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Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile – Plain-text knowledge base on the go

• hebrox 5y ago
  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?
  • yhoiseth 5y ago
    https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes#Math https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes#Math
    • chrisco255 5y ago
      Thank you, very helpful.
  • benrbray 5y ago
    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! [1] https://github.com/benrbray/noteworthy https://github.com/benrbray/noteworthy (disclaimer: not ready for release -- hoping to polish it up by the end of the year) [2] https://benrbray.com/prosemirror-math/ 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)
    • HuShifang 5y ago
      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.)
  • cwdegidio 5y ago
    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. https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference?page=1&tab=votes#tab-top https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-b...
• ericax 5y ago
  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. Now, it's reality, thanks to the web stack. Get it at https://obsidian.md/mobile https://obsidian.md/mobile [0]: https://obsidian.md https://obsidian.md [1]: https://obsidian.md/plugins https://obsidian.md/plugins [2]: https://github.com/liamcain/obsidian-calendar-plugin https://github.com/liamcain/obsidian-calendar-plugin [3]: https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater [4]: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview [5]: https://github.com/renehernandez/obsidian-readwise https://github.com/renehernandez/obsidian-readwise --------- 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 https://obsidian.md/community We're also launching on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/obsidian-for-mobile https://www.producthunt.com/posts/obsidian-for-mobile
• Raphomet 5y ago
  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. No affiliation, just a happy user!
  • slipmagic 5y ago
    Don’t forget their cats!
  • polote 5y ago
    > The development velocity of the (TWO PERSON!) Well in general, isn't the velocity inversely correlated with the number of people in a team?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • Aeolun 5y ago
      Especially if your problem domain is determined by those two people.
    • mariodiana 5y ago
      The Mythical Man-Month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
  • lonesword 5y ago
    >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!
• prashantsengar 5y ago
  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.
  • EleanorKonik 5y ago
    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.
    • whimsicalism 5y ago
      Currently looking all over the place for a good markdown backed out liner. I currently used Logseq with the storage synced by Obsidian.
      • gauchojs 5y ago
        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
    • prashantsengar 5y ago
      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. :).
• genghizkhan 5y ago
  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.
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    If Dynalist was markdown backed that would be a killer feature.
• thek3nger 5y ago
  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!
  • ericax 5y ago
    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).
• coder-3 5y ago
  Obsidian is just too great. They really focused on what matters deeply to the PKM crowd and found an elegant way to serve that need
  • aiisjustanif 5y ago
    They are not the biggest app in this space to do it. Joplin did this a while back. BoostNote is working on it. https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/ https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/
    • redman007 5y ago
      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.
• daviross 5y ago
  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.
  • ericax 5y ago
    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!
• rcarmo 5y ago
  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?
  • austhrow743 5y ago
    "Built in to Obsidian" makes it sound like they're running their own servers, not using iCloud.
  • ericax 5y ago
    iCloud and Working Copy are both known to work. Obsidian Sync is also an option. File Provider is something we'll attempt to implement sometimes in the future to support other sync providers. More info available at https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Sync https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Sync
  • newswasboring 5y ago
    You can use whatever can look like a folder. So I guess icloud should work fine. Apart from that they also offer a sync service. And for the technically minded there is also the obsidian git plug in.
  • andix 5y ago
    It’s difficult. iCloud works (but I don’t want to do that, because it’s not E2E encrypted). Copying manually via iTunes too. I guess the options will stay limited, as the author wants to sell his commercial sync service.
    • nstart 5y ago
      > 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.
• wiradikusuma 5y ago
  Has anyone used Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/)? How does it compare to Obsidian? I've used Joplin for a while. It's Markdown so I like it. The UI is dry (compared to Evernote).
  • nyx 5y ago
    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.
    • jl6 5y ago
      The website says it’s free for personal use. Is there a bait-and-switch somewhere?
      • g3vxy 5y ago
        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.
        • cja 5y ago
          Or SyncThing (but download SyncTrayzor to make using SyncThing easy)
        • jl6 5y ago
          I’m looking for a note taking app that does iOS<—>Linux syncing. Joplin seems to be able to do it via Dropbox.
        • 5y ago
• cube2222 5y ago
  That's lovely! 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.
