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.
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!
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?
I don't. I share my notes with some friends as a private GitHub repo. The backlinks I just use as click-throughs to help me navigate my own notes. I too admire his notes site. Making my own is too much effort for me right now, but it is something I really want...
Linking by title is an anti-pattern. Titles change and titles are not unique. Link-rot should always be prevented. Best solution is to use a uuid and hide it from the user.
This is what Quiver does underneath the covers. Every note has an unique id, same as attachments (photos, files, pdfs, etc).
My only problem with Quiver is that it seems that development has stopped, so the chances of adding new bits (like link autocomplete, for example), are thin. Other than that it's a pretty useful tool.
I'm imagining a version that runs as a daemon, watching the folder containing all the notes. It then looks for files that have been modified, and are not currently edited (.swp files for vim, for example), and runs an update.
I think I'd prefer something running in the browser, though that is of course not ideal for several reasons...
Where can I read more about this? My current personal wiki is powered by TiddlyWiki and while I don't necessarily love the performance, I do LOVE the link structure of TiddlyWiki (I can create a "table of contents" page a random tag, and then every page using that tag gets rendered on said page). I have similar plugins for VSCode to collect all of my todo comments all into one document, linking back to their respective files.
Curious if Obsidian has a similar feature beyond the mind-map view shown on the features page?
Backlinks, thank you. That was the word I was trying to think of and describe exactly this, missed it by THAT much, heh-drinks more coffee. Cheers, I'll definitely be taking this for a spin
Dang, my optical nerve retracted and disconnected from the retina, and is now sitting in some dark corner of some bar in the adrenal cortex drinking whisky in pure protest to your H1 styling.
Kids? I'm probably old enough to vehemently request that you kindly get off my greensward.
But let us not get bogged down with ageism, the real question is what kind of monster uses both cyan and magenta text-shadow diagonally offset against each other???? !!! .... ?
The anaglyph effect is what I tweaked. It's not too unreadable with simpler fonts--I 100% acknowledge readability takes a massive hit with both the fraktur and the anaglyph. Ultimately, though, my goal with that blog is mostly to have fun, so the expressive aspect is important to me. I may play around later with doing an animated effect (a la https://codepen.io/anatravas/pen/mOyNWR ) so the glitchy vibe remains strong but there are more readable keyframes. (Would a proper designer use animated text like this? Certainly not. Am I a proper designer? Certainly certainly not.)
I'm all for artistic freedom.
Just letting you know in a jestful way that the design (and I am certainly not a proper, nor any other kind, designer either) that the design detracted/distracted from the message for this reader, to the point where I just hit back.
Then I went back in again, and started poking around with the element inspector. Then we had this discussion, and I am still not sure what the page content was actually about, but I have a sense that I might have found it interesting if I had stuck with it.
Fair enough; that artistic aspect means that for me, the design is part of the message so it's worth keeping. I think I do a similar thing with unstyled websites a la https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ ; the content has to look very interesting to me to be worth copying and pasting in CSS a la http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ to actually read the thing. It's interesting to think about the wide range of tolerances out there for different kinds of visual presentation.
Looks pretty great to me. I have a great book called Fraktur Mon Amour. Unfortunately it is out of print but if you can still get it somewhere I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Yup! The cool thing about Tiddlywiki is that because it's one massive blob that executes clientside, and because it's designed to be extensible, you can yank the plugin Stroll uses right out of Stroll. If you go to https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html and click plugins on the sidebar, you can see a list of installed plugins; Stories is what he's using to get the second column, and it shows up with this link: https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Fsq...
Click and drag that to the tab with your own TW open, and you're good to go!
I haven't used that plugin so I don't know if it's good or whatnot, but there you are.
The app would need to be open source for this to be possible.
It's still possible to make money with an open-source product. When you're targeting a developer audience, it might even be more profitable to be open-source.
proprietary software can totally be extensible, that's what plugin APIs are for. foss is cool and all, but i don't buy the implication that it's some sort of civic duty for developers to release under a foss license.
Is an open-source piece of software more extensible than closed-source? If so, then if the goal is to maximize extensibility, then open-source is required.
Open source software is readily and legally user modifiable. It is often (but not always) readily extensible - it can actually be quite difficult to extend in some cases. (There's plenty of difficult to work with spaghetti on GitHub.)
Source available proprietary software is readily inspectable, but often not legal to modify (at least not for free). It might still be extensible (ex plugins) though!
Closed source proprietary software is difficult to inspect, difficult to modify, and generally illegal to modify (for most use cases, in most jurisdictions). As above, it could easily be extensible though.
Hardly. Extending a piece of software requires generally extensive familiarization with the codebase, possibly ranging into millions of lines.
On the other hand, a well documented plugin or scripting system, which sits on top of the existing domain logic and is well documented and full of examples, generally is an excellent way to allow extending the base app.
The base app can be open or closed source. Without scripting or plugin system it's still a black box for most intents (as the time needed to study and change it would likely be too much).
someone created something that they'd like to make a little money off of, while still taking very extensive steps to make it available, extensible, and prevent lock in. they chose a path to profit with all of these goals in mind. you're demanding an awful lot for something that "improves extensibility by even 0.0000001%". in the spectrum between "i want to extract money from the users of this product" and "i want this product to be used as the users see fit", i would say this product's goals lean towards the latter.
please don't say the wording is the problem. "as extensible as possible" is fine. "as possible" is a qualifier, it clearly means "as extensible as possible without undermining other goals". you're pretending that they've promised to make it extensible at the expense of _everything_ else, and that assumption in context in unfounded.
it's true that paths to monetization exist for open source software, but they usually aren't accessible to an individual developer who is building a small bootstrapped side-project to generate small amounts of passive income.
setting that aside, though, the best way to make software (open- or closed-source) extensible is via a plugin API. without it, the only way for end users to extend open-source software is to fork and maintain the fork forever, or attempt to merge upstream. so one might argue that the quality of the plugin API (and its documentation) is the primary measure of a software's "extensibility".
Hah, is it not opensource? If it really is closed then it's useless, not worth discussing. Then it's funny they maket it as being better than clouds, that clouds shuts down, change owners or policies. With closed source software they will be able to do the same. Yes, markdown is plain text but as more and more additional features would be used, one would get more vendor locked-in to this software. And then what - write an opensource alternative with all the features from scratch again. Clouds at least give online sync...
What's the concern for? A lot of great jobs still have penny-pinching managers. I've worked somewhere notoriously Frugal that was good and paid well but had no problem denying requests like this.
It's sometimes not just about money. Any organisation that alows individuals and teams to freely pick and choose tools will end up with a huge pile of semi-forgotten systems and organisational knowledge spread over multiple wikis, sharepoint sites, trello boards, monday projects and word docs on shared drives and dropboxes. Seen it happen multiple times. Corparate use of "personal/hobbyist" free tiers of popular tools is not just a legal liability, it's also a security nightmare apart from the already mentioned infromation spread problems.
