[HN Gopher] Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile - Plain-text knowledge ...
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Show HN: Obsidian for Mobile - Plain-text knowledge base on the go
Author : ericax
Score : 640 points
Date : 2021-07-12 07:09 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (obsidian.md)
(TXT) w3m dump (obsidian.md)
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| Has anyone used Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/)? How does it
| compare to Obsidian?
|
| I've used Joplin for a while. It's Markdown so I like it. The UI
| is dry (compared to Evernote).
| sharikone wrote:
| 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.
| uxamanda wrote:
| I am a big fan of Joplin and a plugin advocate for enabling
| features like Backlinks. The best plugin IMHO is the Rich
| Markdown plugin.
|
| Here's a list in case anyone is curious what is available.
| https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/plugin-list/17671
| noisy_boy wrote:
| 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.
| murrayb wrote:
| 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.
| nyx wrote:
| Yeah, I've used both. I think the main things that Obsidian
| does better are its UI (which is pretty good, some annoyances
| around creating new notes and managing folder structure), and
| the fact that its notes are one-to-one with actual .md files on
| disk.
|
| In comparison, Joplin keeps its notes in a more opaque format,
| where the notes database is a bunch of files with garbage
| filenames and so on... and the UI is, er... functional.
|
| I've been trying to switch away from Obsidian to Joplin though,
| because Obsidian is payware (with add-on subscription services
| available too!) and Joplin is simply open source.
| jl6 wrote:
| The website says it's free for personal use. Is there a bait-
| and-switch somewhere?
| laurent123456 wrote:
| Just to clarify the license:
|
| - 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.
| g3vxy wrote:
| They are just selling their own sync option. Since Obsidian
| store all the notes as plain markdown files on disk you can
| just use another sync option like Dropbox or even git.
| cja wrote:
| Or SyncThing (but download SyncTrayzor to make using
| SyncThing easy)
| jl6 wrote:
| I'm looking for a note taking app that does iOS<-->Linux
| syncing. Joplin seems to be able to do it via Dropbox.
| hammon wrote:
| 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
| redman007 wrote:
| 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.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| 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?
| andix wrote:
| If obsidian really hits it off, maybe there will be an open
| source clone once, that is compatible with Obsidian's plugin
| ecosystem.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| 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
| sureglymop wrote:
| It works fine with mobile if you're on Android. I use
| Nextcloud to sync as well as git for versioning.
|
| But syncthing would probably be the easiest option for
| this!
| truth_ wrote:
| Have you ever tried tiddlywiki?
| reitanuki wrote:
| There's Syncthing for Android if you look in F-Droid, at
| least. Plus a fork with some Android specific tweaks
| andix wrote:
| I used it for a while and switched to obsidian.
|
| 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)
| foolinaround wrote:
| > 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.
| andix wrote:
| It works. But it's not easy to use.
|
| 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.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Does allows you to Visualize the links between notes? That's
| one powerful feature where Obsidian seems to be clearly
| dominating.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| For Joplin, the Link Graph plugin does this -
| https://github.com/treymo/joplin-link-graph#link-graph-ui-
| fo...
| richliss wrote:
| Lost data with Joplin from weird sync and encryption issues so
| tried Obsidian.
|
| Within a few days I'd paid for VIP and now subscribe to sync
| too.
|
| It's fantastic especially with the plug-ins.
| brnt wrote:
| 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.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| 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.
| rvieira wrote:
| 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.
| nsriv wrote:
| Do you have any tips for making Obsidian function like
| Noteplan? I'm out of the iOS/Mac ecosystem but love how it
| works.
| rvieira wrote:
| I use a few plugins to manage tasks:
|
| - "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.
| eddyg wrote:
| This post may be of interest: https://axle.design/why-and-
| how-to-use-obsidian-and-noteplan...
| bachmeier wrote:
| 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.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| 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.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I used to use Joplin, nothing wrong with it, but I found
| Obsidian via HN a while back, and it just kinda clicked for me.
|
| With the plugins and bits now, its really quite nice - and
| personally I find the UI much nicer than Joplin
| sen wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://gitlab.com/stavros/notes/
|
| I also like how it easily syncs with NextCloud and works well.
| bigbossman wrote:
| I was Roam cult early on, but left the flock after frequent
| slowdowns and losing a bunch of files during one of their
| outages.
|
| Obsidian is the best. I expect to use it forever, and even if it
| goes away, all the files are stored in plain text without any
| proprietary data formats or databases.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| Their mobile text editor looks very good. Anyone knows what
| library they used for it?
|
| Edit: Based on one of the developer's comments, it's CodeMirror
| 6, which makes sense since it's the only editor with good mobile
| support.
| pps wrote:
| Codemirror 6, AFAIK
| spookyuser wrote:
| Aside from the other praise people have given Obsidian it is also
| by far the fastest electron app I've ever used by a lot. Curious
| if the devs have any insight how they have made it feel so
| performant.
| chishaku wrote:
| Everything changes when you ditch the network and store the
| database locally (markdown files and json metadata).
|
| I used Notion for years before Obsidian and the speed alone is
| a reason to never go back.
|
| On a related note, I also consider Linear to be quite fast and
| responsive especially when you learn the keyboard shortcuts.
| And to achieve that responsiveness, they load the whole
| database (or deltas) at startup.
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| The secret to development is to just follow classic programming
| patterns instead of new school "best practices" that are rife
| among the kinds of programmers who are creating Electron apps,
| and you should be good. In fact, JS is insanely fast, so you
| don't even need to do that. (Netscape 6, which came out 20
| years ago, had tons of its parts written JS, down to the AOL
| Instant Messenger client it shipped with. It was essentially
| the forebear to every Electron app you see today, except it was
| supposed to run on computers with 64 MB of RAM, CPUs measured
| in hundreds of megahertz, and this was all fully interpreted,
| not JITted.) NodeJS development is so bad that you can appear
| to be nimble just by not sucking _as much_ as the status quo.
| "You don't have to be faster than the bear..."
|
| A second thing you can do is not rely on a bunch of bloated,
| poorly written libraries just because they're popular--another
| "best practice", of a different sort. I.e., pretty much the
| opposite of this advice, ironically:
|
| <https://youtu.be/X61wRmfZU8Y?t=223>
| er4hn wrote:
| Can you list out some classic patterns that you see being
| ignored?
| sygma wrote:
| I've been very much enjoying FSNotes [0] as a replacement for
| Notational Velocity (and nvALT) which are both abandonware at
| this point. FSNotes is a native app, is FLOSS and is actively
| maintained. It lacks some of the advanced features of Obsidian
| (like Graph View) but it has the essentials (hyperlinks and tag
| sidebar).
|
| [0] https://fsnot.es/
| eddyg wrote:
| I switched from nVALT to FSNotes, and then to Obsidian. FSNotes
| was too buggy for me. In particular, I'd go to search for
| something and somehow after a few characters I was randomly
| typing in to some saved note. Obsidian has been excellent. I
| suggest dragging the "magnifying glass" icon to it's own "tab"
| so it's always visible (something I'm used to with nvALT /
| FSNotes).
| sygma wrote:
| I've filed bug reports and the FSNotes developer fixed them
| within days. I'll take a look at Obsidian too, thanks!
| notdang wrote:
| I am still using nvALT and the application works despite the
| fact that it wasn't updated in years.
|
| Funny personal fact is that I started to use nvALT after seeing
| it mentioned in a bad fiction book, one of those that you read
| because you get stuck somewhere and it's the only book
| available.
| least wrote:
| I'm still waiting on one of these applications to actually have
| vim keybindings for their iPad app - there are quite a few
| applications that I think use code mirror which for whatever
| reason doesn't seem to support it.
|
| At least I'm assuming that's the reason, given the feature is
| notably absent from every note application that supports a vim
| mode on desktop on iPadOS. Please, someone implement this.
| cube2222 wrote:
| That's lovely!
|
| I've started using Obsidian just yesterday and have been loving
| it so far. I had to get 1writer to work with it on the go, and
| now this, problem solved!
|
| It was my only major gripe with the product. Now it's perfect!
|
| It's really really useful when notes about a topic surpass one
| page, and need good organization.
| zorrow331 wrote:
| I thought 1Writer was good enough for the job (basically just
| note input + viewing one or two key files), Plus the dropbox
| sync works a treat.