  • cube2222 5y ago
    Actually, what would make it totally perfect, would be an easy way to create editable handwritten blocks on an iPad.
    • sureglymop 5y ago
      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.
  • zorrow331 5y ago
    I thought 1Writer was good enough for the job (basically just note input + viewing one or two key files), Plus the dropbox sync works a treat.
• TRcontrarian 5y ago
  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. [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey/comments/ihkqjp/cortex_105_atomic_notes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey/comments/ihkqjp/cortex_105_...
  • simonbarker87 5y ago
    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.
    • h3mb3 5y ago
      I think this is the episode you are reffering to? https://www.relay.fm/cortex/105 https://www.relay.fm/cortex/105
• shabazahmed 5y ago
  Was waiting for this, will try out git to sybc data between desktop and mobile.
  • lucidhacker 5y ago
    Hey, feel free to check out this guide if you use Android - https://lucidhacker.substack.com/p/setting-up-git-syncing-for-obsidian?r=oxefw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy https://lucidhacker.substack.com/p/setting-up-git-syncing-fo...
  • cja 5y ago
    I use SyncThing for this. Works perfectly. (But download SyncTrayzor to make using SyncThing easy)
• usrme 5y ago
  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?
  • rvieira 5y ago
    You might want to check LogSeq [0] for an Obsidian/Dynalist hybrid :) (Not affiliated, just a huge fan) [0] - https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/
    • adkadskhj 5y ago
      In your mind how do LogSeq and Obsidian differ?
      • whimsicalism 5y ago
        LogSeq is an outliner (like Workflowy, the prototypical example) whereas Obsidian is a note-taking/graph app. They're both markdown backed, which is nice.
        • inside_out_life 5y ago
          Obsidian with plugins can be a quite efficiant outliner too, it even has tree collpasing/unfolding command built in
• beshrkayali 5y ago
  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. 1: https://www.orgroam.com/ https://www.orgroam.com/
  • e19293001 5y ago
    Yes. I would recommend org-roam too.
• pixard 5y ago
  Can you clarify what "Hybrid web app" means? Are the mobile apps React Native / Flutter / something else?
  • ericax 5y ago
    Yup! The app is written in TypeScript and shares much of the code with our desktop app. We're using Capacitor https://capacitorjs.com/ https://capacitorjs.com/
• barcoder 5y ago
  Such a great tool. I switched from note taking in Notion to Obsidian, mainly because of the speed at which Obsidian loads files. So while I use Obsidian for my personal notes I still use Notion for teamwork.
• slightwinder 5y ago
  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.
  • bentoner 5y ago
    You could link or copy the config file and plugin folder in the `.obsidian` directory in one vault to other vaults.
    • slightwinder 5y ago
      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.
      • chishaku 5y ago
        It’s not perfect but it did take me about 5 minutes to resolve when I created 3 clones of my main vault. The main issue was changing the relative path references to the templates and and assets directories.
  • xenodium 5y ago
• rayxi271828 5y ago
  Any org-roam users here? I started with Roam Research (one of the believers, even), but then moved to org-roam to keep the files under my control. Is Obsidian worth trying if one's already using org-roam and is reasonably familiar with Emacs?
  • crucialfelix 5y ago
    Obsidian has now exceeded roam for me. The community plugins are great and getting better. Roam has better embedding eg tweets, but not for long.
  • prashantsengar 5y ago
    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. [1] https://github.com/logseq/logseq https://github.com/logseq/logseq
  • stinkytaco 5y ago
    > 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?
    • rayxi271828 5y ago
      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.
  • SirensOfTitan 5y ago
    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.
• RBerenguel 5y ago
  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
• manigandham 5y ago
  ”Obsidian loads blazing fast. No network requests or fancy animations.” This makes such a big difference. I wish everyday that I could turn off iOS animations…
  • perchard 5y ago
    Although this doesn't turn off animations completely, you might be interested in the 'reduce motion' preference: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202655 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202655
    • manigandham 5y ago
      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.
• eXpl0it3r 5y ago
  That went faster than expected, awesome to see! 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. https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+%26+add-on+services/Obsidian+Sync https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+%26+add-on+services/Obsidi...
  • cja 5y ago
    I use SyncThing for this. Works perfectly. (But download SyncTrayzor to make using SyncThing easy)
  • another_kel 5y ago
    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.