Is it worth the time to deny a (well intentioned) $150 request made by a software developer who costs a company (for example) $150K total (salary, benefits, and fixed costs)? $150 is 0.1% of $150K.
What are the benefits and costs? Some questions to ask include:
- How much time did the company spend in the process of denying this request? By the time you include emails, research, context switching, etc, I think it is fair to say this might consume 15 minutes of the engineer's time and 15 minutes of the denier's time. That would be 0.5 hours; assuming $80/hr, that is $40.
- What is the likely effect? Will it discourage an employee from trying a new tool? Might it encourage a culture of "build it here" rather than pay to use something that already exists? Might it encourage an employee to abuse the license? Might this increase the legal risk of the company? In the case of, say, online learning, it might encourage employees to browse dozens of crappy web resources rather than simply paying for a high quality learning resource. My point: being stingy has real effects on human behavior.
- Does the company pay the same level of detail to other areas that could easily save more money? Three examples: (1) Does a company need to spend $200/year/person on junk food or bottled water? (2) Does a company look carefully at ways to improve energy efficiency? (3) Does a company have a smart, regularly practiced, data-recovery plan in place? I could go on; I think you see my point: it is wiser to allocate effort and oversight in proportion to impact.
- To what degree does the company have issues with trust and accountability? What is the effect on morale are discouraged from trying and paying for useful software and tooling?
I think my overarching point is, again, illustrated by questions: What does a company truly value? Are they mindful and realistic about their costs and benefits?
P.S. This may be obvious to some (but not all): paying for software is not necessarily a bad thing. Open source has many advantages, but without ongoing contributions and/or a funding strategy, open source software is not necessarily a "safer" bet than closed-source software. A better litmus test is "can I export my data in a useful way if I decide to leave or switch?"
This seems like an argument for buying SDEs needed software. It doesn't seem like an argument against the idea that you can work somewhere where they refuse to buy things like this, and still have it be a good job.
If your job pays well, work is interesting, good commute, good benefits, good manager, good coworkers, important mission, or a net positive combination of these things, that seems way more important than whether or not they'll buy you arbitrary software.
> This seems like an argument for buying SDEs needed software.
It depends on what the company values. This is what I meant when I wrote: "What does a company truly value? Are they mindful and realistic about their costs and benefits?"
> ALittleLight: It doesn't seem like an argument against the idea that you can work somewhere where they refuse to buy things like this, and still have it be a good job.
Correct, I made no such argument. You are free to make that value judgment.
It depends where you sit. Maybe you want to dig into ways an organization can improve? If so, that gets into questions about organizational values as well as costs and benefits of various options.
> ALittleLight: If your job pays well, work is interesting, good commute, good benefits, good manager, good coworkers, important mission, or a net positive combination of these things, that seems way more important than whether or not they'll buy you arbitrary software.
Again, feel free to make such a value judgement.
However, I would not use the word 'arbitrary' here, since in employment situations, there will be some understanding around expenses, often set out in policies and conversations. Even in organizations that are more flexible with expenses, employees are expected to use good judgment for business expenses.
I'm curious: were you expecting that my comment offer "an argument against the idea that you can work somewhere where they refuse to buy things like this, and still have it be a good job."?
The thread, as I understand it, goes something like:
1. The company should buy you this.
2. They may not.
3. If they didn't, that would be a concern.
4. Why?
5. Argument that the company should buy extra software.
Point 5 is off topic. There might be a good job that wouldn't buy you extra software and that wouldn't really be a concern.
It's like if someone said "Your job is bad if they don't offer free lunch". I might say "My job doesn't offer it, but it's not a concern because I like my job for other reasons" and your reply would be advocating for the benefits of free lunch. Free lunch might be great, but the topic is whether it's a concern that the company doesn't offer it, not whether it's great or not.
Another response: your argument style reminds me a little bit of a straw man:
> A straw man (or strawman) is a form of argument
> and an informal fallacy based on giving the
> impression of refuting an opponent's argument,
> while actually refuting an argument that was not
> presented by that opponent. - Wikipedia
... with the twist: instead of engaging with anything I said, you mischaracterize it and large parts of the preceding discussion. Then you use that as a way to dismiss what I wrote as "off topic".
I'm going to have some fun looking up what others call that kind of rhetoric.
Ah, this appears to be the core of it: according to your interpretation of the thread, my comments are off-topic.
After re-reading the thread, it is clear that your 'understanding' (as written above) of the thread is inaccurate.
I'll annotate the first five comments in the thread, with your 'understandings' and my responses:
Original post:
> allenleein: "Early user here. Obsidian is literally the best
> app in 2020 so far IMO. -Blazingly fast -Clean UI -Free -Sync
> [...] -Great community"
Your 'understanding':
> 1. The company should buy you this.
Your understanding is inaccurate: allenleein does not say a company should buy Obsidian.
Follow-up comment:
> usr1106: "[it is] Not really [free]. The license says you are
> not allowed to take notes about work you get compensated for.
> So free only for 100% hobby projects.
>
> Working in a start-up I don't have big 100% hobby projects
> that would require a lot of note keeping. YMMV
Your 'understanding':
> 2. They may not [buy you this]
Your understanding is inaccurate: usr1106 says nothing about what an organization should or should not buy. A better summary would be: usr1106 disagrees about what 'free' means, explains the license, and does have hobby projects that would qualify as free.
> codezero: I'd be more concerned if you had a hard time getting
> reimbursed for this kind of software at your job.
Your 'understanding':
> 3. If they didn't, that would be a concern.
Fair enough.
Follow-up comment:
> libria: "What's the concern for? A lot of great jobs still
> have penny-pinching managers. I've worked somewhere notoriously
> Frugal that was good and paid well but had no problem denying
> requests like this.""
Your 'understanding':
> Why?
Your understanding is incomplete. In addition to asking why, libria also offers a framing and makes a value judgment about what constitutes a good job.
Some of your other comments in this thread refer to this framing and value judgment. That's fine, but other comments are in no way obligated to agree or buy-in to that framing.
Follow-up comment:
> xpe: I'll respond with a connected set of questions...
>
> Is it worth the time to deny a (well intentioned) $150 request
> made by a software developer who costs a company (for example)
> $150K total (salary, benefits, and fixed costs)? $150 is 0.1%
> of $150K.
>
> What are the benefits and costs? Some questions to ask include:
>
> [... time spent? likely effects? consistency in other areas? ...]
>
> I think my overarching point is, again, illustrated by questions:
> What does a company truly value? Are they mindful and realistic
> about their costs and benefits? [... P.S. ... snip]
Your 'understanding':
5. Argument that the company should buy extra software.
Your understanding is inaccurate. I asked many questions that don't give one particular universal answer about purchasing; the questions, I hope, suggest an approach to finding an answer that works for you.
