Hi HN! After months of private beta, Obsidian is now finally available for Android and iOS!
Obsidian is a personal knowledge management app that works on top of a local folder of Markdown files [0]. Because "local" often means your computer, for the longest time, it has been a pain to access these notes on the go.
Our original plan was to build fully native mobile apps. Instead, we decided to build hybrid web apps. Hybrid web apps gets a lot of hate, and for good reason. There's heavy performance penalty for running JavaScript. Animations are often janky. A lot of native capabilities are restricted.
We know everyone's favorite argument for using the web stack. "We're a small team, and it's just not possible to....". Sure, we're also just two developers, but that excuse gets old.
We see it in a different way. We leverage hybrid web apps not as a shortcut, rather, we use it to put power in the hands of our users. This has always been a key principle driving Obsidian's development.
Obsidian is one of the few apps out there that lets users customize every aspect of the app. Themes and CSS snippets let users completely change the interface. Plugins [1] let users augment the GUI [2], run macros [3], build databases [4], synchronize with other apps [5], and much more.
It's unprecedented for users to have access to this kind of power on their mobile devices.
We have a vibrant community of passionate users: lawyers, database engineers, dungeon masters, medical students, CEOs and CTOs under their alternate identity. You can find them on Discord and our forum at https://obsidian.md/community
Obsidian is the closest thing I've found to the Pensive from Harry Potter. It's a data recording format good enough for me to extract thoughts from my mind, represent them with enough fidelity to reconstruct later, connect them to the concepts that they are related to in my head, and then forget the thought completely so I can move on and process it later.
I was only willing to try it out because I had heard it mentioned [0] on CGP Grey's cohosted podcast, Cortex, in the episode they did on productivity software subcultures. Specifically I think CGP Grey was saying he didn't "get" Obsidian but had observed a fanatic fanbase around it of people who thought it was god's gift to note-taking because it represented the links between knowledge in a unique way. Apparently I'm one of those people because I went from installing it for the first time to writing all my new thoughts down in it in the space of 3 days.
I suspect the real reason I liked Obsidian right away is that long ago I used Microsoft Onenote as a freeform notetaking app to just spew unrelated thoughts into that I could organize later. Onenote's interface was good, but there was no way to port those notes in an exportable format to a new computer when the one with a Onenote license died.
You’re right it was on Cortex, clarification though:
Grey loves Obsidian, Mike doesn’t really get it though. Neither like Notion, even though it has a massive fan base.
There is a whole episode (maybe the one in question) where it comes to light that Grey has spent most of his life NOT making notes like most people do and instead just highlighting areas in source material and referring back to it.
Very funny episode given they were over 100 episodes into a productivity podcast at this point and had spoken about note taking extensively - without realising that one of them has a very different concept of the practice/process.
I spent a while trying Notion, seeing if it could be a good replacement for Evernote, and I had trouble with it as well. I can certainly see its use-case for teams, where the whole notion of homepages and things makes sense. But for the individual, it seemed too much. You're basically making a website.
My biggest gripe with it may have simply been the endless hyping and gushing that all the "productivity gurus" on YouTube and elsewhere did over it. Indeed, it seemed custom-made for YouTube productivity gurus, since you could make everything look so clean and beautiful and polished. It seemed the sort of note-taking tool for people who cared more about how the final result looked, than for people who wanted to quickly add or go over notes.
That said, I recognize that there was much there I probably never really used to its fullest-extent, databases being the fundamental differentiator between Notion and most other note-taking apps, and potentially very powerful.
Yes! That’s the episode. To hear two people realise they’ve been effectively having two different conversations with each other about the same topic without realising it is a special kind of amazing.
The comparison to the Pensieve is so so so good. I had previously used Tim Ferriss' metaphor for writing: that it was to freeze thoughts into a solid so that you could sculpt it into whatever shape you wanted. But as you've already noticed, there isn't really a final form a thought takes, and a lot of it's value is in bouncing amongst other thoughts.
I know this isn't a very hacker newsy comment, but wanted to highlight how amazing your comparison is :D
> The proper desktop version requires an office license
That's not true in my experience. I'm running a proper "OneNote 2016" version without any license or subscription. This is also stated on a Microsoft support site [0]:
> OneNote (formerly called “OneNote 2016”), the _free_ desktop app which runs on all supported versions of Microsoft Windows and which is part of Office 2019 and Microsoft 365.
Further down, it's stated:
> Download OneNote as a free standalone Windows desktop app (some features may be limited).
The link to the "free standalone app" just gives me OfficeSetup.exe (7.0MB), which did not give me a standalone app when I last tried it, but if that works now. Great!
> You can export your notes in a HTML-like format. I haven't tried to convert it into a different format yet, though.
You can export as a .pdf, .xps or into most MS office doc formats like .docx
OneNote isn't great if you want to regularly export to a different format. Especially if you want to make your notebooks accessible to other non-MS software. Right now, I sync my notebooks between several different devices which is kind of a pain.
Do you have a source for that? I don't believe this is true. When creating a notebook, I can specify if I want a OneDrive-synched notebook or a local one (OneNote 2016). Such a limitation _might_ be part of the Store version of OneNote, but that's just a guess. Also a Reddit thread I found discussing this topic stated there's no such limitation in OneNote 2016.
I'm a note-taking power nerd who has used all the buzzy apps on Macs. Obsidian is by far the best — it's become my personal journal, my knowledge base, a quick and dirty blog, a place to keep loose notes.
The development velocity of the (TWO PERSON!) team behind this app is ridiculous. They're constantly pushing updates, and seem to handle all facets of app development with aplomb.
>The development velocity of the (TWO PERSON!) team behind this app is ridiculous
This! I just checked their page for a "careers" button to see if they got VC funding and are raising a team. Nope, still just 2 people. It's not that they are able to move fast, it's that they are moving fast while making a product that looks good, does the job, and is snappy. Kudos to the (2 person) team!
I'll echo this as well. Not only the development pace is ridiculous for such a small team, they're very responsive to support requests via mail and Discord as well.
I had a small problem with the app once. I contacted them via email and it was resolved in a couple of hours and they were kind enough to offer different solutions -- solutions that didn't fill their pockets. (Needless to say, I'm sticking with their services.)
The fact that they can manage all that is almost a testament to how useful the app they're creating must be for them.
I too am just a happy user/customer and wish them nothing but success.
Agreed - and I love how the way that Obsidian stores its files is very transparent. Just a folder on my local drive. I've tried Craft, Notion, Bear, etc. but always had concerns about data portability when I scaled up to thousands of notes and manual exports became impractical.
me too. obsidian hasn't really clicked with me yet but i love the idea of everything being simple plain text files in a folder.
last time i checked out logseq or any of the other outliners, none of them have a note section underneath each bullet point, which is something i use a ton in dynalist
Obsidian has really delivered in a crowded note-taking space by focusing on the fundamentals:
1. Privacy. You can roll your own syncing (or use iCloud, Dropbox, etc.), without the notes being stored on the note editors' servers, which is a huge win over Roam, Notion, Evernote, etc. After the Evernote fiasco from a few years ago (where they considered reading your notes for ML model training and got massive pushback), I value future-proof solutions that won't become a liability in 10 years if the company providing the note taking software gets desperate.
2. Markdown. Speaking of future-proofing, Markdown is as close as it gets to having interoperability with the notes. Obsidian is at its core just a Markdown file editor, which means your notes are stored as plaintext and easy to export. There is a bit of Obsidian-flavored syntax (e.g. bi-directional links [[...]]), but these are becoming standard in note-taking. Many note-taking apps claim export functionality, but at the end of the day they're not incentivized to give you your data in a format that will work with other editors.
3. Executing on features that have become indispensable for note-taking, and personal knowledge management specifically: bi-directional linking, block-embeds, query-embeds, unlinked mentions, graph view, custom CSS, note aliases, markdown diagrams (via mermaid), and a few others.