  • vcavallo 5y ago
    So, bad news for me if I’m using GitHub? Edit: looking in to https://workingcopyapp.com/ https://workingcopyapp.com/ now. an iOS git client.
    • eXpl0it3r 5y ago
      Did you use some plugin that helped with the committing and pushing? On Android you could probably somehow do a local checkout, but don't think that will work with iOS due to file system restrictions.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• for_i_in_range 5y ago
  Obsidian = best Digital. Still inferior to Analog Notecards.
  • fsiefken 5y ago
    do you mean something like: * bullet journal https://bulletjournal.com/ * analog https://ugmonk.com/blogs/journal/analog-the-simplest-productivity-system * hipster pda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_PDA or do you have your own system? 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.
• gexla 5y ago
  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.
  • digital_voodoo 5y ago
    "A management layer over my MD files". Exactly this.
• swilliamsio 5y ago
  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.
  • input_sh 5y ago
    > The divide between edit mode and view mode is annoying That's pretty much their next priority, unifying them into one. Graphs, yeah, same, never really used them. Links are incredibly powerful, I'm not sure how you're using Notion without fully utilising them.
  • permarad 5y ago
    They have a WYSISYG editor (like Typora - https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/) on the roadmap (https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap). Typora is easily my fav markdown editor.
• folex 5y ago
  Does it work offline?
  • encima 5y ago
    Yep, saves to a local folder that you can sync
• sureglymop 5y ago
  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.
  • cja 5y ago
    You might like Foam then, which is like Obsidian implemented in VSCode
    • sureglymop 5y ago
      I've tried Foam but I've landed on Markdown Memo (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=svsool.markdown-memo https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=svsool.m...) which also has the Graph view and so on implemented. I use a lot more markdown related extensions too but this is the main one in VSCode.
• bentoner 5y ago
  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.
  • genghizkhan 5y ago
    Yup. It's called Outliner.
    • bentoner 5y ago
      Thanks! I also found the "Fold indent" setting in the core app.
    • Philipp0205 5y ago
      Outliner and the zoom plugin give you the full outliner experience.
    • smusamashah 5y ago
      Link to outline https://github.com/vslinko/obsidian-outliner https://github.com/vslinko/obsidian-outliner
• crunchbang123 5y ago
  While not as feature rich, I found GitJournal[1] to be a good app that supports markdown + git sync. [1]: https://gitjournal.io/ https://gitjournal.io/
• Gatsky 5y ago
  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.
  • mackrevinack 5y ago
    would storing them obsidian vault in cryptomator work?
  • EleanorKonik 5y ago
    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.
    • Gatsky 5y ago
      Yes android is OK but this doesn’t work on iOS I think.
• hammon 5y ago
  Joplin and you will not look father. https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/
  • redman007 5y ago
    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.
• nklmilojevic 5y ago
  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. :)
  • creakingstairs 5y ago
    For me it’s: - vim binding supported out of box - notes stored in markdown files - bi-directional linking - feels pretty snappy I would have considered bear if it supported vim bindings and was also available on windows (work laptop)
  • encima 5y ago
    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
  • nl 5y ago
    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.
    • inside_out_life 5y ago
      Nope, it still sucks.
  • cube2222 5y ago
    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).
• student2k 5y ago
  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.
  • noyesno 5y ago
    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. [1] Win10: Win + Shift + S OSX: Shift + Command + 4 Linux: Shift + Ctrl + PrtSc
  • singhrac 5y ago
    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.
• ivolimmen 5y ago
  I have used many different note taking tools and I like Obsidian but I am a very happy user of https://notable.app/ https://notable.app/. I also tried https://www.zettlr.com/ 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...
  • stefandesu 5y ago
    I liked Notable before I switched to Obsidian, especially because it has native apps, but the subscription pricing was just too high in my opinion.
• ngrilly 5y ago
  Looks neat! 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?
• usagitoneko97 5y ago
  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?
  • smarx007 5y ago
    I used Evernote for 2, now it's mostly https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox 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.
• 100lvlmaster 5y ago
  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 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alekha.net.