| cube2222 wrote:
| Actually, what would make it totally perfect, would be an easy
| way to create editable handwritten blocks on an iPad.
| sureglymop wrote:
| 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.
| nklmilojevic wrote:
| I've tried Obsidian and it is not for me. I really don't like the
| trend of apps being in Electron and there are much better native
| apps, especially on macOS (Bear, IA Writer, Ulysses).
|
| Trying to understand - what is the feature that Obsidian got you
| hooked? Usually HN is very critical of Electron apps, but not on
| this one and I'm really interested why. :)
| creakingstairs wrote:
| For me it's:
|
| - vim binding supported out of box
|
| - notes stored in markdown files
|
| - bi-directional linking
|
| - feels pretty snappy
|
| I would have considered bear if it supported vim bindings and
| was also available on windows (work laptop)
| bosie wrote:
| I switched from Bear to Obsidian due to the inertia of bear
| development. What hooked me was:
|
| - Vim support
|
| - text files on disk
|
| - plugin support. community around it makes that worth it.
| currently i have 16 plugins installed. and most of them work
| fine on the mobile app too
| encima wrote:
| For me: cross platform (the power of the app on iPad as well as
| Android is pretty amazing). Custom templates: being able to run
| a CLI command and pull those. data directly into a note is
| glorious Other thoughts: - Easy refactoring - My own cloud
| storage (syncthing and synology) - Plugins - Workspaces
| cube2222 wrote:
| You're listing standard note taking tools, and I've also mainly
| been using Bear so far.
|
| But when I have a lot of notes regarding a topic I start
| creating a lot of sections in a note, sometimes multiple notes,
| which are hard to navigate from one to another, etc.
|
| So Obsidian for me shines when I have a topic or area when I
| need to have a lot of nodes, which are in some ways related to
| one another. Or even have a hierarchical structure.
|
| My use case currently is developing OctoSQL as a side project
| and having to keep:
|
| 1. TODOs
|
| 2. Random non-categorized notes
|
| 3. Ideas
|
| 4. Notes specific to some in-progress features, so i.e. a note
| for optimizer strategies, a note-per-datasource describing the
| current state and todo's related to a datasource.
|
| And some of those are best represented as a tree hierarchy, so
| I can start representing that using references in Obsidian, and
| easily navigate them using the graph view.
|
| Bear is too disorganized for me to do that sustainably (most
| notes get forgotten and re-discovered a few weeks/months
| later).
| nl wrote:
| You may not have noticed, but there's a lot less criticism of
| electron these days. I think it's gotten sufficiently
| performant that most people don't care anymore.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| The internal linking between docs is the best implementation
| I've ever seen.
|
| I also like that it's just markdown under the hood.
|
| It's not perfect. Multiple vaults can be clunky and if I want
| to share a vault with someone it's going to get complicated,
| but it's pretty slick at what it does.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I love Obsidian and I've been taking notes this way for about a
| year. But somehow I still find myself going back to VSCode with
| some extensions which add obsidian like behavior very often. I
| don't quite know why but I think it's a combination of being able
| to open any file regardless of whether it's a note, the quicker
| workflow for snippets and the bigger community around VSCode
| (more extensions).
|
| The good thing though, is that my "note vault" works with either,
| because it's just a folder containing plaintext files, some notes
| and some configuration files.
|
| What I would love is if they made it possible to self host
| obsidian publish.
| cja wrote:
| You might like Foam then, which is like Obsidian implemented in
| VSCode
| sureglymop wrote:
| I've tried Foam but I've landed on Markdown Memo (https://mar
| ketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=svsool.m...) which
| also has the Graph view and so on implemented.
|
| I use a lot more markdown related extensions too but this is
| the main one in VSCode.
| gregwebs wrote:
| I have been happy enough with SimpleNote - great cross platform
| markdown note sync. You can link notes and publish them. Not open
| source but no cost.
|
| Just tried the Obsidian mobile app - it is fast as well. I am
| tempted to switch for the vi key bindings.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| For Plugins, are they just javascript imports?
|
| If that's the case, hypothetically i could run a WASM app as the
| primary plugin code, right? The idea of extending functionality
| of Obsidian has me super interested in buying into Obsidian and
| developing extensions i'm interested in!
|
| _edit_ : Wow, this seems like a super yes.
| https://github.com/trashhalo/obsidian-rust-plugin - this is
| exactly what i was planning. Really cool!
|
| This is the first time i'm actually been happy about a web based
| plugin lol
| vorejdajo wrote:
| The android app doesn't work without forced broad access to all
| storage. The reasoning provided for the Android app's storage
| permission[1] is a privacy nightmare.
|
| 1. Performance reductions for sake of privacy is acceptable. 2.
| Feature reductions such as watching a directory are also
| acceptable. No other app even uses this feature. This isn't
| Linux.
|
| In any case, The app can still run without storage access, but
| chooses not to. It can access it's own internal storage at root
| without permissions. It can also access a dedicated app specific
| directory in external storage. If I just want to use the app
| without storage permissions, I should be able to.
|
| 1:
| https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Android+app#Storage+Permis...
| student2k wrote:
| the only things I didn't like of obsidian was working with images
| was a nightmare, in Evernote you have a shortcut to take an area
| screenshot, it stores automatically in a folder, then you can
| write stuff below it, and move it to another folder, really good
| work flow I miss in obsidian.
| singhrac wrote:
| For me the copy and paste into a note functionality works
| perfectly. Actually that's one of the most seamless parts of
| the app. I use it everywhere along with macOS's built in
| screenshot.
| noyesno wrote:
| I use the OS's native screenshot functionality[1] and just
| paste it directly to the note. The only thing I need to
| remember is to assign the attachment folder, so that the image
| ends up in the correct place. If you move the note or the
| attachment/image file via Obsidian's own file browser, all
| links are updated automagically.
|
| [1] Win10: Win + Shift + S OSX: Shift + Command + 4 Linux:
| Shift + Ctrl + PrtSc
| vira28 wrote:
| Awesome release. Only thing that's left for me to move from Apple
| notes is Pencil support.
| TRcontrarian wrote:
| Obsidian is the closest thing I've found to the Pensive from
| Harry Potter. It's a data recording format good enough for me to
| extract thoughts from my mind, represent them with enough
| fidelity to reconstruct later, connect them to the concepts that
| they are related to in my head, and then forget the thought
| completely so I can move on and process it later.
|
| I was only willing to try it out because I had heard it mentioned
| [0] on CGP Grey's cohosted podcast, Cortex, in the episode they
| did on productivity software subcultures. Specifically I think
| CGP Grey was saying he didn't "get" Obsidian but had observed a
| fanatic fanbase around it of people who thought it was god's gift
| to note-taking because it represented the links between knowledge
| in a unique way. Apparently I'm one of those people because I
| went from installing it for the first time to writing all my new
| thoughts down in it in the space of 3 days.
|
| I suspect the real reason I liked Obsidian right away is that
| long ago I used Microsoft Onenote as a freeform notetaking app to
| just spew unrelated thoughts into that I could organize later.
| Onenote's interface was good, but there was no way to port those
| notes in an exportable format to a new computer when the one with
| a Onenote license died.
|
| [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey/comments/ihkqjp/cortex_105_..
| .
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| You're right it was on Cortex, clarification though:
|
| Grey loves Obsidian, Mike doesn't really get it though. Neither
| like Notion, even though it has a massive fan base.
|
| There is a whole episode (maybe the one in question) where it
| comes to light that Grey has spent most of his life NOT making
| notes like most people do and instead just highlighting areas
| in source material and referring back to it.
|
| Very funny episode given they were over 100 episodes into a
| productivity podcast at this point and had spoken about note
| taking extensively - without realising that one of them has a
| very different concept of the practice/process.
| h3mb3 wrote:
| I think this is the episode you are reffering to?
| https://www.relay.fm/cortex/105
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| 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.
| SamBam wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| Starts at ~37 min mark
| darekkay wrote:
| > when the one with a Onenote license died
|
| 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.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| > 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.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| > OneNote has been free for the last few years.
|
| Only if you store your notes in OneDrive.
| darekkay wrote:
| > 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.
| darekkay wrote:
| I can't edit my post, but my guess was correct:
|
| > [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...
| [deleted]
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > OneNote has been free for the last few years.
|
| 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.
| darekkay wrote:
| > 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).
|
| [0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-the-
| differ...
