Obsidian 1.0 introduces two big changes: a UI overhaul and an new tabbed interface. We've put a lot of care into making the app more approachable and more accessible. We've also prioritized using more native OS features for menus, windows, and many details.
We got our first private beta users from a comment under a HN thread about org-roam [1], and our waiting list was an innocent Google Form. Good times!
Our initial launch on HN was over two years ago [2], when terms like "second brain" and "tools for thought" were still in their infancy. Since then, the landscape has continued to evolve and new ideas are sprouting in the space every day. Obsidian has always embraced its "hacker" nature and thrives off its community of tinkerers. We now have over 670 plugins that push the envelope of what's possible in the app.
We want to continue to foster that same hacker spirit, but at the same time, we want to provide a polished product that can stand on its own. In the last several months, we've expanded the team and refocused ourselves on providing a product that's polished and easy to use.
We have big plans to continue making Obsidian the best and most refined thought-processing app for decades to come. Obsidian 1.0 is just the start!
Special credits go to Stephan Ango (@kepano) for the redesign and Liam Cain for tirelessly polishing this release.
[1]: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=22767658 [2]: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=23324598
Finally, a note taking application with a decent API that's allowed me to extract metadata and publish metrics into CloudWatch, allowing me to track key metrics and graphically[0] review historical trends of my "second brain." Previous note taking applications I've tried in the past (e.g. Zettlr, Bear) lacked the vibrant developer community that Obsidian has cultivated.
Hats off to the founder and the Obsidian team!
[0] - https://digitalorganizationdad.substack.com/p/stop-zettelkas...
That said Obsidian and Logseq are interoperable since they both run on a local folder of plain text files. Meaning you can switch over to Logseq for your outlining needs and use Obsidian for everything else.
(slightly biased since I helped on Obsidian 1.0, but I am a lover of all plain text tools)
Often when I write down my thoughts this way, it is more like following associative threads. I focus on a particular thought and relate something to it, which now becomes my new focus. Then I defocus and focus on something completely different. Kind-of like these threads here on HN. I wouldn’t call this outlining, it is more like spawning local contexts, nested textual environments to think in.
This is something that I miss the most when working with linear text structures as in Obsidian. I know you can indent and fold indentations in/out, but for me it doesn’t feel natural the way it does in notebook apps that organize text in block-trees. I also cannot reorganize or reference those indentations easily. I feel liberated (in thinking) with those bullets rather than constrained, but of course it is a matter of personal preference and habits.
I’ve used dozens of outlining and mind mapping tools from FreeMind to Logseq to OmniOutliner and more… But for me Obsidian, still wins because of the plugins. Check out the selection of outlining, link management (in particular link graphing) and crucially the refactoring plugins.
At the basic level the outlining plugins give you shortcuts keys to rapidly realign, reindent, fold and navigate a large tree of indented text, and when you combine that with the ability to take an entire level of that tree and just slice it out into its own document, leaning a link to the new document in its place (which other plugins can use to display an inline preview of that document) … it’s just amazing.
So I think while outliner might be misplaced for emacs it is not for logseq.
However, I think Org-mode’s headings (*, **, …) have great nesting and folding capabilities that are more similar to the structure Logseq or Roam provide, but I don’t like having to create a heading hierarchy for my thoughts, so its not really the same.
My critique was more that the term “Outliner” does not really describe how I work with tools like Logseq and Roam, since I don’t really outline my notes/thoughts but use nested bullets more like a focus hierarchy that helps me to “anchor” them in the context of a previous note/thought (I hope this makes sense).*
I wanted to use logseq (I felt good about "Obsidian, but open source") but when I tried to find some text in a page I was writing it didn't work. I'm a total logseq noob but as far as I could tell I needed to install an extension/plugin to search through the page, which was weird. Plus, the plugin didn't work for me (I typed in the thing to search for, clicked "go find it" and nothing happened, I think - it's been a while and I didn't use it much).
I kinda boggled my mind that logseq wouldn't have a 'Find' feature for finding text in the page I'm editing.
Please tell me that I missed something obvious so that I can feel dumb for missing that obvious thing but happy that I can take another look at logseq :)
The UX is extremely lacking, but it's open source, gaining steam, and they recently closed $4mil in funding so I expect it to massively improve over the next two years. Notably, page search should function without needing a dialog+overlay, and should support highlighting/navigating every match.
I'm excited to hear that there's support for expanding it.
And I'll definitely go back and take another look at it! :)
I think I tried Control+F, and maybe looking through menu items (it's probably there & I just missed it).
First note taking tools where I actually *read my notes*
Enter Logseq, and after a 20 minute learning curve, ideas just fly off of my fingertips. I reach for it daily. Can't recommend Logseq enough.
When you open Logseq, you start with bullet points. Is that the only thing that pushes you to create more? In Obsidian, you can just start bullet points on your own.
Nits aside, I use both and sometimes folder structure came in quite handy (like having separate notes for course modules and having 15 topics). I wouldn't remember even the names of these topics to come by when I need to.
But I agree also that the magic in Logseq happens more often than in Obsi (rediscovery). I think what contributes to it is the atomic nature of blocks as opposed to pages and daily scroll of all topics encountered recently.
While waiting for Logseq to come to Android, I've been using Zettel Notes by Dev Rohit. It's been great so far!
what? why... also emacs is really good for reproducible terminal logging of experiments/commands/output.
org mode has been too time-consuming in the past to adapt into my workflow. Logseq is a fantastic compromise.
"Time taken after creation to search for and open this note again"
This can show how useful your notes are and which are most useful.
While I think it's an interesting metric, it wouldn't capture the utility of my notes for me (emphasis on "for me", since everyone's probably different when it comes to notes).
Often, the act of writing the note helps better commit what I'm writing to memory. At a super rough estimate I'd say that 80% of the utility of note-taking is the act of producing the note itself, and only 20% of the utility is being able to refer back to specific facts.
I'm not quite sure how I'd use the metric or if I'd use it to purge notes.
Searchability or recall can be a problem sometimes though, so "searches where I had no results or didn't visit anything" could be interesting.
Especially if I try searching later and find a note answering my question with bad "SEO".
Another idea I had was to make a Firefox extension that searches my notes and displays results before search engines since I reflexively search things in browser sometimes.
I just, again, for me personally, gain a lot of value from writing the notes even that I never go back to revisit.
So for me personally, the metric is interesting, like I said, but doesn't capture "how useful" a note is, because I have most of my utility outside of that use case.
