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
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...
"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.
What might be most interesting about the new set of fast moving note apps is that all seem to be built by teams of 3 or less people. Obsidian seems to have ascended to the top of the heap with a team of three and no apparent VC funding. Anyone that roots for small companies and passionate programmers should appreciate Obsidian proving that the best tools don't have to be built by the biggest teams. More the opposite.
I’m using Org mode with emacs just so I can have cross references into PDFs and emails in my notes.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
This should be universal advice for everything.
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.
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.
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
It’s also been good enough to replace Sublime + directory for my day to day development note taking. Its fast and just gets out of the way for writing and organizing - which is exactly what I want in a note taking app.
I sync manually using Git, using a Work-repo, a Home-repo, and a Shared repo that is a Git submodule of both Work and Home. I never edit notes on my phone, but I can read them on GitHub or Dropbox. I have more than 1200 notes in Work ∪ Shared, and some more in Home.
Some of my essential plugins are: Dataview (Like inline SQL for querying notes), Natural Language Dates (entering current date easily), Minimal theme (just looks better).
Some builtin stuff that I love: Frontmatter metadata, Mermaid charts (graphviz-ish), inline \LaTeX rendering, daily notes and syntax highlighting.
All I can see is that it's been updated, but WTF is it?
edit: ahh, it wasn't the frontpage...
1) Basic synchronization is a paid feature and you cannot (or at least could not) set up a private synchronization server.
2) Synchronization depends on the cloud. I simply cannot trust all important information of my life going to an unspecified location in the cloud for synchronization, even if it promises end-to-end encryption. The fact that the source is closed and it is a small company aggravates that immensely.
Which is why I'm using Trilium now. It's a bit more limited (no app) but has a web clipper extension and it is open source, so I can do changes or quick fixes if needed. I also synchronize with my own server, running behind a VPN.
For mobile, I'm pulling all tabs using adb and a couple of scripts, and it has been working nicely for my use case (mostly archival/planning).
Also for web clipper check out this bookmarklet I made: https://stephanango.com/obsidian-web-clipper
- Set up Syncthing to sync your vault folder
- Share with your devices and you're done
If you're already using a VPN and syncing with a home-server, you could also leverage Nextcloud or whatever your current syncing solution is. I don't see any reason to get mad when Obsidian is effectively saying "we don't want your data unless you pay us to handle it right".
Anyone can check out my public Obsidian vault here: https://notes.recursion.is
And I made an introduction video for it here: https://youtu.be/tTFK-V3hdAw
In terms of your journey, what do you think the main challenges were? I'm sure a big one is adoption and another performance but curious to hear what the team's thoughts are.
For me personally, the community has been absolutely stellar. Lots of folks always willing to help out. Just a year and a half ago, I found dataview and after avoiding frontend for nearly a decade, I've finally begun my journey with React. The entire experience was kickstarted by my finding Obsidian and trying to contribute to plugins that I loved. A special thanks to everyone from the community: shabegom, joethei, koala, blacksmithgu, pseudometa, Eleanor, Fevol, aquaman, metruzan, and many many others whose name I'm blanking on right now but I promise I'm grateful!
Is there a compelling reason to switch from Joplin to Obsidian? Honest question.
There is no expectation that you use sync, it's simply an option for those that want it and are likely less tech oriented.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, I use github to sync across devices, you could technically use any solution you like.
It seems like a great program; it embraces open formats and is very extensible. But I don't think privacy should be a reason to use it while it's closed source.
EDIT Searching around the web indicates that you can only draw on top of images of the writing later, not edit it. Alas.
It turns out I prefer having lists as my primary interface, especially for the mobile side (insert text and press enter, instead of typing "- [x] item").
It does 3 things (all integrated together): lists, notes, and calendar. The "Notes" section is like a mini obsidian mixed in with the lists, but you can also add markdown notes to each individual 'task'. So I use it like a personal knowledge-base, not just for expendable lists.
