[HN Gopher] Obsidian 1.0 - Personal knowledge base app
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Obsidian 1.0 - Personal knowledge base app
Cofounder of Obsidian here. We're excited to announce Obsidian 1.0
is live! Obsidian 1.0 introduces two big changes: a UI overhaul
and an new tabbed interface. We've put a lot of care into making
the app more approachable and more accessible. We've also
prioritized using more native OS features for menus, windows, and
many details. We got our first private beta users from a comment
under a HN thread about org-roam [1], and our waiting list was an
innocent Google Form. Good times! Our initial launch on HN was
over two years ago [2], when terms like "second brain" and "tools
for thought" were still in their infancy. Since then, the landscape
has continued to evolve and new ideas are sprouting in the space
every day. Obsidian has always embraced its "hacker" nature and
thrives off its community of tinkerers. We now have over 670
plugins that push the envelope of what's possible in the app. We
want to continue to foster that same hacker spirit, but at the same
time, we want to provide a polished product that can stand on its
own. In the last several months, we've expanded the team and
refocused ourselves on providing a product that's polished and easy
to use. We have big plans to continue making Obsidian the best and
most refined thought-processing app for decades to come. Obsidian
1.0 is just the start! Special credits go to Stephan Ango
(@kepano) for the redesign and Liam Cain for tirelessly polishing
this release. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767658
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598
Author : ericax
Score : 930 points
Date : 2022-10-13 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (obsidian.md)
(TXT) w3m dump (obsidian.md)
| thrillgore wrote:
| This is great. As an Obsidian user, this update adds a lot.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| Tried Obsidian, wanted to save a note that had an url in the
| title, can't do that, not able to have special characters in
| titles(am on Linux btw where there's little limitations on what
| chars you can use in file names).
|
| Delete, good bye, auf wiedersehen!
| ptomato wrote:
| I'm not aware of any commonly used linux FS that allows `/` in
| a filename
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| What about other note taking tools that allow `/` in the
| title? How aware are you of them?
| veidr wrote:
| Congratulations, and also: holy fucking shit!! no app has changed
| my day-to-day life to this degree in many, many years.
|
| I use Obsidian every morning on my roof deck for my journal
| (automated with the plugin, of course) and then at my desk all
| day long for my daily WTF blah blah info-capturing tool.
|
| Sure I wish it had more features (persist collapsed/expanded
| state, even in a best-effort, might-not-last-forever kind of way!
| build in git support because apple makes it too hard for plugin
| guys to do on mobile!) but the fact that it is all just
| "standard" markdown and image files washes away all almost my
| complaints.
|
| I use the paid Sync plugin, too (even though it's standard files
| and folders; could totally do it myself! could totally just use
| SyncThing! etc!) so that it is on all my machines and virtual
| machines. Perfect for sysadmin logs of things you touch only
| annually, e.g. Dad's iMac.
|
| To HN readers who haven't tried it: it's the millennials'
| VisiCalc, basically, except for words.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| What plugin do you use for automatic journaling?
| koenvdb wrote:
| What other plugins do you use besides the Sync plugin?
| veidr wrote:
| Only the Calendar one.
| brimwats wrote:
| there's a plugin for folding persistence.. it has a silly name
| like pants or ironing or something but it works welll
| capedape wrote:
| I think you're looking for what some pants have - Creases
| https://github.com/liamcain/obsidian-creases
| roessland wrote:
| Congratulations! Starting to use Obsidian has made me much more
| productive at work. I never forget anything now, since Obsidian
| is my second brain. I use it for logging, tasks, study, spaced
| repetition (with Dataview and tags), learning new things and even
| blogging.
|
| I sync manually using Git, using a Work-repo, a Home-repo, and a
| Shared repo that is a Git submodule of both Work and Home. I
| never edit notes on my phone, but I can read them on GitHub or
| Dropbox. I have more than 1200 notes in Work [?] Shared, and some
| more in Home.
|
| Some of my essential plugins are: Dataview (Like inline SQL for
| querying notes), Natural Language Dates (entering current date
| easily), Minimal theme (just looks better).
|
| Some builtin stuff that I love: Frontmatter metadata, Mermaid
| charts (graphviz-ish), inline \LaTeX rendering, daily notes and
| syntax highlighting.
| tbihl wrote:
| I've been wanting to play with your software for a while, and I
| happened to have a moment this time, so I loaded it on my Android
| phone.
|
| If the bracket notation is a commonality among note taking
| systems like this one, then I may just be too much of an outsider
| to jump in easily to this app. But I, as someone who was
| interested in using the app enough to press every button I could
| see, couldn't figure out how to link notes until I exhausted my
| possibilities in the app, looked at your Web page, scrolled
| through the comments here and finally found someone linking to
| the page I needed. I knew that linking is the main feature, but I
| couldn't find it.
|
| Filtering out dumb users like me may be a design decision, but if
| not, I would encourage something upon app installation that
| offers to tell new users how to link notes, even if it's just a
| link to a YouTube video ("new to Obsidian? Watch this 1 (2?)
| minute video to get you started.")
| brimwats wrote:
| the help/default vault contains exactly what you're describing
| brimwats wrote:
| Obsidian has made so much of my PhD process easier and smoother,
| and I've increasingly depended on it in real life as well.
| Amazing team but absolutely stellar community of passionate and
| kind people. Bravo!
| Eugeleo wrote:
| Hey, mind sharing your workflow? Where do you read papers? And
| do you annotate them?
| smesla wrote:
| Out of curiosity, why is Obsidian closed source? It doesn't look
| like you charge for anything, and with the size and type of
| following you have, you'd probably see some really cool stuff get
| sent your way.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > It doesn't look like you charge for anything,
|
| https://obsidian.md/pricing
|
| https://obsidian.md/sync
|
| https://obsidian.md/publish
| [deleted]
| diimdeep wrote:
| Including most useful plugins, does it work offline without
| issues?
| ngrilly wrote:
| Yes. It has been designed to be offline first.
| Daunk wrote:
| I'm sorry if I sound stupid, but this is an honest question.
|
| What would I use Obsidian for? Is it just for writing stuff down?
| And if so; how would I access these notes on something like my
| phone? I tend to just write down things and store attachments in
| "Saved Messages" on Telegram. That way I can access it all via my
| phone, home computer, work computer or the web.
|
| How would Obsidian be better?
| nhanjkl wrote:
| Just wanted to drop by and say hi. Such a f*cking great app!
| Thank you so so much!
| eimrine wrote:
| May I ask some video materials which show creating of Obsidian
| tree with really rich using of its abilities?
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Congrats! Been following Obsidian here and there and I'm finally
| giving it a spin.
|
| Side Note: If you folks would like a portable version for Windows
| (non-installable version that can run from a cloud folder,
| portable drive, etc), let me know. PortableApps.com has a few
| Electron-based apps now.
| GSGBen wrote:
| Awesome, I've been waiting for proper tab support.
|
| A tip that people on HN will probably enjoy: add --disable-
| smooth-scrolling to your shortcut to make scrolling more
| responsive.
| ghotli wrote:
| I use Obsidian for a very simple use case compared to everything
| it can do. Synced markdown across all platforms, simple lists in
| named files, share those files to other software to perform
| actions against those lists.
|
| For this use case it is the absolute best of the bunch. I've used
| a lot of these sorts of complex second brain things and I've
| settled on a very minimal approach wherein Obsidian was the clear
| 'best in show' for what I needed.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| Love Obsidian, keep up the good work
| smusamashah wrote:
| New UI looks nice I wish it felt faster (it still doesn't). I
| made that Windows 98 UI theme which is totally broke now :(.
| ngrilly wrote:
| I started using Obsidian Sync and I'm quite impressed. The sync
| between my Windows laptop and my iPhone is almost real-time.
| Conflicts are handled nicely by merging changes from both sides
| and the user is notified about it. And of course, everything is
| still stored in a local folder of Markdown files. Would be
| interesting if someone from Obsidian could share some details on
| the implementation.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Is Obsidian Sync end to end encrypted?
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Yup, it is.
|
| https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Security+and+privacy
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I'd also be interested. It's surprisingly robust. In case you
| weren't aware, they also have version history[0] with Sync.
|
| 0:https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Version+history
| Arrath wrote:
| I'll have to give 1.0 a try, I installed Obsidian last time it
| came up on HN but unfortunately it won't run on my phone.
|
| E: Dang. Same thing. Installs and launches, but when I go to
| create a vault I get "Failed to create vault. Unable to create
| directory, unknown reason." Both on internal storage and the SD
| card.
|
| I granted it permissions upon install, so who knows. My phone
| might just be too old and busted.
| [deleted]
| Move37 wrote:
| hiidrew wrote:
| Love obsidian, thank you for building!
|
| My only dream is blocked by Apple. Would to have the ability to
| switch the default notes client in iOS, similar to how you can
| with browsers and email.
| recroad wrote:
| This tool is so expensive. I want to use it but for this to be an
| alternative to Notion you'd have to pay for Sync and Publish,
| which would come to $24/month. That is very pricey for many
| people.
| kirso wrote:
| Good luck accessing Notion offline. Not that it happens often,
| but its a bit apples and oranges.
|
| Use iCloud/gDrive/dropbox for synching instead. Never had any
| issues.
| kepano wrote:
| Obsidian is free, and you can bring your own syncing and
| publishing.
|
| You can choose to sync via pretty much any sync solution like
| Dropbox, iCloud, Git, etc. For publish you can static site
| generators like Jekyll, Hugo, etc.
| jacooper wrote:
| Checkout logseq. Fully open source
| chrisweekly wrote:
| logseq is cool, but it's not portable like obsidian. markdown
| files ftw!
| nirvdrum wrote:
| Logseq uses Markdown files for all of your pages and
| journal entries. However, it doesn't support nested
| directories, choosing to embed "%2F" in the filename
| instead. That is quite ugly. The only thing Logseq doesn't
| use Markdown for is configuration files, AFAIK.
| shampto3 wrote:
| While I encourage supporting the Obsidian team by paying, there
| are ways that you can get the same features without paying.
|
| Sync - On iOS, you can use iCloud to sync your files between
| your Mac and iPhone. I imagine that there are more
| configuration options for this on Android.
|
| Publish - lots of different ways to deploy your notes to a
| site. There's one repo that helps you publish with Mkdocs [1],
| and I'm sure there are other tools the community has created to
| solve this problem.
|
| It may not be as simple to set up as Notion, but that's the
| price you pay for wanting a solution to be cheap, private, and
| let you own your own data.
|
| [1] https://github.com/jobindjohn/obsidian-publish-mkdocs
| hbn wrote:
| It's just reading/writing a directory of files. If you set it
| up to save into a synced directory, whether that be Google
| Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, Dropbox, whatever, you can point all
| your Obsidian installs on various machines to the same synced
| directory and it'll give you the same effect.
| hbrn wrote:
| Is there a good way to sync between Mac OS, Windows and iOS?
| Seems like you can only pick 2 out of 3.
|
| Edit: Today I learned there is iCloud for Windows, so you can
| point Obsidian to the iCloudDrive/Obsidian folder.
|
| Going to give it a try.
| roessland wrote:
| If you put your notes in a Git repo you can make a pipeline
| that deploy your notes online using a static site generator and
| e.g. GitHub pages. Of course Sync/Publish is smoother and
| easier, but don't let the price of Sync/Publish stop you from
| trying Obsidian itself (which is free for personal usage).
| NoMoreBro wrote:
| Love Obsidian. My main problem with it and similar markdown apps
| for notes is the way they store images and attachments. I find it
| very confusing to maintain multiple files per note and IMO the
| only app that nailed it is FSNotes[1] using the textbundle[2]
| format (with a custom implementation for encrypted notes too). I
| think it's elegant and future-proof.
|
| But FSNotes is for the Apple ecosystem only and I can't tie
| myself to a single platform for something so important (I don't
| need another artificial reason to make OS switching so
| difficult).
|
| I hope the textbundle feature request[3] gets some love soon. It
| would be great for Excalidraw files integration too[4].
|
| [1] https://fsnot.es/ [2] http://textbundle.org/ [3]
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/textbundle-support/3585 [4]
| https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin
| jq-r wrote:
| I'm having high hopes for Bear notes v2 (called Panda in beta).
| It does the textbundle format which makes complete sense, and
| also has native pen support on iPads. So actually it is simple,
| and a joy to use, and also you're not locked in to anyone.
| NoMoreBro wrote:
| Wow, textbundle on disk instead of the database, right? It
| would be huge.
|
| Another great feature that Bear and FSNotes share is the
| ability to insert hierarchy tags like #parent/child For some
| reason, I find it perfect to organize notes without too much
| thinking.
| submeta wrote:
| Absolutely agree. Very confusing to see a folder full of
| attachments. Ulysses app (another exmple) does this better via
| textbundle.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Looks nice and based on my initial quick tests seems rather lean,
| and yet it is cross platform. Can I ask what the tech stack looks
| like? development language(s)? Cross platform UI library?
| voat wrote:
| It's an electron app
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Interesting - it runs rather nice for an electron app IMO.
| Also, the memory utilization isn't terrible (so far that I
| have noticed).
| Keegs wrote:
| For an explanation of what changed see this forum discussion [0].
| I'm not a fan of the tab metaphor in general but the
| implementation could've been worse.
|
| [0]: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-release-v1-0-0/44873
| skybrian wrote:
| Looks like the help docs [1] are an example of what Obsidian
| looks like when published?
|
| I found it strange that what I would consider to be the help
| site's table of contents (on the left) is in alphabetical order,
| somewhat like an index, instead of being arranged in a logical
| outline like a book's table of contents.
|
| Meanwhile, what's labelled as the "table of contents" on the
| right is actually just the headings in the current page.
|
| [1] https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Index
| ps wrote:
| I found some threads mentioning sync so just my 5 cents - it is
| possible to create a vault on iCloud drive and thus having a
| content synced across devices. I am not sure if the Sync feature
| provides more functionality, but I personally would not need
| anything else.
| Macha wrote:
| Yes, you can sync with the external file sync tool of your
| choosing with no ill effects
| fudged71 wrote:
| I tried Obsidian and just couldn't use it.
|
| After using Roam I can never go backwards to plain text, I need a
| block based editor with infinite nesting. I've recently switched
| to Tana.
| ducktective wrote:
| Congrats on launch !