1. I have it committed to memory. 2. I never needed it.
I have no way to discern whether either (1) or (2) will happen as far into the future as you care to specify; so it's mostly a moot point. In any case, I will sometimes just do random walks through my notes, wikipedia style, and find a lot of value in it.
I found it very useful to organize research papers like this.
I keep hearing praise about this being a simple app, but I found it to be very fiddly if you want more than just markdown rendered in your editor. Lots and lots of time to get things working/configured.
Sync has been a massive PITA for me with Obsidian. Unless you are willing to pay, there is going to be pain there eventually. I had similar problems with OneNote, but those sync problems have mostly disappeared. Further, OneNote's handwriting experience is really good. It is very easy to export all notes from OneNote to Markdown with Pandoc, so while I may be "locked" in, I can "get out" if I want.
Edit: So thank you Obsidian for helping me convert my notes in OneNote to markdown to try you out! I now have a verified escape hatch if I should ever need it. However, I am not sticking around. Too much trouble for little stuff and OneNote is just a really good all arounder.
If that's what it takes to make someones system effective so be it.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well and all that.
What's a better alternative in your opinion?
What might be most interesting about the new set of fast moving note apps is that all seem to be built by teams of 3 or less people. Obsidian seems to have ascended to the top of the heap with a team of three and no apparent VC funding. Anyone that roots for small companies and passionate programmers should appreciate Obsidian proving that the best tools don't have to be built by the biggest teams. More the opposite.
I’m using Org mode with emacs just so I can have cross references into PDFs and emails in my notes.
This mentions cross-platform usage and seems simple. Is there some way to use this with Obsidian through a plugin? If so, please create a GitHub project and send us a link! :D
Just for reference, I found it with a list of a ton of other tools: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/301318/how-to-ocr-a...
I have messed around with Tesseract a bit, and at some point, I was able to turn a PDF into a text file. I was thinking of doing that and having them as markdown files which are tiny compared to the original. Then keep the Original elsewhere. I've been playing with another PDF system I'm not willing to give up on. :D
Point is, I think I can bring more dimension to my Obsidian or Markdown library by having 'txt' copies of pdfs. The search and tagging alone would be so handy.
I guess expecting consistency from the org with 3+ mutually incompatible video call apps and 5 volume control panels was always a fool's errand, though.
The fact runs super fast on any computer makes me wonder why did they downgrade into the current version which is absolute crap
With Google docs 99% BPU (Brain Processing Unit) goes into writing the thing or searching or reading the thing. As it should be.
That's why I'm working on creating https://visible.page because I want a tool that isn't just for markdown organizational obsessives, but rather for organizing and visualizing ALL kinds of information the way regular people do. None of these tools handle things like dates, locations, numbers, and other data of various types well. With Visible if you add a date or a location to some content, that content is now accessible on a calendar and a map side by side with all the associated text and media you added to it as well. No worrying about what table column it goes into or what metadata row or plugin you need to render it well. Just add the location, and add a map view, boom done. Want more than one date associated with some content? Just add it, you don't have to figure out to add another "Date type" metadata section the way you do in Notion for example.
It is not offline first. It is not file based. It is not catered to the needs you see so often here on Hacker News but don't actually hear when talking to regular people who just want to plan a trip together or keep track of an apartment/house hunt without spreading information across a half-dozen tools.
Does no one else get frustrated that even Google can't show you a map of your week's upcoming event locations? That when you are doing research online you have to tediously copy and paste each address one-by-one into Google Maps and then copy an embed link for that into another tool, and even then the addresses are isolated with no relevant information like photos or notes attachable to them?
We have so many amazing internet powers that are simply unavailable in any of these note taking tools. I'm sorry but markdown and backlinks are boring. I want to see my information the way it was meant to be seen and in a way that my parents can understand it as well.
That is the intention. I don't want excitement with my note-taking, I want plain, boring, open-standards that will survive the test of time.
Chances are high that your startup will: 1) Fail 2) Get acquired and gets shut down 3) Aggressively monetize leading to poor UI/UX (i.e. Evernote)
The whole advantage of Obsidian is that it relies on an open format, and makes it easy to transition to a new platform
I want a system that I know 20 years from now I can still use (or can transition to a better one).
Maybe I'm in the minority but I've tried at least 10 different note taking apps over the last decade, and none of them have staying power because they all fall into the three issues I outlined above.
I think notes should use a database so it can effectively obfuscate data like the spatial relationships between objects in a note. An open specification and utilizing an open source database would be better. Plain text objects could still be used and easily exported, but you gain so much over simply plain text. Portability is important but it's not as important as having tools that meaningfully improve how you perform the task you're trying to accomplish.
I'm sorry but until you've experienced a startup shutting down the product that you built your whole knowledge repo around, you won't really understand the need for portability.
I could care less about the shiny features, because I know that in 10 years this product will be defunct, while markdown will still exist.
It is not hard to understand why portability is important and I do not need to lose anything to empathize with people that have. I think it is important but it doesn't matter how important it is if the tool you're using to secure portability is insufficient for the task you're trying to accomplish. That is backwards thinking.
> I could care less about the shiny features, because I know that in 10 years this product will be defunct, while markdown will still exist.
I'm not speaking in favor for this person's startup, I'm speaking in favor for better tools for note taking, thinking, brainstorming, and managing knowledge. Plain text is not good enough, in my opinion. This is coming from someone who uses plain text for all those things because there isn't an existing adequate alternative. If plain text is genuinely suitable for your needs, that's great. I just really doubt that anyone that uses plain text can genuinely say that they aren't held back by the limitations of the format at least in some way.
It can be accomplished in plain text, by hiding it behind a fancy interface. Which is exactly what Obsidian enables people to do with plugins. And with the new live-editor this allows a pretty well-made mix between plain text and rich content.
Also many features like realtime live collaboration are incredibly difficult to do with a local-first setup, but provides a user experience that lets Visible pages be useful for families, friends, and communities.
We do want to make your data fully available to you via export, and we don't view or use the data in your pages for anything. We have basic event-based analytics to see how people (anonymously) use Visible, but that's just at the level of button clicks and seeing how many pages people create on average.
Until those services are inevitably hacked, as we've seen most of these companies play fast and loose with security.
This describes me perfectly. I use obsidian to 'feel productive' but not actually do any work.
With just the map + calendar views alone you can address so many planning and tracking frustrations that simply aren't solved by the calendar invites and embedding Google maps into other information documents that we are limited to today.
Thank you for signing up for the beta, we will start rolling out invites soon! "Family planner" is exactly the kind of early user we want. Daily life involves so much information that goes beyond text, and we feel there should be a tool that can handle any information you throw at it in an elegant way without tediously configuring and managing it.