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| 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!
| whimsicalism wrote:
| No?
| [deleted]
| dkislyuk wrote:
| Obsidian has really delivered in a crowded note-taking space by
| focusing on the fundamentals:
|
| 1. Privacy. You can roll your own syncing (or use iCloud,
| Dropbox, etc.), without the notes being stored on the note
| editors' servers, which is a huge win over Roam, Notion,
| Evernote, etc. After the Evernote fiasco from a few years ago
| (where they considered reading your notes for ML model training
| and got massive pushback), I value future-proof solutions that
| won't become a liability in 10 years if the company providing the
| note taking software gets desperate.
|
| 2. Markdown. Speaking of future-proofing, Markdown is as close as
| it gets to having interoperability with the notes. Obsidian is at
| its core just a Markdown file editor, which means your notes are
| stored as plaintext and easy to export. There is a bit of
| Obsidian-flavored syntax (e.g. bi-directional links [[...]]), but
| these are becoming standard in note-taking. Many note-taking apps
| claim export functionality, but at the end of the day they're not
| incentivized to give you your data in a format that will work
| with other editors.
|
| 3. Executing on features that have become indispensable for note-
| taking, and personal knowledge management specifically: bi-
| directional linking, block-embeds, query-embeds, unlinked
| mentions, graph view, custom CSS, note aliases, markdown diagrams
| (via mermaid), and a few others.
|
| 4. Offline support. If there's any kind of login or sync required
| to access your notes on your personal device, that's a
| dealbreaker for me. This seems to have been a regression lately
| in the latest batch of note-taking apps.
|
| My entire personal knowledge base was in Evernote for a few
| years, and now happily migrated to Obsidian. The graph view is
| just a magical way to explore the knowledge that you've stumbled
| upon over the years.
|
| The team gives away so much value in the core app for free. If
| you enjoy their product, consider supporting via the Catalyst
| plan: https://obsidian.md/pricing
| pradn wrote:
| Is Markdown a viable format given its many many flavors and
| quirks? I suppose you can just stick to the common features,
| but then the feature-set is pretty basic.
| chris_st wrote:
| My feeling is -- it's plain text with simple, comprehensible
| markup. It'd be pretty simple to convert to some other
| similar format.
|
| I'm not going to wait for the "one true format" while
| something good enough is here.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > but then the feature-set is pretty basic.
|
| Yes, perfect.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Speaking of future-proofing, Markdown is as close as it gets
| to having interoperability with the notes. Obsidian is at its
| core just a Markdown file editor, which means your notes are
| stored as plaintext and easy to export. There is a bit of
| Obsidian-flavored syntax (e.g. bi-directional links [[...]]),
| but these are becoming standard in note-taking. Many note-
| taking apps claim export functionality, but at the end of the
| day they're not incentivized to give you your data in a format
| that will work with other editors.
|
| This is actually the reason I don't use Obsidian. It's _built
| on_ markdown, but _it is not markdown_. Things may be different
| now, but when I gave up on Obsidian, there was no general
| purpose exporter - you either use their editor or you lose much
| of the useful information in your notes. This would not by
| itself be a big problem except for the fact that Obsidian is a
| standard piece of proprietary software. It genuinely solves
| nothing in regard to future proofing.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it's close enough that you can write your own parser to some
| other format with a little bit of hacking, in fact that's
| what I did to port my notes from obsidian to logseq a while
| ago.
|
| Of course it's a little bit of trouble but I imagine most
| people won't want to switch their notetaking apps that
| frequently.
| threatofrain wrote:
| If you wanted strictly markdown then you could just stick to
| markdown, but the set of popular features which extend
| markdown are developing consensus across the ecosystem, such
| that you can get most of Obsidian's functionality with less
| than a handful of popular VSC extensions.
|
| In that sense Obsidian is just a fancy viewer for documents
| which can be edited in VSC.
|
| And with regards to vanilla markdown (which would exclude the
| likes of Github or Gitlab, or the most popular extensions on
| VSC), personally, I wouldn't be satisfied with the exclusion
| of Latex which is already in widespread support across
| markdown supporting apps.
|
| Community markdown is a moving target because John Gruber's
| initial vision is frozen in time whilst the demand for
| innovation is ballooning. It's unfortunate because the
| trademark for markdown is in some ways in the same ballpark
| of value as the community buy-in for the technology.
| TuringTest wrote:
| On the open source front you get zettlr.com, a pure markdown
| WYSIWYM editor with image preview, pandoc integration for
| exporting groups of pages into whole documents, support for
| Zettlekasten workflows, and academic references management.
|
| It's a one-man effort by a guy who created it for working on
| his PhD, but it's quite robust and usable despite a few small
| flaws (who should be corrected in version 2.0, likely coming
| during the year).
| cywick wrote:
| The notes are very much markdown files. There is a very small
| number of extensions the Obsidian developers created (e.g., a
| syntax for linking to a specific paragraph within a note)
| that are not markdown, but it's very easy to not use them.
|
| I'm using the exact same folder of markdown notes in parallel
| with Obsidian, The Archive, 1Writer, Calca, TableFlip, Python
| scripts, and Keyboard Maestro macros I have written and
| everything works flawlessly together.
|
| To me, the killer feature of markdown notes is not the
| future-proofing, but this kind of seamless interoperability.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > The notes are very much markdown files.
|
| I don't much want to get into a debate over semantics, but
| markdown plus extensions with useful information (like
| links) does not qualify in my book as markdown. Sure, if
| you want to limit yourself to the parts that are
| interoperable go ahead, but then you're not using some of
| the best parts of Obsidian.
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| In that case, GitHub doesn't support Markdown, then,
| considering it shits the bed on one of the most crucial
| parts of the Markdown design: line-breaking behavior to
| preserve the readability of the "raw" form.
|
| (Watch now as everyone rushes in to try to say that this
| behavior is an exception, as if you just brought up that
| their favorite uncle has some unsavory qualities.)
| adkadskhj wrote:
| Agreed. And what is exactly expected to be done, if
| sticking to strictly "Markdown spec"? You can't do
| anything meaningful with such a small subset of language
| features, where as Obsidian and Obsidian Plugins are all
| about extending Markdown to provide additional features
| ontop of the language, but stored in plain markdown.
|
| This would only be non-Markdown if it fundamentally broke
| something in Markdown. Ie lists no longer worked, or
| *bold* was used to link documents, etc.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| I'm curious what you use as your markdown to HTML
| converter.
| setr wrote:
| > markdown plus extensions with useful information (like
| links) does not qualify in my book as markdown
|
| Almost every useful markdown system extends markdown
| arbitrarily. Markdown is standardized much like SQL is --
| a standard exists, but it standardized very little;
| mostly just defining the look & feel of the extensions
| olav wrote:
| I am really curious: Why does restructured text get so
| little mindshare? I used it once to make an ebook into a
| website, using sphinx. The format is easy to write and read
| and it has extensibility as a builtin.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| An "export to standard markdown" feature is on the Obsidian
| roadmap, in the "short-term" column.
|
| https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap
|
| edit: they've moved it to the "working on" column
| bachmeier wrote:
| It was on the roadmap when I gave up however long ago.
| caconym_ wrote:
| +1. I found Obsidian a few weeks ago and it really is
| everything I've been wishing for in a "note taking" app. I put
| "note taking" in quotes because I've moved all my writing into
| it, too--it's wonderful to have notes so close at hand while
| I'm working, and Markdown is the gold standard for exporting to
| every presentation format I care about. It's the only richly
| featured writing app I've found that seems to understand how
| overbearing WYSIWYG editing and proprietary file formats/cloud
| garbage just get in the way of productivity.
|
| The only shame with the mobile version is that (last I checked)
| it doesn't have Dropbox support, which makes it more or less
| useless to me. Hopefully it's on their list.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Does the Obsidian app auto update? I ask because that would be
| an avenue for future evil acquisition co to introduce mandatory
| syncing. They could introduce an update which downloads from
| your custom setup and uploads to their servers.