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| Wohoo! I've been using Obsidian for 2+ years and even wrote some
| personal plugins [0] to automatically backup my vault on GH,
| import all my Pocket.com highlights, etc. Highly recommend it :)
|
| [0] https://github.com/fanahova/fana-os
| Geee wrote:
| Not sure if this is for me. I use one large text file where I put
| all my notes. Organizing everything into folders and files with
| formatting seems to be just too high friction.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| You can use as many or as few folders and files as you want in
| Obsidian. Try saving your one large text file as .md and open
| it in Obsidian. Voila, superpowers.
| Geee wrote:
| I'll try to get used to it.
| caycep wrote:
| I wonder if Obsidian can support using Apple Notes as a data
| source/back end/sync source?
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| If I use obsidian to take personal work notes, do I need a
| commercial license? Right now I use a giant append-only markdown
| file but I'm curious about the linking.
| Macha wrote:
| This is my use case and after reading the terms, I came to the
| conclusion that the answer is yes. It's an honor system setup
| though.
| elefantastisch wrote:
| My understanding is yes, and honestly, this was my biggest
| sticking point with Obsidian. I'm happy to pay for software. I
| pay for Dynalist pro (same team for anyone who didn't know),
| but the separate commercial license on top of paying for sync
| just felt like a lot. Especially with commercial use being
| defined so broadly.
|
| Fourteen days to trial just isn't enough to see whether it
| would be worth the cost to use for my own personal use at work.
| The Dynalist freemium model where I could use a smaller feature
| set for a longer time and then decide it was worth upgrading
| was just much easier.
|
| Erica, would you consider a discount on add-on services for
| commercial subscribers? A 25% discount would put the price a
| bit closer to Dynalist pro and make it feel like I was actually
| getting something for the commercial subscription other than
| just permission to use it for work. Or maybe a discount for
| existing Dynalist pro subscribers?
|
| I really love the work you all are doing, here and on Dynalist,
| just a bit hung up on the cost here.
| pgt wrote:
| I moved from Google Docs to Obsidian in a process of de-Googling
| my life. With Obsidian, my notes are only stored on my machine
| and my storage syncing service. Files are just text, so my notes
| can outlive Obsidian itself.
| dmix wrote:
| I was using Obsidian pretty hard for a year but I eventually
| switched over to https://www.ticktick.com/
|
| It turns out I prefer having lists as my primary interface,
| especially for the mobile side (insert text and press enter,
| instead of typing "- [x] item").
|
| It does 3 things (all integrated together): lists, notes, and
| calendar. The "Notes" section is like a mini obsidian mixed in
| with the lists, but you can also add markdown notes to each
| individual 'task'. So I use it like a personal knowledge-base,
| not just for expendable lists.
|
| The calendar integration is also nice. I've combined Obsidian,
| gCal, and Omnitasks/Todoist into one app.
|
| That said, for pure note taking Obsidian was the best. Especially
| for coding/work.
| urlwolf wrote:
| For anyone wanting to try something similar but with a better
| graph view, check Tangent: http://tangentnotes.com/
|
| Also more performant and less plugin-dependent.
| oxff wrote:
| Fantastic update for me.
| kylecordes wrote:
| The sync pricing is frustrating. You can choose between free
| (single device only), and surprisingly expensive for a low-volume
| file sync mechanism.
|
| Of course I understand there are good reasons for it. It is so
| difficult to find a paying customer for anything, that it's
| impractical to price below a cost threshold. LTV > CAC.
|
| Would love to see something like "$200 to enable the a peer-to-
| peer sync engine forever", i.e. no ongoing hosting costs for
| Obsidian.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| It's markdown - could DIY a sync via git pretty easily
| brimwats wrote:
| lots of folks use syncthing or something similar
| [deleted]
| Macha wrote:
| I pay for Obsidian sync largely to sync my work vault between
| my company provided laptop and my company provided tool as
| installing a general purpose sync tool apart from the company
| managed Google File Stream makes the IT security folks nervous
| of data exfiltration. Maybe even Google File Stream would work,
| but I will admit the lazy file downloading makes me nervous
|
| For my personal non-work vaults between my personal devices, I
| used Syncthing without issue for months, only switching since I
| was paying for the sync license for work anyway.
| soamv wrote:
| Does anyone use obsidian with any of the e-ink note-taking
| devices (remarkable/supernote/etc.)?
| canMarsHaveLife wrote:
| Thank you for Obsidian! I really like it and I'm learning
| Zettelkasten with it! As a consequence I am leanrning things more
| deeply.
|
| The only thing I miss is a more acessible price for brazilians in
| Obsidian Sync (1 USD [?] 5.50 BRL, that is too much). I know I
| can sync it using other tools, but I feel the native tool would
| be the best of the scenarios).
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| I just realised Obsidian is built by the same folks who built
| Dynalist wow. I enjoyed using Dynalist for a while (before
| discovering Notion) and even built a chrome extension for it
| (Dynalist Allstar).
| badtension wrote:
| Out of curiosity, can you share more on your pricing strategy?
| What is actually paying for your development? It looks like you
| give away a lot for free, do you do that cause the server costs
| are nil without e.g. sync?
|
| Can you share the rough number of users in each tier/service?
| fho wrote:
| Woohoo! Kudos for building what is a pretty awesome application!
|
| Use mine for Zettelkasten style knowledge tracking, Zotero and
| Vim plugins are awesome ... I guess I should donate some money
| because I am pretty happy with Obsidian!
| hs86 wrote:
| Obsidian is my favorite app, and my only missing feature is to
| enable better PDF support, similar to Logseq.
|
| Logseq allows me to embed the PDFs inside the app and annotate
| them with all the bells and whistles enabled by markdown. Area
| highlights, math notation, all these things are not possible with
| classical PDF readers, and I think Obsidian would fit well here.
| thadt wrote:
| Agreed, better PDF support would be great. The main feature I
| constantly need is search. But the 'open in external
| application' option gets me there pretty quickly, so it's not
| that much slower - but it would be nice to not have to switch
| apps.
| solarkraft wrote:
| What do you prefer Obsidian over Logseq for?
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Also not OP, but personally I have a few gripes with Logseq:
|
| - No export to PDF. There's a community plugin, but it's not
| great. The workaround is to export to HTML and print to PDF,
| but there's no real iOS option there.
|
| - Managing images and other attachments are a mess. Using the
| "upload an asset" method gives it a random filename that if
| the app fails to save the page correctly, you either dig
| through the folder structure to find the random file name to
| link manually or you re-"upload an asset" creating a
| duplicate with a new random name. This could be alleviated if
| it was more stable or with a file picker with thumbnails to
| find previously "uploaded" files
|
| - Pages fail to save correctly more than I'd like. I have no
| idea what the cause is, but it happens frequently on every
| platform I've tried.
|
| - Page title changes don't propagate correctly sometimes,
| causing orphaned pages where it's a coin flip whether the
| page with the older title holds the content or the new one,
| leaving the other empty.
|
| - Each page needs a unique title. I like how Notion allows
| multiple pages with the same title and are organized based on
| which parent page they're embedded or created in. I imagine
| Notion randomizes the actual file name similar to how Logseq
| already does for "uploaded" assets, so this could be
| alleviated if Logseq did the same. It could potentially
| alleviate the previously mentioned issue and it seems to me
| like the most logical method of handling this particular type
| of non-directory organizational structure.
|
| - Their E2EE sync service is not yet ready, so no real mobile
| sync outside of iCloud (I use DropBox).
|
| - Their documentation is terrible. There's tons of
| undocumented features, like admonitions, and the existing
| documentation is horribly structured, which is ironic since
| the documentation uses Logseq itself and the whole point of
| the app is to structure content.
|
| ----
|
| Side note, since we're on the topic of personal knowledge
| bases and note taking, my personal dream app is Obsidian with
| Asciidoc support instead of Markdown. A lot of the extra
| features they add to markdown are part of the Asciidoc
| standard, like admonitions and document-to-document cross-
| references, it would potentially make the backend easier and
| the content more portable with page attributes like
| specifying an attachment directory, and some features are
| simply more flexible/powerful like tables.
|
| I still use AsciiDoc to create PDF documents that require
| more flexibility, like table spans and nested ordered lists
| (Obsidian's markdown uses just 1,2,... instead of changing to
| e.g., a,b,... for a nested level). My current workflow is
| typing it up in VS Code, converting to DocBook with
| asciidoctor, then converting that to a LaTeX PDF using
| pandoc. The result is a professional, academic-like PDF, but
| the workflow is a bit of a hassle and I'd prefer to do all of
| my document typing in Obsidian since it's so nice to use.
|
| If I had more free time outside of my CS master's program and
| thesis work, I'd learn JS/TS to attempt to create a community
| extension that added AsciiDoc support to it and support for
| exporting to HTML and DocBook (and basic PDF since I'm pretty
| sure Obsidian uses an HTML-based PDF export anyway because
| CSS themes affect the look of the export), even if I still
| needed to use pandoc to convert to a more professional LaTeX
| PDF. I'm sure the VS Code AsciiDoc extension as reference and
| asciidoctor.js could get one pretty far.
|
| Sorry for the rant. I've just been itching for a AsciiDoc-
| based note-taking/PKB for a long time.
| papascrubs wrote:
| Fellow AsciiDoc supporter. I want an AsciiDoc note taking
| app so badly too. So many awesome features in AsciiDoc that
| blow markdown out of the water. I use asciidoc-pdf for
| doc/report generation and the workflow is so smooth.
|
| - Includes/embeds (reference your source code by line
| range(s)
|
| - Complex table support + the ability to embed CSV
| (automatic headers)
|
| - Frontmatter as a first class citizen
|
| - Macros (Variables) that can be referenced across
| documents
|
| - Numerous Diagram parsing libraries (embed pretty much any
| diagram-as-code language)
|
| I've had the same thoughts on building a Dendron type
| extension for AsciiDoc (AsciiDoc vscode plugin is fairly
| robust). Really would just need to hammer out some front
| matter parsing to get basic functionality.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Thanks for the reminder to check out asciidoctor-pdf! I
| forgot about it because I was using macOS's default, out-
| of-date Ruby version for the longest time and the gem
| required a newer version. I've since figured out how to
| install and change the default Ruby installation though,
| so I need to check it out. It's certainly a pain getting
| my current workflow set up on a new machine (e.g.
| installing TexLive takes forever for the latex-pdf
| support in pandoc).
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| I was also kind of sad that Logseq didn't really have a
| vim-mode.
| NoMoreBro wrote:
| (not op) Logseq is open source and really great in the way it
| connects notes and highlights pdfs, but the sync part is too
| "asynchronous". It works well if you use a single device, but
| as long as you add something else you have to manually
| reindex and refresh a lot.
|
| Obsidian is less opinionated on the txt file format and
| folders too, so I consider it more future-proof.
| number6 wrote:
| The sync part I solved with syncthing.
|
| I started with logseq and now obsidian doesn't work for me
| anymore. Tried to switch but I am into this small self
| containing bits now. Plus journal with timestamps
| submeta wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the syncing part? Last I tried
| Logseq, syncing across devices via iCloud was very
| unreliable. So I gave up. Although I would have loved to
| replace Roam with Logseq back then. Now I stick to Emacs
| + orgmode and Obsidian for plain markdown files.
| number6 wrote:
| I have a folder in syncthing called "logseq". This folder
| holds the logseq files. I have logseq-sync on my phone so
| it syncs the folder. I also have a Cloudserver which is
| the spoke and all other devices (2 laptops, the phone)
| sync it.
| NoMoreBro wrote:
| Syncthing is very good, but the best iOS implementation,
| Mobius Sync[1], is not comparable with the Android one
| (the OS limits the syncs, you need a regular notification
| and so on).
|
| The great things about Logseq are his weakness for me.
| Everything is so interconnected (you can say: "here put
| the paragraph of this other note") that I sometimes lose
| confidence in the system. It becomes too complex. With
| Obsidian I know that a note is a file. Less convenient
| but simple and reliable.
|
| Logseq really excels with his outlining mode, I miss it
| (but I don't like the way it saves states in the markdown
| file). It has some problems with the code blocks too.
|
| [1] https://www.mobiussync.com/
| hs86 wrote:
| As an outliner, Logseq is too opinionated about how I am
| supposed to use it. Obsidian is less strict and allows me to
| follow whatever principle I want to which extent I want.
|
| I can mix a bit of Zettelkasten here, some daily notes there,
| and some 'old-fashioned' folder structures for projects to my
| heart's content.
| zachlatta wrote:
| This is so exciting, congrats!
|
| Obsidian has completely changed my notes workflow over the past
| year. It's so lightweight, and has just the right amount of
| structure for me. Thank you for building it! The new interface
| looks fantastic.
|
| Does this include an update to the iOS app?
| joethei wrote:
| Yes, the update got released on every platform
| pshirshov wrote:
| The sync feature is kinda overpriced. What about a family
| subscription and collaboration/sharing features?
|
| Also, from what I can see, there is no 2FA, am I wrong?..
| kepano wrote:
| You can sync using any sync solution, e.g. Git, iCloud,
| Dropbox, etc.