I'm also frustrated by the typical notes apps inability to store data in a way that it's convenient to retrieve. One example: I'd like to be able to just tag some string (think a UUID or other opaque thing) as a "blob" and then be able to click the "blob" just once to copy it to the clipboard, to be put into other tools.
Your app looks much more up my alley and I'll be signing up.
Seems like there should be a general answer for this, as sometimes I'd like to put a geolocation and notes in a file, and some uniform way to parse this later, whatever the tool.
[0]: https://github.com/esm7/obsidian-map-view
[1]: https://github.com/valentine195/obsidian-leaflet-plugin
I had onenote once, realized my handwriting was shit, and never tried to hand write notes again.
Goodnotes, Apple notes, and OneNote still leagues better for Apple Pencil support.
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/
As you mentioned Syncthing works flawlessly as well as other methods on Android.
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/mobile-setting-up-ios-git-based-...
On the desktop the git extension does the same thing, but is automatic. Conflict resolution is as detailed and I want.
Yeah lots of non-opensource components in that flow, but it works well and is perfectly happy when I am totally offline.
The iOS client does not allow choosing the folder. You can specify either icloud sync or not, but you cannot select a folder.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/s4kw0k/set_fold...
In my case, Obsidian syncs just fine between my laptop, iPad, and iPhone. I use Sync.com for everything else.
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/guide-using-git-to-sync-your-obs...
I know that the team behind Obsidian also created dynalist which iirc is a workflowy competitor.
because I have a thoughts been killing me in the back of my head:
Need a family version but self hosted + cloud which allows for an auto push of notes, pics and calander to your own thing..
basically a family planner.
That went on for practically a year until I finally just jumped ship and ported all of my notes into markdown.
I use Obsidian every morning on my roof deck for my journal (automated with the plugin, of course) and then at my desk all day long for my daily WTF blah blah info-capturing tool.
Sure I wish it had more features (persist collapsed/expanded state, even in a best-effort, might-not-last-forever kind of way! build in git support because apple makes it too hard for plugin guys to do on mobile!) but the fact that it is all just "standard" markdown and image files washes away all almost my complaints.
I use the paid Sync plugin, too (even though it's standard files and folders; could totally do it myself! could totally just use SyncThing! etc!) so that it is on all my machines and virtual machines. Perfect for sysadmin logs of things you touch only annually, e.g. Dad's iMac.
To HN readers who haven't tried it: it's the millennials' VisiCalc, basically, except for words.
You just enable it in the "Options → Core plugins" pane in the settings.
- Don't rush to install a bunch of plugins. Start with the defaults, learn Obisidian and add only what you need. It is easy for some to spend more time tweaking Obsidian than actually using it.
- If you're a macOS user, check out the Minimal theme, which will make Obsidian feel more native. -> https://minimal.guide/Home
- When you are ready for plugins, you may want Omnisearch[1] to be one of your first.
I used to organize stuff into folders, now I pretty much just create a note at the vault's root level and use tagging and good semantics and use Omnisearch to pull up notes.
1. https://github.com/scambier/obsidian-omnisearch
I wrote Minimal theme. BTW, I led the redesign of Obsidian 1.0 so I brought a lot of those ideas into the core app. We've also made a big push around using more native components. I'm still improving Minimal, but hopefully the "out of the box" experience feels a lot more native.
Wow! It’s a shame it’s not highlighted in release notes! Great news, and thank you for your work!
This should be universal advice for everything.
Also, you can change the cursor by going to Style Settings > Minimal Advanced Options
This might be the CSS? (I am not a CSS guy, sorry.)
https://www.w3docs.com/tools/code-editor/2404Edit: Ah I see. You're suggesting installing the "Style Setting" plugin, installing and changing the theme to "Minimal" and then setting the "Cursor style" to "Pointer".
I mean. This is what v1.0 is for.
It's also been fun to see how rapidly the plugin ecosystem has grown. The community is so friendly and creative.
I have contributed a few things of my own, notably Minimal theme[0]. When I was asked to help lead the new UI for 1.0 it was a dream come true. I am really proud of how it turned out. We were able to make a lot of the app feel more native across platforms. I'm also excited to see what new themes pop up that use the new theme system which is much simpler and more flexible.
1.0 is an amazing milestone, and one you don't get to celebrate often. It's so much fun to see all the love in the comments.
[0]: https://minimal.guide
Logseq allows me to embed the PDFs inside the app and annotate them with all the bells and whistles enabled by markdown. Area highlights, math notation, all these things are not possible with classical PDF readers, and I think Obsidian would fit well here.
I can mix a bit of Zettelkasten here, some daily notes there, and some 'old-fashioned' folder structures for projects to my heart's content.
Obsidian is less opinionated on the txt file format and folders too, so I consider it more future-proof.
I started with logseq and now obsidian doesn't work for me anymore. Tried to switch but I am into this small self containing bits now. Plus journal with timestamps
The great things about Logseq are his weakness for me. Everything is so interconnected (you can say: "here put the paragraph of this other note") that I sometimes lose confidence in the system. It becomes too complex. With Obsidian I know that a note is a file. Less convenient but simple and reliable.
Logseq really excels with his outlining mode, I miss it (but I don't like the way it saves states in the markdown file). It has some problems with the code blocks too.
[1] https://www.mobiussync.com/
- No export to PDF. There's a community plugin, but it's not great. The workaround is to export to HTML and print to PDF, but there's no real iOS option there.
- Managing images and other attachments are a mess. Using the "upload an asset" method gives it a random filename that if the app fails to save the page correctly, you either dig through the folder structure to find the random file name to link manually or you re-"upload an asset" creating a duplicate with a new random name. This could be alleviated if it was more stable or with a file picker with thumbnails to find previously "uploaded" files
- Pages fail to save correctly more than I'd like. I have no idea what the cause is, but it happens frequently on every platform I've tried.
- Page title changes don't propagate correctly sometimes, causing orphaned pages where it's a coin flip whether the page with the older title holds the content or the new one, leaving the other empty.
- Each page needs a unique title. I like how Notion allows multiple pages with the same title and are organized based on which parent page they're embedded or created in. I imagine Notion randomizes the actual file name similar to how Logseq already does for "uploaded" assets, so this could be alleviated if Logseq did the same. It could potentially alleviate the previously mentioned issue and it seems to me like the most logical method of handling this particular type of non-directory organizational structure.