A charitable reading (see the HN Guidelines) of my comment would see that I was responding to this part of libria's comment: "What's the concern for?" To put it very simply, I would be concerned by a company that was not mindful and realistic about their costs and benefits. Why? It is simple: I value working for mindful and realistic companies.
Because it seems like you are talking to a dev, not a manager. Assume the dev is already onboard with the idea of being compensated; the original comment was "I'd be more concerned if you had a hard time getting reimbursed" i.e from the POV of the employee.
Yes, I saw you aren't using the same account name. That's why I asked.
At the risk of saying something we already know, HN discussion isn't limited to one person's definition of what a "hacker" or "developer" is:
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
> interesting. That includes more than hacking and
> startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence,
> the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's
> intellectual curiosity.
I think it is easy to forget, so I just want to write this here... People here may work on building technology (hardware, software, biotech), running companies, leading teams, thinking about problems to solve, how to be effective, how to deal with stress and mental issues, and lots more. So, talking about organizational culture is on-topic.
You may prefer to discuss something from the point of view of a software developer. You may have desire to keep threads organized and on-topic.
Personally, I think your assessment of the "context of the thread" is both overly narrow and off target. But my goal is not to convince you my interpretation is correct...
...My goal is to show that your interpretation of the context of the thread is subjective. Again, subjective is fine; we don't need to agree. I want to emphasize that reasonable people can see it differently from you. I hope that you (and everyone on HN) can recognize this and think it through before they say a comment is "irrelevant".
So, forgive me for asking, but I can't help but wonder how you approached this thread. With curiosity? With a goal of understanding? With some other driving factors?
I would like to highlight a few important points from the HN guidelines that think we can all learn from (myself included) ...
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of
> other people's work. A good critical comment teaches
> us something.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible
> interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
> that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
> don't cross-examine. Comments should get more
> thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets
> more divisive.
On a personal note, I put considerable thought into my comment -- phrasing it with open-ended questions where I implied some arguments in play. I offered food for thought. I was hoping for substantive responses, not claims that the comment was off topic. In addition, I found some of the resulting comments to be unconstructive. I think we owe it to each other to help each other and make the most of our precious time here on the planet.
One motivation for reading this comment, frankly, is a plea for people to re-examine their communication tendencies and the resulting effects on (a) your ability to learn (e.g. a growth mindset); (b) this community; (c) all communities.
Can be a bit more specific? Your words imply accusations without explicitly making them, and it comes across as two-faced to me.
* why are you highlighting those HN guidelines?
* who are the "people" you want to "re-examine their communication tendencies", and what motivates this plea?
* why are you curious about how I "approached this thread"?
That aside,
I answered your question: replying to a thread in an ambiguous or open-ended manner will cause people to fill in the gaps (infer your meaning) from the context of the thread. If your meaning does not follow from the context (i.e. is a non-sequitur) it's likely you will be misunderstood; In this case that you were offering "an argument against the idea that you can work somewhere where they refuse to buy things like this, and still have it be a good job."
Re: 1 & 2: I would like HN participants to consider the HN guidelines, because I often see what appears to be a lack of awareness. Following the guidelines (many of which are about self-reflection and tone) helps shape the community discussion constructively.
Re 3: I asked because I want to understand your motivations here.
Yes, I understand the general idea of non-sequiturs.
In summary, I think an accurate and charitable reading of my comment will realize that it was not a non sequitur nor off-topic.
Above your comment said:
> Im telling you the context of the thread implied it, otherwise your comments arent relevant to the POV of a dev.
My comments are relevant to the point of view of a developer. Moreover, HN discussion is about more than the POV of a developer.
Why did you to cite those particular guideline in this specific thread? Why ask about my motivations.
It seems like you are dodging the question(s) i.e If you have some generality about HN participants, why put it in this thread (and not others). Since you don't put it in your profile, or copy-paste it in every comment you make, it seems to me there's a reason.
> In summary, I think an accurate and charitable reading of my comment will realize that it was not a non sequitur nor off-topic.
Another back-handed response, as it implies my own comments (which made the opposite conclusion) is therefore either/or not accurate, or not charitable. If you believe this, then why not explicitly say so - and then defend that position? you say "In summary", but I can't see what part of this post you are summarising.
> My comments are relevant to the point of view of a developer. Moreover, HN discussion is about more than the POV of a developer.
They might relevant, if there is enough context to understand them. And we are not talking about what is relevant to "HN discussion" - we are talking about this thread in particular.
I don’t know you or anything about your life experiences. I asked about your motivations because I was curious.
My goal here is to use a calm, measured language. I was hoping this would help the conversation, but perhaps it upset you. You called my comments ‘back-handed’ and ‘two-faced’. I didn’t intend them that way.
You could have chosen different words. You may realize the words you chose were harsher than necessary. Even if you were correct in your assessment, which I don’t think you were, those choice of words will likely have a negative effect in a conversation. Especially online, particularly with someone you don’t know.
BTW, I am genuinely sorry if you think I’m trying to insult you in an obscure or sneaky way. I’m not. Doing that would be unkind.
Speaking of your claims that my comments were ‘two-faced’ or ‘back-handed’, there is another explanation. (Skip two paragraphs down for that)
If there’s one thing I could get across to you, it is: please open your mind to other explanations. Be charitable towards others. Don’t assume malice.
If you think you are already as charitable as you can be, then I don’t expect this advice to bother you. If you feel bothered by it, perhaps you should take a closer look at yourself. (I’m not claiming that I am perfect in this regard. It is a process.)
You might have reached the point in life when you realize and respect that people have different communication styles. Many people may not be as direct as you would like.
You say I ‘dodged’ your question. I hope you realize there are other ways to say the same thing with nicer connotations.
You also may realize you didn’t answer my questions, which I asked first. I don’t mind if you don’t want to answer.
I’ll try to phrase my thinking over the last few messages in a different way. My take is that many of your claims are overconfident, possibly because you aren’t actively asking yourself ‘how might other people see this’.
I think a big reason I’ve been replying is out of some (misplaced, perhaps) desire to help you. I think you would benefit by finding more ways to understand other people’s points of view.
I will admit, you seem capable of arguing just fine. So, I don’t see intelligence being a limiter. I would guess (with about 75% probability) that a lack of empathy is a limiter for you.
This is not meant to be harsh even though it may be direct. If true, you certainly aren’t alone and you definitely aren’t alone in a community of technical people. There’s plenty of rationality and technical knowledge but too little empathy.
Example in point: You did a nice job of criticizing my use of ‘in summary’. I’m both joking and not. My usage could be improved, but I think the intent was clear.
Based on what I’ve seen in your behavior, I predict you will reply. However, I don’t expect it to be much different in tone. Feel free to surprise me!
In any case, maybe you will check back in a few years and re-read this thread. Maybe you will see it with new eyes. Maybe it will be some value to you.
Just so you know, if you reply, I don’t expect to reply in timely manner (or ever). So, feel free to have the last word here.