|
| There is no 2FA because there is no authentication necessary.
| All the files are local to your device.
| ameixaseca wrote:
| I installed Obsidian and did some initial testing, but two things
| completely threw me off:
|
| 1) Basic synchronization is a paid feature and you cannot (or at
| least could not) set up a private synchronization server.
|
| 2) Synchronization depends on the cloud. I simply cannot trust
| all important information of my life going to an unspecified
| location in the cloud for synchronization, even if it promises
| end-to-end encryption. The fact that the source is closed and it
| is a small company aggravates that immensely.
|
| Which is why I'm using Trilium now. It's a bit more limited (no
| app) but has a web clipper extension and it is open source, so I
| can do changes or quick fixes if needed. I also synchronize with
| my own server, running behind a VPN.
|
| For mobile, I'm pulling all tabs using adb and a couple of
| scripts, and it has been working nicely for my use case (mostly
| archival/planning).
| elashri wrote:
| While Trilium have a very good web version. It also have cross
| platform app (Linux, MacOS and Windows) [1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/zadam/trilium/releases/latest
| AB1908 wrote:
| Wait I can synchronize with nextcloud just fine. It's just a
| folder on my drive after all. That said, it's janky on mobile.
| selykg wrote:
| That's an understatement. The mobile app is... frankly, kind
| of a garbage can of usability issues imo, but I love the
| desktop app, it's pretty great. But until they fix the mobile
| app I just can't use it.
|
| I'd like to see the mobile app bridge the gap between typical
| mobile note taking apps and the desktop Obsidian app. Make it
| easy to create a new note like you would in any other note
| app, save it where it makes sense to save it, make sync easy
| to setup, etc. Probably asking too much, but ugh... the
| mobile app is so bad.
| kepano wrote:
| Did you try the 1.0 version of mobile app? It's much
| improved compared to past versions. What are the issues you
| are running into?
| selykg wrote:
| Just downloaded. Seems a little better. I wish I could
| easily create a note in whatever folder I am in
| currently. I have an inbox folder. It's where new notes
| go until I can deal with them. This always drove me nuts
| in both apps, but I can't just go into a folder. Look at
| Apple Notes for instance as a simple example of how this
| works.
|
| The sidebar is just a tree in Obsidian. It doesn't really
| act how I want. This is less an issue on desktop, but on
| mobile my expectations are different.
|
| Hopefully sync setup has improved in mobile. That was
| awful last I tried it.
| kepano wrote:
| > I wish I could easily create a note in whatever folder
| I am in currently.
|
| That's easy. Go to:
|
| Settings > Files & Links > Default location for new
| notes: Same folder as current file
|
| Note that the file explorer is a plugin like any other,
| so you can also create your own file explorer plugin that
| works the way you want it to :)
| smoldesu wrote:
| You can also syncronize Obsidian with your own
| hardware/software solution. I've been doing it for years and
| it's the simplest thing:
|
| - Set up Syncthing to sync your vault folder
|
| - Share with your devices and you're done
|
| If you're already using a VPN and syncing with a home-server,
| you could also leverage Nextcloud or whatever your current
| syncing solution is. I don't see any reason to get mad when
| Obsidian is effectively saying "we don't want your data unless
| you pay us to handle it right".
| e12e wrote:
| Any reason not to put the Obsidian folder in git, and sync via
| push/pull?
| andymac4182 wrote:
| There is a plugin that helps automate that as well :)
| https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git
| kepano wrote:
| Obsidian is just a folder of plain text files on your computer
| so you can use pretty much any sync service (iCloud, Dropbox,
| OneDrive, etc) -- you can even use Git if you want to
| completely control sync and version control.
|
| Also for web clipper check out this bookmarklet I made:
| https://stephanango.com/obsidian-web-clipper
| mikae1 wrote:
| I've had not reason to pick freemium Obsidian over open source
| https://logseq.com/.
| the-printer wrote:
| alexmorse wrote:
| I've been using this for a few months and it's great. The wiki-
| like connections, vim mode, and several different ways to look at
| how things relate make it my go to for notes
| technosopher wrote:
| It's awesome!
| c7b wrote:
| The description sounds interesting! Can anyone comment on how
| this compares to or integrates with Anki? I've found SRS to be
| really powerful, but I'd like to integrate it more with note-
| taking.
| shrvtv wrote:
| The app experience is totally ruined now. It's insanity for me to
| see 1Password 7 to 8 transition level of nonsense again.
|
| Block-quotes are no longer quotes, just text with a strip of
| light on the left with no option to make it more obvious.
|
| File name is now H1 header at the top of the file with no option
| to hide it.
|
| Performance sucks so much, and that is on an eight-core x64
| mobile CPU running Windows 10 Pro. Everything is sluggish 15fps
| mess. Shame.
|
| Markdown links are ruined too. The previous UI was light years
| ahead, using different colors for the text and the link. Now the
| color is the same.
|
| Most extensions don't care and don't render properly. Fckn great,
| man.
|
| The tabs are by far the only good thing in the update. Everything
| else is a downgrade.
| 9935c101ab17a66 wrote:
| > The app experience is totally ruined now. It's insanity for
| me to see 1Password 7 to 8 transition level of nonsense again.
|
| I really, really don't think this kind of catastrophizing is
| appropriate. A lot of your complaints are _incredibly_ minor
| things, and are resolved through configuration.
|
| > Most extensions don't care and don't render properly. Fckn
| great, man.
|
| This absolutely has not been my experience and the level of
| vitriol is completely inappropriate. Extensions are developed
| by third-parties in their own time, and provided _for free_.
| Have you made sure all your 'broken' extensions are up to
| date? Have you verified they are compatible? Have you checked
| to see there are issues opened in the extension's git repo?
| Have you submitted PRs to fix the issues you've come across?
|
| I've been using Obsidian for about a year, and about six months
| ago, I paid for Catalyst to have access to insider builds and
| to support development. In that time, Obsidian has gotten
| _significantly_ better.
| andthat wrote:
| Been using Obsidian for the last year or so, following LYT etc.
| Life changing software. So, basically everything feels exactly
| the same to me. I don't understand what this comment is about.
| Is something light years ahead just because there is a
| different link colour? For some reason this comment is at the
| top? HN pessimism has gone too far. Sorry.
| TheLocehiliosan wrote:
| > File name is now H1 header at the top of the file with no
| option to hide it.
|
| Have you tried adjusting the option: Appearance > Show inline
| title ?
| shrvtv wrote:
| That actually worked out for me, thanks. Looks like some
| settings like font size, UI scaling and showing inline title
| have been reset.
| kepano wrote:
| You can turn off the inline title under Settings > Appearance
|
| It will likely take a few weeks for plugins/themes to update to
| the new theme system, so I would encourage a bit of patience!
|
| See theme migration guide:
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/0-16-0-theme-migration-guide/425...
| shrvtv wrote:
| Wait, I recognize your username... Thanks for the tabs, but
| please, please do something to the links and quotes. They are
| completely and utterly messed up, now that they look the
| same. 10 hours ago there was a difference between the text
| and the URL in a hyperlink. And now there isn't.
|
| Perfomance is something we never had to begin with, at the
| very least I can live without it. But we had double colored
| links! We had quotes, highlighted out of the text by grey
| colored blocks.
|
| Why? Why would you take that? I mean, 1Password team has
| moved to Electron and lost features, that is partially
| understandle. Forgivable, at least. But Obsidian just got
| comically worse with no explanation provided.
| kepano wrote:
| I am not 100% sure I understand what you are describing but
| it sounds easy to fix.
|
| If you can share before/after screenshots of issue on the
| Obsidian forum or in Obsidian Discord, that would help!
| shrvtv wrote:
| I'll be glad to help on the weekend. It was a huge relief
| to know, that you didn't just drop a color from the
| hyperlink
| rcarmo wrote:
| Good news. I wonder if it can deal with deeply nested folders and
| get metadata from standard Markdown frontmatter already?
|
| (I have a fair amount of content already in plain Markdown, as
| you can see here: https://taoofmac.com/static/graph)
| rcarmo wrote:
| Did a quick test. Still seems to not support storing images
| alongside Markdown files (at least it breaks in mine), nor
| support having a default file (index.md) per folder and have
| the folder path be the actual page path.
| jaimehrubiks wrote:
| Those two are actually a must for me. My team at work needed
| a wiki and I would only accept one with such features,
| eventually we found it. Still looking for something to self
| note taking. I'd also need something that can sync to phone
| cheaper, as currently I don't pay for Google keep
| rcarmo wrote:
| I had to build mine: https://github.com/rcarmo/sushy
| chriskrycho wrote:
| Not sure what approach you're stumbling with re: images, but
| they definitely support them, but you can literally just drop
| an image onto the editor and it'll embed it, including
| locating it where you've specified that attachments should
| go.
|
| The default file per folder is not built-in, but there is a
| handy community plugin[1] which does it.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/xpgo/obsidian-folder-note-plugin
| rcarmo wrote:
| Right. That's the problem, it insists on storing images in
| a single folder, which doesn't scale or make it easy to
| manage complex notes as a single unit (it's the reason why
| my notes are folders and not single files).
| kepano wrote:
| You can store images anywhere. Can you share what syntax
| you are using for your image links?
| chriskrycho wrote:
| No, you can put them _anywhere_ , it just _defaults_ to
| putting them in a single folder for ease of convenience.
| There 's even a setting, "Default location for new
| attachments," which allows you to choose:
|
| - Vault folder - A specified folder in your vault - In
| the same folder as the current file - In subfolder under
| the current folder
|
| But again, that's just the default location; you can put
| it anywhere and reference it wherever it is using
| relative paths.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Well, I am looking at a very simple Markdown file with a
| single image reference and it's not working. The image
| file is in the current folder...
| chriskrycho wrote:
| Interesting - possibly normal image links don't work but
| their _embeds_ do?
| rcarmo wrote:
| Just tried the plugin in "Index file" mode, set the index
| file to index.md and it doesn't seem to pick up nested
| paths correctly for some reason.
|
| (Also the rest of Obsidian seems to not be aware the plugin
| is there, the notes graph is still referencing the wrong
| things...)
| mmlkrx wrote:
| Not having used any of the graph based note taking/knowledge
| tools like Obsidian, logseq, Athens Research or Roam -- I was
| wondering if anybody has tried them for collaborative knowledge
| management?
|
| Obsidian seems to be single user based, Athens is "collaborative"
| and "for startup teams". But does anybody actually have any
| experience using a graph based knowledge tool for your teams
| knowledge management?
| Macha wrote:
| I think Notion is more aimed at teams. I haven't used Athens or
| Roam, but certainly Obsidian and loqseq are much more single
| user focused. You could use a shared sync but it requires the
| end user to have the same sync program as you, so it's not like
| sending a link to someone involved
| stavros_ wrote:
| WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
|
| Obsidian has changed my life. Everything about this software is
| _chefs kiss_.
|
| Thankyou.
| adamfeldman wrote:
| Among other awesome plugins, there's obsidian-wielder [1] for
| using Clojure (via sci).
|
| [1]: https://github.com/victorb/obsidian-wielder
| bloqs wrote:
| Questions for users - if we work in an environment where we
| cannot install applications (and no this wont be approved) are we
| able to use this still, or is it only going to be viable for a
| "personal" machine.
|
| I ask as i can think of several times ive been stuck with just a
| work laptop or similar and it would suck to not at least have a
| browser version or something.
|
| Thanks
| DMell wrote:
| This is very cool! Thanks for sharing.
| bloqs wrote:
| I think you replied to the wrong comment!
| DMell wrote:
| I absolutely did - apologies.
| brimwats wrote:
| a few people have set it up in Docker, so if you're that
| technical it might be doable
| [deleted]
| jeremy0x4a wrote:
| There are a few posts in their feature requests forum asking
| for a portable version to run via flash drive, but so far I
| don't believe that request has ever been acknowledged, though
| some hacky workarounds exist.
| AlanYx wrote:
| If you can't install applications locally, Logseq is a good
| alternative. It can operate entirely locally, with nothing
| installed, if your browser supports the localstorage API. Edge
| does, for example. (There are a small number of features that
| don't work in this mode.)
| bloqs wrote:
| This sounds interesting - but I've never heard of it, what is
| it?
| nitin-pai wrote:
| Obsidian is among the best note-taking apps out there today.
| Backlinks make it more useful than other note taking apps, and
| this helps me uncover connections even if I don't use the graph
| feature that much.
|
| One plugin I am wish will arrive soon is Google Calendar
| integration.
| sofixa wrote:
| > One plugin I am wish will arrive soon is Google Calendar
| integration
|
| For what use? There's an obsidian-ics plugin to fill a daily
| note with events from a calendar, ans obsidian-google-lookup to
| put Google Calendar events and contacts as objects in notes.
| nmaleki wrote:
| Congrats on hitting 1.0! Props to the team for adding digraph
| support to published vaults early on.
|
| Anyone can check out my public Obsidian vault here:
| https://notes.recursion.is
|
| And I made an introduction video for it here:
| https://youtu.be/tTFK-V3hdAw
| tester457 wrote:
| oheyadam wrote:
| This is one of the best uses of Obsidian I've ever seen. Thanks
| for sharing
| sdf4j wrote:
| Congratulations for the achievement! Been using obsidian for over
| a year as my daily driver. Found the graph view quite gimmicky
| for my workflow but the rest of the features are super polished.
| thadt wrote:
| Have been using Obsidian for organizing and running a tabletop
| RPG session for a while and and it is fantastic. I have whole
| folders of monsters, encounters, player backstory, world notes,
| and state blocks. Being able to drop them inline for 'today's
| session' and then viewing it all together has been monumentally
| useful.