- Their E2EE sync service is not yet ready, so no real mobile sync outside of iCloud (I use DropBox).
- Their documentation is terrible. There's tons of undocumented features, like admonitions, and the existing documentation is horribly structured, which is ironic since the documentation uses Logseq itself and the whole point of the app is to structure content.
----
Side note, since we're on the topic of personal knowledge bases and note taking, my personal dream app is Obsidian with Asciidoc support instead of Markdown. A lot of the extra features they add to markdown are part of the Asciidoc standard, like admonitions and document-to-document cross-references, it would potentially make the backend easier and the content more portable with page attributes like specifying an attachment directory, and some features are simply more flexible/powerful like tables.
I still use AsciiDoc to create PDF documents that require more flexibility, like table spans and nested ordered lists (Obsidian's markdown uses just 1,2,... instead of changing to e.g., a,b,... for a nested level). My current workflow is typing it up in VS Code, converting to DocBook with asciidoctor, then converting that to a LaTeX PDF using pandoc. The result is a professional, academic-like PDF, but the workflow is a bit of a hassle and I'd prefer to do all of my document typing in Obsidian since it's so nice to use.
If I had more free time outside of my CS master's program and thesis work, I'd learn JS/TS to attempt to create a community extension that added AsciiDoc support to it and support for exporting to HTML and DocBook (and basic PDF since I'm pretty sure Obsidian uses an HTML-based PDF export anyway because CSS themes affect the look of the export), even if I still needed to use pandoc to convert to a more professional LaTeX PDF. I'm sure the VS Code AsciiDoc extension as reference and asciidoctor.js could get one pretty far.
Sorry for the rant. I've just been itching for a AsciiDoc-based note-taking/PKB for a long time.
- Includes/embeds (reference your source code by line range(s)
- Complex table support + the ability to embed CSV (automatic headers)
- Frontmatter as a first class citizen
- Macros (Variables) that can be referenced across documents
- Numerous Diagram parsing libraries (embed pretty much any diagram-as-code language)
I've had the same thoughts on building a Dendron type extension for AsciiDoc (AsciiDoc vscode plugin is fairly robust). Really would just need to hammer out some front matter parsing to get basic functionality.
It's also natively supported in VSCode (unlike AsciiDoc).
AsciiDoc includes are very powerful though, being able to populate your tables/code blocks from external data sources (filtering for certain lines/ranges). Also Tables can have complex structures (merged cells etc).
I feel like AsciiDoc was designed around writing technical papers than code documentation. It's essentially an opinionated wrapper around LaTex but less complexity. reST looks like it can produce great code documentation. AsciiDoc lets me cover both code documentation and customer facing documentation/reports with one code base. But I'll definitely continue to take a peek at reST. Although I think it's use case is more for embedding documentation directly in code. It's probably just my "I know the AsciiDoc toolchain well" bias though.
But FSNotes is for the Apple ecosystem only and I can't tie myself to a single platform for something so important (I don't need another artificial reason to make OS switching so difficult).
I hope the textbundle feature request[3] gets some love soon. It would be great for Excalidraw files integration too[4].
[1] https://fsnot.es/ [2] http://textbundle.org/ [3] https://forum.obsidian.md/t/textbundle-support/3585 [4] https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin
Another great feature that Bear and FSNotes share is the ability to insert hierarchy tags like #parent/child For some reason, I find it perfect to organize notes without too much thinking.
It’s also been good enough to replace Sublime + directory for my day to day development note taking. Its fast and just gets out of the way for writing and organizing - which is exactly what I want in a note taking app.
I sync manually using Git, using a Work-repo, a Home-repo, and a Shared repo that is a Git submodule of both Work and Home. I never edit notes on my phone, but I can read them on GitHub or Dropbox. I have more than 1200 notes in Work ∪ Shared, and some more in Home.
Some of my essential plugins are: Dataview (Like inline SQL for querying notes), Natural Language Dates (entering current date easily), Minimal theme (just looks better).
Some builtin stuff that I love: Frontmatter metadata, Mermaid charts (graphviz-ish), inline \LaTeX rendering, daily notes and syntax highlighting.
https://obsidian.md
All I can see is that it's been updated, but WTF is it?
edit: ahh, it wasn't the frontpage...
Edit: Found md-graph that also has the same neat graph: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ianjsike...
And plugins! I can put a search query right within Markdown and it works. I have a unified interface over Markdown's to-do syntaxes I've left in various files. I can put a button that triggers some internal Obsidian command. I can have templates that pull from APIs and auto-populate some fields. I have variables I can easily query over. There's a git plugin you can use to auto-push/pull. There's a fully-featured mobile app (nearly feature compatible with the desktop app, plugin support and all). I have some subfolders that automatically get published on multiple websites that use a different CMS/SSG.
It's nothing you can't achieve with some custom bash/python scripts, but I don't like to spend my free time maintaining custom scripts, and Obsidian is truly a remarkably extensible product that allows me not to do that. It's easily in top 3 software products I use the most (next to a browser and a terminal emulator), I can't praise it enough.
Two example of easy of use:
- You can type "[[" anywhere and start entering the title of a new or existing note (and follow that link). If the note already exists it will fuzzy match inline as you write.
- While on a note, you can change the title and all the references get updated.
There are also plugins with extra feature like note of the day, which creates and opens a file in the format 2022-10-13 so you can easily have a file for each day. Vim node also works very well.
Editing in a somewhat rendered markdown - it's not quite full wysiwyg, but e.g, your heading blocks are sized right, your lists are rendered as bullets until you're editing that line, etc.
Notes first UI: Stuff like the rendered view toggle, links, inline image previews are more acccessible than in vs code due to their higher relative importance.
> I guess the target is not directly developers when looking at their paid sync addon, because I would simply put this into a free closed gitlab repo.
You could, and people do, but there's a bit less friction with the built-in sync.
https://github.com/search?q=obsidian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base
1) Basic synchronization is a paid feature and you cannot (or at least could not) set up a private synchronization server.
2) Synchronization depends on the cloud. I simply cannot trust all important information of my life going to an unspecified location in the cloud for synchronization, even if it promises end-to-end encryption. The fact that the source is closed and it is a small company aggravates that immensely.
Which is why I'm using Trilium now. It's a bit more limited (no app) but has a web clipper extension and it is open source, so I can do changes or quick fixes if needed. I also synchronize with my own server, running behind a VPN.
For mobile, I'm pulling all tabs using adb and a couple of scripts, and it has been working nicely for my use case (mostly archival/planning).