4. Offline support. If there's any kind of login or sync required to access your notes on your personal device, that's a dealbreaker for me. This seems to have been a regression lately in the latest batch of note-taking apps.
My entire personal knowledge base was in Evernote for a few years, and now happily migrated to Obsidian. The graph view is just a magical way to explore the knowledge that you've stumbled upon over the years.
The team gives away so much value in the core app for free. If you enjoy their product, consider supporting via the Catalyst plan: https://obsidian.md/pricing
> Speaking of future-proofing, Markdown is as close as it gets to having interoperability with the notes. Obsidian is at its core just a Markdown file editor, which means your notes are stored as plaintext and easy to export. There is a bit of Obsidian-flavored syntax (e.g. bi-directional links [[...]]), but these are becoming standard in note-taking. Many note-taking apps claim export functionality, but at the end of the day they're not incentivized to give you your data in a format that will work with other editors.
This is actually the reason I don't use Obsidian. It's built on markdown, but it is not markdown. Things may be different now, but when I gave up on Obsidian, there was no general purpose exporter - you either use their editor or you lose much of the useful information in your notes. This would not by itself be a big problem except for the fact that Obsidian is a standard piece of proprietary software. It genuinely solves nothing in regard to future proofing.
The notes are very much markdown files. There is a very small number of extensions the Obsidian developers created (e.g., a syntax for linking to a specific paragraph within a note) that are not markdown, but it's very easy to not use them.
I'm using the exact same folder of markdown notes in parallel with Obsidian, The Archive, 1Writer, Calca, TableFlip, Python scripts, and Keyboard Maestro macros I have written and everything works flawlessly together.
To me, the killer feature of markdown notes is not the future-proofing, but this kind of seamless interoperability.
I don't much want to get into a debate over semantics, but markdown plus extensions with useful information (like links) does not qualify in my book as markdown. Sure, if you want to limit yourself to the parts that are interoperable go ahead, but then you're not using some of the best parts of Obsidian.
In that case, GitHub doesn't support Markdown, then, considering it shits the bed on one of the most crucial parts of the Markdown design: line-breaking behavior to preserve the readability of the "raw" form.
(Watch now as everyone rushes in to try to say that this behavior is an exception, as if you just brought up that their favorite uncle has some unsavory qualities.)
Agreed. And what is exactly expected to be done, if sticking to strictly "Markdown spec"? You can't do anything meaningful with such a small subset of language features, where as Obsidian and Obsidian Plugins are all about extending Markdown to provide additional features ontop of the language, but stored in plain markdown.
This would only be non-Markdown if it fundamentally broke something in Markdown. Ie lists no longer worked, or *bold* was used to link documents, etc.
I'm not arguing against anything you've written. None of it changes the fact that you're dumping your notes into a format that only works properly with a single proprietary app.
Your Obsidian vault is a folder of Markdown files that use [[links like this]]. You can load your Obsidian vault folder in the open-source version of VSCode with either the "Foam"[1] extensions or Markdown Memo[2] VSCode extension. [[This style of link]] works great with either. I think I also saw a new feature (or plugin?) for VimWiki that allows [[links]] to work even when the target is in a different subfolder, but I haven't tried it myself so don't quote me on that. There are also other programs that use this style of linking.
You can alternatively set up Obsidian to use [regular markdown links](regular.md) , it's just not the default setting.
What's the definition of properly though? It opens and works fine.
If you're saying "Features that only exist within Obsidian won't exist in other apps!" then.. yea, that's true. However features that _do_ exist in other apps, like the loosely spec'd `[[link]]` will work in many apps. Same with latex, github extensions, etc.
> markdown plus extensions with useful information (like links) does not qualify in my book as markdown
Almost every useful markdown system extends markdown arbitrarily. Markdown is standardized much like SQL is — a standard exists, but it standardized very little; mostly just defining the look & feel of the extensions
I am really curious: Why does restructured text get so little mindshare? I used it once to make an ebook into a website, using sphinx. The format is easy to write and read and it has extensibility as a builtin.
For me, reST had the big issue of not being as quick to type as markdown. It's a better standard, that's true, and especially the table features are A LOT more useful than MD, but I've always felt a lot more mental resistance and less compatible tooling. I basically picked up MD on the side (on SO and GitHub), but reST I would have to learn.
If you wanted strictly markdown then you could just stick to markdown, but the set of popular features which extend markdown are developing consensus across the ecosystem, such that you can get most of Obsidian's functionality with less than a handful of popular VSC extensions.
In that sense Obsidian is just a fancy viewer for documents which can be edited in VSC.
And with regards to vanilla markdown (which would exclude the likes of Github or Gitlab, or the most popular extensions on VSC), personally, I wouldn't be satisfied with the exclusion of Latex which is already in widespread support across markdown supporting apps.
Community markdown is a moving target because John Gruber's initial vision is frozen in time whilst the demand for innovation is ballooning. It's unfortunate because the trademark for markdown is in some ways in the same ballpark of value as the community buy-in for the technology.
The devs have been pretty busy with the mobile apps lately and the desktop version hasn't hit 1.0 yet. But they say they're now currently "working on" the markdown export feature (previously the mobile apps were in that column)
On the open source front you get zettlr.com, a pure markdown WYSIWYM editor with image preview, pandoc integration for exporting groups of pages into whole documents, support for Zettlekasten workflows, and academic references management.
It's a one-man effort by a guy who created it for working on his PhD, but it's quite robust and usable despite a few small flaws (who should be corrected in version 2.0, likely coming during the year).
it's close enough that you can write your own parser to some other format with a little bit of hacking, in fact that's what I did to port my notes from obsidian to logseq a while ago.
Of course it's a little bit of trouble but I imagine most people won't want to switch their notetaking apps that frequently.
+1. I found Obsidian a few weeks ago and it really is everything I've been wishing for in a "note taking" app. I put "note taking" in quotes because I've moved all my writing into it, too--it's wonderful to have notes so close at hand while I'm working, and Markdown is the gold standard for exporting to every presentation format I care about. It's the only richly featured writing app I've found that seems to understand how overbearing WYSIWYG editing and proprietary file formats/cloud garbage just get in the way of productivity.
The only shame with the mobile version is that (last I checked) it doesn't have Dropbox support, which makes it more or less useless to me. Hopefully it's on their list.
> My entire personal knowledge base was in Evernote for a few years, and now happily migrated to Obsidian.
Can I ask what your use-cases were for Evernote, and how well they all migrated to Obsidian?
When I think over my Evernote usage, for me it really boils down to three things:
1. Evergreen notes, like lists of books to read
2. Wiki-ish knowledgebase for work, like how do I get data from this server, or whatever
3. Digital shoebox: the place to throw old receipts, tax returns, contracts, whatever. Mostly throw it in and forget it, but useful for the 1% of time when I need to find something and it's magically there.
Numbers 1 and 2 could easily be moved to Obsidian, but I don't know if 3 would work.
My Evernote usage is a lot like yours. Ever since the Windows client switched to being a web app I've been planning on moving to something else but it's hard to find something that ticks all the boxes from me.
I still use a web clipper because pages go away too often.
I want image OCR because it's nice to search for something and have a snapshot of a whiteboard come up.
I want a native client on iPad and Windows. I would prefer local storage if possible.
Basically, I want Evernote from about 7 years ago.
Does the Obsidian app auto update? I ask because that would be an avenue for future evil acquisition co to introduce mandatory syncing. They could introduce an update which downloads from your custom setup and uploads to their servers.
Their privacy policy also allows them to use personal information for the purposes of
> recommending products and services that Dynalist believes will be of interest and provide value to you
There's a toggle for whether you want updates. You can also download the installers for each version onto your local machine if you want to revert or stick to a particular version.
Is Markdown a viable format given its many many flavors and quirks? I suppose you can just stick to the common features, but then the feature-set is pretty basic.
Almost everything else fucks with my copy&paste-ables, and is a forced WYSIWYG with no escape hatch (or recently removed it) and no dark mode, and doesn't support markdown at all, so yes the market definitely exists.