|
| It's also been good enough to replace Sublime + directory for my
| day to day development note taking. Its fast and just gets out of
| the way for writing and organizing - which is exactly what I want
| in a note taking app.
| kepano wrote:
| I was an early user of Obsidian in May 2020, and have been
| absolutely blown away by how fast this tiny team of 2 people was
| able to build such a life-changing app. Using Obsidian
| fundamentally changed the way I think.
|
| It's also been fun to see how rapidly the plugin ecosystem has
| grown. The community is so friendly and creative.
|
| I have contributed a few things of my own, notably Minimal
| theme[0]. When I was asked to help lead the new UI for 1.0 it was
| a dream come true. I am really proud of how it turned out. We
| were able to make a lot of the app feel more native across
| platforms. I'm also excited to see what new themes pop up that
| use the new theme system which is much simpler and more flexible.
|
| 1.0 is an amazing milestone, and one you don't get to celebrate
| often. It's so much fun to see all the love in the comments.
|
| [0]: https://minimal.guide
| 9935c101ab17a66 wrote:
| I'm a HUGE fan of Minimal Theme, and I really appreciate not
| only all the work you've put in to improve Obsidian, but also
| your thoughtfulness and skill. Minimal not only looks
| wonderful, but it has a really great array of options/settings,
| both through Minimal Theme Settings and Style Settings. I've
| tried dozens of Obsidian themes, and frankly, nothing else
| comes close. It's no surprise you were tapped to improve the
| default theme for 1.0 :).
| pkulak wrote:
| Fun! I just moved over to Obsidian because of the simplicity. I
| love that I can use the local folder just as easily as the full
| app.
|
| Tip for anyone wondering: if you need encryption, gocryptfs works
| great.
|
| Now I just need to wait for Flathub to update...
| leodriesch wrote:
| Could you expand on how you do encryption with gocryptfs?
| pkulak wrote:
| Oh, sure. Obsidian just reads from whatever directory you
| give it, so I set up an encrypted directory with gocryptfs,
| then mount it decrypted and point Obsidian at that. Sounds
| like a pain, but I have a separate "vault" (folder) for
| secrets and I don't have to get in to that one very often.
| But if I did, I could have the folder mount at boot or
| something.
| charles_f wrote:
| Congrats!!
|
| Honestly the beta version was already stable and feature rich
| enough to consider it it a v1 :)
|
| If one of the key features is a new UI, can I advise to put a
| couple screenshots in the announcement?
|
| Will this be retrocompatible with plugins on v.15?
| input_sh wrote:
| As someone using insider build and a bunch of 3rd party
| plugins, they're fine, but themes are a bit of a bumpier ride
| due to UI changes.
|
| They've marked them all as legacy and are removing the legacy
| label as theme developers are updating them.
| Jack_rando_fang wrote:
| Interesting. I'll be switching from Logseq to Obsidian as the
| outline-only mode in Logseq felt limiting.
| omair_inam wrote:
| Anyone have any thoughts on Craft[1] and how it compares to
| Obsidian as a note-taking tool? My primary work machine is a Mac
| (I also have an iPad and iPhone). I'm looking primarily for a
| note-taking app with support for images. I don't necessarily need
| the more "glamourous" publishing type features that craft has.
|
| Things I like about the app:
|
| * (Generally) good keyboard support
|
| * Syncing (but I'm paying for it)
|
| * Good native apps on mobile
|
| Things that aren't so good
|
| * Editing code blocks
|
| [1] https://www.craft.do/
| ngrilly wrote:
| Two reasons why I'm using Obsidian instead of Craft:
|
| Craft uses a proprietary data format. Obsidian is more portable
| since it just uses folders of Markdown files.
|
| Craft for Windows doesn't work offline (only online).
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I love Obsidian so much. It's the only note-taking/knowledge base
| type app that I've stuck with. It's so flexible, performant and
| nice looking. Everything I care to document or commit to long-
| term memory goes in my Obsidian vault and I push it all up to a
| private git repo.
| productceo wrote:
| Interesting decision to have zero images of the new design on the
| landing page. Could you share why you decided this way?
| mirzap wrote:
| This update looks amazing. Kudos to the entire team! I love
| Obsidian, using it for couple of months now.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| I recently switched _back_ to Obsidian _(from nothing)_. It doesn
| 't solve everything the way i want, but it's the closest. The
| biggest thing for me is it's very open to plugin development, so
| my goal is to heavily modify it myself (and a few community
| plugins) to do what i want in the short term. Saves me from
| forever yakshaving my home-rolled solution lol.
|
| Also the fact that i can easily use syncing with E2E encryption
| _(though not sure if it 's been reviewed yet.. would be nice)_ is
| awesome.
| vlugorilla wrote:
| Love the respect for privacy that Obsidian brings. No tackers and
| no shit. It's beautiful to find such a great app with a respect
| for something so important.
| wbharding wrote:
| Between Obsidian, Roam, Amplenote, and Reflect it has certainly
| been a golden age for note taking over the last few years. It's
| hard to remember that it was only 5 years ago that second
| generation note apps like Evernote, Notion and Bear were the only
| viable options unless you wanted a 1st gen app like OneNote or
| Workflowy.
|
| What might be most interesting about the new set of fast moving
| note apps is that all seem to be built by teams of 3 or less
| people. Obsidian seems to have ascended to the top of the heap
| with a team of three and no apparent VC funding. Anyone that
| roots for small companies and passionate programmers should
| appreciate Obsidian proving that the best tools don't have to be
| built by the biggest teams. More the opposite.
| lukewrites wrote:
| MacOS also has the FOSS app Notenik (https://notenik.app/)
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| It's not often that I see a mention of Workflowy in the wild. I
| know there is better out there, but Workflowy and Apple Notes
| are the ones I already use and I'm unsure whether the others
| are better enough to be worth the switching costs.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I find with extensions I can basically replicate the
| Workflowy experience in Obsidian.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| My issue is that it feels like none of these tools do anything
| significantly new, and are all so obsessed with wonky features
| like node-graph views and backlinks that are only useful to a
| niche audience of obsessive note-takers who in many cases seem
| to care more about playing with their notes than actually using
| or sharing them.
|
| That's why I'm working on creating https://visible.page because
| I want a tool that isn't just for markdown organizational
| obsessives, but rather for organizing and visualizing ALL kinds
| of information the way regular people do. None of these tools
| handle things like dates, locations, numbers, and other data of
| various types well. With Visible if you add a date or a
| location to some content, that content is now accessible on a
| calendar and a map side by side with all the associated text
| and media you added to it as well. No worrying about what table
| column it goes into or what metadata row or plugin you need to
| render it well. Just add the location, and add a map view, boom
| done. Want more than one date associated with some content?
| Just add it, you don't have to figure out to add another "Date
| type" metadata section the way you do in Notion for example.
|
| It is not offline first. It is not file based. It is not
| catered to the needs you see so often here on Hacker News but
| don't actually hear when talking to regular people who just
| want to plan a trip together or keep track of an
| apartment/house hunt without spreading information across a
| half-dozen tools.
|
| Does no one else get frustrated that even Google can't show you
| a map of your week's upcoming event locations? That when you
| are doing research online you have to tediously copy and paste
| each address one-by-one into Google Maps and then copy an embed
| link for that into another tool, and even then the addresses
| are isolated with no relevant information like photos or notes
| attachable to them?
|
| We have so many amazing internet powers that are simply
| unavailable in any of these note taking tools. I'm sorry but
| markdown and backlinks are boring. I want to see my information
| the way it was meant to be seen and in a way that my parents
| can understand it as well.
| pbronez wrote:
| Neat concept. What's the security story? The local-first
| architecture that Obsidian et al use is really valuable to
| me. In a world where everything lives on somebody else's
| server, I crave experiences that I can exercise some control
| over. Nothing hosted in the cloud feels private.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| I totally understand and sympathize with that feeling which
| is not uncommon here on Hacker News, but when I speak to
| the average internet user they do care about privacy, they
| just don't have the same anxiety over cloud services. We
| are following a similar path to Notion or Paper who have
| millions of users who trust that their data is secure,
| private, and accessible.
|
| Also many features like realtime live collaboration are
| incredibly difficult to do with a local-first setup, but
| provides a user experience that lets Visible pages be
| useful for families, friends, and communities.
|
| We do want to make your data fully available to you via
| export, and we don't view or use the data in your pages for
| anything. We have basic event-based analytics to see how
| people (anonymously) use Visible, but that's just at the
| level of button clicks and seeing how many pages people
| create on average.
| duderific wrote:
| It sounds like you're going for a completely different type
| of user than those who like Obsidian. That said, I've signed
| up for your Beta rollout, as what you're building sounds
| appealing for my use case, that of a kind of family planner.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| Definitely targeting a different core user, although I
| think the simplicity and power that we will provide out-of-
| the-box may eventually sway some users caught in
| Obsidian/Roam land to try the Visible way.
|
| Thank you for signing up for the beta, we will start
| rolling out invites soon! "Family planner" is exactly the
| kind of early user we want. Daily life involves so much
| information that goes beyond text, and we feel there should
| be a tool that can handle any information you throw at it
| in an elegant way without tediously configuring and
| managing it.
| dominotw wrote:
| > only useful to a niche audience of obsessive note-takers
| who in many cases seem to care more about playing with their
| notes than actually using or sharing them.
|
| This describes me perfectly. I use obsidian to 'feel
| productive' but not actually do any work.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| I fall into the same trap. We want Visible to be somewhere
| you create pages that are genuinely useful, not just info
| dumps. Millions of young people now use Notion to organize
| their lives, but as you can see from their marketing page
| it is a tool catered towards business knowledge-bases and
| not the variety of awesome uses these people have jerry-
| rigged Notion into.
|
| With just the map + calendar views alone you can address so
| many planning and tracking frustrations that simply aren't
| solved by the calendar invites and embedding Google maps
| into other information documents that we are limited to
| today.
| prox wrote:
| I have been using scrivener as my note taking app. It's
| actually made for writers and for researchers to make their
| work (books, essays) but as a note taker it's very versatile.
|
| https://www.literatureandlatte.com/
| kstrauser wrote:
| I have Scrivener, but I've been using iA Writer much more for
| note taking. It has wiki links, decent-ish support for
| x-callback-url automation, and a dead simple filesystem
| layout that lets me write custom scripts for note mangling
| when I need to.
| rayiner wrote:
| Seems more like a dark age. Obsidian makes the fans on my 4 ghz
| laptop go crazy. And in some ways (integration with email and
| tasks) it has less functionality than One Note 2010. And
| Obsidian has a PDF view and PDF annotations, but you can't
| search in it?
|
| I'm using Org mode with emacs just so I can have cross
| references into PDFs and emails in my notes.
| FirstLvR wrote:
| One note 2010 is the holy grail for me, nothing can beat that
| simplicity. Tho ... the purple color stil bothers me
|
| The fact runs super fast on any computer makes me wonder why
| did they downgrade into the current version which is absolute
| crap
| angryasian wrote:
| I'm not sure about the issues with your computer, but there
| are a ton of plugins for tasks and boards. What type of email
| integration are you looking for ?
| monkmartinez wrote:
| There is very little criticism of Obsidian here, but you
| definitely pointed a few out. I am a OneNote user and
| Obsidian doesn't really compare to OneNote. If you read a lot
| of papers, you can have OneNote OCR the text and make it
| searchable.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I'd love to use obsidian, but the mobile app does not allow
| specifying the folder. As a result on iOS you can only use the
| official syncing method. Maybe it's so you pay for the app, but
| I would personally rather pay a few for that functionality.
| teilo wrote:
| I've been using iCloud sync with Obsidian for a year, and it
| has worked perfectly. Correct, you don't get to put your
| folder anywhere you want. It has to be in iCloud Drive, but
| so what?
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| If you only use it on a single ios device, it screws up
| your whole syncing method. Google drive/dropbox works on
| every other platform seamlessly.
| shakezula wrote:
| Uh, this can't be true cause I have my Obsidian mobile vault
| set to my iCloud and use that for syncing and backup and it
| works pretty much perfectly.
| fnoof wrote:
| It allows iCloud or obsidian syncing. I tried to set it up
| with Dropbox because I didn't trust iClouds conflict
| resolution and couldn't get it to work.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I can't vouch for it because I don't have any iOS devices
| new enough to support it, but supposedly you can also set
| it up to sync via git:
|
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/mobile-setting-up-ios-git-
| based-...
| nvrspyx wrote:
| One thing to note is that this requires manually pulling
| and pushing in Working Copy as well as paying to unlock
| pro features ($20 one-time payment) to push to a remote
| repository.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I think that's a limitation of the Files API. In the
| least, I've yet to come across an app that allows
| _syncing_ with third-party storage apps through Files. I
| 've only seen one-way saving or using the file picker to
| retrieve a file.
| bostonvaulter2 wrote:
| This is due to an iOS limitation. On android you can
| pretty much use whatever syncing method you like (such as
| Syncthing)
| kzisme wrote:
| This is one of my main gripes with iOS. Even with
| folder/app/device specific folders it's a massive
| headache.
|
| As you mentioned Syncthing works flawlessly as well as
| other methods on Android.
| lambdas wrote:
| You can just save to a folder on your iOS device and
| push/pull changes with the app "working copy", which is a
| full gift client. It costs a pretty penny though.
| DMell wrote:
| You can use it with any cloud storage - iCloud, Dropbox, etc.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Just checked and that's the first thing I'm asked to do on
| the Android app. Maybe it only works when creating a vault?