Also for web clipper check out this bookmarklet I made: https://stephanango.com/obsidian-web-clipper
- Set up Syncthing to sync your vault folder
- Share with your devices and you're done
If you're already using a VPN and syncing with a home-server, you could also leverage Nextcloud or whatever your current syncing solution is. I don't see any reason to get mad when Obsidian is effectively saying "we don't want your data unless you pay us to handle it right".
I'd like to see the mobile app bridge the gap between typical mobile note taking apps and the desktop Obsidian app. Make it easy to create a new note like you would in any other note app, save it where it makes sense to save it, make sync easy to setup, etc. Probably asking too much, but ugh... the mobile app is so bad.
The sidebar is just a tree in Obsidian. It doesn’t really act how I want. This is less an issue on desktop, but on mobile my expectations are different.
Hopefully sync setup has improved in mobile. That was awful last I tried it.
[1] https://github.com/zadam/trilium/releases/latest
Anyone can check out my public Obsidian vault here: https://notes.recursion.is
And I made an introduction video for it here: https://youtu.be/tTFK-V3hdAw
In terms of your journey, what do you think the main challenges were? I'm sure a big one is adoption and another performance but curious to hear what the team's thoughts are.
For me personally, the community has been absolutely stellar. Lots of folks always willing to help out. Just a year and a half ago, I found dataview and after avoiding frontend for nearly a decade, I've finally begun my journey with React. The entire experience was kickstarted by my finding Obsidian and trying to contribute to plugins that I loved. A special thanks to everyone from the community: shabegom, joethei, koala, blacksmithgu, pseudometa, Eleanor, Fevol, aquaman, metruzan, and many many others whose name I'm blanking on right now but I promise I'm grateful!
[1]: https://github.com/victorb/obsidian-wielder
Is there a compelling reason to switch from Joplin to Obsidian? Honest question.
I'm not a huge fan of Joplin's UX, but not having to pay for sync (and being able to choose the backend for sync) is important enough to me that it is a differentiator greater than the overall UX. I can point all of my Joplin installs to the same S3 bucket and boom done.
I'm hearing that with Obsidian you can use OneDrive/iCloud/Dropbox/etc for sync but that is all based on the sync provider. To me that brings ambiguity about how concurrency and conflict resolution are dealt with, since the app kinda capitulates that to the external storage engine right?
There is no expectation that you use sync, it's simply an option for those that want it and are likely less tech oriented.
I think they mean free, as in free software. Obsidian is not free neither open source software.
I imagine that applies to many of us. How many people are looking to use Obsidian purely for personal use?
The overwhelming majority, if the Obsidian message boards are anything to go by.
I wouldn't want to use a product that only now reached v1.0, for a business. It's not Figma, or a Google Docs type app where corporate use cases are very apparent. At best, Obsidian would be good for a knowledgebase, but there are better wiki tools out there for that.
Obsidian does personal knowledge management best, because of its customizability.
I struggle to understand the mentality that deems that unreasonable. It'd be a bargain at 5x the price.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, I use github to sync across devices, you could technically use any solution you like.
It seems like a great program; it embraces open formats and is very extensible. But I don't think privacy should be a reason to use it while it's closed source.
EDIT Searching around the web indicates that you can only draw on top of images of the writing later, not edit it. Alas.
I export pdfs (and rarely, svgs) from my Remarkable 2 e-ink tablet.
SVGs can be converted to Excalidraw data.
The Remarkable 2 also supports OCR but I don't make use of that.
[0]: https://github.com/cobalamin/obsidian-remarkable
My current workflow is pretty suboptimal (manual desktop Remarkable.app to extract/export notes as pdf -> obsidian vault fs) and I was stoked to set up your plugin. Unfortunately it looks like it's not yet compatible w obsidian v1.0.
I created an issue https://github.com/cobalamin/obsidian-remarkable/issues/9 in hopes of confirming it's not just me. Happy to help debug if I can.
It turns out I prefer having lists as my primary interface, especially for the mobile side (insert text and press enter, instead of typing "- [x] item").
It does 3 things (all integrated together): lists, notes, and calendar. The "Notes" section is like a mini obsidian mixed in with the lists, but you can also add markdown notes to each individual 'task'. So I use it like a personal knowledge-base, not just for expendable lists.
The calendar integration is also nice. I've combined Obsidian, gCal, and Omnitasks/Todoist into one app.
That said, for pure note taking Obsidian was the best. Especially for coding/work.
Obsidian has been a core part of how I go about my day to day ever since I installed it a few months ago. Using it in conjunction with my Dropbox account has been a smooth operation too.
I tell everybody about it at this point. Keep up the good work.
Block-quotes are no longer quotes, just text with a strip of light on the left with no option to make it more obvious.
File name is now H1 header at the top of the file with no option to hide it.
Performance sucks so much, and that is on an eight-core x64 mobile CPU running Windows 10 Pro. Everything is sluggish 15fps mess. Shame.
Markdown links are ruined too. The previous UI was light years ahead, using different colors for the text and the link. Now the color is the same.
Most extensions don't care and don't render properly. Fckn great, man.
The tabs are by far the only good thing in the update. Everything else is a downgrade.
I really, really don't think this kind of catastrophizing is appropriate. A lot of your complaints are incredibly minor things, and are resolved through configuration.
> Most extensions don't care and don't render properly. Fckn great, man.
This absolutely has not been my experience and the level of vitriol is completely inappropriate. Extensions are developed by third-parties in their own time, and provided for free. Have you made sure all your 'broken' extensions are up to date? Have you verified they are compatible? Have you checked to see there are issues opened in the extension's git repo? Have you submitted PRs to fix the issues you've come across?
I've been using Obsidian for about a year, and about six months ago, I paid for Catalyst to have access to insider builds and to support development. In that time, Obsidian has gotten significantly better.
It will likely take a few weeks for plugins/themes to update to the new theme system, so I would encourage a bit of patience!
See theme migration guide: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/0-16-0-theme-migration-guide/425...
Perfomance is something we never had to begin with, at the very least I can live without it. But we had double colored links! We had quotes, highlighted out of the text by grey colored blocks.
Why? Why would you take that? I mean, 1Password team has moved to Electron and lost features, that is partially understandle. Forgivable, at least. But Obsidian just got comically worse with no explanation provided.
If you can share before/after screenshots of issue on the Obsidian forum or in Obsidian Discord, that would help!
Have you tried adjusting the option: Appearance › Show inline title ?
I found it strange that what I would consider to be the help site's table of contents (on the left) is in alphabetical order, somewhat like an index, instead of being arranged in a logical outline like a book's table of contents.