|
| Their privacy policy also allows them to use personal
| information for the purposes of
|
| > recommending products and services that Dynalist believes
| will be of interest and provide value to you
| whimsicalism wrote:
| And then it would be just as easy to switch to any other
| markdown editor that supports linked notes.
| SamBam wrote:
| > My entire personal knowledge base was in Evernote for a few
| years, and now happily migrated to Obsidian.
|
| Can I ask what your use-cases were for Evernote, and how well
| they all migrated to Obsidian?
|
| When I think over my Evernote usage, for me it really boils
| down to three things:
|
| 1. Evergreen notes, like lists of books to read
|
| 2. Wiki-ish knowledgebase for work, like how do I get data from
| this server, or whatever
|
| 3. Digital shoebox: the place to throw old receipts, tax
| returns, contracts, whatever. Mostly throw it in and forget it,
| but useful for the 1% of time when I need to find something and
| it's magically there.
|
| Numbers 1 and 2 could easily be moved to Obsidian, but I don't
| know if 3 would work.
| criddell wrote:
| My Evernote usage is a lot like yours. Ever since the Windows
| client switched to being a web app I've been planning on
| moving to something else but it's hard to find something that
| ticks all the boxes from me.
|
| I still use a web clipper because pages go away too often.
|
| I want image OCR because it's nice to search for something
| and have a snapshot of a whiteboard come up.
|
| I want a native client on iPad and Windows. I would prefer
| local storage if possible.
|
| Basically, I want Evernote from about 7 years ago.
| shabazahmed wrote:
| Was waiting for this, will try out git to sybc data between
| desktop and mobile.
| cja wrote:
| I use SyncThing for this. Works perfectly. (But download
| SyncTrayzor to make using SyncThing easy)
| jonotime wrote:
| I want to use a tool like this but I dont like using Markdown for
| taking notes. Its far too restrictive. Which is why I keep coming
| back to plaintext. These days my formatting is just deep tabs.
| Anyone know of tooling around this? I created a plugin for now
| here https://github.com/jonocodes/vscode-tabtext
|
| but I'd still like a better tool. Worth a try to ask, I guess.
| spidersouris wrote:
| What exactly do you find restrictive with MD?
| jonotime wrote:
| MD is great for a readme, or a book where someone is going to
| read it once and digest the info. Markdown is a presentation
| format and is much easier to write then HTML since its less
| expressive.
|
| Note taking can be deep and contain a lot of data (lists of
| items copied form CSVs, code snippets, documenting failures).
| Notes are more like code. You can spend your whole day in it
| - tweaking code blocks, refactoring, etc.
|
| A lot of my sections are 5 tabs deep. Doing this with stars
| is harder to type, harder to copy/paste, and harder to read.
| afarviral wrote:
| I don't understand. Can you not just indent text to an
| arbitrary depth? I definitely get what you mean about
| treating like code/refactoring, but I have found I can
| easily do this since there so are many options. The only
| area it is lacking is not being able to take handwritten
| diagrams and tables (or similar)...furiatingly fiddly. But
| as far as the depth and complexity of hierarchy ... That's
| not something markdown is lacking? Especially in comparison
| to plain text. Maybe revisit it.
| jonotime wrote:
| Yes I can do arbitrary depth text in markdown but then it
| becomes text, not markdown. Then you are rending a mix of
| different things which are not semantically meaningful to
| a tool. Are you suggesting I use MD for the top levels,
| then then free text when nesting gets deeper?
|
| To be clear I cobbled together an example of what my
| notes may look like: https://gist.github.com/jonocodes/55
| 74dc799774b4613c33d2572b...
|
| I'm not even sure what tab level 2 should be in Markdown.
| Should it be a unordered list or a heading level 2? At
| what depth would I switch from headings, to lists, to
| plain text etc? I hit a wall pretty quickly with
| Markdowns restrictiveness here.
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| It's great that there is a PDF export option. But it would also
| be nice if there were better options for customizing PDFs without
| having to rely on other tools like Pandoc.
|
| My use case is to export end-user documentation to PDFs including
| title page, TOC, headers, and footers.
| usrme wrote:
| I was actually very surprised to learn from a comment above that
| you are also working on Dynalist, something I'm a happy user of.
| While I understand that Dynalist is an outliner and that Obsidian
| acts as more of a knowledge base, I'm still curious to know
| whether you see Obsidian superseding Dynalist in the future?
| Would I also be able to transfer everything I have in Dynalist to
| Obsidian in the future?
| rvieira wrote:
| You might want to check LogSeq [0] for an Obsidian/Dynalist
| hybrid :) (Not affiliated, just a huge fan)
|
| [0] - https://logseq.com/
| adkadskhj wrote:
| In your mind how do LogSeq and Obsidian differ?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| LogSeq is an outliner (like Workflowy, the prototypical
| example) whereas Obsidian is a note-taking/graph app.
|
| They're both markdown backed, which is nice.
| beshrkayali wrote:
| If you're on Emacs I'd recommend checking out org roam [1]. I've
| been using it for a while to do connected notes (Zettelkasten)
| and I've been very happy with it. I tried a couple of methods for
| note taking and this one seems to be the one that I've managed to
| stick with the most.
|
| 1: https://www.orgroam.com/
| bentoner wrote:
| Strong recommendation for both Obsidian and Dynalist, the other
| product of this crazy productive duo. I really appreciate their
| understanding that users want to be able customize their note-
| taking/life-organizing system.
|
| Is there a plugin or something that enables list folding in a
| markdown file? I'm wondering whether it's time to migrate the
| Dynalist parts of my system to Obsidian and that's the big thing
| I'd miss.
| genghizkhan wrote:
| Yup. It's called Outliner.
| bentoner wrote:
| Thanks! I also found the "Fold indent" setting in the core
| app.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Link to outline https://github.com/vslinko/obsidian-outliner
| Philipp0205 wrote:
| Outliner and the zoom plugin give you the full outliner
| experience.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| ...exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks for posting about
| it!
| ftwynn wrote:
| Been using Obsidian for a few months.
|
| The thing that's most impressive to me is that the plugin
| community is constantly building radical new things you can do...
| seemingly every week. Normally I think of plugins as offshoot
| nice to have things, but in Obsidian's case the community comes
| up with vastly different, potentially workflow altering stuff all
| the time... from templating systems to query languages to task
| management to kanbans to mind mapping to uri improvements to
| outliner capabilities for plain markdown lists.
|
| And while not 100%, many of them port easily to mobile thanks to
| Obsidian's hybrid approach. So all that power travels with you.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I use Notable.app to track notes on my high school pupils, lesson
| plans for teaching CS, and instances of individual lessons where
| I've delivered those lessons to different groups of pupils. Also
| mixed in where log notes on coding clubs, tutorials, staff
| meetings etc.
|
| It is a great tool and has been game changing. But...
|
| My workflow is inextricably linked to the way I use Notable.app
| and while I'm kind of happy with it, one way linking without a
| back button is a massive drag. As a markdown editor it is utterly
| fantastic. As an organiser of knowledge it is good, but could be
| better, but I can't move on from it without a lot of work to
| migrate my _workflow_. I'll get around to it at some point this
| summer but only if I get comfortable with a workflow in another
| tool first.
|
| My point: be careful how you integrate these tools into your
| life. You are basically betting married to them.
|
| They can be amazing. They can also be amazing 90% of the time and
| leave you high and dry in ways that make you want to move on, but
| cannot.
| Madeindjs wrote:
| Same for me.
|
| I tried to build a [plugin for
| VScode](https://github.com/madeindjs/vscode-notable) (with a
| fraction of feature of notable) but I finally moved to
| [Dendron](http://dendron.so/). I'm happy with it for the moment
| because I feel less coupled to a Software.
| lolive wrote:
| I use Dropbox to sync my Obsidian folder. I wonder how Obsidian
| for Mobile can handle that. [I presume it cannot]
| chrizel wrote:
| See https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app and
| https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Android+app for your sync
| options.
| EleanorKonik wrote:
| I use Dropbox via DropSync and it's been working great for
| months. I'm told by folks in the Discord that Dropbox mobile
| app itself probably works, I just personally preferred the
| (free) DropSync app for syncing with my Dropbox account.
| ivolimmen wrote:
| I have used many different note taking tools and I like Obsidian
| but I am a very happy user of https://notable.app/. I also tried
| https://www.zettlr.com/ in the past but that one actually edits
| in preview mode and that made the view really weird. It is good
| there is a lot of variety in this space...
| stefandesu wrote:
| I liked Notable before I switched to Obsidian, especially
| because it has native apps, but the subscription pricing was
| just too high in my opinion.