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Android is different (i.e. better) than iOS in this regard,
| since it has much more robust filesystem support. You can
| easily use git syncing via termux:
|
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/guide-using-git-to-sync-your-
| obs...
| scubbo wrote:
| This is presumably a limitation of the iOS client, as I've
| certainly been able to store my vault in a Dropbox folder and
| sync it to my Android device with DropSync.
| samstave wrote:
| ELI5 What ever happened to Evernote?
|
| because I have a thoughts been killing me in the back of my
| head:
|
| Need a family version but self hosted + cloud which allows for
| an auto push of notes, pics and calander to your own thing..
|
| basically a family planner.
| luckman212 wrote:
| TLDR- the founder quit, a bunch of suits took over, they
| gutted the dev team and put the app on life support for
| years. Bugs piled up and nobody could fix them so they
| outsourced to a new offshore team who rewrote the whole thing
| in Electron... which of course was waaay too little, way too
| late.
| samstave wrote:
| You sound like someone i need to talk to email via profile.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Remember the whole copy paste debacle where they literally
| couldn't figure out how to allow for pasting with
| formatting versus pasting without formatting?
|
| That went on for practically a year until I finally just
| jumped ship and ported all of my notes into markdown.
| Vrondi wrote:
| I'm still waiting on one of these upstarts to implement the
| most essential features of the "first gen" apps, like
| inking/handwriting.
| brimwats wrote:
| Excalidraw works pretty well in obsidian. I didn't like it
| the first time but I'm increasingly getting used to it
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What's your secret? I find it... icky (maybe too long of a
| delay?) compared to Goodnotes.
| AB1908 wrote:
| There's an excalidraw plugin that helps with this to a
| degree.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| This plugin misses mark big time. I tried it and tried it
| again. Trying to love it... just couldn't compare with
| OneNote.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Likewise. I love Obsidian, I love my Apple Pencil - and
| the Excalidraw plugin just does not get me there,
| unfortunately.
|
| Goodnotes, Apple notes, and OneNote still leagues better
| for Apple Pencil support.
| bostonvaulter2 wrote:
| I absolutely love this plugin. But I'm probably using
| quite differently from you since I barely use the
| pencil/draw tool at all.
| sanshugoel wrote:
| There is one in Apple ecosystem. That is called _Muse_
| gumby wrote:
| Thanks!
| Ruq wrote:
| Try the "Excalidraw" Plugin for Obsidian.
| HellsMaddy wrote:
| I think the Excalidraw plugin solves a different problem.
| It's great for creating diagrams, especially with a
| keyboard+mouse. What I'm looking for, though, is something
| like Apple Notes on iPad, where you can seamlessly write in
| your notes with your Apple Pencil. The Excalidraw plugin
| adds a lot of friction and complexity if all you want to do
| is write.
| tryptophan wrote:
| Not everyone considers that essential.
|
| I had onenote once, realized my handwriting was shit, and
| never tried to hand write notes again.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Handwriting I find completely useless, but drawing on a
| display can be quite OK even for me
| angryasian wrote:
| theres a plugin for that -
| https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Unfortunately, I find the delay unacceptably high with
| this extension compared to first class support from apps
| like Goodnotes, Onenote and Apple Notes.
|
| Still love Obsidian - just wish drawing on it was a
| viable option.
| bostonvaulter2 wrote:
| That's a great plugin! It even lets you create links to
| docs from within the drawing. And you can embed one part
| of a drawing in one note and another part in a different
| note. I also highly recommend checking out the creator's
| YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/VisualPKM
| yellow_postit wrote:
| This is what keeps me coming back to apps like OneNote or
| Apples Notes. Obsidian and their ilk, for me, just encourage
| endless bike shedding and metrics that get in the way of the
| job to be done -- taking and finding notes.
| phlakaton wrote:
| FWIW I only use Obsidian for note-taking, not metrics or
| graph views or bike-shedding. Markdown with two-way links
| and the occasional image, code snippet, or Mermaid diagram.
| Doesn't need to be more complicated than that!
| mcluck wrote:
| Adding my voice to the cacophony. I don't use Obsidian
| but I do use Foam in VS Code. Daily notes and wikilinks
| is all I need. I've toyed with adding more metadata but
| it's just not worth the maintenance cost
| Mezzie wrote:
| This is one reason I can't stop using Goodnotes with an Apple
| Pencil: I like to handwrite. It's particularly helpful when
| I'm taking notes in multiple languages; switching keyboards
| every time I want to write a word in another language is a
| pain.
| [deleted]
| IcyPalm wrote:
| After years of trying around multiple markdown tools like
| Standard Notes, and loads of open source I finally landed on
| Obsidian. Still trying to wrap my head around it but it seems
| like such a powerful tool
| gibdu wrote:
| I've been using Obsidian since last year, and it soon became my
| primary tool for taking notes, keeping up with projects,
| proposals, etc...To keep business and personal life separate, I
| utilize two separate vaults, which is really simple. Highly
| recommended for anyone wanting to create their so-called second
| brain.
| paradox242 wrote:
| I found that in my role I was task switching into different
| domains and have a lot of trouble remembering the details a
| various deep dives and at first tried OneNote, Evernote, etc but
| had issues with each, mostly the concern that the storage formats
| were incompatible and so I would be held hostage by whichever app
| I chose.
|
| I went searching for something I could store in the cloud and
| locally and could understand markdown. Lo and behold Obsidian
| kept coming up in recommendations. I've been using it for 3
| months now and I love that it uses simple filesystem heirarchies
| to store the .md files. I can put it into a git repo and fit it
| neatly into my existing workflow. It is basically the perfect
| note taking app for me. Well done and keep up the good work!
| mitchitized wrote:
| I see this as "Joplin, just not nearly as free (speech or beer)."
| Why would I pay monthly for sync and have no control, when I can
| already sync to my own s3 buckets and only pay for AWS storage
| and transfer?
|
| Is there a compelling reason to switch from Joplin to Obsidian?
| Honest question.
| DMell wrote:
| I'm really struggling to understand how Obsidian isn't free.
| Maybe I'm simply missing your point.
|
| There is no expectation that you use sync, it's simply an
| option for those that want it and are likely less tech
| oriented.
| huskyr wrote:
| +1. It's pretty easy to setup your own syncing using iCloud,
| Dropbox or whatever you want.
| volleygman180 wrote:
| Sync offers E2E encryption though. Definitely not getting
| E2E with iCloud (Apple says you do, however iCloud backups
| aren't E2E encrypted) and I don't believe Dropbox offers
| E2E either
| larnon wrote:
| You can do your own encryption using something like
| Cryptomator.
| chiyc wrote:
| From their licensing: "You need to pay for Obsidian if and
| only if you use it to contribute, directly or indirectly, to
| revenue-generating, work-related activities in a company that
| has two or more people."
|
| I imagine that applies to many of us. How many people are
| looking to use Obsidian purely for personal use?
| rchaud wrote:
| > How many people are looking to use Obsidian purely for
| personal use?
|
| The overwhelming majority, if the Obsidian message boards
| are anything to go by.
|
| I wouldn't want to use a product that only now reached
| v1.0, for a business. It's not Figma, or a Google Docs type
| app where corporate use cases are very apparent. At best,
| Obsidian would be good for a knowledgebase, but there are
| better wiki tools out there for that.
|
| Obsidian does personal knowledge management best, because
| of its customizability.
| chiyc wrote:
| That's cool to know. It's definitely not what I expected!
| I made the assumption a markdown-based tool would
| primarily be used amongst tech workers for tech-related
| knowledge. All that being said, the cost for a license is
| nothing compared to other tools I use daily like
| JetBrains products.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| $50/user/yr is about $4/mo.
|
| I struggle to understand the mentality that deems that
| unreasonable. It'd be a bargain at 5x the price.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| This is the reason I don't even try it. I would never be
| able to get my company to pay for a software that's not
| in our catalog, regardless of the price.
| [deleted]
| return_to_monke wrote:
| > I'm really struggling to understand how Obsidian isn't
| free. Maybe I'm simply missing your point.
|
| I think they mean free, as in free software. Obsidian is not
| free neither open source software.
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| Joplin takes a traditional approach to notes: there's
| notebooks, pages, then notes. Obsidian is more focused on
| zettelkasten - creating a network of smaller but refined notes
| that are all tagged and interconnected, which ends up looking
| somewhat like a bunch of neurons (hence _second brain_). It's
| also much more extensible. I've seen Obisidian extensions that
| add kanban and moodboards to notes, for example.
| huskyr wrote:
| I have tried Joplin a little bit and found the UI of Obsidian
| much friendlier, also the plugin ecosystem is very active.
| Another main difference is how Obsidian works using the 'bunch
| of Markdown files' vs. the database approach Joplin uses. Also
| see this earlier thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27808003.
| mitchitized wrote:
| Joplin stores files as separate markdown files, and the
| database is just an index for search and metadata.
|
| I'm not a huge fan of Joplin's UX, but not having to pay for
| sync (and being able to choose the backend for sync) is
| important enough to me that it is a differentiator greater
| than the overall UX. I can point all of my Joplin installs to
| the same S3 bucket and _boom_ done.
|
| I'm hearing that with Obsidian you can use
| OneDrive/iCloud/Dropbox/etc for sync but that is all based on
| the sync provider. To me that brings ambiguity about how
| concurrency and conflict resolution are dealt with, since the
| app kinda capitulates that to the external storage engine
| right?
| huskyr wrote:
| I'm not sure how conflict resolution is done with Obsidian,
| but i have used both Dropbox and iCloud and with both i
| never had any sync issues in the last year that i've used
| Obsidian. Before Obsidian i used NvAlt which gave me sync
| issues all the time.
| riekus wrote:
| I have just setup Obsidian with syncthing and works like
| magic.
| angryasian wrote:
| > Why would I pay monthly for sync and have no control
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this, I use github to sync across
| devices, you could technically use any solution you like.
| rchaud wrote:
| Joplin doesn't use flat files, last I checked (tried it in late
| 2021).
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Huge fan; Obsidian is at the center of my personal system for PKM
| / TFT (note-taking, todos, journaling, devnotes, bookmarks,
| sketches... ). It's like an OS for .md files. It's so powerful
| and extensible, via eg WYSIWYG editor, Excalidraw integ, Readwise
| Reader integ, home for my Remarkable2 notes and drawings, etc.
| Amazing community too.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| How are you integrating your Remarkable2? So far I have the two
| separate, and sometimes have to cross-reference. It would be
| nice to find a way to integrate them better.
| boomskats wrote:
| I was quite proud of myself when I brought Simon Welker's
| obsidian-remarkable[0] plugin back to life a few months ago.
| It's one-way screenshot sync, but the experience is stellar
| (single shortcut, sub-second later you have a cropped,
| transparent screenshot of what's on your remarkable screen
| with no toolbar etc). I find it really useful for both
| staging meeting notes into Obsidian before summarising them,
| and for adding monochrome 'brutalist hand-drawn' graphics to
| my personal documents.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/cobalamin/obsidian-remarkable
| Vrondi wrote:
| I'd very interested to hear more about your workflow, because
| lack of inking/handwriting recognition in apps like Obsidian is
| what keeps me on OneNote (and from going fully Linux). Can you
| edit any of these ink based formats later in Obsidian, or are
| you limited to only viewing static images of things you've
| drawn/handwritten elsewhere in the past?
|
| _EDIT_ Searching around the web indicates that you can only
| draw on top of images of the writing later, not edit it. Alas.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Do you need to be able to edit ink on your computer? If
| editing ink on-device is all you need, e-ink tablets that use
| PDF as their native file format (like the DPT-RP1 or
| Quaderno) fit well into an Obsidian workflow. You can
| sync/roundtrip the files back and forth to your device for
| editing.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| That's not exactly my workflow but I think something like it
| wld be doable.
|
| I export pdfs (and rarely, svgs) from my Remarkable 2 e-ink
| tablet.
|
| SVGs can be converted to Excalidraw data.
|
| The Remarkable 2 also supports OCR but I don't make use of
| that.
| SignalM wrote:
| Obsidian has been an amazing tool. I keep all my notes in it and
| love the WYSIWYG editing and plugins - keep it up!
| umanwizard wrote:
| First I'm hearing of Obsidian, sounds cool. Can anyone comment on
| how it compares to org-mode?
| xz18r wrote:
| Current org-mode user here, former Obsidian user. Although much
| more extensible than apps like Joplin, Notion or - god forbid -
| Evernote, Obsidian comes nowhere near the freedom you have in
| Org-mode. You can customize Obsidian to fit your workflow to
| some extent, but not by a whole lot. Then again: for most
| people that is enough. Most want to drive a car, not build it.
|
| There is afaik no such thing as an org-agenda in Obsidian,
| which is a deal breaker for me. Also to do list handling is
| shoddy at best (it would probably be a perfect app if that got
| integrated, e.g. via a todo.txt format with a calendar) but
| alas.
|
| If I weren't an org-mode user, Obsidian would probably be my
| pick. It is very nice in everything it does, but it just
| doesn't have that "edge" of creating a setup that is ugly,
| complicated an unrecognizable from its default. It may be ugly,
| but at least it's _your_ ugly.
| sharps1 wrote:
| Not an org-mode user.
|
| Would this be a set-up that creates an agenda that works (by
| using 2 extensions)?
|
| https://medium.com/geekculture/how-i-track-my-tasks-in-
| obsid...
|
| Dataview is such a great extension.
| riekus wrote:
| this is great, thanks!
| AlanYx wrote:
| That definitely gives you the basics. But it's worth noting
| that core org comes with a lot more functionality, e.g.,
| calendaring, scheduling tasks (this is distinct from
| deadlines), blocking and ordered tasks, priorities,
| repeating tasks, timekeeping and time reporting. Some of
| this could be cobbled together in Obsidian by combining
| various plugins and some query code.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Obsidian vs. org-mode is pretty much like VScode vs. emacs.