Very few licenses are easily enforced, but that does not entitle folks to violate them. Most desktop software can easily be found with the copy protection removed, but that doesn’t make it free - there’s no moral difference between warez, GPL violations, and violating a free-for-non-commercial-use license.
Wow, based on your history of submissions you've really been obsessing over this problem for quite a while. Kudos on continuing to improve your products/positioning.
I downloaded Obsidian and it looks really nice. I use markdown already to make notes on my side project, but in my brain my thoughts are more diffuse as it's an MVP stage thing with so many ways to extend, so many things to think about. I think this would, at firs glance, help me alot.
One small thing I'd recommend would be when you first open it, could it create a default folder like (on Windows for example) Documents\Obsidian. And pre fill that as the folder (and I can change if I like). Then when I first use it there is less friction.
The other thing is to UX test that first screen where you are made to choose between new document and reading docs. I felt that made me think too much, and it might be the wording. I'd sort of prefer something like:
New User? Do you want to read help on getting started? Yes/No.
However I might not be typical, so watch over some shoulders as people first use the app and ask them what they are thinking.
I've been looking for something like this for... so long. It's like tiddlywiki but with first class & local markdown! Thank you!!!
Add a separate GUI for a workflow-y like list-editing (that saves as a markdown list format) and you've got a serious competitor to Roam as well as beating out more traditional competitors like Notion, Boostnote, etc.
e: ah, no inline LaTex.. I knew there was a catch!
> Add a separate GUI for a workflow-y like list-editing (that saves as a markdown list format) and you've got a serious competitor to Roam as well as beating out more traditional competitors like Notion, Boostnote, etc.
This looks really cool! I can't wait to check it out.
I've been using various personal wikis for years, and this hits most of what I am looking for.
But, I'd like to offer some suggestions.
- It would be cool if you would consider some tweaks for how the text is rendered. It can still be Markdown compatible, but for example allow linebreaks to be interpreted as linebreaks. Text used for reference often has different needs than what is being exported to HTML.
- Git integration. I just use git for syncing my knowledge bases. It makes the most sense for my multiple devices, and it is very rare that I even have conflicts and can't automatically merge differences.
I actually have a script that lets me use Dropbox or another syncing provider to sync my working tree, separate from the repo itself, so that my history isn't polluted with excessive automated commits, but it is still tracked relative to where it was checked out, and resolved automatically. That way you can have the strengths of git without the drawbacks.
You may also want to check out git-annex/datalad. I combine it with my home grown Markdown wikis for embedding references to files in my wikis, keeping my git history just pure text. One of my goals is to bridge file management with text management.
I'd be happy to share any of this if you're interested. I've had plenty of free time recently to further develop it.
This looks incredible, I’m going to try it out today.
One suggestion - would you consider adding videos/gifs of your product on the features page? I feel like that would demonstrate your product much better, especially the linking part.
Downloaded this a few hours ago, and ported all my notes about my novel over to it, and I have to say: this is a really great piece of software. The interface is intelligent, ergonomic and fast, and it does a lot of things automatically which I really like. It cuts down on the boring book keeping.
I was also able to move my plot outline into this, which was a godsend for me because previously it was in a word document, meaning I couldn't check things off. Now I have an interactive task list for it! And everything is all in one place!
One small suggestion: I would really like some place where it lists all the key commands (for instance, are there key commands for making headings? what about the key command for Replace, which I couldn't find?). Also, it would be nice if tags weren't necessarily represented inside the document from a viewing perspective. Maybe as a bar along the bottom, which is then copied into the markdown document transparently?
You'd need some snap store to be able to install it without using --dangerous flag. Snapcraft.io is Ubuntu's (and most popular one), though that might not work for you if you want the download to be available exclusively from your own website.
But then again, if it's on Snapcraft, you don't need to worry about distributing updates to your users.
Might I suggest distributing your app as an AppImage? snaps require the snap package manager (snapd) to be installed on your system. AppImages, on the other hand, run out of the box after a chmod +x.
Are you going to add some features for more structured data? I'm thinking about tables like in Notion where you can sort by any column. Working with Markdown tables is very clunky.
The closest thing in Markdown is probably front-matters. You're right in that Obsidian is not great for structured data right now, and for that purpose Notion or Airtable is much better.
If you need to edit tables then you could just use TableFlip, gives you a spreadsheet style interface to edit tables, automatically updates your markdown file without the need to copy paste https://tableflipapp.com
Have you any good resources for getting started with this graph-type note-taking? Currently I just used notable.md in a NextCloud folder and it works pretty slickly.
Not aware of many good resources since it's pretty new, but you can probably look into the Zettelkasten method.
The gist is to make your notes atomic and link them together whenever possible. [[ links provides auto-complete, and the backlink plugin tells you what notes links to this note, and what notes mention it but don't explicit link it.
The graph view is for discovery and navigation mostly. It lets you discover clusters, and identify "orphan" nodes that aren't connected anything. That might inspire you to think of connections and strength your knowledge network.
Unless you follow the semantic wiki model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_wiki) rather than the plain wiki model what the user is building is neither a knowledge base nor a second brain. Nearly all software in this area makes this mistake so it's not your fault. Links in human brains are typed (not untyped) and the regular wiki model (and web, and Obsidian) only support untyped links. If you are truly aiming to deliver software that allows users to create a personal knowledge base then please consider spending some time researching semantic web technology.
I just installed it, and it looks pretty slick, congratulations on the launch!
One piece of feedback, I couldn't discover in the app itself how to make references to other documents. I finally figured it out by looking at your web page and seeing the [[connections]] bit.
this is awesome! i see the 'zettelkasten link fixer' in the markdown format importer ("Fixes [[UID]] links to full [[UID File Name]].") - any plans/thoughts on just supporting [[UID]]? this seems less brittle to me in that you won't break all of your backlinks if you change the (non-ID) part of the filename.
+1 for this request, which would allow better interoperability with "The Archive" (from zettelkasten.de). I built my Zettelkasten links in "The Archive" using [[UID]]. Obsidian looks fantastic and I'd love to give it a try but my existing links do not work. As a side note, the other feature from "The Archive" I miss is the ability to create buttons for custom searches in the left sidebar.
Could you add the releases on Arch Linux's AUR? Downloading a binary from a website is not something Linux users often do. I couldn't find Obsidian on the snap store[0] either.
Awesome work guys! Judging by such an active and enthusiastic community, I could see this having a very sizable market share of knowledge bases like roam / bear / notion in the future. So far I haven't found a good filesystem based note taking app that fit my needs. Quiver came the closest but has not been active in development recently, so I'm switching to this and I'm excited where it goes.
You and Shida have some serious product & programming chops ~ UWaterloo represent!
can you do a quick and dirty screenshare demo of how you use it and post that to youtube? e.g. setting up some notes after a fake brainstorming session or micro LSD dose etc..