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| Obsidian = best Digital.
|
| Still inferior to Analog Notecards.
| fsiefken wrote:
| do you mean something like: * bullet journal
| https://bulletjournal.com/ * analog
| https://ugmonk.com/blogs/journal/analog-the-simplest-
| productivity-system * hipster pda
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_PDA
|
| or do you have your own system?
|
| i use little index cards on occasion, but i often forget to
| bring them or later archive them.
|
| i bought an s-pen so I can scribble notes in a handwriting app,
| next to tiddlywiki (and now also obsidian) managing markdown
| and org files (the letter linked to markdown otherwiste
| tiddlywiki doesn't get it) see how that goes.
| dangoor wrote:
| I have a Kindle Vella coming out (this is Amazon's new serialized
| fiction format that's expected to go live this week), and I've
| been writing it in Obsidian using both mobile and desktop apps.
| The ability to open multiple views of notes conveniently has
| worked great, because I have notes for characters and settings
| and such, plus a master note providing a general index, and then
| a note for each episode of the Vella.
|
| I have noticed that Obsidian (plus my Smart Keyboard) drains my
| iPad's battery a bit more than a full native app might, but it
| doesn't drain it nearly as much as a game and it works amazingly
| well.
|
| I also using Obsidian as the backing store for my blog/site[1]
| and the ability to link up notes on a public site is really nice.
| I'm not even taking advantage of this fully yet. Because Obsidian
| uses plain Markdown as the source of truth, it was easy to write
| code[2] to augment page content with backlinks myself and then
| feed it to Hugo for generation of my site.
|
| Overall, I'm a very happy customer!
|
| [1]: https://www.kevindangoor.com [2]:
| https://github.com/dangoor/sharedbrain
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| After a year+ of using Roam, I discovered https://mem.ai a few
| months ago and haven't gone back to Roam. Mem is invite only beta
| I think. Raised 5.6M from A16z. It has bidirectional linking,
| tagging etc. Easy workflow via "mem spotlight" - you can capture
| websites or highlights into mem, or paste from mem into other
| apps (e.g snippets)
|
| https://get.mem.ai/faq
|
| But very intrigued by obsidian. I briefly tried it before but
| will give it a go again
| atfzl wrote:
| I can't find the link but there was some discussion about
| mem.ai on hackernews. mem.ai doesn't sound very privacy
| friendly.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/06/note-taking-app-mem-raises...
|
| > The broader hope of the founders and investors behind Mem is
| that the team can leverage the platform's intelligence over
| time to better understand the data dump from your brain -- and
| likely other information sources across your digital footprint
| -- to know you better than any ad network or social media graph
| does.
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| Their website is very frustrating to use, I had to scroll like
| crazy to get the animations to slowly load in.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| Agreed. I got distracted half way through because of how much
| mindless scrolling i was doing. I had to switch to the
| sidebar to even get to the end, super frustrating.
| martian42 wrote:
| Hey, could you invite me to Mem beta-testing? It looks very
| interesting. I'm using Roam currently, from what I know
| Obsidian isn't very different from Roam. lepa.sso017@gmail.com
| jonfer wrote:
| Sounds what I'm looking for, do you have an invite
| (nojfer@gmail.com)?
| [deleted]
| pixard wrote:
| Can you clarify what "Hybrid web app" means? Are the mobile apps
| React Native / Flutter / something else?
| ericax wrote:
| Yup! The app is written in TypeScript and shares much of the
| code with our desktop app. We're using Capacitor
| https://capacitorjs.com/
| orf wrote:
| Why does the MacOS app from the app store require an M1 chip?
| Xavdidtheshadow wrote:
| Not positive, but I bet it's because the one in Mac app store
| is the iOS version running on M1 hardware. The actual Mac app
| (afaik) isn't distributed through the app store.
| ngrilly wrote:
| Looks neat!
|
| How Obsidian handlers sync conflicts? For instance, I edit a note
| on iOS while offline, then I edit the same note on desktop while
| online, then the iOS device comes back online. Apple Notes for
| example is handling this amazingly well by merging changes a bit
| like Google Docs. But it doesn't support plain Markdown files and
| version history, which are two things really great about
| Obsidian.
|
| And also, do you provide a full-text search, for example by
| indexing the files in a SQLite FTS5 backend?
| ericax wrote:
| Hi HN! After months of private beta, Obsidian is now finally
| available for Android and iOS!
|
| Obsidian is a personal knowledge management app that works on top
| of a local folder of Markdown files [0]. Because "local" often
| means your computer, for the longest time, it has been a pain to
| access these notes on the go.
|
| Our original plan was to build fully native mobile apps. Instead,
| we decided to build hybrid web apps. Hybrid web apps gets a lot
| of hate, and for good reason. There's heavy performance penalty
| for running JavaScript. Animations are often janky. A lot of
| native capabilities are restricted.
|
| We know everyone's favorite argument for using the web stack.
| "We're a small team, and it's just not possible to....". Sure,
| we're also just two developers, but that excuse gets old.
|
| We see it in a different way. We leverage hybrid web apps not as
| a shortcut, rather, we use it to put power in the hands of our
| users. This has always been a key principle driving Obsidian's
| development.
|
| Obsidian is one of the few apps out there that lets users
| customize every aspect of the app. Themes and CSS snippets let
| users completely change the interface. Plugins [1] let users
| augment the GUI [2], run macros [3], build databases [4],
| synchronize with other apps [5], and much more.
|
| It's unprecedented for users to have access to this kind of power
| on their mobile devices.
|
| Now, it's reality, thanks to the web stack. Get it at
| https://obsidian.md/mobile
|
| [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
| barcoder wrote:
| Such a great tool. I switched from note taking in Notion to
| Obsidian, mainly because of the speed at which Obsidian loads
| files.
|
| So while I use Obsidian for my personal notes I still use Notion
| for teamwork.
| mechhacker wrote:
| Interesting. I'll give this a shot. I've been using Evernote for
| years but their recent "improvements" to mobile have made it
| incredibly slow and requiring 3x as many steps as before, and I
| can't stand it anymore.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Long time Evernote user here too.
|
| I moved to Notion a year or so ago. Tried Obsidian and Joplin,
| but Notion hit the sweet spot for me. You can do very
| interesting things with the "everything is a database" concept.
|
| Obsidian really seems to be picking up steam though, with all
| the community plugins and everything I really need to re-
| evaluate it vs. Notion later.
| crunchbang123 wrote:
| While not as feature rich, I found GitJournal[1] to be a good app
| that supports markdown + git sync.
|
| [1]: https://gitjournal.io/
| adkadskhj wrote:
| For anyone who follows Obsidian, have they approached the idea of
| spaced repetition or perhaps plugins for spaced repetition?
|
| A big thing i want in a note taking tool is Spaced Repetition,
| but not _just_ that, more like a way to manage how much
| information i'm going to try and keep sync'd with my actual
| brain.
|
| I'd love this system to monitor how much time i'm dedicating to
| it, and how much knowledge i'm able to retain in my brain based
| on available quiz time and retention rates (which would vary, i
| suppose).
|
| I've often debated writing it myself but so many of these note
| taking tools achieve 90% of what i want, but miss the retention
| phase. I want to pour my knowledge into Obsidian, i just want
| some additional tools to help keep some subset in sync with my
| brain.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I would love better interoperability between Obsidian and
| Mochi.
|
| Mochi is a nifty little markdown backed SRS app that I've
| replaced Anki with in my own workflows. Would love to be able
| to draw from the same vault/folder between the two.
| l1silver wrote:
| I know that there's a plugin for anki and youtube tutorial on
| setting it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXyv6pnVGhA .
| Haven't tried it myself but will probably give it a shot
| noyesno wrote:
| Check out https://www.remnote.io/
| dunham wrote:
| I haven't worked with spaced repetition, so I haven't looked
| into this.
|
| Obsidian does have a plugin system that you might be able to
| use to add spaced repetition, but I don't know if anyone has
| written a plugin to do this yet.