| Obsidian has a more immediately accessible interface and a big
| community of plugins, but the available plugins tend to operate
| at a higher level of abstraction. Obsidian is also document-
| centric rather than outline-centric, although org-mode can be
| used either way. Calendaring isn't native in Obsidian and there
| is no org-agenda, but you can cobble together something similar
| with queries depending on your needs. Functionally, there's no
| real reason to switch from org-mode, but if you primarily want
| Roam-like features and find org-roam too confusing or awkward,
| you might consider it.
| preek wrote:
| Obsidian is neither Free Software nor Open Source.
|
| Source: https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases
| hericium wrote:
| So, without clicking, what does this app do? What is it?
| nfd wrote:
| In brief, an extensible, syncable tool for making lightweight
| personal Markdown wikis. Emphasis on being very smooth and
| stylish. Emphasizes giving you a lot of tools that can suit a
| lot of writing/note taking workflows.
|
| If I were to need to start writing a book this week, this is
| probably where I'd organize the research _and_ composition.
| njsubedi wrote:
| It's a note-taking application like Evernote but open source.
| Has native apps. You can sync using a self-hosted sever easily.
| Works great on mobile too. Update: Oops. I always thought it
| was Open Source. I started using it after learning about it a
| HN thread some time ago. Downloaded and started using and it
| worked so good I didn't have to look back about it.
| nickspacek wrote:
| > You can sync using a self-hosted server easily
|
| Do you mean using a third-party sync application (Syncthing
| for example)? All I could find is a feature request:
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/self-hosted-sync-server/20975/13
| KitchenParticle wrote:
| It's NOT open source
| joethei wrote:
| Common misconception, but Obsidian itself is not open source
| kepano wrote:
| It's a note-taking app that emphasizes non-linear writing.
|
| You can use it as a journal, personal wiki, knowledge base,
| task management, or just a Markdown text editor. There are
| hundreds of plugins that make it easy to tailor the app to your
| needs.
|
| It's also focused on privacy and future-proofing your notes.
| All your data is stored locally in a folder of plain text
| files.
| wohfab wrote:
| (Advanced) note taking, often used in the Personal Knowledge
| Management (PKM) & "Second Brain" community.
| colordrops wrote:
| Is Obsidian open source? I couldn't figure it out from a quick
| perusal of the site.
| kepano wrote:
| Obsidian is not open source but it uses plain text local files
| with Markdown support, so you are not locked in. All plugins
| for Obsidian are required to be open source. Also Obsidian
| contains no tracking/analytics, and the Sync product is E2E
| encrypted. The Obsidian API is also very flexible and allows
| you to do almost anything if you want to modify the app.
| wojciechpolak wrote:
| How do you know that it doesn't contain tracking/analytics
| without the source code?
| kepano wrote:
| You can inspect network requests and see that nothing
| communicates to Obsidian servers. Since the app is Electron
| based you can also open up developer tools and unminify the
| JS code if you want to actually look at the code.
|
| You can also check out the privacy policy here:
| https://obsidian.md/privacy
| julienreszka wrote:
| you don't
| Ruq wrote:
| Wasn't expecting this release to be 1.0! But I suppose I
| should've seen it coming.
| nchase wrote:
| I recently started using Reflect[^1] and I rather like it,
| especially after trying the task management feature, which is now
| in beta.
|
| My usage of Reflect has made me very curious about other apps
| that do similar things (e.g. Obsidian)
|
| Has anyone here tried Obsidian _and_ Reflect?
|
| [^1]: https://reflect.app/
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| Love love love obsidian. The tool is aesthetically pleasing,
| built-in vim mode surprisingly well (a few minor glitches with
| the cursor blinking) -- but above all else, the plug-in community
| takes the cake.
|
| Finally, a note taking application with a decent API that's
| allowed me to extract metadata and publish metrics into
| CloudWatch, allowing me to track key metrics and graphically[0]
| review historical trends of my "second brain." Previous note
| taking applications I've tried in the past (e.g. Zettlr, Bear)
| lacked the vibrant developer community that Obsidian has
| cultivated.
|
| Hats off to the founder and the Obsidian team!
|
| [0] - https://digitalorganizationdad.substack.com/p/stop-
| zettelkas...
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Wow, CloudWatch for note metadata metrics. Notebook
| organization systems are serious business!
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > Notebook organization systems are serious business!
|
| If that's what it takes to make someones system effective so
| be it.
|
| If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well and all that.
|
| What's a better alternative in your opinion?
| emptyparadise wrote:
| If it works, it works. Just surprised by the infrastructure
| involved.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| I'm very very very disorganized by nature. Some people I know
| seem to be organized at birth. All the systems I put are
| really just mechanisms are really aspiration, ways for me to
| emulate their behavior, keep me accountable, and gamify it a
| bit.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| That's awesome. Personally I found that I end up spending
| too much time on configurations and tinkering with the
| notes, so I end up going for the simplest system I can.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| There it is! I am with you 100%. All of these massive
| plugin systems are a giant time suck. You spend soooo
| much time just setting things up only to forget the
| little stuff you need to do when something breaks. Every
| plugin I have installed requires some level of
| configuration. The more feature rich plugins (with no
| surprise there) are basically apps in and of themselves.
|
| I keep hearing praise about this being a simple app, but
| I found it to be very fiddly if you want more than just
| markdown rendered in your editor. Lots and lots of time
| to get things working/configured.
|
| Sync has been a massive PITA for me with Obsidian. Unless
| you are willing to pay, there is going to be pain there
| eventually. I had similar problems with OneNote, but
| those sync problems have mostly disappeared. Further,
| OneNote's handwriting experience is really good. It is
| very easy to export all notes from OneNote to Markdown
| with Pandoc, so while I may be "locked" in, I can "get
| out" if I want.
|
| Edit: So thank you Obsidian for helping me convert my
| notes in OneNote to markdown to try you out! I now have a
| verified escape hatch if I should ever need it. However,
| I am not sticking around. Too much trouble for little
| stuff and OneNote is just a really good all arounder.
| parrot987 wrote:
| TIL that obsidian has vim mode... I love it even more now.
| mystickphoenix wrote:
| even better, it asks you to type a specific vim command
| before enabling it. Great "here there be dragons, are you a
| dragonslayer?" UX choice, and fun easter egg too ;)
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| Another metric idea for you:
|
| "Time taken after creation to search for and open this note
| again"
|
| This can show how useful your notes are and which are most
| useful.
| diego898 wrote:
| I used to set this manually on Tiddlywiki with a "touched"
| field. I'm thinking of incorporating this into Obsidian using
| the templater plugin.
|
| I found it very useful to organize research papers like this.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > how useful your notes are
|
| While I think it's an interesting metric, it wouldn't capture
| the utility of my notes for me (emphasis on "for me", since
| everyone's probably different when it comes to notes).
|
| Often, the act of writing the note helps better commit what
| I'm writing to memory. At a super rough estimate I'd say that
| 80% of the utility of note-taking is the act of producing the
| note itself, and only 20% of the utility is being able to
| refer back to specific facts.
| just_boost_it wrote:
| That's definitely an exponential distribution. I'm a data
| scientist and I keep going back to a few key notes over and
| over and adding little bits. I tried to track things like
| ideas, tasks, and just journaling, but it just didn't fit
| right. It's unbeatable for my work related stuff though,
| and the key things for me were mathjax support and being
| able to paste screenshots directly onto the page. Fantastic
| product.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Oh, I 100% agree that there would be some kind of
| exponential falloff in which notes I go back to.
|
| I just, again, for me personally, gain a lot of value
| from writing the notes even that I _never_ go back to
| revisit.
|
| So for me personally, the metric is interesting, like I
| said, but doesn't capture "how useful" a note is, because
| I have most of my utility outside of that use case.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| I agree there is value in just creating the note and
| distilling your thoughts even if you never revisit.
|
| I'm not quite sure how I'd use the metric or if I'd use
| it to purge notes.
|
| Searchability or recall can be a problem sometimes
| though, so "searches where I had no results or didn't
| visit anything" could be interesting.
|
| Especially if I try searching later and find a note
| answering my question with bad "SEO".
|
| Another idea I had was to make a Firefox extension that
| searches my notes and displays results before search
| engines since I reflexively search things in browser
| sometimes.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| Would be interesting to see how to capture this metric within
| Obsidian. I can imagine a similar metric: "elapsed time
| between note created and first time note opened." This data
| might help answer whether or not we are creating notes that
| are never revisited, an opportunity to purge the note itself.
| mikae1 wrote:
| Did you try https://logseq.com/? I've had not reason to pick
| freemium Obsidian over open source Logseq.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| I have not yet tried Logseq. Checking it out now!
| kepano wrote:
| The biggest fundamental difference is that Logseq is an
| outliner whereas Obsidian is more flexible to any kind of
| text you throw at it. So if I am trying to write prose it
| feels constraining for everything to be a bullet.
|
| That said Obsidian and Logseq are interoperable since they
| both run on a local folder of plain text files. Meaning you
| can switch over to Logseq for your outlining needs and use
| Obsidian for everything else.
|
| (slightly biased since I helped on Obsidian 1.0, but I am a
| lover of all plain text tools)
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I loved Obsidian to death, but felt a bit of friction. As
| nice as it was, I wasn't getting sucked in and resorted to
| writing my own bespoke bash program for organized note-
| taking.
|
| Enter Logseq, and after a 20 minute learning curve, ideas
| just fly off of my fingertips. I reach for it daily. Can't
| recommend Logseq enough.
| danial wrote:
| I definitely also like logseq better, but find that it
| doesn't sync well between desktop and iOS app. Have you
| found good solution for this?
| tdido wrote:
| I sync my journal directory using syncthing and it works
| reasonably well.
| dfgsdfgwef wrote:
| Same experience here. I was die hard fan of obsidian till I
| used Logseq. Obsidian doesn't have proper outlining as they
| have another commercial app called Dynalist. They probably
| don't want competition between their own products. Lack of
| folders in logseq is a feature. It force the user to follow
| zettelcasten style which results in serendipitous
| encounters with older notes.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| >resorted to writing my own bespoke bash program for
| organized note-taking.
|
| what? why... also emacs is really good for reproducible
| terminal logging of experiments/commands/output.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Oh my that is beautiful. Just looking at the GIFs with the /
| shortcuts for TODO status, linking to headings using curly
| braces, the beautiful highlights on "dynamic" areas. I tried
| Obsidian and didn't feel the same "pull" to keep using it,
| will definitely try Logseq out.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Logseq _strongly_ encourages you to represent all forms of
| information in the form of checklists or bullet points...
| which is great if you 're making a grocery list but terrible
| for longform documentation.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| I tried both and am using Obsidian now.
|
| I wanted to use logseq (I felt good about "Obsidian, but open
| source") but when I tried to find some text in a page I was
| writing it didn't work. I'm a total logseq noob but as far as
| I could tell I needed to install an extension/plugin to
| search through the page, which was weird. Plus, the plugin
| didn't work for me (I typed in the thing to search for,
| clicked "go find it" and nothing happened, I think - it's
| been a while and I didn't use it much).
|
| I kinda boggled my mind that logseq wouldn't have a 'Find'
| feature for finding text in the page I'm editing.
|
| Please tell me that I missed something obvious so that I can
| feel dumb for missing that obvious thing but happy that I can
| take another look at logseq :)
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Ctrl+K or the macOS equivalent provides a universal search
| dialog with a toggle for page-only search.
|
| The UX is _extremely_ lacking, but it 's open source,
| gaining steam, and they recently closed $4mil in funding so
| I expect it to massively improve over the next two years.
| Notably, page search should function without needing a
| dialog+overlay, and should support highlighting/navigating
| every match.
| cldwalker wrote:
| Cmd-K to find any line in your notes and Cmd-shift-K to
| find any line in your page. Starting with 0.8.3 there is
| also a native find-in-page feature,
| https://docs.logseq.com/#/page/Find%20in%20page, which can
| search anything that is visible including results of
| queries
| jeremy0x4a wrote:
| Could someone tell me if the ability to export standard markdown
| has been implemented yet?
| kepano wrote:
| Can you explain more? The files are already in Markdown format,
| and you can use standard notation. You don't actually need to
| export them, they're just in your vault folder.
| jeremy0x4a wrote:
| Obsidian uses non-standard Markdown for things such as block
| references, wiki-style links, etc. Since very early beta
| "export to standard Markdown" had been on the todo list so
| that notes taken in Obsidian would not be "locked in" because
| they were reliant on app-specific markup.
| kepano wrote:
| Have you checked out the Obsidian Pandoc plugin? I think it
| might meet your needs:
|
| https://github.com/OliverBalfour/obsidian-pandoc
|
| That being said standard Markdown does not provide notation
| for certain things, so it is somewhat up to interpretation
| how to convert certain features to standard Markdown.
| jeremy0x4a wrote:
| It appears that the feature in question is still on the
| roadmap, but moved to long-term:
|
| https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap
| kepano wrote:
| Gotcha, check out the Obsidian Pandoc plugin as I think
| it can be modified to suit your needs!
| jeremy0x4a wrote:
| Will do, thanks.
| hanche wrote:
| Is standard markdown a thing? What is now called commonmark [1]
| was called by thar name originally, but the name was changed
| after John Gruber objected. Other than that, there seem to be a
| plethora of markdown dialects, none of which is very "standard"
| as far as I can tell. Perhaps variants of the github flavor are
| most widespread, though.
|
| [1] https://commonmark.org/
| weekendvampire wrote:
| All I'll say is that I'm a huge fan and Obsidian has been life
| changing, so thank you.
| asabla wrote:
| It feels like I've been using Obsidian for years. Really like
| most of all functionality and especially the community!
|
| Kudos to the team!