  • 100lvlmaster 5y ago
    The current feature set includes: - pulling entire threads for a tweet - offline support for markdown - tags - search for notes - qr codes - sharing entire blocks of bookmarks with other people
• laurent123456 5y ago
  Their mobile text editor looks very good. Anyone knows what library they used for it? Edit: Based on one of the developer's comments, it's CodeMirror 6, which makes sense since it's the only editor with good mobile support.
  • pps 5y ago
    Codemirror 6, AFAIK
• spookyuser 5y ago
  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.
  • journey_16162 5y ago
    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). https://medium.com/actualbudget/the-horror-of-blocking-electrons-main-process-351bf11a763c https://medium.com/actualbudget/the-horror-of-blocking-elect... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616374 https://archive.jlongster.com/secret-of-good-electron-apps https://archive.jlongster.com/secret-of-good-electron-apps Also you may want to use Svelte rather than React. I'm curious myself if the Obsidian team has anything to share about this.
  • chishaku 5y ago
    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.
  • pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
    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: <https://youtu.be/X61wRmfZU8Y?t=223 https://youtu.be/X61wRmfZU8Y?t=223>
• PaulWaldman 5y ago
  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.
• lolive 5y ago
  I use Dropbox to sync my Obsidian folder. I wonder how Obsidian for Mobile can handle that. [I presume it cannot]
  • chrizel 5y ago
    See https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app and https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Android+app https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Android+app for your sync options.
  • EleanorKonik 5y ago
    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.
• ChristinWhite 5y ago
  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.
• jaimefjorge 5y ago
  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.
• sygma 5y ago
  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). [0] https://fsnot.es/ https://fsnot.es/
  • notdang 5y ago
    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.
  • eddyg 5y ago
    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).
    • sygma 5y ago
      I’ve filed bug reports and the FSNotes developer fixed them within days. I’ll take a look at Obsidian too, thanks!
• least 5y ago
  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.
• gregwebs 5y ago
  I have been happy enough with SimpleNote - great cross platform markdown note sync. You can link notes and publish them. Not open source but no cost. Just tried the Obsidian mobile app - it is fast as well. I am tempted to switch for the vi key bindings.
• jonotime 5y ago
  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 https://github.com/jonocodes/vscode-tabtext but I'd still like a better tool. Worth a try to ask, I guess.
  • journey_16162 5y ago
    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.
  • spidersouris 5y ago
    What exactly do you find restrictive with MD?
    • jonotime 5y ago
      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.
      • afarviral 5y ago
        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.
• d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
  After a year+ of using Roam, I discovered https://mem.ai 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) https://get.mem.ai/faq https://get.mem.ai/faq But very intrigued by obsidian. I briefly tried it before but will give it a go again
  • uo21tp5hoyg 5y ago
    Their website is very frustrating to use, I had to scroll like crazy to get the animations to slowly load in.
    • adkadskhj 5y ago
      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.
  • jonfer 5y ago
    Sounds what I’m looking for, do you have an invite (nojfer@gmail.com)?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • martian42 5y ago
    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
  • atfzl 5y ago
    I can't find the link but there was some discussion about mem.ai on hackernews. mem.ai doesn't sound very privacy friendly. https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/06/note-taking-app-mem-raises-5-6-million-from-andreessen-horowitz/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/06/note-taking-app-mem-raises... > 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.
• mechhacker 5y ago
  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.
  • theshrike79 5y ago
    Long time Evernote user here too. 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.
• arch-ninja 5y ago
  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.
  • Macacity 5y ago
    This app is for reading markdown files on your device. You can sync them yourself to wherever you want to make sure that nothing gets lost.
• d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
  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?
• vorejdajo 5y ago
  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. 1: https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Android+app#Storage+Permission https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Android+app#Storage+Permis...
• dangoor 5y ago
  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. Overall, I'm a very happy customer! [1]: https://www.kevindangoor.com https://www.kevindangoor.com [2]: https://github.com/dangoor/sharedbrain https://github.com/dangoor/sharedbrain
• nsriv 5y ago
  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!
• criddell 5y ago
  Hybrid web app? Does that mean when your severs go down the app no longer works?
  • victoryhb 5y ago
    No, it means they are using a standard web tech stack (HTML, CSS, JS/TS) inside a native shell (to utilize hardware features).
• dkislyuk 5y ago
  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 https://obsidian.md/pricing
  • bachmeier 5y ago
    > 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.