I love using Obsidian and it is where all my notes live.
Last year when I was searching for wiki-type note taking tools, I stumbled upon many of them including Roam Research, TiddlyWiki, and then Obsidian. Obsidian is what I chose because of how it stores my data - markdown files.
And it does not lose any functionality even if it uses markdown. Bidirectional linking, block references, heading references, a beautiful graph - Obsidian features almost every feature you need.
It is also very customizable. You can use custom themes and build your own plugins to work better.
Though the only thing I think needs improvement is the outlining ability - it does not feel very intuitive in Obsidian. This is the reason I use LogSeq along with Obsidian.
Now this also shows why interoperability is necessary, I do not have to worry about any data lock-in. I am free to use any notes editor along with Obsidian.
I've heard good things about the LogSeq/Obsidian interoperability, but out of curiosity, have you tried the Outliner plugin for Obsidian? I haven't gotten a good sense of how the two differ.
I have used Outliner too. There isn't exactly a difference between using them both. I prefer LogSeq because of the UI/UX that it provides for outlining. I would like to fix myself to a single app one day if possible, but for now Logseq and Obsidian work well for me.
Offtopic: It is such a nice co-incidence to meet you here on HN. I found you on YouTube yesterday while searching for Notion swipe files and then followed you on Twitter today. :).
Good to know about them being about the same. Thanks! I'm still trying to figure out the outlining workflow and I've heard such different reports about all the different options that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around everything. I think I'd prefer the "Logseq folder in Obsidian" approach myself.
O/T: I usually lurk on HN since I'm very developer-adjacent (my husband and most of my friends are engineers so I like to have stuff to talk about at dinner/parties), but this was finally a thread where I knew something relevant haha. Nice to meet you!
OTOH...
I kinda assumed outlining was awesome for taking notes and jumped on the Roam (and Logseq) hype train, but recently noticed how "thinking" with free text works better in most cases. Markdown lists in Obsidian/VsCode when lists are really needed.a
I have bagged on Obsidian a lot because of all the "me too" "Roam-like" "Second Brain" apps which followed Roam. After trying Obsidian a few times, it seemed not to offer much beyond all the others in that group.
I got past that by not looking at it through the Roam lens. I realized Obsidian is the tool I wanted to build for myself. I see it as a view / management layer over my MD files. Also, the features have been fast coming and some key additions have made the tool much more useful. And I really like my MD files.
Obsidian is really nice, and quite powerful, especially thanks to plugins. It's also moving fast, the developers are very active. I used it for a while to move on from org-mode, but kinda lost interesst because of certain excentrics it has.
One specific problem that killed it for me temporary is the lack of support for multiple vaults, to the point that there is not even a truely centralized global configuation. Everything is saved in the vault itself, including plugins. Vault is the name of the data-directory, basically your workspace. For someone using multiple vaults (work, and private stuff) on multiple systems, this really kills any motivation to use it. Did this change in the meanwhile? I losly follow the changelog and haven't seen anything yet regarding this things, but maybe I just missed it.
Other than thoise specific problems, it's awesome how activate and vibrant the community itself is. There is a very active forum and discord-server, and many awesome plugins coming from the community are available. Obsidian has really the potential to leave org-mode behind and become a serious alternative for the rest of the world.
> One specific problem that killed it for me temporary is the lack of support for multiple vaults, to the point
> that there is not even a truely centralized global configuation. Everything is saved in the vault itself,
> including plugins. [...] Did this change in the meanwhile?
You can invoke an overview, that lists the last five, or so, Vaults, you used. From there you can switch. But that is all. The configuration, and, yes, the plugins (yeez!), sadly, are still installed on a per Vault base. What I have done is to set up an empty Vault as a template, configure it the way, I would have my master preferences, and when I create a new Vault, I start by cloning that. It's not perfect, but better than nothing.
Another thing I dislike is, that the Vault can not go into a (programming) project's folder as a sub folder, but considers the project folder as the Vault.
Perhaps-interestingly, I like this about its config and would view that feature as a bonus. It makes it easy to really tailor a given vault to a purpose, without having to consider layered configuration and how that might propagate.
I want to use Obsidian but the only thing that keep me off is the lack of encryption support. That is why I am staying with Joplin since it offers a full encryption. Obsidian does have a plugin for the encryption but only partial of it.
Joplin does not encrypt notes at rest. Only data being synced is encrypted; when it gets to its destination it’s available unencrypted in an SQLite database. Any program running on your computer can read your Joplin notes at any time. The developer has come out against implementing encryption-at-rest many times throughout the years. Their suggestion is that you use another form of encryption, like veracrypt. Notably, this makes using Joplin with encryption-at-rest impossible on iOS.
I tried this early on, but it seems there are vault-specific parts that become weird when used outside their original vault.
I'm also not so eager to regulary waste time for hacking tools. Updating the settings in all vaults each time I update some setting or plugin in one vault would be quite a pain.
Aside from the other praise people have given Obsidian it is also by far the fastest electron app I've ever used by a lot. Curious if the devs have any insight how they have made it feel so performant.
Everything changes when you ditch the network and store the database locally (markdown files and json metadata).
I used Notion for years before Obsidian and the speed alone is a reason to never go back.
On a related note, I also consider Linear to be quite fast and responsive especially when you learn the keyboard shortcuts. And to achieve that responsiveness, they load the whole database (or deltas) at startup.
The secret to development is to just follow classic programming patterns instead of new school "best practices" that are rife among the kinds of programmers who are creating Electron apps, and you should be good. In fact, JS is insanely fast, so you don't even need to do that. (Netscape 6, which came out 20 years ago, had tons of its parts written JS, down to the AOL Instant Messenger client it shipped with. It was essentially the forebear to every Electron app you see today, except it was supposed to run on computers with 64 MB of RAM, CPUs measured in hundreds of megahertz, and this was all fully interpreted, not JITted.) NodeJS development is so bad that you can appear to be nimble just by not sucking as much as the status quo. "You don't have to be faster than the bear..."
A second thing you can do is not rely on a bunch of bloated, poorly written libraries just because they're popular—another "best practice", of a different sort. I.e., pretty much the opposite of this advice, ironically:
I'm not working on Obsidian, but I'm also building a desktop app with Electron now and a non-obvious performance tip is to offload things from the main process to a separate child process and use something like node-ipc to communicate. Especially if you use sqlite3 to store data (even though it has an API with callbacks, it's blocking).
My major issue with the mobile apps is the syncing. On iOS you get to decide between iCloud or Obsidian Sync. On Android you can hack together something with third-party syncing apps and local disk storage. But if you have been using Dropbox or OneDrive for syncing on your PC, you won't be able to (bidirectional) sync your data to your mobile devices (out of the box).
Obsidian Sync is awesome and at $4 per month (early bird lifetime) very tempting, but then with max 4 GB per vault (à 5 vault) including history, you can't exactly compare it with the 1+TB you get on Dropbox and OneDrive, meaning you'll have to cut out pictures, audio files, videos etc.
This leaves me a bit conflicted and forces me to rethink the setup I have right now.
What amazes me (as an Android user) is that mobile Google drive app doesn't do what you'd expect from it: on PC it allows you to keep few folders on different devices in sync, but on Android the app just allows you to browse/open those folders, not keep a full mirror of any folder from your PC locally.
There are some third party apps that kind of do this for you, but shouldn't Google just make their app do what it is supposed to do? Where's the «backup and sync» alternative for Android? That's the only thing I need to use obsidian on mobile and get rid of Keep or any other app, because obsidian on desktop is just perfect for my needs.
I used to use Zim wiki before, and it was almost what I need, but it didn't use markdown, looked uglier, was slower, and there was no mobile app.
Sounds like you're in luck with Working Copy, as they mention this as being the only (known) application supporting background-sync for specific directories.