Obsidian seems very cool. One thing I noticed on install as someone with a Windows device is that the install location cannot be specified. It would be great if your team supported this as it's pretty standard for many Windows apps and aids in system organization. I was able to move Obsidian and the obsidian-installer and things seem okay but I have no idea if this will break the updater at a later point in time.
Obsidian looks great! And I think it will be greater if I can write `[](another_markdown)` as internal links too, it will be easier to generate HTML files to host, using Hugo or something. If people save all markdown files in one folder then it's the same word count as [[another_markdown]].
I would just like to point out John Gruber disavowed the []() syntax on Twitter. He even said he would like to accept reverse brackets, since it's such a common problem.
I have been using personal wikis for about a decade, and 99% of the time I make an internal link, I want the caption to be the same as the page name.
I wish that the Markdown standard would just specify to render [[Page]] as [Page](Page).
To be fair, John Gruber has disavowed a lot of modern Markdown features and syntaces, so it's not exactly an authority statement anymore for today's Markdown. It's why CommonMark exists.
What do you think about CMS usecases like blogging? Where you'd write locally and maybe define some notes or a folder for static site generation, maybe triggering rebuilds from within Obsidian?
We still want to give you the option to export internal links to standard [Markdown](link) links so that static site generators or sites like GitBooks can understand them out of the box.
I know I'm a day late, but I wanted to pass on that I am in love with this product, so cool! I have used it nonstop since I downloaded it. Can't wait to see how this evolves
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.
If we're internet armchair lawyering then I'd point out that a carpenter building something is "exercising their trade or profession" but a carpenter reading a textbook or watching a how-to video is not.
Analogously, a salaried software developer learning something and taking notes on their own time would be in the clear but a freelance developer tracking their projects or clients would be in violation.
What's not clear is how it applies to a salaried developer learning something and taking notes on the job (ie is time provided for professional development part of practicing your trade or merely a perk?) or a freelance developer using this product at all (same issue as previous scenario, except now it's not even clear where your job ends and personal time begins).
I'm pretty sure that doesn't qualify. To my mind that's training or study of a trade which is distinct from practicing (ie getting paid for) it.
Where it gets weird is cases where the delineation between practice and study is unclear. Researchers are professionally employed to study things. On the clock professional development is study, but it's paid for by your employer. Freelancers manage their own time making even the distinction between paid and unpaid work unclear in some cases - were you studying as part of a current contract, or to better prepare yourself to take on similar work in the future?
Commercial license is 50$ per year. Not even 5 bucks per month. I do not think this qualifies as "expensive", especially if you intend to use it for work related stuff
There is also Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/), which is open source and has multiple Apps available (including mobile). I don’t think it uses plain markdown files as the primary data store, but notes are written in it and they can be exported as Markdown files.
I got myself stuck in quiver which is a nice tool but has no movement in its project and has horrible exporting. Beware. I still need to move my .qlite notes into markdown.
My problem with Quiver wasn't just no updates, its a good tool how it is, but that plus no web/android/windows. Just figured it was time to finally hop of that sinking ship.
I.. wish someone had told me this 2 years ago when I started using quiver and it was already dead, before I put hundreds of notes in it that are now stuck in .qlite or .. pdf i think?
Does Quiver solve the same problems? Sorry it's a hard word to Google so not sure I found the app you are thinking of.
50/y is definitely a think about it and review yearly when budgeting type of expense as a personal expense, because all those recurring expenses add up! But as a business expense, if a $100k/y dev asks for a $50 tool I think their boss will say "why you waste my time asking, just get it and we'll pay for it".
I would say Quiver targets the same problem space. There’s some overlap and there are some healthy differences. I didn’t mention it to propose it as an alternative, but to illustrate that “expensive” is not just about absolute cost.
My biggest problem is the license is pretty strict, so I don't really have room to try it and see if it works for me.
90% of my notes are work related, so I don't really generate enough "hobby" notes to stress the tool and see if I want to use it. I'm not going to drop $50 to try and it and see if I like it. I'm also not going to violate their license to see if I like it.
I wish there were a trial for the commercial version. 14 or 30 days would be really useful as an evaluation period. Without being able to try it before I buy, though, it ends up being a pass from me even though $50 isn't _that_ expensive.
Not all people are living in an environment where they have an income that allows one to afford this. For some $4 is a lot, for some it is peanuts. Context matters.
I don't think that's relevant, I don't feel entitled to anything. My point was just that the $4's would add up. There are 2286 packages on my PC at the moment, which ones should I pay for? I can't even imagine earning that much money.
Moreover, are you suggesting that people should feel guilty for using free software?
The whole discussion was about how 'expensive' this particular software was, at $4/mo. $4 is the price of a cup of coffee. If the software makes you more productive than one cup of coffee per month would, then it seems like $4 is not expensive at all.
Of those 2286 packages on your PC, how many of them are written by individual software engineers who are trying to make a living by writing software? And how many of them contribute to your overall wellbeing? I'm guessing that 99% of those packages are used by programs that you yourself don't use, that just come packaged with your OS or some other product. The other 1%, yes, I think you should think about paying for.
We live in a world where a certain kind of extractive personality--Zuckerberg, Gates, Ellison--makes billions from their software, because they are willing to be an asshole-to-the-hilt with their anti-competitive, unethical, and often downright illegal behavior. The 'nice guys' who write and maintain your compiler (if gcc) or editor (if vim or emacs) or scripting language (virtually all of them) and any number of other tools that we use daily, will struggle to pay their hospital bills in retirement. And yet people balk at $4/mo for software that they might use for years. And even if they only used it for 1 month, that $4 is inconsequential compared to the other factors (like learning curve, time investment, etc).
I do think people should be spending some money on their software tools each year. Maybe 1% of their income? That's around $100/mo, which seems like an awful lot, but only in comparison to the current price they're paying of $0. But think of how much better your tools would be, if the developer who makes them could earn a living wage from them, without having to embrace the capitalistic ideals that make us hate computers and software in the firstplace.
While much of that is true, you again seem to be assuming everyone who uses notetaking software earns some kind of US/SF SWE salary from your $100/mo calculation.
I really dislike this cup of coffee that is commonplace. Buying coffee from Starbucks is really expensive! Coffee costs about 30c to make yourself. Some people buy coffee every day - over a year that can up to a month's rent in a world-class city.
Personally I have paid for a lot of software over the years. I think 95% of the time I have ended up getting almost no value out of those purchases, especially with iOS apps and PC games I never play. I wish I had not been so frivolous with those $4 coffee-cup Steam purcahses and instead spent all that money donating to open source projects which I actually do use every day. In the future I will be trying to do so.
By your calculations I should be spending less than $10 per month on software. And I'm a software developer, just not in USA. If I spent $4 just for Obsidian, I'd be left with $6 for cloud file storage, music and video streaming, and other subscriptions.
