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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

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.
- cywick 5y ago
  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.
  - bachmeier 5y ago
    > The notes are very much markdown files. 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.
    - setr 5y ago
      > 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
    - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
      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.)
      - adkadskhj 5y ago
        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.
SamBam 5y ago
> 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.
- criddell 5y ago
  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.
pradn 5y ago
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.
- chris_st 5y ago
  My feeling is -- it's plain text with simple, comprehensible markup. It'd be pretty simple to convert to some other similar format. I'm not going to wait for the "one true format" while something good enough is here.
- ncallaway 5y ago
  > but then the feature-set is pretty basic. Yes, perfect.
- antifa 5y ago
  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.
srcreigh 5y 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
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  And then it would be just as easy to switch to any other markdown editor that supports linked notes.
- EleanorKonik 5y ago
  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.
caconym_ 5y ago
+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.

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.

cywick 5y ago
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.
- bachmeier 5y ago
  > The notes are very much markdown files. 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.
  - setr 5y ago
    > 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
  - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
    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.)
    - adkadskhj 5y ago
      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.

SamBam 5y ago

> 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.

criddell 5y ago
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.

pradn 5y ago

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.

chris_st 5y ago
My feeling is -- it's plain text with simple, comprehensible markup. It'd be pretty simple to convert to some other similar format. I'm not going to wait for the "one true format" while something good enough is here.
ncallaway 5y ago
> but then the feature-set is pretty basic. Yes, perfect.
antifa 5y ago
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.

srcreigh 5y 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

whimsicalism 5y ago
And then it would be just as easy to switch to any other markdown editor that supports linked notes.
EleanorKonik 5y ago
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.

caconym_ 5y ago

+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.