Meanwhile, what's labelled as the "table of contents" on the right is actually just the headings in the current page.
[1] https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Index
I'm trying to understand the use case where it would be worth it to switch to Obsidian and pay monthly for the sync and no longer host the data myself, which doesn't sound like an improvement to me.
The way Obsidian organizes notes sounds intriguing though, I can see how some might find that worth the additional cost (or loss of sync ability).
This is also the case with Obsidian! Because the files are just loose `.md` files in a folder, I personally use Syncthing and Git to keep them synchronised across devices for free. Sync is another option to complement those, for people who don't want to roll their own solution.
By default in Obsidian you own the data (and it never leaves your hard drive), you pay for them to host it for you so that it 'just works' across devices
That said, I've stuck with Obsidian so far, specifically because it doesn't lock me into a format. I was able to drop it on top of my folder-o-markdown & go from there. We'll see if it sticks, but so far so good.
Am I missing something?
My only dream is blocked by Apple. Would to have the ability to switch the default notes client in iOS, similar to how you can with browsers and email.
Of course I understand there are good reasons for it. It is so difficult to find a paying customer for anything, that it's impractical to price below a cost threshold. LTV > CAC.
Would love to see something like “$200 to enable the a peer-to-peer sync engine forever”, i.e. no ongoing hosting costs for Obsidian.
For my personal non-work vaults between my personal devices, I used Syncthing without issue for months, only switching since I was paying for the sync license for work anyway.
Sync - On iOS, you can use iCloud to sync your files between your Mac and iPhone. I imagine that there are more configuration options for this on Android.
Publish - lots of different ways to deploy your notes to a site. There's one repo that helps you publish with Mkdocs [1], and I'm sure there are other tools the community has created to solve this problem.
It may not be as simple to set up as Notion, but that's the price you pay for wanting a solution to be cheap, private, and let you own your own data.
[1] https://github.com/jobindjohn/obsidian-publish-mkdocs
Use iCloud/gDrive/dropbox for synching instead. Never had any issues.
You can choose to sync via pretty much any sync solution like Dropbox, iCloud, Git, etc. For publish you can static site generators like Jekyll, Hugo, etc.
Edit: Today I learned there is iCloud for Windows, so you can point Obsidian to the iCloudDrive/Obsidian folder.
Going to give it a try.
The only thing I miss is a more acessible price for brazilians in Obsidian Sync (1 USD ≈ 5.50 BRL, that is too much). I know I can sync it using other tools, but I feel the native tool would be the best of the scenarios).
Quick note, on the website the download button for MacOS is delegating to "https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/releases/dow..." despite the button saying "Version 1.0.0", I believe it should be "https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/releases/dow..." instead?
Fourteen days to trial just isn't enough to see whether it would be worth the cost to use for my own personal use at work. The Dynalist freemium model where I could use a smaller feature set for a longer time and then decide it was worth upgrading was just much easier.
Erica, would you consider a discount on add-on services for commercial subscribers? A 25% discount would put the price a bit closer to Dynalist pro and make it feel like I was actually getting something for the commercial subscription other than just permission to use it for work. Or maybe a discount for existing Dynalist pro subscribers?
I really love the work you all are doing, here and on Dynalist, just a bit hung up on the cost here.
I kind of agree that having to pay it on top of the sync fees feels off, but you could just as well sync with onedrive.
Side Note: If you folks would like a portable version for Windows (non-installable version that can run from a cloud folder, portable drive, etc), let me know. PortableApps.com has a few Electron-based apps now.
If anyone's interested ... two very (very) minor things I've noticed in my 20mins of usage (apologies if these are solved - I haven't got to the literature yet):
- same-same appearance of sub-list markers (I prefer alternative icons for tiered lists)
- Headline / filename special characters conundrum. Many of my docs had headlines in them that weren't suitable as filenames, I found myself repeating the non-filesafe headline on the first line. I wonder if there's some kind of front-matter setup that could resolve this?
Can you share the rough number of users in each tier/service?
I know that Obsidian has roots as "database is a directory of markdown files", but I will say that the last remaining feature request I have for the app is about versioning: I want to browse my vault at a point in time, not look at old versions of files. Specifically, I want to delete a file, then do a text search in 6 months, find a match in the deleted file, and browse my notebook at the date before I deleted the file.
https://obsidian.md/pricing
https://obsidian.md/sync
https://obsidian.md/publish
I realize they are just markdown files, but they use a proprietary "Obsidian" markup that will require painful conversion if I ever need move to another app. I've been through this before and it has always been a massive headache.
Also the fact that i can easily use syncing with E2E encryption (though not sure if it's been reviewed yet.. would be nice) is awesome.
I'm still using Logseq as my PKMS app by default, but seeing how active you've been with pushing genuinely new (and useful) changes, I might just reconsider this.
I use Vimwiki in vim and Obsidian outside of Vim -- they can be configured to use exactly the same pile of Markdown files as a vault/wiki.
[1] https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
I use it for every aspect of knowledge management, building a personal wiki, personal logging and writing, task tracking, reading notes, academic paper notes+metadata, planning, and more. Other tools offer similar features, but they all seem to have tradeoffs on data ownership or offline support or lack of extensibility or non-standard text format (i.e. not markdown). I wrote last year in another HN post that it's remarkable that the Obsidian team has delivered a superior product in a _very_ crowded note-taking / PKM space, and 18 months later it remains the single tool that I couldn't imagine abandoning.
E: Dang. Same thing. Installs and launches, but when I go to create a vault I get "Failed to create vault. Unable to create directory, unknown reason." Both on internal storage and the SD card.
I granted it permissions upon install, so who knows. My phone might just be too old and busted.
If you're on macOS/iOS a lot of this is now at the OS level, and has gotten really quite good.
I ask this as someone who much prefers atomization with good interoperability to bloated everything applications (and who has a phone and laptop with active stylus.)
I've tried many different tools in the past and I find I can't stay organized. I don't want to sit there linking stuff together, I just want to jot down a quick note or thought and have it link up with enough stuff that I can find it easily later.
I was thinking of making a personal tool based on some kind of database like datalog. Where I can dump a bunch of facts and have the computer automatically tag and link items.
I'd love something that knows I'm currently in a meeting with X,Y,Z persons while I took a note and automatically links it with them and any keywords etc from my note to other notes and topics.
I saw a demo for outreach? I think that did some cool stuff for sales, listening to phone calls and making notes linking people etc. I want that but for _everything_ haha. Have it link in with JIRA, slack, GitHub, Gmail etc. One stop shop.