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| Obsidian supports plugins, but on that note, if you want to
| practice spaced repetition, maybe point a spaced repetition app
| at your notes? It doesn't seem to make sense that a note-taking
| app should take any particular interest in that use case, when
| it can be better served by a dedicated app, and there's little
| overlap with more "ordinary" needs.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| I would agree, but for me it's a tightly coupled idea - my
| knowledge base and a subset of knowledge i choose to retain.
|
| So while yes, a dedicated app for SR would probably be
| "better", i'd then have to make tightly coupled user
| experiences to sync data back and forth between my knowledge
| base and my knowledge retention app.
|
| To me they're two sides of the same coin. With that said i've
| long wanted to make my own app here for this stuff, but
| Obsidian seems very customizable, so i'm thinking i'll just
| try to make an extension which embeds the necessary metadata
| into the markdown files themselves.
| [deleted]
| knubie wrote:
| You may want to check out Mochi [0], a markdown based SRS app.
| Similar to Obsidian in that it is a local-first architecture
| with a focus on zettelkasten style note cards.
|
| [0] https://mochi.cards/
| Raphomet wrote:
| I'm a note-taking power nerd who has used all the buzzy apps on
| Macs. Obsidian is by far the best -- it's become my personal
| journal, my knowledge base, a quick and dirty blog, a place to
| keep loose notes.
|
| The development velocity of the (TWO PERSON!) team behind this
| app is ridiculous. They're constantly pushing updates, and seem
| to handle all facets of app development with aplomb.
|
| No affiliation, just a happy user!
| sylens wrote:
| 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.
| gexla wrote:
| And isn't this a side project? They are also the dev team
| behind Dynalist?
| Philipp0205 wrote:
| Yes they develop Dynalist as well but as far as I know it is
| on "hold" and they are focusing on Obsidian atm.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I would love a fusion between the two - an MD backed
| infinite outliner.
|
| Logseq is the closest thing, but it feels a little
| clunkier.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| That actually scares me a bit. I liked Dynalist but stopped
| using it because of random UI issues on mobile, it just
| didn't feel worth it.
|
| Hope they do better with Obsidian.
| polote wrote:
| > The development velocity of the (TWO PERSON!)
|
| Well in general, isn't the velocity inversely correlated with
| the number of people in a team?
| Aeolun wrote:
| Especially if your problem domain is determined by those two
| people.
| [deleted]
| mariodiana wrote:
| _The Mythical Man-Month._
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
| dombili wrote:
| 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.
| slipmagic wrote:
| Don't forget their cats!
| lonesword wrote:
| >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!
| WJW wrote:
| The product velocity is probably _because_ it 's only two
| people, not _despite_ their team size.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| It might also be because they're avid users of Obsidian
| itself.
| usagitoneko97 wrote:
| Just tried the desktop version and it's interesting. Ideally, I
| would like to consolidate all my workflow to one app, so I'm
| looking for:
|
| 1. Markdown editing with vim (Obsidian has vim support! Nice) 2.
| web clipping (one note) 3. note taking and image annotation with
| tablet (samsung notes) 4. Sync with desktop/web/android.
|
| While 1 and 4 is great on Obsidian, it feels like it's limited on
| the image and annotation that I would like. Any ideas?
| smarx007 wrote:
| I used Evernote for 2, now it's mostly
| https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox (still using Evernote
| in those cases when I need to clip a page behind login). Image
| handling is a pain point of all text-first note apps, sadly.
| arch-ninja wrote:
| This looks awesome, but is there a source-available release? I'd
| pay for it, I generally dislike large blobs ("appimages") and
| would prefer to "./configure && make && make install" myself so I
| can be confident the SW won't forget all my data because of an
| update; if I understand how it is built I can understand the
| risks associated storage and prevent them outright.
|
| Even the largest most successful companies with 100+ QA people on
| a flagship product lose data because of mundane updates, and this
| can be prevented by understanding how the SW works.
| Macacity wrote:
| This app is for reading markdown files on your device. You can
| sync them yourself to wherever you want to make sure that
| nothing gets lost.
| smusamashah wrote:
| What are the plans for Typora like wysiwyg functionality?
| gexla wrote:
| 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.
| hebrox wrote:
| 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?
| benrbray wrote:
| My notes are pretty math-heavy, and for that reason I really
| prefer WYSIWYG rather than a split view or staring at the LaTeX
| source most of the time. Something like the Typora editor on
| top of Obsidian would be great. If only both were open source!
|
| I've been hacking on my own clone [1] for the past year with a
| WYSIWYG editor based on ProseMirror. Here's the demo page [2]
| for the math editor!
|
| [1] https://github.com/benrbray/noteworthy (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)
| HuShifang wrote:
| Typora UI emulation is one of the devs' top to-dos, and I've
| found they move remarkably fast on these things, so stay
| tuned... (EDIT: Fair point re: open source, though I find the
| use of Markdown and easy exportability mitigating.)
| cwdegidio wrote:
| I'm currently using Obsidian to convert my handwritten notes to
| .md files for Discrete Math. Besides the links already
| mentioned, this one is great as well as it gives some quick
| reference examples.
|
| https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-b...
| yhoiseth wrote:
| https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes#Math
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Thank you, very helpful.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| I just installed the app on iOS and the number one thing I look
| for is sharing links into my note taking app-- but I don't see
| obsidian in the share sheet. Am I missing something?
| xtat wrote:
| lmk when open source and I'll give it a shot
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Dumb question: is Obsidian anything more than an open source
| version of Apple Notes?
|
| I realize there's technical differences but from a use cases /
| feature perspective - isn't it essentially the same?
| murermader wrote:
| Well it is open source, is cross platform and is not made by
| Apple. So, really different.
| applecrazy wrote:
| It is actually not currently OSS, although the creators have
| indicated interest in open-sourcing parts of it in the past.
| applecrazy wrote:
| They're the same in the sense that Mail.app and Outlook are the
| same.
|
| Apple Notes is great, but can't do things like tagging/graph
| view and doesn't allow you to export in a standardized format.
|
| Obsidian is a superset of Markdown (with a few modifications
| for page embedding and wiki-links) and allows you to sync with
| anything that provides a way for you to upload a folder of text
| files.
| cepth wrote:
| It's a much more fully featured note taking app, probably most
| directly comparable to Roam Research.
|
| E.g., tagging, graph views, back links between notes,
| note/document templates.
|
| All docs are (more or less) plain markdown as well, so if for
| some reason the open source community ever abandoned Obsidian,
| in theory it's easy to export/transfer your notes.
| stevecat wrote:
| I'm probably underselling it but for me, markdown support and
| note organisation simply reflecting the directory structure is
| what sold me. I can then sync it whichever way I want; I've
| taken to having a "notes" folder in each project and including
| it in the Git repository. The notes are then browsable on
| GitHub too.
|
| I've spent a lot of time trying to find my "perfect" note
| taking app, and have attempted to build my own a few times, and
| I'm very happy with Obsidian.
| prashantsengar wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| EleanorKonik wrote:
| 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.
| prashantsengar wrote:
| 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.
| :).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Currently looking all over the place for a good markdown
| backed out liner. I currently used Logseq with the storage
| synced by Obsidian.
| vort3 wrote:
| This is completely unrelated, but FYI, website is not reachable
| from Kazakhstan.
|
| I know this is a problem with Kazakhstan government blocking
| everything left and right, but maybe you'll try to contact them
| and fix it somehow (I think few months ago I could access it
| without VPN, now I can't).
| genghizkhan wrote:
| I've absolutely been loving Obsidian since I started using it,
| which was only 3 months or so ago. But the plugin ecosystem has
| well and truly hooked me in. It's brilliant that they have a
| mobile app now, I can easily use it as an inbox/dump now.
|
| The features I'm waiting for (I know they're in development) are
| the WYSIWYG editor and hopefully some integration with dynalist,
| the other amazing app from this team. Once that's done and
| dusted, this will be awesome.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If Dynalist was markdown backed that would be a killer feature.
| thek3nger wrote:
| I am still very surprised that Apple allows this kind of
| CSS/plugin power. I wonder if the reason is that Obsidian is so
| popular among a lot of influential iOS users, that rejecting it
| would be a huge PR disaster. :D
|
| Anyway, it is good to see Obsidian going strong. I am a happy
| user since the very beginning!