Yes. I've built multiple pieces of free software, including open source drivers, data packages, libraries and even the odd game mod. Those projects have been used by individuals, corporations and other projects, both opensource and closed.
And no, I'm not entitled to free software, but I am entitled to where I spend my time, money and support. I do financially support open source projects that I use (and keep a spreadsheet in Notion to track that on a yearly basis). I also believe that if I'm going to integrate software into my day-to-day and depend on that software, it must be open source or have an open source available alternative (ala Android).
Open source isn't about making (or saving) a dollar. It's about software being more than just a means to profit.
I disagree. $50 for note taking app only is expensive compared to something like Google Docs which does much more functionality and includes cloud storage.
The product is applicable to anyone who needs a knowledge base so it’s $50/employee and that adds up quickly.
While the developer is free to charge whatever they like, I don’t like the trend of these products priced based on people thinking $50 isn’t that much and that spiraling into what should be a one time fee to every piece of software being $50/year forever.
This reminds me of the 4 hour workweek where there’s a plan to create recurring streams of revenue for little to no work.
I think the amount of time put into this product doesn’t warrant that price. Even though I think it’s a really neat product.
Yeah. Photoshop is only $10/mo. Many IntelliJ IDEs are $12.50/mo and you get to keep them if you stop paying. Both of those are core revenue drivers for many of the employees who use them. $4/mo is quite expensive for a markdown editor IMO.
In other words, a year's worth of this (which is based off the idea that you would actually be using it. If you plan to use something you don't just stop using it after a month), is an entire month's worth of rent that you could pay instead.
Or maybe a different perspective, a month's worth of this is the same price as a month's worth of groceries.
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!
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 ) and the Polyform licenses ( https://polyformproject.org/ ).
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.
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).
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?
Licenses are written by people versed in the appropriate laws. That’s why they come across as “more strict”, for precision’s sake. However, one should be very careful about trying to emulate legal precision just by virtue of stricter language.
> licenses are usually written more strictly for legal purposes
Well written legal documents are precise (not strict). The trouble is that you haven't unambiguously defined what qualifies as personal use, and there are a rather large number of obvious edge cases. This is a good example of something that should be drafted by a qualified attorney.
As a feedback from me: the license doesn't leave any room for evaluation on the commercial side.
90% of the notes I generate are for my business, and probably ~10% of my notes are for personal stuff. The volume of personal notes isn't enough to be worth having my notes separated out while I trial Obsidian. Since I can't put any of my commercial notes in it without paying for it, I'm just giving up trying it.
If Obsidian works well for me, I'd definitely consider putting down $50/year for it. The price seems a little high to me, but if it works well, then I'd probably do it. But the license doesn't let me evaluate it, so I won't be able to find out if it works well for me. $50/year is way too high for me to put down to see if I like it.
A 14-day or 30-day evaluation period in the commercial license text would be really helpful to letting me see if Obsidian works for me.
The simple answer is: don't write your own software license, because if you're not a lawyer (or if you're a lawyer not specialized in this area of law), you'll get it wrong.
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.
> I will never again build any kind of workflow for my knowledge on top of anything that isn’t open source.
100% this. The peace of mind I get knowing that all of my data is under my control is worth it, after scrambling to archive content from failed or pivoting services, removing my data from businesses that try to exploit it or trying to migrate my data from one old app to a different newer app.
There are many different open-source and self-hosted wikis, note taking apps and mind-mapping tools. Some of them are listed here[1], just Ctrl-F for "wiki", "notes" and "knowledge"
Just a quick notw, I think everythink (need to archive content, ease of migrating data etc) is solved simply by Obsidian being offline-first and markdown-only. I.e. you don’t need the app to be open-source in the end.
You may want to look into the Gitlab [1] model of open source monetization, as it has strong resemblance of what you are trying to achieve with Obsidian.
That’s pretty cool and it’s good of you to think about the scenario.
The problem is the bankruptcy court/buyer/ex-spouse/whatever may have a different preference. So you may want to set up something legally binding now when everyone is the same agreement.
Could you also solve this by GPL+Commercial license for those that pay?
"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?
I can recall a few on the top of my head, but those are the exception rather than the norm: Blender & Mozilla, though that last one wasn't really a last act. I think I saw a few others, but can't recall which ones, I'd be interested in such a list.
Now, there are interesting communities that form around games, that tend to be a "dead product" after release, and for which there was a source dump (or not, actually): doom, openMW, openRA, etc.
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.
I don’t follow. This app would work on top of your existing markdown files, and if they go out of business there is nothing preventing you from either keep using the app, or take your markdown files and take them elsewhere.
That's really a nice thing, to be honest, and probably the only reason I'm somewhat interested, even though I mostly run open-source software on my computers, except when such software is a one-off comodity, like videogames.
But for something I'm going to invest some time learning, and will rely on, that's a very difficult pill to swallow. I don't want to depend on proprietary software for important parts of my workflow. What if I want to switch to a pinebook, for instance? No ARM build seems to be available yet. And that's just a single example... (a WASM/LLVM IR build could sidestep that issue).
That said, I like the idea. Is there any open-source equivalent?
I was actually using Joplin for the past year after migrating to evernote. I really liked it but am now migrating to something with a little more flexibility around structuring.
As the other commenter noted Joplin is a desktop application that syncs (over E2EE) if you like to other machines via gdrive/dropbox/nextcloud etc.
I was using it via nextcloud and it worked perfectly for what it was. The web clipper also did a great job of snatching simplified versions of web pages.
What killed it for me was just my expanding desires. I want to things like
- view my knowledge base from my work machine without downloading the whole knowledge base to it.
- Be able to search my notes AND all the books i've read. I tried using pandoc to go epub to md but it was too clunky and the searchability within notes wasn't great.
If I was still using it as a drop in replacement for evernote I think it would be great, but to go beyond that starts to stretch the seams a bit.
I also second looking at github's awesome-selfhosted.
Joplin isn't like your typical web app, and you need to either carry a copy of your notes around on every device, or you need to sync them using a cloud service. For that reason, I went with other note-taking and wiki software.
I'm in agreement with you on this. I've been playing with a package for Atom that would simplify a bunch of stuff in my process, but in general I don't like the risk of proprietary software/stack for my workflow.
Joplin is the state of the art in terms of open source note taking in my opinion. It too uses Markdown, and supports a whole heap of other features on top of it. But it's been around for a long time, has mobile apps, cloud backups, the lot - and is all open source on Github.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
You didn't ask for advice, so feel free not to take it - but you should consider using a pre-baked editing solution like Quill.js or something similar. Rich text serialization is its own problem and you shouldn't waste your development time on it :)
As someone who was experimenting with text editing in a browser recently: I could not find any open source (non-commercial expensive license) text editors that could actually handle workloads I cared about. (and which are not also specialized on code, such as Ace Editor) While Quill (and friends) definitely provide some very nice functionality, the moment I tried to do something like shove a full novel into one, not only did it take quite a while to actually load that text, but it took 500ms+ to insert single characters. There is a serious lack of an open source text editing library for Javascript that can handle any amount of characters without completely bogging down.