I haven't looked into any automation options, but I doubt it. Seems like Working Copy takes a specified folder in the "Files" app and treats it as a git repo (in this case, the Obsidian/YourVaultHere folder). When you launch Working Copy you're basically sitting at a (very nice) git UI, so all the standard git workflows are present.
I'm used to using a variety of editing software and then manually pushing my notes repo, so the lack of automatic syncing doesn't bother me. In fact, I prefer it. I've been burned by auto-syncing before and it makes me nervous.
I moved my vault from OneDrive to iCloud today, it feels surprisingly good, with ~10s delay between typing something on my iPhone and seeing it on my Windows computer.
Also since I don't use iCloud for anything else base 5GB will be enough for the foreseeable future.
I have both on iOS and I have to say I much prefer Obsidian.
Although Joplin is FOSS, Obisian uses plain text files rather than a database which is a massive plus to me, personally.
Also, Obsidian UI is light-years ahead of Joplin's. It's interesting that (IIUC) Obsidian is also not native but it feels completely native when compared to Joplin.
Also most Obsidian plugins work fine on desktop and mobile and the ecosystem is visibly growing. I don't think Joplin's plugins are really getting a huge traction.
All in all, Obsidian replaced most other apps I used (Bear, Noteplan, Evernote). The only thing I can imagine replacing Obsidian is LogSeq if they get their mobile app right.
Unfortunately Obsidian cannot replace apps like Agenda or noteplan for me, because it doesn't sync with external calendars. I still use it for most stuff though.
- Joplin doesn’t save plain Markdown, you can‘t just edit/view your files with alternative editors easily
- Creating and organizing notes feels less smooth for me
- navigating between notes is not so easy
- you can’t write #tags inside your text and it just works
- plug-ins and configuration is stored inside the vault, if you sync the vault, you have all the plugins everywhere
What I liked better in Joplin:
- 2 Levels (or panels) of organizing notes, instead of just one tree view in obsidian. Like every email client or file manager does it (one panel with folder tree, another panel with all elements inside)
- possibility to custom order inside notebooks (but I didn’t work well)
> Joplin doesn’t save plain Markdown, you can‘t just edit/view your files with alternative editors easily
It saves files to Markdown, and on right click, you can 'external edit' with your favorite text editor, which you have configured ahead of time in the settings.
Yeah, I've used both. I think the main things that Obsidian does better are its UI (which is pretty good, some annoyances around creating new notes and managing folder structure), and the fact that its notes are one-to-one with actual .md files on disk.
In comparison, Joplin keeps its notes in a more opaque format, where the notes database is a bunch of files with garbage filenames and so on... and the UI is, er... functional.
I've been trying to switch away from Obsidian to Joplin though, because Obsidian is payware (with add-on subscription services available too!) and Joplin is simply open source.
- The desktop, mobile, cli apps and clipper are open source. They can all sync for free with any of the supported services - Dropbox, OneDrive, S3, Nextcloud, WevDAV and the file system (some people use SyncThing). All this will always be free and open source.
- Joplin Server is free for personal use, so you can self host it. It was MIT originally, but I had to change to a more restrictive license because companies were selling access to it and I don't think it was fair that I do the work for free, and all they have to do is run `docker-compose start` and sit there and make a profit. But if it's for yourself, family or friends then it's free and will remain so.
They are just selling their own sync option. Since Obsidian store all the notes as plain markdown files on disk you can just use another sync option like Dropbox or even git.
No. Joplin can sync using different ways and backend (webdav etc).
It has also crypto and wysiwyg editor AND versioning.
It's the definitive personal wiki on all platform.
It has also a terminal gui LOL
not as far as I know. I've been using it for over a year and think that there's a free way to do everything on your own, and the devs and mods even help out on Discord for people to set it up. You can pay for the Sync or hosting service, but everything is optional since there are plenty of other options.
After what feels like trying every note tool under the sun. I’ve been using Joplin 3 years now and won’t leave if I can help it.
Why pay Obsidian $4/month, when Joplin is free and open source, can sync, has a desktop App for every OS, has a mobile app, encryption at rest, and I can contribute to it?
It's only $4 a month if you want to use their sync, there is a plugin for using github to sync (if that is your thing) or I just use syncthing and have my obsidian folder there.
Edit: Actually, I guess that won't work with mobile
I tried both and went with Joplin - it was a while ago and I can't remember exactly why, sorry. Import from EverNote would have been a factor (Obsidian may have this too?) as well as being FOSS. I use my notes as a personal knowledge base more than note taking so I have a lot of clipped web pages and linked notes so it could be that Joplin just suits my use case better. Obsidian didn't leave me with strong negative feelings just didn't fit what I wanted to do. Hope this helps.
I’ve used Joplin for obsessive note taking for a couple years now and am happy with it (after trying every other tool I could find). It lets me sync with my standard sync tools and being FOSS I know it won’t end up being a paid app down the track or get bought out and ruined.
Obsidian does have a slightly nicer UI and some nice features Joplin doesn’t have but I think the former points are way more important.
I tried both and stuck with Joplin. I like the database since I can write tooling for it more easily, and have written an exporter to create a static site for my Joplin notes:
I stuck with Joplin, because it is FOSS and not much worse than Obsidian.
I actually like Obsidian more and I would be glad to pay the price. My problem is that it now runs well, uses compatibile formats, is actively maintained - but who knows how will it be 10 years from now? Having the whole of my bibliography locked in in Mendeley was not a great experience.
I started using it - not bad since it stores the data in .md files + offers various export formats. Works fine on Linux and Android. My wishlist would be a more polished Android client, ability to synchronize immediately using iNotify and ability to designate a notebook/page as "main"/"default" and a button to jump to that from anywhere.
I've been using Joplin heavily for a few months. That is likely to come to an end, though, as it hasn't been syncing to OneDrive properly. Some notes simply will not sync even if I click the button manually. Then there's the web clipper that has stopped working. And a variety of other small issues. I was really happy with it for a while.
I has been using Joplin for a while with OneDrive syncing. The only way I found to keep Joplin synced with OneDrive is set the folder in your computer to keep it local as possible. Right click the folder (the Joplin folder) in OneDrive and click "Always keep on this device". So this way it will be less sync issues.
With this option enabled, it kept my Joplin synced across five devices without issues and all of them have this option enabled. My Joplin have 5-seconds delay of syncing between devices. I have about 100 notes/subnotes, I'm not sure if the amount of notes is a factor of syncing issues.
I wonder if Obsidian allows sharing of particular (folders of) notes. Joplin does not (you can only share, by syncing, your whole database, but I just want to share some notes. Can't find any reference with either tool right now to sharing.
With Joplin Server you can publish a note to a URL, or share notebooks with other users on the server. It works with Joplin Server, which can be self-hosted, or the upcoming Joplin Cloud, which is essentially a managed hosting version of Joplin Server.
I was actually very surprised to learn from a comment above that you are also working on Dynalist, something I'm a happy user of. While I understand that Dynalist is an outliner and that Obsidian acts as more of a knowledge base, I'm still curious to know whether you see Obsidian superseding Dynalist in the future? Would I also be able to transfer everything I have in Dynalist to Obsidian in the future?
I've absolutely been loving Obsidian since I started using it, which was only 3 months or so ago. But the plugin ecosystem has well and truly hooked me in. It's brilliant that they have a mobile app now, I can easily use it as an inbox/dump now.
The features I'm waiting for (I know they're in development) are the WYSIWYG editor and hopefully some integration with dynalist, the other amazing app from this team. Once that's done and dusted, this will be awesome.
I've tried Obsidian and it is not for me. I really don't like the trend of apps being in Electron and there are much better native apps, especially on macOS (Bear, IA Writer, Ulysses).
Trying to understand - what is the feature that Obsidian got you hooked? Usually HN is very critical of Electron apps, but not on this one and I'm really interested why. :)
You're listing standard note taking tools, and I've also mainly been using Bear so far.
But when I have a lot of notes regarding a topic I start creating a lot of sections in a note, sometimes multiple notes, which are hard to navigate from one to another, etc.