| ericax wrote:
| 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).
| swilliamsio wrote:
| 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.
| permarad wrote:
| They have a WYSISYG editor (like Typora - https://typora.io/)
| on the roadmap (https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-
| roadmap). Typora is easily my fav markdown editor.
| input_sh wrote:
| > The divide between edit mode and view mode is annoying
|
| That's pretty much their next priority, unifying them into one.
|
| Graphs, yeah, same, never really used them. Links are
| incredibly powerful, I'm not sure how you're using Notion
| without fully utilising them.
| coder-3 wrote:
| Obsidian is just too great. They really focused on what matters
| deeply to the PKM crowd and found an elegant way to serve that
| need
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| They are not the biggest app in this space to do it. Joplin did
| this a while back. BoostNote is working on it.
|
| https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/
| redman007 wrote:
| 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.
| folex wrote:
| Does it work offline?
| encima wrote:
| Yep, saves to a local folder that you can sync
| RBerenguel wrote:
| 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
| smoldesu wrote:
| Obsidian and Nextcloud is all I'll ever need for taking notes.
| foxbee wrote:
| Wonderful job. Simply wonderful. Well done to the team for
| delivering at such high velocity!
| alexf95 wrote:
| Obsidian is definitely a great tool for knowledge management, and
| now it's even able to do all that on mobile!
|
| Personally, I've used our tool Hypernotes
| (https://zenkit.com/en/hypernotes/). It released with a mobile
| version of it and also runs of all the platforms and has a web
| version too. It is also able to do all the features the modern
| "second brain" note-taking apps offer.
| daviross wrote:
| How long is the promotional pricing for Obsidian Sync intended to
| last? From what I've seen of Obsidian Mobile, that's probably the
| smoothest way to synchronize vaults (understandably so), and I'd
| like to make sure that pricing isn't something I have to rush
| testing out the mobile version on.
| ericax wrote:
| 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!
| slightwinder wrote:
| Obsidian is really nice, and quite powerful, especially thanks to
| plugins. It's also moving fast, the developers are very active. I
| used it for a while to move on from org-mode, but kinda lost
| interesst because of certain excentrics it has.
|
| One specific problem that killed it for me temporary is the lack
| of support for multiple vaults, to the point that there is not
| even a truely centralized global configuation. Everything is
| saved in the vault itself, including plugins. Vault is the name
| of the data-directory, basically your workspace. For someone
| using multiple vaults (work, and private stuff) on multiple
| systems, this really kills any motivation to use it. Did this
| change in the meanwhile? I losly follow the changelog and haven't
| seen anything yet regarding this things, but maybe I just missed
| it.
|
| Other than thoise specific problems, it's awesome how activate
| and vibrant the community itself is. There is a very active forum
| and discord-server, and many awesome plugins coming from the
| community are available. Obsidian has really the potential to
| leave org-mode behind and become a serious alternative for the
| rest of the world.
| xenodium wrote:
| I love org-mode, and use it in all sorts of areas, but I
| haven't found a mobile (iOS) solution I'm happy with.
|
| Org being so feature-rich, I decided to tackle a subset on iOS,
| so I built https://flathabits.com.
|
| I'm itching to build a similar thing for personal task
| management, since I currently rely on Shortcuts emailing myself
| org-formatted TODOs.
| tikej wrote:
| Have you checked beorgapp?
|
| I find that it supports surprisingly large parts of org mode.
| zmix wrote:
| > One specific problem that killed it for me temporary is the
| lack of support for multiple vaults, to the point > that there
| is not even a truely centralized global configuation.
| Everything is saved in the vault itself, > including plugins.
| [...] Did this change in the meanwhile?
|
| You can invoke an overview, that lists the last five, or so,
| Vaults, you used. From there you can switch. But that is all.
| The configuration, and, yes, the plugins (yeez!), sadly, are
| still installed on a per Vault base. What I have done is to set
| up an empty Vault as a template, configure it the way, I would
| have my master preferences, and when I create a new Vault, I
| start by cloning that. It's not perfect, but better than
| nothing.
|
| Another thing I dislike is, that the Vault can not go into a
| (programming) project's folder as a sub folder, but considers
| the project folder as the Vault.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| I want to use Obsidian but the only thing that keep me off is
| the lack of encryption support. That is why I am staying with
| Joplin since it offers a full encryption. Obsidian does have a
| plugin for the encryption but only partial of it.
| gareim wrote:
| Joplin does not encrypt notes at rest. Only data being synced
| is encrypted; when it gets to its destination it's available
| unencrypted in an SQLite database. Any program running on
| your computer can read your Joplin notes at any time. The
| developer has come out against implementing encryption-at-
| rest many times throughout the years. Their suggestion is
| that you use another form of encryption, like veracrypt.
| Notably, this makes using Joplin with encryption-at-rest
| impossible on iOS.
|
| https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/requesting-encryption-
| of-l...
| bentoner wrote:
| You could link or copy the config file and plugin folder in the
| `.obsidian` directory in one vault to other vaults.
| slightwinder wrote:
| I tried this early on, but it seems there are vault-specific
| parts that become weird when used outside their original
| vault.
|
| I'm also not so eager to regulary waste time for hacking
| tools. Updating the settings in all vaults each time I update
| some setting or plugin in one vault would be quite a pain.
| chishaku wrote:
| It's not perfect but it did take me about 5 minutes to
| resolve when I created 3 clones of my main vault.
|
| The main issue was changing the relative path references to
| the templates and and assets directories.
| analognoise wrote:
| I liked Obsidian but I moved all my notes to Zettlr and Org-mode
| because they were truly free and they could never be revoked. I
| have had my heart broken too many times by various pieces of
| software changing licenses or being bought out or whatever.
| rayxi271828 wrote:
| Any org-roam users here? I started with Roam Research (one of the
| believers, even), but then moved to org-roam to keep the files
| under my control.
|
| Is Obsidian worth trying if one's already using org-roam and is
| reasonably familiar with Emacs?
| stinkytaco wrote:
| > Is Obsidian worth trying if one's already using org-roam and
| is reasonably familiar with Emacs?
|
| What features do you need that org-roam doesn't have? Hard to
| say if it's worth moving on without knowing that. If org-roam
| is working for you, then why bother moving? If it's not, why
| not and does obsidian possess those features?
| prashantsengar wrote:
| You can use LogSeq[1] if you'd like to continue with org-roam.
| It supports both Markdown and org-roam, stores data locally,
| and has a good community as well. It is still in beta though.
|
| [1] https://github.com/logseq/logseq
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| I also use org-roam, I'm wondering the same thing. I really
| like org-roam, and I'm very used to the keybindings, but I've
| always felt a little bit of friction with it that I can't
| really explain.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| Obsidian has now exceeded roam for me. The community plugins
| are great and getting better.
|
| Roam has better embedding eg tweets, but not for long.
| nsriv wrote:
| Perhaps I haven't used Obsidian enough to figure out an
| organizational method or workflow for this, but I've really been
| hoping for a universal version of Noteplan 3. I love having the
| notes and maps but also want to use it as a daily planner with
| reminders. Hopefully the mobile app is a step towards that, but
| I'm open to any worflow suggestions too!
| 100lvlmaster wrote:
| As a college student, I like the conventional note-taking apps.
| But I kept switching between them instead of sticking to one.
| Because the next one always seemed more lucrative for
| productivity. So I created a lightweight but featured app to help
| me type less using bookmarks. I could just bookmark a tweet and
| then it would pull the entire Thread for me. I could bookmark a
| website to copy notes from later and it would export that to
| Markdown. I'm going keep incrementing the feature set but keep
| the UI looking lightweight It's public right now if anyone wants
| to check it out:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alekha.net.
| 100lvlmaster wrote:
| The current feature set includes:
|
| - pulling entire threads for a tweet
|
| - offline support for markdown
|
| - tags
|
| - search for notes
|
| - qr codes
|
| - sharing entire blocks of bookmarks with other people
| criddell wrote:
| Hybrid web app? Does that mean when your severs go down the app
| no longer works?