I was actually seriously impressed that I was able to take a huge amount of text and shove it into Obsidian and the UI stayed completely smooth the entire time. Props to the Obsidian devs for that!
It appears to match all of your requirements, and is scriptable. It's also strongly FOSS, in the AGPL sense. It also has the ability to self-host a sync server.
Have you looked into Zettlr(.com)? It ticks most of your boxes. Plain old markdown. And it's actually open source and a pretty decent community, so there's a good chance to get features in.
Looks very promising, thanks! I'm surprised I've never come across Zettlr before in all my research about editors. The features page and docs really are a testament to potential of OSS.
I too have been looking for a better note-taking app. I also signed up for Roam but I'm still on the waitlist. I've been trying out all kinds of programs and coincidentally enough tried Obsidian this last week.
I feel the same exact way as you in regards to all these apps. I currently use Joplin but I wish it was more "roam like" but looked like https://bear.app/.
Have you tried https://wiki.js.org/? Curious if it fits your needs, given they are open source.
P.S.
I use GitHub for all my personal writing and only now realized that a big part of it is due to its open source nature and data portability. I use emacs org-mode for my todo lists for the same reason. You're so right about how critical these features are.
I'm pretty sure org-mode can do just about all of those (except maybe for the custom formatting bit). Inline LaTEX was something I found super nice to have in org-mode.
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.
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?
Writting and browsing are often different mental modes. You are not always working with your notes, but mostly reading them. Thus have a plain edit-mode used 10% the time, and a rich viewing-mode for the remaining 90% of the usage-time is good enough for many people.
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.
i feel the same about the dual window (edit and preview) concept of markdown. such a hackish way and distracts the writing. rooting for a nice wysiwyg markdown editor for vscode and light weight program for windows.
I also feel like hot keys, VIM key bindings, and org-mode key bindings are a big part of what make it good to use for a power user. Bindings are learn once, benefit forever, whereas no key bindings may make it easy initially but are an infinite drag on productivity.
It depends on the editor, but esp for markdown pure text, WYSIWYG is a thorny topic - see slack's recent problems with their IME. Typora has a nice feel and switches from editor to preview as you move to the next area in a document.
Obsidian is trying this a bit with their headings, but seemingly small features like this are very difficult to get to feel natural, esp for devs comfortable with ASCII.
> I just don't get it. Is this really what people do? Switch back and forth between editing and viewing all the time?
Yes, I do this all the time. In particular I want to be editing my markdown in a fixed-width font (because it includes a lot of code, typically), but also able to view it prettily.
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
Devs, please consider the Jetbrains model - make the current version (up to v1 while in beta) have a lifetime license for a one-time fee, even commercial, and keep subscribers updated.
Since it's locally based, if I only need the basic features, I'm not sure what I'll be paying for with a subscription.
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)
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?
> 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/
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!
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.
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.
I think you are a bit too optimistic on what employers are willing to expense. A note-taking app falls far outside what most workplaces that I know of in IT would accept. In reality, I am afraid that you are excluding a large group of users.
Personally, I would pay 25$ out of my own pocket for this app, but not if I have to ensure that the notes are not related to my work, only to my personal life. And with my personal projects I use similar technologies as I do at work. Should I then not look at the notes when at work? It is just to complicated to live up to the terms of the license.
I can't even get my employer to expense texts that are necessary references for my job. They're not going to pay for my subscription for your app. I don't think your fee is unreasonable. But there are probably a lot of people with employers similar to mine.
This is really murky to me. As a professional, I keep notes as I learn things which may or may not relate to my current employment. The notes are my property and part of my knowledge base that I bring to any job. But I suppose I indirectly receive compensation for knowing things, so I need a commercial license?
Or what if I start taking notes on some random subject for fun, and eventually I write and sell a book based on them? All of a sudden I need to start paying a yearly fee?
It's not a prohibitive amount of money, but I'd be much happier with paying a one-time fee for the current version, then buying future versions if I choose to.
Generally the way you extract value out of an enterprise customer is to sell it to their enterprise as an upsell from the personal plan. Check out Evernote's pricing for example:
You can use Evernote for personal or work uses. They have two tiers for that. Or you can get your company to buy it for you and at least one other person, with extra features that benefit the enterprise, not the user.
> I have never worked for any employer that would expanse a note taking app. Expansing anything is usually akin to pulling teeth. How am I supposed to get my employer to expanse it?
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.
Yeah, I’m totally confused by this. It’s not like the data is in a mega proprietary format, it’s all valid GitHub markdown apart from the back linking, which would probably be relatively easy to reimplement if the company went out of business. I see org-mode being promoted as a viable alternative but it’s personally been a significant pain in the arse getting org files to being valid markdown. The beauty of obsidian IMO is that the “backend” is just Plain text markdown files organised in folders.
It's a little overblown, sure--but I do think that for the super technical power users especially, people like to invest in getting their setup tweaked just right, including all the UX details. This then creates anxiety over the risk to all that time invested. I don't want to learn and rejigger a full set of power user keyboard shortcuts for an app that might disappear, goes the thinking. In addition, open source often means further tweaks are possible (though it sounds like they're trying to maintain extensibility so this may be less of a big deal).
Simply because extensibility and plugins. Once they extend syntax greatly, plain text markdown files would contain lots of proprietary stuff no other editor would render correctly. It is also annoying to find and learn a new alternative every time a proprietary SW or service shuts down. And also some people run 100% FOSS on their machines, yes they are minority but they exist. For example to avoid stuff Adobe's updaters constantly running under root, effectively acting as a remotely acessible backdoor.
Since Obsidian is one-time purchase and offline-first, you would continue to use it as you were. Them going down should only affect future updates. Plus you would be able to continue writing plugins (when the API is released) to extend it if you want.
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.)
This got shared on their discord, but I s2g that it really is the case, given that I use a similar tool called Roam, which recently had such a big spike of attention (in part due to Thomas Frank's video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxOffM_tVHI) and somewhat popularized what Obsidian is kind of aiming for here (so much that Roam had to close registrations due to massive traffic influx). Plenty of ppl just swear by Roam at this point, including its creator who has big vision for a thing. Here is his white paper on a thing: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/Vu1MmjinS.
I can attest to that as well, and given that Roam is unavailable, would suggest to try out this alternative that is pretty decent for what it does (even though Conaw (Roam's creator) does think it doesn't exactly align with what Roam really seeks to do, yk the thing)
Edit: to elaborate, I am not raving about either Roam or Obsidian, I am raving about they approaches they provide, and after nearly a month of using Roam it honestly feels like a game changer to me. Solved my art block a bit as well.
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.