So Obsidian for me shines when I have a topic or area when I need to have a lot of nodes, which are in some ways related to one another. Or even have a hierarchical structure.
My use case currently is developing OctoSQL as a side project and having to keep:
1. TODOs
2. Random non-categorized notes
3. Ideas
4. Notes specific to some in-progress features, so i.e. a note for optimizer strategies, a note-per-datasource describing the current state and todo's related to a datasource.
And some of those are best represented as a tree hierarchy, so I can start representing that using references in Obsidian, and easily navigate them using the graph view.
Bear is too disorganized for me to do that sustainably (most notes get forgotten and re-discovered a few weeks/months later).
For me: cross platform (the power of the app on iPad as well as Android is pretty amazing).
Custom templates: being able to run a CLI command and pull those. data directly into a note is glorious
Other thoughts:
- Easy refactoring
- My own cloud storage (syncthing and synology)
- Plugins
- Workspaces
The internal linking between docs is the best implementation I've ever seen.
I also like that it's just markdown under the hood.
It's not perfect. Multiple vaults can be clunky and if I want to share a vault with someone it's going to get complicated, but it's pretty slick at what it does.
You may not have noticed, but there’s a lot less criticism of electron these days. I think it’s gotten sufficiently performant that most people don’t care anymore.
If that's the case, hypothetically i could run a WASM app as the primary plugin code, right? The idea of extending functionality of Obsidian has me super interested in buying into Obsidian and developing extensions i'm interested in!
I've started using Obsidian just yesterday and have been loving it so far. I had to get 1writer to work with it on the go, and now this, problem solved!
It was my only major gripe with the product. Now it's perfect!
It's really really useful when notes about a topic surpass one page, and need good organization.
I agree. I still take handwritten notes sometimes using a remarkable and I've always wanted to integrate with or keep it close to my markdown notes. Referencing handwritten notes and so on.
If you’re on Emacs I’d recommend checking out org roam [1]. I’ve been using it for a while to do connected notes (Zettelkasten) and I’ve been very happy with it. I tried a couple of methods for note taking and this one seems to be the one that I’ve managed to stick with the most.
That's for motion sickness. It doesn't remove the animations but just turns them into fades rather than slides, and they still waste the same amount of time.
I have a Kindle Vella coming out (this is Amazon's new serialized fiction format that's expected to go live this week), and I've been writing it in Obsidian using both mobile and desktop apps. The ability to open multiple views of notes conveniently has worked great, because I have notes for characters and settings and such, plus a master note providing a general index, and then a note for each episode of the Vella.
I have noticed that Obsidian (plus my Smart Keyboard) drains my iPad's battery a bit more than a full native app might, but it doesn't drain it nearly as much as a game and it works amazingly well.
I also using Obsidian as the backing store for my blog/site[1] and the ability to link up notes on a public site is really nice. I'm not even taking advantage of this fully yet. Because Obsidian uses plain Markdown as the source of truth, it was easy to write code[2] to augment page content with backlinks myself and then feed it to Hugo for generation of my site.
After a year+ of using Roam, I discovered https://mem.ai a few months ago and haven’t gone back to Roam. Mem is invite only beta I think. Raised 5.6M from A16z. It has bidirectional linking, tagging etc. Easy workflow via “mem spotlight” - you can capture websites or highlights into mem, or paste from mem into other apps (e.g snippets)
Agreed. I got distracted half way through because of how much mindless scrolling i was doing. I had to switch to the sidebar to even get to the end, super frustrating.
> The broader hope of the founders and investors behind Mem is that the team can leverage the platform’s intelligence over time to better understand the data dump from your brain — and likely other information sources across your digital footprint — to know you better than any ad network or social media graph does.
Hey, could you invite me to Mem beta-testing? It looks very interesting. I'm using Roam currently, from what I know Obsidian isn't very different from Roam.
lepa.sso017@gmail.com
I liked Obsidian but I moved all my notes to Zettlr and Org-mode because they were truly free and they could never be revoked. I have had my heart broken too many times by various pieces of software changing licenses or being bought out or whatever.
I’ve been a happy user of Obsidian for almost a year. It’s a solid product, moving at impressive speed (until recently they had almost weekly releases of features/bugs/improvements) with just 2 people. In my opinion we need more products and teams like these.
As for my use of Obsidian, I’ve put into it almost 400 permanent notes into it and I have my journal in it as well. I find the process of connecting ideas and thoughts great for exploring subjects/books/articles. I’m a fan of this product.
How Obsidian handlers sync conflicts? For instance, I edit a note on iOS while offline, then I edit the same note on desktop while online, then the iOS device comes back online. Apple Notes for example is handling this amazingly well by merging changes a bit like Google Docs. But it doesn't support plain Markdown files and version history, which are two things really great about Obsidian.
And also, do you provide a full-text search, for example by indexing the files in a SQLite FTS5 backend?
The android app doesn't work without forced broad access to all storage. The reasoning provided for the Android app's storage permission[1] is a privacy nightmare.
1. Performance reductions for sake of privacy is acceptable.
2. Feature reductions such as watching a directory are also acceptable. No other app even uses this feature. This isn't Linux.
In any case, The app can still run without storage access, but chooses not to. It can access it's own internal storage at root without permissions. It can also access a dedicated app specific directory in external storage. If I just want to use the app without storage permissions, I should be able to.
I have used many different note taking tools and I like Obsidian but I am a very happy user of https://notable.app/. I also tried https://www.zettlr.com/ in the past but that one actually edits in preview mode and that made the view really weird. It is good there is a lot of variety in this space...
Strong recommendation for both Obsidian and Dynalist, the other product of this crazy productive duo. I really appreciate their understanding that users want to be able customize their note-taking/life-organizing system.
Is there a plugin or something that enables list folding in a markdown file? I'm wondering whether it's time to migrate the Dynalist parts of my system to Obsidian and that's the big thing I'd miss.
How long is the promotional pricing for Obsidian Sync intended to last? From what I've seen of Obsidian Mobile, that's probably the smoothest way to synchronize vaults (understandably so), and I'd like to make sure that pricing isn't something I have to rush testing out the mobile version on.
We'll give at least one month of advance notice before ending the discount, so as long as you receive news from us (Twitter, Discord, forum, etc) you should be good!
After searching around (and trying Roam, Obsidian, a bit of Tiddlywiki, etc) I ended up sticking with Athens [0][1]. It's essentially an open-source version of Roam, and it's YC funded. I've found it to already be mature enough to be a good replacement for Roam.
I use Notable.app to track notes on my high school pupils, lesson plans for teaching CS, and instances of individual lessons where I’ve delivered those lessons to different groups of pupils. Also mixed in where log notes on coding clubs, tutorials, staff meetings etc.
It is a great tool and has been game changing. But…
My workflow is inextricably linked to the way I use Notable.app and while I’m kind of happy with it, one way linking without a back button is a massive drag. As a markdown editor it is utterly fantastic. As an organiser of knowledge it is good, but could be better, but I can’t move on from it without a lot of work to migrate my workflow. I’ll get around to it at some point this summer but only if I get comfortable with a workflow in another tool first.
My point: be careful how you integrate these tools into your life. You are basically betting married to them.
They can be amazing. They can also be amazing 90% of the time and leave you high and dry in ways that make you want to move on, but cannot.
I tried to build a [plugin for VScode](https://github.com/madeindjs/vscode-notable) (with a fraction of feature of notable) but I finally moved to [Dendron](http://dendron.so/). I'm happy with it for the moment because I feel less coupled to a Software.
Suggestion -- addressing friction at initial note-capture stage can help a lot with adopting Obsidian. As an example, I was looking to see if there's an easy way to capture links (with titles) I find while browsing on iOS. I saw that Obsidian doesn't show up in the iOS share-sheet. Ok, so I tried the next best thing -- copy the link + title (via an iOS shortcut), and then I tried pasting it into Obsidian -- and I faced a wall of choices -- which folder? which file?