• Cybotron5000 5y ago
  …exactly what I’ve been looking for. Thanks for posting about it!
• ftwynn 5y ago
  Been using Obsidian for a few months. 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.
• foxbee 5y ago
  Wonderful job. Simply wonderful. Well done to the team for delivering at such high velocity!
• vira28 5y ago
  Awesome release. Only thing that’s left for me to move from Apple notes is Pencil support.
• udfalkso 5y ago
  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!
• smusamashah 5y ago
  What are the plans for Typora like wysiwyg functionality?
• alexf95 5y ago
  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/ 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.
• tiffanyh 5y ago
  Dumb question: is Obsidian anything more than an open source version of Apple Notes? I realize there's technical differences but from a use cases / feature perspective - isn't it essentially the same?
  • murermader 5y ago
    Well it is open source, is cross platform and is not made by Apple. So, really different.
    • applecrazy 5y ago
      It is actually not currently OSS, although the creators have indicated interest in open-sourcing parts of it in the past.
  • applecrazy 5y ago
    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.
  • cepth 5y ago
    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.
  • stevecat 5y ago
    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.
• analognoise 5y ago
  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.
• gorgoiler 5y ago
  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.
  • Madeindjs 5y ago
    Same for me. I tried to build a [plugin for VScode](https://github.com/madeindjs/vscode-notable https://github.com/madeindjs/vscode-notable) (with a fraction of feature of notable) but I finally moved to [Dendron](http://dendron.so/ http://dendron.so/). I'm happy with it for the moment because I feel less coupled to a Software.
    • _1tan 5y ago
      Thumbs up for Dendron. On mobile I simply edited the Markdown files directly.
• riffic 5y ago
  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: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27811809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27811809
  • lucidhacker 5y ago
    Hey, feel free to check out this guide if you use Android - https://lucidhacker.substack.com/p/setting-up-git-syncing-for-obsidian?r=oxefw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy https://lucidhacker.substack.com/p/setting-up-git-syncing-fo...
  • kakkan 5y ago
    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!
    • riffic 5y ago
      See the other comments in this thread about "Working Copy", which is also referenced in the Obsidian docs: https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Working+Copy https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Working+Copy Sorry Android users, you're on your own to figure this out. edit: I had to figure out how to perform "Setup Folder Sync". This is done within Working Copy. Here's a walkthrough: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/mobile-setting-up-ios-git-based-syncing-with-mobile-app-using-working-copy/16499 https://forum.obsidian.md/t/mobile-setting-up-ios-git-based-...
• smoldesu 5y ago
  Obsidian and Nextcloud is all I'll ever need for taking notes.
• adkadskhj 5y ago
  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.
  • dunham 5y ago
    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.
  • pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
    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.
    • adkadskhj 5y ago
      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.
• adkadskhj 5y ago
  For Plugins, are they just javascript imports? 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! edit: Wow, this seems like a super yes. https://github.com/trashhalo/obsidian-rust-plugin https://github.com/trashhalo/obsidian-rust-plugin - this is exactly what i was planning. Really cool! This is the first time i'm actually been happy about a web based plugin lol
• orf 5y ago
  Why does the MacOS app from the app store require an M1 chip?
  • Xavdidtheshadow 5y ago
    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.
• bigbossman 5y ago
  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.
• vort3 5y ago
  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).
• dopu 5y ago
  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. [0]: https://www.athensresearch.org https://www.athensresearch.org [1]: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
• xtat 5y ago
  lmk when open source and I'll give it a shot
• jimkleiber 5y ago
  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? Thanks to anyone who has insight
• counternotions 5y ago
  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. https://publish.obsidian.md/lyt-kit/Umami/LYT+Kit https://publish.obsidian.md/lyt-kit/Umami/LYT+Kit
  • Terretta 5y ago
    Isn’t this just obscure re-naming of web concepts even older than index.html and every GeoCities geek site’s organization?
• cyberpunk 5y ago
  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..
• d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
  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.
  • counternotions 5y ago
    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.
    • d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
      Interesting. I wonder what makes the share-sheet feature so hard to implement.
• garfieldnate 5y ago
  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.
• TooSmugToFail 5y ago
  Obsidian is an amazing note taking app. 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.