| bleachedsleet wrote:
| Surely a website advertising a "brand new look" would have a
| screenshot of the interface, right?
|
| Am I missing something?
| unsafecast wrote:
| It looks like they made it work in the meantime.
| kepano wrote:
| Screenshots are visible if you're on desktop but not on mobile
| yet. We need to improve the mobile version. We're a small team!
| That said, you can see screenshots of the mobile app by tapping
| through to the app store.
| toopok4k3 wrote:
| I have no idea what Obsidian is and their frontpage does nothing
| to tell me what it is.
|
| All I can see is that it's been updated, but WTF is it?
|
| edit: ahh, it wasn't the frontpage...
| mirzap wrote:
| As front page says, it's a tool for building a knowledge base.
| Organizing your stuff.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base
| Vrondi wrote:
| It's a note taking app that uses markdown and plain text files.
| Gives some nice organizational views. That's it.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| 1st 2 sentences: true. Last sentence: not even close. It
| integrates w/ a Calendar, with Excalidraw for notes in images
| and vice versa, and via Dataview and DQL supports querying...
| its featureset is incredible.
| weberer wrote:
| Markdown editor that lets you add links to other files. You
| basically have a "project" consisting of a folder with various
| .md files.
| toopok4k3 wrote:
| How does it compare to wikis, eh? Isn't that what they do.
| DMell wrote:
| I'd start with the plugins. It allows for easy integration
| into my current workflow.
| capableweb wrote:
| It's basically a wiki but running locally that you can sync
| with a remote, and based around normal (well, almost
| "normal") markdown files.
| weberer wrote:
| That requires setting up a server, which filters out 99% of
| the population.
| Erwin wrote:
| I used TiddlyWiki for a while, but it was too fiddly. E.g.
| saving to google drive was a hack. Obsidian, at a very low
| price, gives me a reliable app -- Tiddly wiki, running
| within the browser, often got slow when I had a few hundred
| diary entries.
| Vrondi wrote:
| It's trying to be a wiki without a server. Or at least,
| that's how it started. It's a note taking app that uses
| markdown and plain text files. Gives some nice
| organizational views.
| nkrebs13 wrote:
| There are plugins and extensibility that can be added as
| well.
|
| https://github.com/search?q=obsidian
| Kelteseth wrote:
| So what is difference to vscode here? I can see a cool graph
| view of my links. I guess the target is not directly
| developers when looking at their paid sync addon, because I
| would simply put this into a free closed gitlab repo. I will
| definitely try out the free version this week :)
|
| Edit: Found md-graph that also has the same neat graph: https
| ://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ianjsike...
| Macha wrote:
| Plugin community - stuff like pulling tasks from notes,
| helping with various organisational systems, etc.
|
| Editing in a somewhat rendered markdown - it's not quite
| full wysiwyg, but e.g, your heading blocks are sized right,
| your lists are rendered as bullets until you're editing
| that line, etc.
|
| Notes first UI: Stuff like the rendered view toggle, links,
| inline image previews are more acccessible than in vs code
| due to their higher relative importance.
| dsissitka wrote:
| One big difference is that it works on desktop and mobile.
|
| > I guess the target is not directly developers when
| looking at their paid sync addon, because I would simply
| put this into a free closed gitlab repo.
|
| You could, and people do, but there's a bit less friction
| with the built-in sync.
| mejutoco wrote:
| It is mainly easy of use of the links and being backed by
| .md files (easy to backup anywhere and future-proof). I
| think of Obsidian as Org mode 90% there and easier to use.
|
| Two example of easy of use:
|
| - You can type "[[" anywhere and start entering the title
| of a new or existing note (and follow that link). If the
| note already exists it will fuzzy match inline as you
| write.
|
| - While on a note, you can change the title and all the
| references get updated.
|
| There are also plugins with extra feature like note of the
| day, which creates and opens a file in the format
| 2022-10-13 so you can easily have a file for each day. Vim
| node also works very well.
| input_sh wrote:
| In my opinion links and images work _much_ better. If you
| move a Markdown file or an image file to a different
| subdirectory, links gets fixed automatically. Absolute
| timesaver over a custom script I had to use previously.
|
| And plugins! I can put a search query right within Markdown
| and it works. I have a unified interface over Markdown's
| to-do syntaxes I've left in various files. I can put a
| button that triggers some internal Obsidian command. I can
| have templates that pull from APIs and auto-populate some
| fields. I have variables I can easily query over. There's a
| git plugin you can use to auto-push/pull. There's a fully-
| featured mobile app (nearly feature compatible with the
| desktop app, plugin support and all). I have some
| subfolders that automatically get published on multiple
| websites that use a different CMS/SSG.
|
| It's nothing you can't achieve with some custom bash/python
| scripts, but I don't like to spend my free time maintaining
| custom scripts, and Obsidian is truly a remarkably
| extensible product that allows me not to do that. It's
| _easily_ in top 3 software products I use the most (next to
| a browser and a terminal emulator), I can 't praise it
| enough.
| DMell wrote:
| It's a fantastic markdown editor. Have been using it daily for
| a year now as an organization and note tool and couldn't be
| happier.
| [deleted]
| psychomugs wrote:
| I have nothing to add to the heap of praise here, apart from my
| own thank-you. I'm a fairly new user but exploring the tool gives
| me the childlike glee akin to coming home from school and
| continuing a video game or project.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| I love Obsidian's editor - it hides markup when you're not
| editing but shows you when your cursor is over some text. The
| fact that you can just drag an image into a note is great and
| something terminal note apps will never be able to do.
|
| And then there's [[hypertext]]. Love it!
| bogdanoff_2 wrote:
| Is there a way to disable the hiding of markdown? I don't like
| when text moves around
| brimwats wrote:
| yes, use Source mode
| bogdanoff_2 wrote:
| Thank you, that's exactly what I was looking for.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| For anyone thinking that this "home page" is light on
| explanation, the _actual_ home page is likely better for those
| who are new to this (excellent) product:
|
| https://obsidian.md
| AB1908 wrote:
| Hi Erica and congrats to you and the whole team! Super excited
| for a 1.0 release. I hope this means we get some official API
| docs soon. ;)
|
| In terms of your journey, what do you think the main challenges
| were? I'm sure a big one is adoption and another performance but
| curious to hear what the team's thoughts are.
|
| For me personally, the community has been absolutely stellar.
| Lots of folks always willing to help out. Just a year and a half
| ago, I found dataview and after avoiding frontend for nearly a
| decade, I've finally begun my journey with React. The entire
| experience was kickstarted by my finding Obsidian and trying to
| contribute to plugins that I loved. A special thanks to everyone
| from the community: shabegom, joethei, koala, blacksmithgu,
| pseudometa, Eleanor, Fevol, aquaman, metruzan, and many many
| others whose name I'm blanking on right now but I promise I'm
| grateful!
| Vrondi wrote:
| If Obsidian ever added some good inking/handwriting recognition
| stuff, it would be a contender for the best note taking app out
| there.
| tbihl wrote:
| Couldn't you just use your preferred inking app, then export as
| image?
|
| I ask this as someone who much prefers atomization with good
| interoperability to bloated everything applications (and who
| has a phone and laptop with active stylus.)
| kepano wrote:
| Can you explain more about what you would want to see? There is
| the Excalidraw plugin that allows you to write handwritten
| notes inside of Obsidian. It should also be possible to add
| handwriting recognition as a plugin.
|
| If you're on macOS/iOS a lot of this is now at the OS level,
| and has gotten really quite good.
| bityard wrote:
| > over two years ago [2], when terms like "second brain" ... were
| still in their infancy.
|
| Funny, that was the exact title of my personal wiki that I
| started in 2006 or so.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| hey! Don't have anything serious to add, but just want to say
| thanks! Obsidian is a great tool and I use it every day.
|
| I don't even use half the features/capabilities but as a simple
| markdown editor w/ links it's fantastic.
| sanshugoel wrote:
| I am still looking for a note editor that has good support for
| tables. Might as well use Excel for note-taking from now on.
| submeta wrote:
| How about Emacs + org-mode? Org-tables are plain text tables on
| steroids. You can quickly create, rearrange, modify these
| tables, and do even basic (or complex) calculations within
| them.
| JoachimS wrote:
| If its good or not can be discussed, but Obsidian supports
| tables. Obsidian also supports mermaid flowcharts. And there
| are plugins for mindmaps, GANTT charts etc. There really are an
| amazing range of functions in Obsidian.
| tkk23 wrote:
| Am I mistaken or are all the note taking systems optimized for
| isolated usage? Some allow some form of communication by
| publishing notes but the last time I checked, there was no public
| pool of notes that were open for discovery.
|
| I would love to have a system where my notes are automatically
| linked with notes from other users who have the same ideas or
| goals.
| ilikecode wrote:
| I've had so many epiphanies from journaling. I wonder what
| society would realize if all our thoughts were linked.
| mirages wrote:
| Is it me or am I the only one who took a good 3 mins to figure
| what this app is for ?
|
| Sorry I don't want to sound disrespectul but I didn't found an
| quick and easy parsable description. If I would show this my
| parents, I wouldn't be sure if they could guess. :/
|
| "Obsidian is a powerful and extensible knowledge base" ?????
| simlevesque wrote:
| What part of that sentence don't you understand ? It seems
| straightforward to me.
| QuackingTheQ wrote:
| knowledge base is buzzwordy. it's a very elaborate (and
| good!) note taking app.
| simlevesque wrote:
| Would you call a private wiki a note taking app ?
| TuringTest wrote:
| This recent breed of note-taking tools (Obsidian, Notion,
| logseq, Roam Research) are aimed at enabling a style of
| personal knowledge base known as _networked thinking_ ,
| which attempts to facilitate the emergent creation of new
| knowledge by connecting related ideas in your notes.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Vester#Networked
| _Thin...
| shinryuu wrote:
| Think a journal / notes application on steroids.
| DMell wrote:
| Interesting - the homepage is pretty straightforward.
| Vrondi wrote:
| No, it really isn't if you're not already into this type of
| app (and the recent trendy buzzwords around them). What it
| is: A note taking app using plain text files and giving great
| organization views. Nowhere on the main page does it say note
| taking app. Nowhere. You have to scroll to find "tend your
| notes like a gardener" as a clue that this is a note taking
| app. Anyone who hasn't looked at this space for more than 1-2
| years will not know that "knowledge base" is investor-speak
| for "fancy note taking app".
| mastax wrote:
| Not that it makes much difference, but "knowledge base" is
| a much older term than 1-2 years. The Microsoft knowledge
| base is the first thing that came to mind, which started in
| 2003. Tools like Lotus Notes were using the term before
| that, but I can't find exactly when.
|
| This google trends graph confirms my suspicion that it was
| a more common term back then: https://trends.google.com/tre
| nds/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=K...
|
| Out of curiosity I tried to find older references. There
| are references using this definition back to at least 1995.
| Beyond that it's trickier because apparently "knowledge
| base" was used to describe the knowledge available to an AI
| system during the expert systems era, which is a somewhat
| different definition. e.g. Lehnert 1977:
| https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED150955.pdf
| veidr wrote:
| It's basically a Markdown editor, except not for a single
| document, but a collection -- which might be _all_ your
| documents.
|
| Or some subset(s) sure, fine. It's flexible. But the huge value
| is more readily apparent when it is all the documents (for some
| meaningul value of "all").
| poisonarena wrote:
| its not just you, I think they could have written an about page
| that explains what it is more clearly. Seems neat though, maybe
| could replace my "stickies" app
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| No it wasn't just you. The best I could understand was that it
| was a note-taking app that outputs in markup.
| Macha wrote:
| Yes, it is a markdown notes application. This is the core,
| think Notion but local-first (Sync is a paid extra, or you
| can use Syncthing or Git to DIY sync).
|
| You can build much more complicated systems with it (I also
| have it as my todo app and have it pulling out todos from all
| my notes and prioritising them), or you can use it as a
| slightly nicer version of using vs code with a folder of
| markdown files, which was my precious system (there's also
| Dendron, which is the same idea but as a vs code plugin).
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| haha, thank-you for trying to help, but ALL of the examples
| you used are nothing that I'm familiar with.
|
| So I'm thinking that this is a _ME_ problem and not
| necessarily a 'Product Description' problem.
|
| After installing it, and typing in a few things I notice
| that it's similar to ZIM (another desktop wiki app) on the
| surface.
|
| I also appreciate that you corrected my misuse of "markup"
| when I should have said markdown without making me feel
| like an idiot.
| mirzap wrote:
| It is pretty straightforward - tool for creating personal
| knowledge base
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| The reason for this is these "second brain" and "personal
| knowledge management" apps are rather cultish and aren't really
| intended for an audience outside of those already in the know -
| that is, the circuit of cycling through all these different
| apps and "productivity" games.
|
| A similar app, Roam Research, is the same story as Obsidian,
| only a few chapters ahead. Roam's marketing campaign actually
| referred to itself and its users as a literal cult.
|
| Ultimately, like self help, it's all just more of the same -
| cashgrabs that make people feel like they're improving or
| achieving, with every self help quip they consoom, with every
| "second brain" note they take.
|
| Ultimately, they're just games for wasting time - "tool games"
| [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33135227
| meltyness wrote:
| We can only aspire to be as perfect as you, and your:
|
| - blanket admonishment of others' efforts towards creativity
| and developing insights
|
| which you already have and that can come only from inside
| your great mind.
|
| Please fluoresce and share your brilliant illuminating light
| of self-made intelligence and inspiration upon us, the sheep-
| like, turf-sprawled, vibrating masses.
| hbn wrote:
| The other replies aren't very helpful imo
|
| It's essentially an app for taking notes and jotting down
| ideas, and you write them in markdown. You can link references
| to other notes within a note to link up ideas.
|
| Here's a 12 minute demo that should give you an idea:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbLb6QCK88
|
| I'm not that quite in-depth with my usage of it. I essentially
| use it as a scratchpad for a few notes for work. But it does
| the job
| StupidOne wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. It sounds cool and I will try it, but even
| at this moment I'm not sure how is this different then for
| example OneNote.
|
| Again, don't want to sound disrespectful and I will definitely
| try the tool.
| yucky wrote:
| As a former OneNote user who moved to Obsidian, I would say
| it's like comparing a go kart and luxury sedan. They both
| technically get you where you're going if you try hard
| enough. And if you're not going very far maybe all you need
| is a go kart.
|
| My obsidian has turned into a personal Wikipedia and it's
| crazy how much it's improved my efficiency.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Can you explain what it has that onenote, evernote, notion
| etc doesn't?
| yucky wrote:
| Never used Notion. I only toyed around with Evernote
| years ago and remember it being a cluttered mess. One
| Note worked alright for basic notes but I noticed I
| rarely referred back to them. With Obsidian, maybe it's
| because I put the time into my configuration but I have
| templates for different types of notes, a tagging system
| that works great for grouping and reference, and the
| internal linking really ties everything together.