This "initial capture friction/anxiety" has been an issue with Notion. Roam tried to provide a simple "Quick-capture" but it's not great. Mem.ai addressed this problem head-on and they make quick entry dead-simple: on desktop, you just start typing anywhere and it enters into a new note, and from mobile you can text anything (including sharing links etc) to a specific number and it goes to a new note.
Bear is my primary notes app on iOS because of this. Share to Bear as a markdown-formatted titled link or the full web page content, and from there I can also prepend or append to an existing note.
As a college student, I like the conventional note-taking apps. But I kept switching between them instead of sticking to one. Because the next one always seemed more lucrative for productivity.
So I created a lightweight but featured app to help me type less using bookmarks.
I could just bookmark a tweet and then it would pull the entire Thread for me.
I could bookmark a website to copy notes from later and it would export that to Markdown.
I'm going keep incrementing the feature set but keep the UI looking lightweight
It's public right now if anyone wants to check it out:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alekha.net.
The thing that's most impressive to me is that the plugin community is constantly building radical new things you can do... seemingly every week. Normally I think of plugins as offshoot nice to have things, but in Obsidian's case the community comes up with vastly different, potentially workflow altering stuff all the time... from templating systems to query languages to task management to kanbans to mind mapping to uri improvements to outliner capabilities for plain markdown lists.
And while not 100%, many of them port easily to mobile thanks to Obsidian's hybrid approach. So all that power travels with you.
You can use LogSeq[1] if you'd like to continue with org-roam. It supports both Markdown and org-roam, stores data locally, and has a good community as well.
It is still in beta though.
> Is Obsidian worth trying if one's already using org-roam and is reasonably familiar with Emacs?
What features do you need that org-roam doesn't have? Hard to say if it's worth moving on without knowing that. If org-roam is working for you, then why bother moving? If it's not, why not and does obsidian possess those features?
That was exactly my point. Perhaps a clearer, if much more verbose phrasing, would be: "If you've used org-roam before and then moved to Obsidian, what are the benefits you realize only after moving to Obsidian?"
I don't know these because I haven't tried Obsidian myself and I suspect if there are benefits they won't be immediately obvious without some sustained use.
I also use org-roam, I'm wondering the same thing. I really like org-roam, and I'm very used to the keybindings, but I've always felt a little bit of friction with it that I can't really explain.
Exactly this. I have a hard time using Roam Research now that I'm on org-roam, but org-roam DOES feel slower and have more friction. One of those cumulation of little things that make it so, I suppose.
I've picked up studying math. Right now I'm using "plain" markdown, but I'm starting to struggle with writing down formulas. Is this something that Obsidian (or something related) support well?
I'm currently using Obsidian to convert my handwritten notes to .md files for Discrete Math. Besides the links already mentioned, this one is great as well as it gives some quick reference examples.
My notes are pretty math-heavy, and for that reason I really prefer WYSIWYG rather than a split view or staring at the LaTeX source most of the time. Something like the Typora editor on top of Obsidian would be great. If only both were open source!
I've been hacking on my own clone [1] for the past year with a WYSIWYG editor based on ProseMirror. Here's the demo page [2] for the math editor!
[2] https://benrbray.com/prosemirror-math/ (disclaimer: the demo page is quite minimal -- many extra features, like Markdown syntax, copy/paste, etc. can be added through ProseMirror)
Typora UI emulation is one of the devs' top to-dos, and I've found they move remarkably fast on these things, so stay tuned... (EDIT: Fair point re: open source, though I find the use of Markdown and easy exportability mitigating.)
I tried out Obsidian but its really not for me. The divide between edit mode and view mode is annoying and I don't really see the appeal of the focus on the graph and links - I'd prefer if my notes were kept organised and logical through a system I develop as opposed to the random(?) linking of keywords.
I use Notion right now for my notes which I like, except from the always online requirement. I'm currently waiting for AnyType to be released which will hopefully save me from that and be my forever knowledgebase.
I’ve been very much enjoying FSNotes [0] as a replacement for Notational Velocity (and nvALT) which are both abandonware at this point. FSNotes is a native app, is FLOSS and is actively maintained. It lacks some of the advanced features of Obsidian (like Graph View) but it has the essentials (hyperlinks and tag sidebar).
I switched from nVALT to FSNotes, and then to Obsidian. FSNotes was too buggy for me. In particular, I'd go to search for something and somehow after a few characters I was randomly typing in to some saved note. Obsidian has been excellent. I suggest dragging the "magnifying glass" icon to it's own "tab" so it's always visible (something I'm used to with nvALT / FSNotes).
I am still using nvALT and the application works despite the fact that it wasn't updated in years.
Funny personal fact is that I started to use nvALT after seeing it mentioned in a bad fiction book, one of those that you read because you get stuck somewhere and it's the only book available.
I’m still waiting on one of these applications to actually have vim keybindings for their iPad app - there are quite a few applications that I think use code mirror which for whatever reason doesn’t seem to support it.
At least I’m assuming that’s the reason, given the feature is notably absent from every note application that supports a vim mode on desktop on iPadOS. Please, someone implement this.
I posted earlier why Joplin was close, but Obsidian was worth the switch. What I haven't found is a good multiplayer-mode. There are hints that this might work with Obsidian in the future and I am excited about that. I've used mem.ai which is close, but it's been buggy and also there's note a clear way to "zoom out" and look at all your notes, like a file explorer, graph view, or whatever. I imagine they might change this. But BoostNote looks very interesting. I appreciate the recommendation. I'll keep my eyes on it, for sure.
A spectacularly efficient and dedicated two-person dev team, and an awesome community.
I was brought to Obsidian when I was looking for a replacement for Roam. Quickly after I made the switch, I realised Obsidian is a much more powerful tool.
As a plus, Obsidian is free of that quasi-intellectual pretence that Roam ‘ecosystem’ is ripe with.
I am still very surprised that Apple allows this kind of CSS/plugin power. I wonder if the reason is that Obsidian is so popular among a lot of influential iOS users, that rejecting it would be a huge PR disaster. :D
Anyway, it is good to see Obsidian going strong. I am a happy user since the very beginning!
App Store allows external code if it strictly runs under WebKit and JavaScript Core. There's a few more general restrictions (like the additional functionality must be free or use IAP).
For anyone who follows Obsidian, have they approached the idea of spaced repetition or perhaps plugins for spaced repetition?
A big thing i want in a note taking tool is Spaced Repetition, but not _just_ that, more like a way to manage how much information i'm going to try and keep sync'd with my actual brain.
I'd love this system to monitor how much time i'm dedicating to it, and how much knowledge i'm able to retain in my brain based on available quiz time and retention rates (which would vary, i suppose).
I've often debated writing it myself but so many of these note taking tools achieve 90% of what i want, but miss the retention phase. I want to pour my knowledge into Obsidian, i just want some additional tools to help keep some subset in sync with my brain.
I would love better interoperability between Obsidian and Mochi.
Mochi is a nifty little markdown backed SRS app that I've replaced Anki with in my own workflows. Would love to be able to draw from the same vault/folder between the two.
Obsidian supports plugins, but on that note, if you want to practice spaced repetition, maybe point a spaced repetition app at your notes? It doesn't seem to make sense that a note-taking app should take any particular interest in that use case, when it can be better served by a dedicated app, and there's little overlap with more "ordinary" needs.
I would agree, but for me it's a tightly coupled idea - my knowledge base and a subset of knowledge i choose to retain.
So while yes, a dedicated app for SR would probably be "better", i'd then have to make tightly coupled user experiences to sync data back and forth between my knowledge base and my knowledge retention app.
To me they're two sides of the same coin. With that said i've long wanted to make my own app here for this stuff, but Obsidian seems very customizable, so i'm thinking i'll just try to make an extension which embeds the necessary metadata into the markdown files themselves.
