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
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!
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
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.
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.
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 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!
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 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).
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.
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!
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?
> 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)
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)
> (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.
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.
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.
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.
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
- 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.
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
- 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.
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.
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 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 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 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’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 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'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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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?
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.
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?
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'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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
328 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 344 ms ] threadObsidian 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
---------
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
We're also launching on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/obsidian-for-mobile
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!
Well in general, isn't the velocity inversely correlated with the number of people in a team?
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!
Scaling up teams is to deal with scope, not speed, and usually leads to much slower progress as processes and procedures are layered on top.
Logseq is the closest thing, but it feels a little clunkier.
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
Hope they do better with Obsidian.
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.
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.
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. :).
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!
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.
Anyway, it is good to see Obsidian going strong. I am a happy user since the very beginning!
https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/
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
Apart from that they also offer a sync service. And for the technically minded there is also the obsidian git plug in.
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.
(Also, sidenote: assuming gender is maybe not necessary: his => their)
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.
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.
I've used Joplin for a while. It's Markdown so I like it. The UI is dry (compared to Evernote).
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.
Edit: Actually, I guess that won't work with mobile
But syncthing would probably be the easiest option for this!
Some reasons:
- 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)
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.
After finishing the edit, you need to press another button inside Joplin, to import the changes you made. Doesn’t work automatically.
You can only edit single files like that. If the file contains links to other notes, they are not resolvable.
It is not possible to just create some Md files and let Joplin index them and watch them for updates.
There is a hotfolder plug-in, but it only imports those files and then deletes them.
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.
- "Calendar" to organise daily notes (my "inbox")
- "Tasks" and "Rollover Daily Todos"
- "Checklist" for a unified todo view
"Day Planner" seems cool, but I haven't played with it.
With the plugins and bits now, its really quite nice - and personally I find the UI much nicer than Joplin
https://gitlab.com/stavros/notes/
I also like how it easily syncs with NextCloud and works well.
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 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.
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.
Here's a list in case anyone is curious what is available. https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/plugin-list/17671
Within a few days I'd paid for VIP and now subscribe to sync too.
It's fantastic especially with the plug-ins.
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 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_...
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.
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.
OneNote has been free for the last few years.
> port those notes in an exportable format
You can export your notes in a HTML-like format. I haven't tried to convert it into a different format yet, though.
Only if you store your notes in OneDrive.
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.
> [OneNote 2016/Desktop] is the only version of OneNote that supports local notebook storage on your PC’s hard drive in addition to cloud storage.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-the-differ...
Not in my experience. The online, UWP, feature-reduced version that comes with windows is gratis, but ... .
The proper desktop version requires an office license. It then is "gratis" on top of the cost you already paid for office.
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).
[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-the-differ...
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.
I know this isn't a very hacker newsy comment, but wanted to highlight how amazing your comparison is :D
[0] - https://logseq.com/
They're both markdown backed, which is nice.
1: https://www.orgroam.com/
So while I use Obsidian for my personal notes I still use Notion for teamwork.
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 (disclaimer: not ready for release -- hoping to polish it up by the end of the year)
[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)
https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-b...
This makes such a big difference. I wish everyday that I could turn off iOS animations…
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/Obsidi...
Also since I don't use iCloud for anything else base 5GB will be enough for the foreseeable future.
Edit: looking in to https://workingcopyapp.com/ now. an iOS git client.
On Android you could probably somehow do a local checkout, but don't think that will work with iOS due to file system restrictions.
No, it's just a folder of markdown files that I keep in version control and access through a variety of software, including (usually) Obsidian.
https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Sync
Do you have to remember to manually trigger commits/syncing or can you set it to commit/sync automatically (e.g., after a short period of inactivity)?
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.
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.
Still inferior to Analog Notecards.
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.
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.
Exactly this.
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.
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.