I've been using Obsidian for a short while after seeing a comment here on HN. I've used a lot of desktop notetaking apps, and this one really is different. It's the app HN commenters would write themselves. I expect it to be very successful in the next few years. It hasn't changed my life, because I'm not going to trust it with anything important right now, but they do have an ethusiastic community.
There's a new video out today if you want an overview:
I've been using Obsidian for about a week, and it may be the first time I've ever felt compelled to comment in an app's user forum. I even installed Discord so that I could subscribe to the Obsidian channel and watch its (rapid) progress. I am quite excited by this tool.
It does seem suspicious but personally the only reason I jumped in was because I’m genuinely so happy with this software and I believe that it should be tried out by as many people as possible!
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for raising this. I couldn't imagine using anything like this without a serious guarantee that if development ever bogs down I'd still have some way to keep it working and up-to-date. Even if the founders honestly intend this to be the case, who is to say that the firm that buys them up feels similarly?
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.
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
It sounds like you want either something backed by a cloud drive with local installs of the software, or something more like a traditional wiki server with a markdown plugin.
there's always the option of syncthing + a vps (or network drive or raspberry pi if you have one). i use it with a synology network drive myself and would find it hard going back a cloud storage due to the slow speeds you get when files have to go across the country and back again
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.
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.
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.
Roam is essentially an outliner: every bullet-point has a unique ID and you can't link directly to it. That way you can
a) reference specific blocks of texts (Obsidian only allows to link to headings)
b) display the entire block in the backlinks section (Obsidian only renders a set number of words around that mention)
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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) (to convert Markdown to static HTML files), and [Live Reload Addon](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 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) 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?
Although it's not markdown based, we're building https://www.remnote.io/ for this purpose; it lets you take hierarchical, nonlinear, linked notes and internalize them with spaced repetition.
I saw Anki integration mentioned recently on the TiddlyWiki boards. TiddlyWiki was also mentioned elsewhere here. It can technically do a lot of the things Obsidian/Roam can with modifications. Stroll and Drift are examples of TiddlyWiki variants. I've been trying them out, there's a bit of a learning curve. Look it up on Google Groups.
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.
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.
Any time you spend more than a few minutes solving any problem, note how you did it. For example, I have a full log of what I did to set up my Hackintosh, or code snippets on how to use some library or how to fix when my PC doesn’t recognize the Arduino etc.
This instantly fixes any situations where you run into the same problem again but you don’t remember the details how you solved it. At least to me, that happens quite a lot. Your future self will thank you.
* random lists (e.g., things to do, books to read, movies on netflix)
* personal CMS (e.g., mailing addresses, the name of so-and-so's boyfriend, etc. etc.)
* bookmarked articles with quotes or summaries (e.g., I read lots of things like https://psyche.co/ideas/a-touch-of-absurdity-can-help-to-wra... but since the idea that absurdity can push people towards the familiar is very disheartening to me, and therefore has interesting implications for my ideas, I'm taking notes on it)
* "ruby case statement syntax" (don't laugh, I switch languages a lot at work, and it's always faster to pull up the neat little answer I wrote myself)
* drafts of things like blog posts
* little fragments of ideas that I might or might not want to turn into blog posts
* journaling (especially nice when linked to entries for people mentioned)
* freewriting on anything I should probably be seeing a therapist for
* personal project documentation (e.g. install commands for self-hosted nonsense)
It's never "I wish I had taken notes of this" exactly, but more a combination of being able to pull up some fact /information/resource, draft things with lots of interlinked connections, or write just about anything down with connections to other things (like my journal entries linked to people they mention). In addition, the process of writing notes means you remember more even if you never consult the notes you wrote, so it's not wasted even in that case.
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
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.
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.
At work: I type up all the notes about the papers I read, meeting minutes, list of tasks, and also me wondering "out loud" about bugs, design notes, etc.
For personal use: I write down notes about articles I read, copy-paste some quotes and write my personal thoughts around them.
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.
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?
I just joined the beta last week. I keep my notes as md files in a private github repo. I just "loaded" the folder in obsidian and it just worked. I imagine that any editor that you can use with your own storage place would work.
Edit: Someone else mentioned " ... editing to add that I'm using iCloud for my vaults which allows for very fast syncing and the ability to edit on iOS".
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.
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).
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.
I think Andy Matuschak has some utility that automatically inserts the “Pages linking to here” into a mardkown document. Not sure if it could be used for Bear, but you might check it out.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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).
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.
- 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/ are even cheaper.
They are proprietary, so not using markdown files directly, but I think it is fair to compare them anyways.
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.
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 :)
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.
- "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 :-)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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..
- 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
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
What convinced me to give Obsidian a twirl is that there's essentially no danger of sunk costs: I already store my notes as markdown files in a local folder synced via cloud service between browsers and mobile, and accessed via IDEs/plaintext editors. Obsidian merely replaces the IDE as an access/manipulation point.
The only 'cost', so to speak, is adding bidirectional link syntax, which I suspect is soon to become a common standard. I am curious to see what happens when they open up their developer API, as the Obsidian PKM community is quite active.
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.
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.
Because individual users don't give a lot of revenue to any SaaS company. That's why Notion just made their personal tier free.
It's a top of the funnel to convert people at workspaces into using the tool because they're familiar with it (not talking about Obsidian specifically, but in general).
Why not have a somewhat open core model? The user is free to use the open source app in their local machine, but then there is a license that says you definitely can't host this on your own and charge for it.
Meanwhile for the commercial customers they can offer a managed solution.
All your data is in text format. It's a desktop app, so you don't really lose it, but if for some reason it disappears and your installed app stops working, all your data is already in a directory on your computer.
It's a desktop app. If Obsidian shuts down the app will continue to work as long as your OS can run electron apps. If it doesn't work, they're just markdown files a million other apps can handle.
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!
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. 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) 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...) 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.
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.
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" :(
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
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.
It's kind of gross that the only way to use that is to have it pollute your file space, rather than just having a document to open.
Also, on Mac it should be under the actual Help menu, the same way that there should be an Obsidian -> Preferences... menu item (hotkey cmd+,) to open settings. Conventions are important!
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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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'.
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
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.)
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).
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.
Can you link to the Kiwi you're talking about? I found 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I agree. I think in it's current state, the graph is just a neat toy but even with just the help page, it already looks like a jumbled mess. It would be nice to be able to customize the graph or at least have it present the information in a cleaner way. For instance, have the ability to separate intra/inter document links. It would also be nice to be able to view a link hierarchy by treating a single file as a root.
I've been using 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
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.
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.
Shameless plug here after a failed HN post. For people interested in taking many quick notes using markdown please check 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
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.
+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 :)
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]
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?
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 :)
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?"
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.).
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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?
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.
I've been recently working on something similar (but much more primitive) https://github.com/dpc/tagwiki if anyone is interested. It's an async/await Rust project too, which might be interesting to some.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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..
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 ?)
@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Read the story of the project and the team: https://obsidian.md/about