I know that there's a plugin for anki and youtube tutorial on setting it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXyv6pnVGhA . Haven't tried it myself but will probably give it a shot
You may want to check out Mochi [0], a markdown based SRS app. Similar to Obsidian in that it is a local-first architecture with a focus on zettelkasten style note cards.
I haven't worked with spaced repetition, so I haven't looked into this.
Obsidian does have a plugin system that you might be able to use to add spaced repetition, but I don't know if anyone has written a plugin to do this yet.
I was Roam cult early on, but left the flock after frequent slowdowns and losing a bunch of files during one of their outages.
Obsidian is the best. I expect to use it forever, and even if it goes away, all the files are stored in plain text without any proprietary data formats or databases.
Interesting. I'll give this a shot. I've been using Evernote for years but their recent "improvements" to mobile have made it incredibly slow and requiring 3x as many steps as before, and I can't stand it anymore.
I moved to Notion a year or so ago. Tried Obsidian and Joplin, but Notion hit the sweet spot for me. You can do very interesting things with the "everything is a database" concept.
Obsidian really seems to be picking up steam though, with all the community plugins and everything I really need to re-evaluate it vs. Notion later.
I love Obsidian and I've been taking notes this way for about a year. But somehow I still find myself going back to VSCode with some extensions which add obsidian like behavior very often.
I don't quite know why but I think it's a combination of being able to open any file regardless of whether it's a note, the quicker workflow for snippets and the bigger community around VSCode (more extensions).
The good thing though, is that my "note vault" works with either, because it's just a folder containing plaintext files, some notes and some configuration files.
What I would love is if they made it possible to self host obsidian publish.
I absolutely love Obsidian and it’s been great to have it on my iOS devices as well! I’m still blown away by how quickly a two person team turned around an Electron app and built iOS and Android versions.
Obsidian is definitely a great tool for knowledge management, and now it's even able to do all that on mobile!
Personally, I've used our tool Hypernotes (https://zenkit.com/en/hypernotes/). It released with a mobile version of it and also runs of all the platforms and has a web version too. It is also able to do all the features the modern "second brain" note-taking apps offer.
I would love to replace my OmniFocus setup with pure obsidian, but the one thing I am missing is the “rapid capture” keyboard shortcut, from anywhere on my Mac I just hit some key combo and a little text box appears and I type on a task and boom, it’s saved.
I use this to keep track of things I’ve done, things I need to do and so on (helps with billing also since they’re timestamped).
Anyone come up with something similar for obsidian? I could write a little app that throws a line into “inbox.md” or so I suppose..
I just installed the app on iOS and the number one thing I look for is sharing links into my note taking app— but I don’t see obsidian in the share sheet. Am I missing something?
I've been playing with Obsidian on Mac and really like it, so I'm excited to have it on iOS as well.
I also have hesitated to install community plugins on my Mac because of the scary safe mode warning (and also I believe plugins do have quite a lot of access to my computer).
Do community plugins have similar access on iOS? In other words, does iOS do a better job at sandboxing/silo'ing so that I can use community plugins on my phone without giving access to everything?
I want to use a tool like this but I dont like using Markdown for taking notes. Its far too restrictive. Which is why I keep coming back to plaintext. These days my formatting is just deep tabs. Anyone know of tooling around this? I created a plugin for now here
https://github.com/jonocodes/vscode-tabtext
but I'd still like a better tool. Worth a try to ask, I guess.
I used to use Atom to store notes before I came upon Obsidian. To be honest I'm thinking about coming back. I think I used to write a lot more when I was using Atom.
MD is great for a readme, or a book where someone is going to read it once and digest the info. Markdown is a presentation format and is much easier to write then HTML since its less expressive.
Note taking can be deep and contain a lot of data (lists of items copied form CSVs, code snippets, documenting failures). Notes are more like code. You can spend your whole day in it - tweaking code blocks, refactoring, etc.
A lot of my sections are 5 tabs deep. Doing this with stars is harder to type, harder to copy/paste, and harder to read.
I don't understand. Can you not just indent text to an arbitrary depth? I definitely get what you mean about treating like code/refactoring, but I have found I can easily do this since there so are many options. The only area it is lacking is not being able to take handwritten diagrams and tables (or similar)…furiatingly fiddly. But as far as the depth and complexity of hierarchy ... That's not something markdown is lacking? Especially in comparison to plain text. Maybe revisit it.
Yes I can do arbitrary depth text in markdown but then it becomes text, not markdown. Then you are rending a mix of different things which are not semantically meaningful to a tool. Are you suggesting I use MD for the top levels, then then free text when nesting gets deeper?
I'm not even sure what tab level 2 should be in Markdown. Should it be a unordered list or a heading level 2? At what depth would I switch from headings, to lists, to plain text etc? I hit a wall pretty quickly with Markdowns restrictiveness here.
I originally switched to Obsidian for the vim bindings, and it's been solid. My only major issue with it was a lack of ability to edit things on mobile (using drop box app to edit markdown files was OK but def. not great).
I generally need simple things on the go, like checking off an item on a to-do list. Almost built my own mini-markdown viewer/editor to do this myself but glad I didn't as now this mobile app totally solves my issue. Great update, thanks!
LYT with MOCs is the best note organizing framework I’ve found for Obsidian, really game-changing:
> The LYT system super-charges your digital library by giving you the ability to use fluid frameworks—like MOCs and a Home note—to enhance your ability to find things, create things, and develop ideas over time.
Great.
You need to use the paid sync option if you want full mobile funcitonality and also use the desktop apps. I guess icloud works if you are all apple only, but no E2E.
Another option on mobile is to use Ulysses to edit notes stored on whatever compatible sync service you are using, but you don't get the full Obsidian functionality (or E2E). If you mainly just type notes and don't do a lot of linking etc then it won't matter much.
I've been having success with Dropbox/Dropsync into the Obsidian directory on my android device, and I know some folks have been using Syncthing without a hitch. The paid Obsidian Sync is just the only one they promise to "fully support" since they can't bugfix other apps, as far as I know.
Just tried the desktop version and it's interesting. Ideally, I would like to consolidate all my workflow to one app, so I'm looking for:
1. Markdown editing with vim (Obsidian has vim support! Nice)
2. web clipping (one note)
3. note taking and image annotation with tablet (samsung notes)
4. Sync with desktop/web/android.
While 1 and 4 is great on Obsidian, it feels like it's limited on the image and annotation that I would like. Any ideas?
I used Evernote for 2, now it's mostly https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox (still using Evernote in those cases when I need to clip a page behind login). Image handling is a pain point of all text-first note apps, sadly.
Perhaps I haven't used Obsidian enough to figure out an organizational method or workflow for this, but I've really been hoping for a universal version of Noteplan 3. I love having the notes and maps but also want to use it as a daily planner with reminders. Hopefully the mobile app is a step towards that, but I'm open to any worflow suggestions too!
I've never heard of it before, but all I can say is: finally! It's exactly what I've been looking for. Well, almost. I'd love if it were open source. But my data remains in plaintext files in a format I can parse myself, so it's close enough. I've used Sublime Text since forever under the same conditions.
It's great that there is a PDF export option. But it would also be nice if there were better options for customizing PDFs without having to rely on other tools like Pandoc.
My use case is to export end-user documentation to PDFs including title page, TOC, headers, and footers.
I'm probably underselling it but for me, markdown support and note organisation simply reflecting the directory structure is what sold me. I can then sync it whichever way I want; I've taken to having a "notes" folder in each project and including it in the Git repository. The notes are then browsable on GitHub too.
I've spent a lot of time trying to find my "perfect" note taking app, and have attempted to build my own a few times, and I'm very happy with Obsidian.
They're the same in the sense that Mail.app and Outlook are the same.
Apple Notes is great, but can't do things like tagging/graph view and doesn't allow you to export in a standardized format.
Obsidian is a superset of Markdown (with a few modifications for page embedding and wiki-links) and allows you to sync with anything that provides a way for you to upload a folder of text files.
It’s a much more fully featured note taking app, probably most directly comparable to Roam Research.