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| Mind sharing your setup and process ?
| TuringTest wrote:
| > I'm not sure how is this different then for example OneNote
|
| The main difference is that your notes are stored in a
| readable plain text format.
|
| But if you are interested in an open format, you may as well
| go the full route and use the similar open-source app logseq
| instead.
|
| [1] https://logseq.com/
| Macha wrote:
| I feel Dendron is practically the more equivalent open
| source tool, logseq is a more opinionated tool, being
| focused on the bulleted sequential use case that it
| actually feels relatively different to use
| altilunium wrote:
| Obsidian is a "personal wiki". Why we might need a personal
| wiki? Because installing a local MediaWiki instance is quite a
| hassle and organizing your personal notes by using [[WikiLink]]
| structure is so wholesome.
| dmans0n wrote:
| If they would simply move "An IDE for your notes" from the
| "About" page to the top fold of the front page, we'd all have
| had a much better time.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| I'm very aware of Obsidian, having used it on and off since the
| early days, but I would agree that the wording on the linked
| page (for the 1.0 release) seems to make an assumption that the
| reader already knows what Obsidian is:
|
| > Obsidian 1.0, the all-new Obsidian.
|
| > A brand new look. A fresh way to browse. An exciting new
| start.
|
| You could also be misled into thinking this is the home page.
|
| The _actual_ home page does a better job of getting to the
| point of what Obsidian is:
|
| https://obsidian.md
|
| (And BTW, I recommend Obsidian, it's excellent)
| foolfoolz wrote:
| is it a browser
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| No
| [deleted]
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I just can't keep up with all the note taking apps; I sometimes
| go through a Phase of "I need a means to organize my things", but
| invariably just go back to a folder with text documents. The note
| taking apps are fine, but they will either have a web/electron
| based interface that is too indirect, or their data storage is
| not open (like text documents), or they try and upsell you cloud
| storage / sync, or they offer no benefit over a plain text editor
| (with global search).
| daviross wrote:
| That's where I used to be for years, first in Tiddlywiki, then
| away from that as it was having trouble with browsers (it's
| good again now, I gather) and into a Dropbox folder of pseudo-
| markdown text files.
|
| That said, I've stuck with Obsidian so far, specifically
| because it doesn't lock me into a format. I was able to drop it
| on top of my folder-o-markdown & go from there. We'll see if it
| sticks, but so far so good.
| mitchitized wrote:
| This is precisely why I ended up on Joplin several years ago...
| Being able to sync for free (I just pay for S3 costs) means I
| got cross-device/platform support and know I will never lose my
| notes.
|
| I'm trying to understand the use case where it would be worth
| it to switch to Obsidian and pay monthly for the sync and no
| longer host the data myself, which doesn't sound like an
| improvement to me.
|
| The way Obsidian organizes notes sounds intriguing though, I
| can see how some might find that worth the additional cost (or
| loss of sync ability).
| brimwats wrote:
| fwiw, I just use a syncthing folder for obsidian and I've
| never had an issue
| Macha wrote:
| This is the reason I ended up on Obsidian, it's data model is a
| "a folder of markdown files on your local filesystem", which
| was already my prior system when I used VS code as an editor
| for notes.
| nklmilojevic wrote:
| I appreciate what Obsidian is and how it works, and congrats on
| 1.0!
|
| On the personal side, I dislike aesthetics and wouldn't ever use
| it 'cause of Electron, tho. I'm spoiled by native note-taking
| apps like Bear and Noteplan on macOS which have much nicer UX and
| UI, especially on mobile.
| chriskrycho wrote:
| Has Noteplan's performance improved over the past couple years?
| I really liked its model, but last time I tried it (early 2020)
| it got pretty slow as soon as you had a non-trivial amount of
| data/notes in it. Ironically, given the sentiment (which I
| share!) about Electron, Obsidian trounces Noteplan for
| performance.
| nklmilojevic wrote:
| I stopped using Noteplan as developer doubled the
| subscription price over the night. Performance was perfect
| for me, though.
| kirso wrote:
| You can try minimal theme, it makes it a look a bit more
| native.
| omnimus wrote:
| The aesthetics of all three of these apps seem almost the same?
| chriskrycho wrote:
| Bear's aesthetics are definitely a bit nicer. I have switched
| to Obsidian for extensibility and its use of local files...
| but Bear has a level of polish that is hard to put into words
| and which screenshots alone don't quite capture. It just
| straight-up _feels_ better. (It also has the problem of
| getting updates _very_ slowly and is really committed to
| keeping everything in its internal DB, which makes it much
| less useful to me.)
| casey2 wrote:
| Man pages. Very simple, yet more power markup language, already
| installed on your system, just make a new section and go.
| ArcMex wrote:
| >It means we're proud enough to drop the word "beta".
|
| Huge milestone. Congratulations! I will be trying out the flatpak
| on my Linux build and keeping an eye out for your progress. Well
| done!
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Love the 1.0 on iPad! The tabbed interface (and weird history
| behavior when working with splits) was one of my biggest hiccups
| with the old version. The new one interface has smoother
| animations and behaves better. Wish you added multiple window
| support on iPad, but that's super minor.
|
| I know that Obsidian has roots as "database is a directory of
| markdown files", but I will say that the last remaining feature
| request I have for the app is about versioning: I want to browse
| my vault at a point in time, not look at old versions of files.
| Specifically, I want to delete a file, then do a text search in 6
| months, find a match in the deleted file, and browse my notebook
| at the date before I deleted the file.
| kepano wrote:
| You can do something like this with Obsidian Git. If your vault
| is synced to Git then you can roll back to any commit in the
| history and return to that overall state of your vault.
| IndigoIncognito wrote:
| I stopped using it due to the fact that it is like Vim for
| Microsoft Word, it takes more time to use, has less features than
| the original and hurts your sanity
| jmcphers wrote:
| If you just want a knowledge base in Vim, have you tried
| Vimwiki[1]?
|
| I use Vimwiki in vim and Obsidian outside of Vim -- they can be
| configured to use exactly the same pile of Markdown files as a
| vault/wiki.
|
| [1] https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
| smeagull wrote:
| What I want from a note taking app:
|
| * Takes pages from my browser
|
| * Uses github to sync across platforms
|
| * Has offline reading on mobile
|
| * Tagging and a todo list for triaging notes.
|
| Haven't found one yet.
| andymac4182 wrote:
| Here is a way to capture pages from the browser in Obsidian
| https://stephanango.com/obsidian-web-clipper
|
| https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git will help you sync
| across platforms
|
| Obsidian has all files locally so can be read offline
|
| I use a mix of tagging and two plugins (dataview and tasks) to
| accomplish the last one.
| nikivi wrote:
| 1.0 broke making the cursor not blinking in Vim mode. Is it
| possible to fix it back?
|
| Specifically this CSS snippet stopped working:
|
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/how-to-stop-the-blinking-cursor-...
| dkislyuk wrote:
| Obsidian is a tool like no other: a "second brain" that you have
| complete ownership over. Being able to link together knowledge or
| concepts across contexts is a superpower. A recent example: the
| AlphaTensor paper comes out with a new approach to optimizing
| matrix multiplication algorithms: as I jot down some thoughts,
| can I seamlessly refresh my memory on every paper or talk or
| offhand ML finding I've come across on "matrix multiplication",
| "deep RL", "Strassen's algorithm", etc.?
|
| I use it for every aspect of knowledge management, building a
| personal wiki, personal logging and writing, task tracking,
| reading notes, academic paper notes+metadata, planning, and more.
| Other tools offer similar features, but they all seem to have
| tradeoffs on data ownership or offline support or lack of
| extensibility or non-standard text format (i.e. not markdown). I
| wrote last year in another HN post that it's remarkable that the
| Obsidian team has delivered a superior product in a _very_
| crowded note-taking / PKM space, and 18 months later it remains
| the single tool that I couldn't imagine abandoning.
| permo-w wrote:
| what separates this from sublime?
| atentaten wrote:
| Obsidian is a note taking and knowledge management tool whereas
| sublime is a text editor.
| permo-w wrote:
| so far all things I've read obsidian can do are doable in
| sublime
| runjake wrote:
| A few tips for those new to Obsidian:
|
| - Don't rush to install a bunch of plugins. Start with the
| defaults, learn Obisidian and add only what you need. It is easy
| for some to spend more time tweaking Obsidian than actually using
| it.
|
| - If you're a macOS user, check out the Minimal theme, which will
| make Obsidian feel more native. -> https://minimal.guide/Home
|
| - When you are ready for plugins, you may want Omnisearch[1] to
| be one of your first.
|
| I used to organize stuff into folders, now I pretty much just
| create a note at the vault's root level and use tagging and good
| semantics and use Omnisearch to pull up notes.
|
| 1. https://github.com/scambier/obsidian-omnisearch
| emrah wrote:
| Obsidian is great but I haven't had much luck with plugins.
| They often break after upgrades and most are not maintained.
| Perhaps that will change after the 1.0 release, at least the
| breaking problem
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > They often break after upgrades
|
| I mean. This is what v1.0 is for.
| sedatk wrote:
| "Start with the defaults, learn _______ and add only what you
| need."
|
| This should be universal advice for everything.
| kepano wrote:
| Great recommendations! I definitely agree with running the app
| without too many plugins at first, especially if you're new to
| using wikilinks.
|
| I wrote Minimal theme. BTW, I led the redesign of Obsidian 1.0
| so I brought a lot of those ideas into the core app. We've also
| made a big push around using more native components. I'm still
| improving Minimal, but hopefully the "out of the box"
| experience feels a lot more native.
| patleeman wrote:
| Wow! I just disabled minimal because I found the default
| theme to be perfect. Amazing work!
| lake_vincent wrote:
| Awesome work my friend!
| untech wrote:
| > I led the redesign of Obsidian 1.0
|
| Wow! It's a shame it's not highlighted in release notes!
| Great news, and thank you for your work!
| brimwats wrote:
| it's in the last paragraph :)
| nvrspyx wrote:
| If you're also responsible for the improved mobile support
| with the new redesign, great work! It's a joy to use.
| ngrilly wrote:
| Your redesign is a fantastic improvement in terms of both
| ergonomics and aesthetics. Thank you for this!
| cl42 wrote:
| I just installed your theme. Great work! Thank you for this.
| bostonvaulter2 wrote:
| I wish the minimal theme didn't get rid of switching to the
| finger cursor when hovering over links.
| kepano wrote:
| The cursor is a pointer for links. Do you mean buttons?
|
| Also, you can change the cursor by going to Style Settings >
| Minimal Advanced Options
| runjake wrote:
| I think they mean like the macOS-native functionality where
| you hover over a URL and macOS changes the cursor from an
| arrow to a hand with the index finger pointing.
|
| This might be the CSS? (I am not a CSS guy, sorry.)
| cursor: pointer;
|
| https://www.w3docs.com/tools/code-editor/2404
| runjake wrote:
| Definitely file an issue: https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-
| minimal/issues
| beardedman wrote:
| Love Obsidian! Congrats. The new UI looks awesome!
| scubbo wrote:
| I absolutely love Obsidian, and have been enthusiastically
| recommending it to everyone I can. Congratulations on hitting
| 1.0!
| brightball wrote:
| Congratulations on the 1.0. Just installed it and everything
| works great.
|
| Obsidian has been a core part of how I go about my day to day
| ever since I installed it a few months ago. Using it in
| conjunction with my Dropbox account has been a smooth operation
| too.
|
| I tell everybody about it at this point. Keep up the good work.
| sylens wrote:
| I love Obsidian because it puts everything in just a file that I
| can see live on my filesystem. Craft, Bear, Notion are all good
| tools, but I get uneasy knowing that so much of my knowledge base
| and documentation lives on their backend somewhere.
|
| I happily pay for Obsidian Sync even though I could use iCloud or
| OneDrive to sync my vaults because I want to support them
| tfsh wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch! I downloaded Obsidian for the
| first time last night and spent all morning customising it, so
| the timing for me couldn't be better.
|
| Quick note, on the website the download button for MacOS is
| delegating to "https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-
| releases/releases/dow..." despite the button saying "Version
| 1.0.0", I believe it should be
| "https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/releases/dow..."
| instead?
| joethei wrote:
| It's a caching problem. You should be directed to the correct
| version in the next few minutes.
| weka wrote:
| Shame -- I cannot seem to download it.
| codethief wrote:
| Congrats on reaching v1.0!
|
| Does anyone have any experience with their Android app? How well
| does it work these days?
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(page generated 2022-10-13 23:00 UTC)