| victoryhb wrote:
| No, it means they are using a standard web tech stack (HTML,
| CSS, JS/TS) inside a native shell (to utilize hardware
| features).
| Gatsky wrote:
| Great. You need to use the paid sync option if you want full
| mobile funcitonality and also use the desktop apps. I guess
| icloud works if you are all apple only, but no E2E.
|
| Another option on mobile is to use Ulysses to edit notes stored
| on whatever compatible sync service you are using, but you don't
| get the full Obsidian functionality (or E2E). If you mainly just
| type notes and don't do a lot of linking etc then it won't matter
| much.
| hammon wrote:
| Joplin and you will not look father. https://joplinapp.org/
| redman007 wrote:
| I would agree father, but I was using Joplin and then switched
| to Obsidian.
|
| Joplin is no slouch and no shade on anyone who uses it, but
| here's why I am happy I made the switch.
|
| - Backlinks (Linked and Unlinked Mentions) are the super power
| of Obsidian. (Roam and others can do what I will describe, but
| I'm not aware that Joplin can.) - Being able to
| see everywhere I linked to my current note in my 1500+ other
| notes is super helpful. Having used Obsidian for over a
| year, I couldn't count the amount of helpful connections this
| has created and news trains of thought this has led me down.
| - Unlinked mentions takes this to the next level since I can
| take a note that is where I have developed a core idea that I
| want to propagate throughout my thinking. By taking that core
| note and naming it properly or giving it an alias, in Unlinked
| mentions I often find dozens and dozens of places where I
| interact with this idea as a tangent before I developed this
| core note. (And sometimes after, too.) So when I return to
| ideas that are still in the sandbox and trying to be figured
| out, Unlinked Mentions sometimes lets me connect the new
| intellectual "key" to a "lock" that I had been frustrated with
| in the past. - Obsidian's links and files work
| are consistent with Markdown spec, so they're more portable
| than with Joplin. I can easily move from Obsidian to most
| other platforms, but when leaving Joplin, tags don't always
| migrate very well.
|
| - YMMV on Obsidian's plug-ins, but the community has built
| tools that really are super helpful.
|
| - The Table Editor is fantastic for creating and manipulating
| tables in Markdown.
|
| - The Dataview plugin that allows you to dynamically generate
| tables based on metadata fields you create for each note. I
| find this particularly useful for notes on other works.
|
| - You can Tweet directly from Obsidian and also draw within
| Obsidian using plugins. Maybe it's been too long since I used
| Joplin, but those weren't options that I was aware of. And the
| list of plugins is more than 200.
|
| - The search is the best I've used on any *note-taking*
| platform. I'm sure there are better options in code editors,
| but for someone on the less technical side of things, it's
| usable for them, but it allows regex, expanding context
| surrounding matches, and a host of other options.
| udfalkso wrote:
| I originally switched to Obsidian for the vim bindings, and it's
| been solid. My only major issue with it was a lack of ability to
| edit things on mobile (using drop box app to edit markdown files
| was OK but def. not great).
|
| I generally need simple things on the go, like checking off an
| item on a to-do list. Almost built my own mini-markdown
| viewer/editor to do this myself but glad I didn't as now this
| mobile app totally solves my issue. Great update, thanks!
| manigandham wrote:
| _"Obsidian loads blazing fast. No network requests or fancy
| animations."_
|
| This makes such a big difference. I wish everyday that I could
| turn off iOS animations...
| ChristinWhite wrote:
| I absolutely love Obsidian and it's been great to have it on my
| iOS devices as well! I'm still blown away by how quickly a two
| person team turned around an Electron app and built iOS and
| Android versions.
| eXpl0it3r wrote:
| That went faster than expected, awesome to see!
|
| My major issue with the mobile apps is the syncing. On iOS you
| get to decide between iCloud or Obsidian Sync. On Android you can
| hack together something with third-party syncing apps and local
| disk storage. But if you have been using Dropbox or OneDrive for
| syncing on your PC, you won't be able to (bidirectional) sync
| your data to your mobile devices (out of the box).
|
| Obsidian Sync is awesome and at $4 per month (early bird
| lifetime) very tempting, but then with max 4 GB per vault (a 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...
| vort3 wrote:
| 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.
| vcavallo wrote:
| So, bad news for me if I'm using GitHub?
|
| Edit: looking in to https://workingcopyapp.com/ now. an iOS git
| client.
| eXpl0it3r wrote:
| Did you use some plugin that helped with the committing and
| pushing?
|
| On Android you could probably somehow do a local checkout,
| but don't think that will work with iOS due to file system
| restrictions.
| vcavallo wrote:
| > Did you use some plugin that helped with the committing
| and pushing?
|
| 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.
| vcavallo wrote:
| I just found this: https://workingcopyapp.com/
| eXpl0it3r wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Sync
| vcavallo wrote:
| Confirming: Working Copy is _itself_ amazing, and solves
| the syncing-obsidian-to-github-on-ios problem.
| cywick wrote:
| That sounds very intriguing. How does syncing work in
| practice, though?
|
| 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)?
| vcavallo wrote:
| 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.
| cja wrote:
| I use SyncThing for this. Works perfectly. (But download
| SyncTrayzor to make using SyncThing easy)
| [deleted]
| another_kel wrote:
| 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.
| dopu wrote:
| After searching around (and trying Roam, Obsidian, a bit of
| Tiddlywiki, etc) I ended up sticking with Athens [0][1]. It's
| essentially an open-source version of Roam, and it's YC funded.
| I've found it to already be mature enough to be a good
| replacement for Roam.
|
| [0]: https://www.athensresearch.org
|
| [1]: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
| rcarmo wrote:
| So how does this sync exactly? Can I use an iCloud folder, an iOS
| filesystem provider, or do I need yet another service to have my
| notes on my desktop as well?
| austhrow743 wrote:
| "Built in to Obsidian" makes it sound like they're running
| their own servers, not using iCloud.
| ericax wrote:
| iCloud and Working Copy are both known to work. Obsidian Sync
| is also an option.
|
| File Provider is something we'll attempt to implement sometimes
| in the future to support other sync providers.
|
| More info available at
| https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Sync
| newswasboring wrote:
| You can use whatever can look like a folder. So I guess icloud
| should work fine.
|
| Apart from that they also offer a sync service. And for the
| technically minded there is also the obsidian git plug in.
| andix wrote:
| It's difficult. iCloud works (but I don't want to do that,
| because it's not E2E encrypted). Copying manually via iTunes
| too.
|
| I guess the options will stay limited, as the author wants to
| sell his commercial sync service.
| encima wrote:
| 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)
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > (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.
| andix wrote:
| 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.
| encima wrote:
| 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)
| nstart wrote:
| > 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.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| Dropbox, OneDrive, Custom, etc. Just like other similar apps,
| BoostNote and Joplin.
| cja wrote:
| I use SyncThing for this. Works perfectly. (But download
| SyncTrayzor to make using SyncThing easy)
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| 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.
| riffic wrote:
| excellent app! Now I just need to figure out how to sync my vault
| that I keep backed to a remote Git repo.
|
| Also, I saw this ( _An Interactive Introduction to Zettelkasten_
| ) on reddit today and felt like sharing. This goes hand in hand
| with tools like Obsidian, Logseq, or Roam:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27811809
| kakkan wrote:
| I'm trying to do the same. All my notes are backed up to a
| private repository, would be pretty kick-ass to get it synced
| with my iphone. Let me know if you find it out!
| riffic wrote:
| See the other comments in this thread about "Working Copy",
| which is also referenced in the Obsidian docs:
|
| https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Working+Copy
|
| Sorry Android users, you're on your own to figure this out.
|
| edit: I had to figure out how to perform "Setup Folder Sync".
| This is done within Working Copy. Here's a walkthrough:
|
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/mobile-setting-up-ios-git-
| based-...
| jaimefjorge wrote:
| I've been a happy user of Obsidian for almost a year. It's a
| solid product, moving at impressive speed (until recently they
| had almost weekly releases of features/bugs/improvements) with
| just 2 people. In my opinion we need more products and teams like
| these.
|
| As for my use of Obsidian, I've put into it almost 400 permanent
| notes into it and I have my journal in it as well. I find the
| process of connecting ideas and thoughts great for exploring
| subjects/books/articles. I'm a fan of this product.
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