I use Standard Notes which doesn’t charge extra for encryption or sync, and,
most importantly, is open source/free software.

Closed source cryptography is dangerous, and should be avoided whenever
possible.

------
ohthehugemanate
I don't understand your target audience:

> In our age when cloud services can shut down, get bought, or change privacy
> policy any day, the last thing you want is proprietary formats and data
> lock-in.

Concerned about proprietary lock-in when it comes to file format, but not when
it comes to software.

Seems like you could make some technical gains without losing audience by
getting consistent. You could ditch the "open standards based file storage
that you manage yourself" idea and gain flexibility to do your own thing
there. I bet people would expect you to handle sync in that case, but that's
not so bad.

Alternatively you could go open source for functional parts of the app and
build a development community to support you and your users.

------
kn8
Hm.. I opened Obsidian. Double clicked the title bar to make it not full
screen (on a Mac), now it's not visible anywhere. It's as if the window is 0
width somewhere on my screen..

~~~
ericax
Is it possible for you to join our Discord so that we can help you?

------
operon
I use Ullysses+Delineato for a combination of notes+diagrams to organize my
thoughts and now I am feeling like a dactylographer using a word processor for
the first time.

------
HNBRN
Brilliant tool ! I started to put all my notes there. However I cannot figure
out how to display a note at the bottom of the screen (below another one as in
the featured page ?)

------
joyceschan
@ericax, Thanks for this product. I have a lot of notes in Jupyter notebooks
that contain chunks of markdown. Would be great if your product works with
Jupyter notebooks.

------
kotutku
I was going to ask about possibility to extend the editor with a VIM emulator,
but I see you guys already included that, neat!

I'm definitely going to give Obsidian a try.

~~~
ericax
Yes we do have a Vim mode. Thanks CodeMirror!

------
nightowl_games
love this.

may I suggest you go open source and then charge a low monthly fee for your
sync service?

open source really solidifies the "forever" tagline and I'd consider paying
<5$ month (I'm Canadian & not paid nearly as well as many ppl on here...)

also I'm not stingy on the "open source" vs "source available" stuff. Im just
a code hoarder.

i know your going against cloud integration but cloud + mobile has to be a
consideration

------
Osyris
This seems pretty neat, however it looks like it freezes up when I open a
vault inside of WSL. I can't make new files at all.

Worked fine on a regular Windows folder.

------
mehdix
I used to use Zim in the past, however recently I've switched to writing
Markdown files and tracking the with Yadm. Works perfectly.

------
JSavageOne
Would be nice to see a live example, I can't tell from the website what this
actually does or how it would be useful to me

~~~
ericax
Sorry but because it works on a local folder, online demo is unrealistic.

I would recommend installing, opening an _empty_ folder, and going to Settings
- Help to grab our hel & demo folder to play around with it and get a feel.

~~~
JSavageOne
You could have a video demoing it on your landing page. Most site visitors
aren't going to take the time to install a random desktop application and toy
with it just to see if it might be something they find useful. Maybe you're ok
with that, just giving you my advice if you want to increase usership.

------
haolez
What's the team sharing story here? Can I share a folder with other people and
collaborate?

------
leke
It's nice that it's on my local machine. I can always make backups on github.

------
Hammershaft
This is awesome! great work! I'm in the process of switching from Roam.

------
DenisM
So how is this different from being another local/serverless wiki?

------
DrStartup
Exactly what I’ve been looking for. Will there be extension support?

~~~
ericax
Yes, once we get close to a stable v1.0 release we'll be opening up a plugin
API!

------
bigbossman
Obsidian is awesome. I moved over from Roam and never looked back.

------
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
does anyone know a simple app that allows hyperlinking between notes? I want
to create a roam-style knowledge base, but this looks a bit too heavy for my
purposes.

------
ceocoder
This is very cool! Any plans on making it work in org files?

------
microcolonel
If you use org-mode, do you really need more than one file?

------
kitplummer
Anyone know if this thing has a web-clipper plugin?

~~~
ericax
You can use any web clipper extension that can turn HTML pages to Markdown
files.

Our community made this: [https://github.com/deathau/markdown-
clipper](https://github.com/deathau/markdown-clipper)

------
casmith
Would be great if this were a homebrew cask

------
sandGorgon
do you also plan to support asciidoc ?

------
wojtekkru
How well does it handle large repos?

~~~
luckman212
Also would like to know this. Currently have over 10k notes in Evernote,
looking to move elsewhere but Electron makes me worry about poor performance
with such a large data set.

------
Chris2048
How does this compare to TiddlyWiki?

------
the_mango
I have a feeling I found a gem

------
coconido
Been using this for months now and it’s my full time PKM amazing product and
amazing team, highly recommend!

~~~
sanjayparekh
I'm behind you and have only been using for a few weeks but I dig it. And it
comes as an AppImage too!

------
tinktank
This is a great idea.