E.g., tagging, graph views, back links between notes, note/document templates.
All docs are (more or less) plain markdown as well, so if for some reason the open source community ever abandoned Obsidian, in theory it’s easy to export/transfer your notes.
So how does this sync exactly? Can I use an iCloud folder, an iOS filesystem provider, or do I need yet another service to have my notes on my desktop as well?
E2EE only works with their sync service, so yes, if you care for it. Your local folder is always unencrypted, so any sync service works as long as you forgo E2EE.
> I guess the options will stay limited, as the author wants to sell his commercial sync service.
Just putting a note in here to say that that's unlikely. On Android, you can use a lot of different approaches and I actually didn't need to use Obsidian's sync service. On iOS it's more complicated than that because of iOS's way of handling files. Building the integration of any other sync providers into Obsidian itself feels like a giant time sink for 2 people.
Basically, the options will stay limited but probably for actual feasibility challenges rather than personal gain.
The limitations are purely on the iOS device. I am using Syncthing on iOS with Obsidian and no issues. Fully agree with wanting to avoid iCloud in all cases where one can.
(Also, sidenote: assuming gender is maybe not necessary: his => their)
> (Also, sidenote: assuming gender is maybe not necessary: his => their)
On a personal note, please don't do this. I understand people choosing their preferred pronouns, but don't force it on others unless they have stated preferred pronouns too.
Quick edit: went and looked at the developer team (https://obsidian.md/about). It's actually a man, a woman and two cats, so "their" is clearly appropriate.
The iOS limitations are a given, we don’t need to discuss them.
Joplin, as an example, allows syncing via WebDAV. Which you can easily self host.
I know that Joplin works differently. Obsidian also has integrated sync capabilities, but it’s a proprietary protocol and you can’t self host it. And I guess this is a design decision of the authors. To sell their service. They probably need some money to pay their bills.
It is proprietary? I mean the code is but I have no idea if the protocol is. Obsidian is a note taking app that saves to a folder.
Any OS it runs on can use any syncing solution (as long as the OS supports access to those folders)
I'm also interested in that. I tried MöbiusSync, but it can only sync inside it's own folder. And Obsidian can only open vaults from it's own folder, or iCloud.
This looks awesome, but is there a source-available release? I'd pay for it, I generally dislike large blobs ("appimages") and would prefer to "./configure && make && make install" myself so I can be confident the SW won't forget all my data because of an update; if I understand how it is built I can understand the risks associated storage and prevent them outright.
Even the largest most successful companies with 100+ QA people on a flagship product lose data because of mundane updates, and this can be prevented by understanding how the SW works.
I have been using the beta (iPad Mini 5, iPad Pro 2021, iPhone) since around January and it has worked excellent. Obsidian is a great piece of software
excellent app! Now I just need to figure out how to sync my vault that I keep backed to a remote Git repo.
Also, I saw this (An Interactive Introduction to Zettelkasten) on reddit today and felt like sharing. This goes hand in hand with tools like Obsidian, Logseq, or Roam:
I'm trying to do the same. All my notes are backed up to a private repository, would be pretty kick-ass to get it synced with my iphone. Let me know if you find it out!
I would agree father, but I was using Joplin and then switched to Obsidian.
Joplin is no slouch and no shade on anyone who uses it, but here's why I am happy I made the switch.
- Backlinks (Linked and Unlinked Mentions) are the super power of Obsidian. (Roam and others can do what I will describe, but I'm not aware that Joplin can.)
- Being able to see everywhere I linked to my current note in my 1500+ other notes is super helpful. Having used Obsidian for over a year, I couldn't count the amount of helpful connections this has created and news trains of thought this has led me down.
- Unlinked mentions takes this to the next level since I can take a note that is where I have developed a core idea that I want to propagate throughout my thinking. By taking that core note and naming it properly or giving it an alias, in Unlinked mentions I often find dozens and dozens of places where I interact with this idea as a tangent before I developed this core note. (And sometimes after, too.) So when I return to ideas that are still in the sandbox and trying to be figured out, Unlinked Mentions sometimes lets me connect the new intellectual "key" to a "lock" that I had been frustrated with in the past.
- Obsidian's links and files work are consistent with Markdown spec, so they're more portable than with Joplin. I can easily move from Obsidian to most other platforms, but when leaving Joplin, tags don't always migrate very well.
- YMMV on Obsidian's plug-ins, but the community has built tools that really are super helpful.
- The Table Editor is fantastic for creating and manipulating tables in Markdown.
- The Dataview plugin that allows you to dynamically generate tables based on metadata fields you create for each note. I find this particularly useful for notes on other works.
- You can Tweet directly from Obsidian and also draw within Obsidian using plugins. Maybe it's been too long since I used Joplin, but those weren't options that I was aware of. And the list of plugins is more than 200.
- The search is the best I've used on any *note-taking* platform. I'm sure there are better options in code editors, but for someone on the less technical side of things, it's usable for them, but it allows regex, expanding context surrounding matches, and a host of other options.
I use Dropbox via DropSync and it's been working great for months. I'm told by folks in the Discord that Dropbox mobile app itself probably works, I just personally preferred the (free) DropSync app for syncing with my Dropbox account.
the only things I didn't like of obsidian was working with images was a nightmare,
in Evernote you have a shortcut to take an area screenshot, it stores automatically in a folder,
then you can write stuff below it, and move it to another folder, really good work flow I miss in obsidian.
I use the OS’s native screenshot functionality[1] and just paste it directly to the note. The only thing I need to remember is to assign the attachment folder, so that the image ends up in the correct place. If you move the note or the attachment/image file via Obsidian’s own file browser, all links are updated automagically.
For me the copy and paste into a note functionality works perfectly. Actually that’s one of the most seamless parts of the app. I use it everywhere along with macOS’s built in screenshot.
This is completely unrelated, but FYI, website is not reachable from Kazakhstan.
I know this is a problem with Kazakhstan government blocking everything left and right, but maybe you'll try to contact them and fix it somehow (I think few months ago I could access it without VPN, now I can't).
Not positive, but I bet it's because the one in Mac app store is the iOS version running on M1 hardware. The actual Mac app (afaik) isn't distributed through the app store.
i use little index cards on occasion, but i often forget to bring them or later archive them.
i bought an s-pen so I can scribble notes in a handwriting app, next to tiddlywiki (and now also obsidian) managing markdown and org files (the letter linked to markdown otherwiste tiddlywiki doesn't get it) see how that goes.
Obsidian is a personal knowledge management app that works on top of a local folder of Markdown files [0]. Because "local" often means your computer, for the longest time, it has been a pain to access these notes on the go.
Our original plan was to build fully native mobile apps. Instead, we decided to build hybrid web apps. Hybrid web apps gets a lot of hate, and for good reason. There's heavy performance penalty for running JavaScript. Animations are often janky. A lot of native capabilities are restricted.
We know everyone's favorite argument for using the web stack. "We're a small team, and it's just not possible to....". Sure, we're also just two developers, but that excuse gets old.
We see it in a different way. We leverage hybrid web apps not as a shortcut, rather, we use it to put power in the hands of our users. This has always been a key principle driving Obsidian's development.
Obsidian is one of the few apps out there that lets users customize every aspect of the app. Themes and CSS snippets let users completely change the interface. Plugins [1] let users augment the GUI [2], run macros [3], build databases [4], synchronize with other apps [5], and much more.
It's unprecedented for users to have access to this kind of power on their mobile devices.
Now, it's reality, thanks to the web stack. Get it at https://obsidian.md/mobile
[0]: https://obsidian.md [1]: https://obsidian.md/plugins [2]: https://github.com/liamcain/obsidian-calendar-plugin [3]: https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater [4]: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview [5]: https://github.com/renehernandez/obsidian-readwise
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We have a vibrant community of passionate users: lawyers, database engineers, dungeon masters, medical students, CEOs and CTOs under their alternate identity. You can find them on Discord and our forum at https://obsidian.md/community
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