I happily pay for Obsidian Sync even though I could use iCloud or OneDrive to sync my vaults because I want to support them
I would love to have a system where my notes are automatically linked with notes from other users who have the same ideas or goals.
EDIT: The Sync feature is far too expensive. I pay about $22/year for Evernote: https://evernote.com/compare-plans Syncing is a core feature, and I'm not going to use any notetaking tool if it can't sync my notes between mobile and desktop. I don't really want to switch to a tool that will cost $96/year. I'd be comfortable paying up to $25/year.
Even better if there was a self-hosted database that I could run on my own server, or a way sync via Dropbox or Google Drive (that also works on mobile.) Maybe iCloud is an option.
I ask as i can think of several times ive been stuck with just a work laptop or similar and it would suck to not at least have a browser version or something.
Thanks
If the bracket notation is a commonality among note taking systems like this one, then I may just be too much of an outsider to jump in easily to this app. But I, as someone who was interested in using the app enough to press every button I could see, couldn't figure out how to link notes until I exhausted my possibilities in the app, looked at your Web page, scrolled through the comments here and finally found someone linking to the page I needed. I knew that linking is the main feature, but I couldn't find it.
Filtering out dumb users like me may be a design decision, but if not, I would encourage something upon app installation that offers to tell new users how to link notes, even if it's just a link to a YouTube video ("new to Obsidian? Watch this 1 (2?) minute video to get you started.")
* Takes pages from my browser
* Uses github to sync across platforms
* Has offline reading on mobile
* Tagging and a todo list for triaging notes.
Haven't found one yet.
https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git will help you sync across platforms
Obsidian has all files locally so can be read offline
I use a mix of tagging and two plugins (dataview and tasks) to accomplish the last one.
Another option is to write a document up in Obsidian, then upload the markdown to google docs. Or there are obsidian plugins converting obsidian notes to Word format.
Specifically this CSS snippet stopped working:
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/how-to-stop-the-blinking-cursor-...
I went searching for something I could store in the cloud and locally and could understand markdown. Lo and behold Obsidian kept coming up in recommendations. I've been using it for 3 months now and I love that it uses simple filesystem heirarchies to store the .md files. I can put it into a git repo and fit it neatly into my existing workflow. It is basically the perfect note taking app for me. Well done and keep up the good work!
And then there's [[hypertext]]. Love it!
There is afaik no such thing as an org-agenda in Obsidian, which is a deal breaker for me. Also to do list handling is shoddy at best (it would probably be a perfect app if that got integrated, e.g. via a todo.txt format with a calendar) but alas.
If I weren't an org-mode user, Obsidian would probably be my pick. It is very nice in everything it does, but it just doesn't have that "edge" of creating a setup that is ugly, complicated an unrecognizable from its default. It may be ugly, but at least it's _your_ ugly.
Would this be a set-up that creates an agenda that works (by using 2 extensions)?
https://medium.com/geekculture/how-i-track-my-tasks-in-obsid...
Dataview is such a great extension.
Source: https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases
Use mine for Zettelkasten style knowledge tracking, Zotero and Vim plugins are awesome ... I guess I should donate some money because I am pretty happy with Obsidian!
Honestly the beta version was already stable and feature rich enough to consider it it a v1 :)
If one of the key features is a new UI, can I advise to put a couple screenshots in the announcement?
Will this be retrocompatible with plugins on v.15?
They've marked them all as legacy and are removing the legacy label as theme developers are updating them.
Huge milestone. Congratulations! I will be trying out the flatpak on my Linux build and keeping an eye out for your progress. Well done!
Which tool would be the best for assembling distinct documents from a large of pre-written paragraphs/sentences. I frequently need to write a set of docs with extensive cross-referencing, however, (a) the exported output docs needs to have referenced paras/sentences 'inlined' into the final version, and, (b) 'locking' the exported output docs should lock all the paras used by that doc while leaving the remaining ones editable.
Thanks.
A tip that people on HN will probably enjoy: add --disable-smooth-scrolling to your shortcut to make scrolling more responsive.
For this use case it is the absolute best of the bunch. I've used a lot of these sorts of complex second brain things and I've settled on a very minimal approach wherein Obsidian was the clear 'best in show' for what I needed.
Obsidian seems to be single user based, Athens is "collaborative" and "for startup teams". But does anybody actually have any experience using a graph based knowledge tool for your teams knowledge management?
0:https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Version+history
https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Security+and+privacy
What would I use Obsidian for? Is it just for writing stuff down? And if so; how would I access these notes on something like my phone? I tend to just write down things and store attachments in "Saved Messages" on Telegram. That way I can access it all via my phone, home computer, work computer or the web.
How would Obsidian be better?
They do provide mobile apps that work well but it's just markdown files so you can really access them however you want. I just have the entire vault in my Google Drive.
Advance - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3NaIVgSlAVIDaYB0yeH3lnB9...
My usage of Reflect has made me very curious about other apps that do similar things (e.g. Obsidian)
Has anyone here tried Obsidian _and_ Reflect?
[^1]: https://reflect.app/
[0] https://github.com/fanahova/fana-os
(I have a fair amount of content already in plain Markdown, as you can see here: https://taoofmac.com/static/graph)
The default file per folder is not built-in, but there is a handy community plugin[1] which does it.
[1]: https://github.com/xpgo/obsidian-folder-note-plugin
- Vault folder - A specified folder in your vault - In the same folder as the current file - In subfolder under the current folder
But again, that's just the default location; you can put it anywhere and reference it wherever it is using relative paths.
(Also the rest of Obsidian seems to not be aware the plugin is there, the notes graph is still referencing the wrong things...)
I ask because there was one other note taking app that couldn't cope with the semantics of Google drive's write activity (been a while and i've forgotten which one) and consequently I lost data
On the personal side, I dislike aesthetics and wouldn't ever use it 'cause of Electron, tho. I'm spoiled by native note-taking apps like Bear and Noteplan on macOS which have much nicer UX and UI, especially on mobile.
One plugin I am wish will arrive soon is Google Calendar integration.
For what use? There's an obsidian-ics plugin to fill a daily note with events from a calendar, ans obsidian-google-lookup to put Google Calendar events and contacts as objects in notes.
Obsidian has completely changed my notes workflow over the past year. It's so lightweight, and has just the right amount of structure for me. Thank you for building it! The new interface looks fantastic.
Does this include an update to the iOS app?
Also more performant and less plugin-dependent.
Tip for anyone wondering: if you need encryption, gocryptfs works great.
Now I just need to wait for Flathub to update…
Also I really want the file name to be independent of the heading, like it used to be.
Also it is great and I gave you my money.
Obsidian has changed my life. Everything about this software is chefs kiss.
Thankyou.
Funny, that was the exact title of my personal wiki that I started in 2006 or so.
After using Roam I can never go backwards to plain text, I need a block based editor with infinite nesting. I’ve recently switched to Tana.
Here I recorded a comparison https://imgur.com/a/6QzpwYw
Will give it a chance, looks so good and has several interesting features that I may didn't know that I needed. Kudos to the Obsidian team.
Also, from what I can see, there is no 2FA, am I wrong?..
There is no 2FA because there is no authentication necessary. All the files are local to your device.
It's both a pre-configured knowledge base (with a structure, plugins, templates, etc) and a detailed user guide with theory and practical how-to guides.
It's not free but might be a good investment if you want to spare time when diving in.
Things I like about the app:
* (Generally) good keyboard support
* Syncing (but I'm paying for it)
* Good native apps on mobile
Things that aren't so good
* Editing code blocks
[1] https://www.craft.do/
Craft uses a proprietary data format. Obsidian is more portable since it just uses folders of Markdown files.
Craft for Windows doesn’t work offline (only online).
Kudos to the team!
[1]: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/2...
Maybe some of it is true for logseq, but finding articles, tutorials, guidelines and examples for obsidian certainly contributes to it's success.
Looking through that link, though, I don't see anything too absurd. It's a closed-source app, which isn't ideal but is common enough. It looks like they have a Github repo that explicitly does not have the core source code but hosts some secondary files, and that's spelled out in the first couple lines of the readme.
Seems fine to me, overall. Maybe there's something objectionable I missed in there?
Does anyone have any experience with their Android app? How well does it work these days?
[0]: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-release-v1-0-0/44873
[1] https://commonmark.org/
https://github.com/OliverBalfour/obsidian-pandoc
That being said standard Markdown does not provide notation for certain things, so it is somewhat up to interpretation how to convert certain features to standard Markdown.
https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap
You can also check out the privacy policy here: https://obsidian.md/privacy
I don't even use half the features/capabilities but as a simple markdown editor w/ links it's fantastic.
Have to say though - it's quite a bit of work to get the whole Foam ecosystem working compared to obsidian but once you get it done it's very freeing.
Delete, good bye, auf wiedersehen!
If I were to need to start writing a book this week, this is probably where I'd organize the research and composition.
You can use it as a journal, personal wiki, knowledge base, task management, or just a Markdown text editor. There are hundreds of plugins that make it easy to tailor the app to your needs.
It's also focused on privacy and future-proofing your notes. All your data is stored locally in a folder of plain text files.
Do you mean using a third-party sync application (Syncthing for example)? All I could find is a feature request: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/self-hosted-sync-server/20975/13
My epiphany of the decade.
Thank you SO MUCH!!!
Sorry I don't want to sound disrespectul but I didn't found an quick and easy parsable description. If I would show this my parents, I wouldn't be sure if they could guess. :/
"Obsidian is a powerful and extensible knowledge base" ?????
It's essentially an app for taking notes and jotting down ideas, and you write them in markdown. You can link references to other notes within a note to link up ideas.
Here's a 12 minute demo that should give you an idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbLb6QCK88
I'm not that quite in-depth with my usage of it. I essentially use it as a scratchpad for a few notes for work. But it does the job
A similar app, Roam Research, is the same story as Obsidian, only a few chapters ahead. Roam's marketing campaign actually referred to itself and its users as a literal cult.
Ultimately, like self help, it's all just more of the same - cashgrabs that make people feel like they're improving or achieving, with every self help quip they consoom, with every "second brain" note they take.
Ultimately, they're just games for wasting time - "tool games" [1].
[1] https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=33135227
These tools are technologically great, but they are not 10x better than notepad.exe
The marketing and hype around these tools are self perpetuating. Some twitter guru will post about these tools and get kickback or an increase in followers. People who pay for tools post about their experience online so they can signal to other people who have paid for this tool that yes, they now belong to the cool kids club too.
And there are content creators who's income depends on these tools. They will 'review' these tools, post a review online and unknown to most people, they will be getting some money for this review under the table.
I've also seen that this is all mostly limited to tech folks who consume too much of their info from Twitter and Youtube. None of my offline friends know about Obsidian, Roam, or the zillion productivity tools that are being produced.
That's cap. Obsidian is many, many times more powerful and useful than notepad.exe. It's a completely different class of product. It's virtually an operating system unto itself.
- blanket admonishment of others' efforts towards creativity and developing insights
which you already have and that can come only from inside your great mind.
Please fluoresce and share your brilliant illuminating light of self-made intelligence and inspiration upon us, the sheep-like, turf-sprawled, vibrating masses.
> Obsidian 1.0, the all-new Obsidian.
> A brand new look. A fresh way to browse. An exciting new start.
You could also be misled into thinking this is the home page.
The actual home page does a better job of getting to the point of what Obsidian is:
https://obsidian.md
(And BTW, I recommend Obsidian, it's excellent)
You can build much more complicated systems with it (I also have it as my todo app and have it pulling out todos from all my notes and prioritising them), or you can use it as a slightly nicer version of using vs code with a folder of markdown files, which was my precious system (there's also Dendron, which is the same idea but as a vs code plugin).
So I'm thinking that this is a _ME_ problem and not necessarily a 'Product Description' problem.
After installing it, and typing in a few things I notice that it's similar to ZIM (another desktop wiki app) on the surface.
I also appreciate that you corrected my misuse of "markup" when I should have said markdown without making me feel like an idiot.
Also yes Obsidian is pretty much a wiki.
Again, don't want to sound disrespectful and I will definitely try the tool.
My obsidian has turned into a personal Wikipedia and it's crazy how much it's improved my efficiency.
The main difference is that your notes are stored in a readable plain text format.
But if you are interested in an open format, you may as well go the full route and use the similar open-source app logseq instead.
[1] https://logseq.com/
Or some subset(s) sure, fine. It's flexible. But the huge value is more readily apparent when it is all the documents (for some meaningul value of "all").
This google trends graph confirms my suspicion that it was a more common term back then: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=K...
Out of curiosity I tried to find older references. There are references using this definition back to at least 1995. Beyond that it's trickier because apparently "knowledge base" was used to describe the knowledge available to an AI system during the expert systems era, which is a somewhat different definition. e.g. Lehnert 1977: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED150955.pdf
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Vester#Networked_Thin...