The calendar integration is also nice. I've combined Obsidian, gCal, and Omnitasks/Todoist into one app.
That said, for pure note taking Obsidian was the best. Especially for coding/work.
Obsidian has been a core part of how I go about my day to day ever since I installed it a few months ago. Using it in conjunction with my Dropbox account has been a smooth operation too.
I tell everybody about it at this point. Keep up the good work.
Block-quotes are no longer quotes, just text with a strip of light on the left with no option to make it more obvious.
File name is now H1 header at the top of the file with no option to hide it.
Performance sucks so much, and that is on an eight-core x64 mobile CPU running Windows 10 Pro. Everything is sluggish 15fps mess. Shame.
Markdown links are ruined too. The previous UI was light years ahead, using different colors for the text and the link. Now the color is the same.
Most extensions don't care and don't render properly. Fckn great, man.
The tabs are by far the only good thing in the update. Everything else is a downgrade.
I really, really don't think this kind of catastrophizing is appropriate. A lot of your complaints are incredibly minor things, and are resolved through configuration.
> Most extensions don't care and don't render properly. Fckn great, man.
This absolutely has not been my experience and the level of vitriol is completely inappropriate. Extensions are developed by third-parties in their own time, and provided for free. Have you made sure all your 'broken' extensions are up to date? Have you verified they are compatible? Have you checked to see there are issues opened in the extension's git repo? Have you submitted PRs to fix the issues you've come across?
I've been using Obsidian for about a year, and about six months ago, I paid for Catalyst to have access to insider builds and to support development. In that time, Obsidian has gotten significantly better.
It will likely take a few weeks for plugins/themes to update to the new theme system, so I would encourage a bit of patience!
See theme migration guide: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/0-16-0-theme-migration-guide/425...
Have you tried adjusting the option: Appearance › Show inline title ?
I found it strange that what I would consider to be the help site's table of contents (on the left) is in alphabetical order, somewhat like an index, instead of being arranged in a logical outline like a book's table of contents.
Meanwhile, what's labelled as the "table of contents" on the right is actually just the headings in the current page.
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).
That said, I've stuck with Obsidian so far, specifically because it doesn't lock me into a format. I was able to drop it on top of my folder-o-markdown & go from there. We'll see if it sticks, but so far so good.
Am I missing something?
My only dream is blocked by Apple. Would to have the ability to switch the default notes client in iOS, similar to how you can with browsers and email.
Of course I understand there are good reasons for it. It is so difficult to find a paying customer for anything, that it's impractical to price below a cost threshold. LTV > CAC.
Would love to see something like “$200 to enable the a peer-to-peer sync engine forever”, i.e. no ongoing hosting costs for Obsidian.
For my personal non-work vaults between my personal devices, I used Syncthing without issue for months, only switching since I was paying for the sync license for work anyway.
Sync - On iOS, you can use iCloud to sync your files between your Mac and iPhone. I imagine that there are more configuration options for this on Android.
Publish - lots of different ways to deploy your notes to a site. There's one repo that helps you publish with Mkdocs [1], and I'm sure there are other tools the community has created to solve this problem.
It may not be as simple to set up as Notion, but that's the price you pay for wanting a solution to be cheap, private, and let you own your own data.
Use iCloud/gDrive/dropbox for synching instead. Never had any issues.
You can choose to sync via pretty much any sync solution like Dropbox, iCloud, Git, etc. For publish you can static site generators like Jekyll, Hugo, etc.
The only thing I miss is a more acessible price for brazilians in Obsidian Sync (1 USD ≈ 5.50 BRL, that is too much). I know I can sync it using other tools, but I feel the native tool would be the best of the scenarios).
Quick note, on the website the download button for MacOS is delegating to "https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/releases/dow..." despite the button saying "Version 1.0.0", I believe it should be "https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/releases/dow..." instead?
Fourteen days to trial just isn't enough to see whether it would be worth the cost to use for my own personal use at work. The Dynalist freemium model where I could use a smaller feature set for a longer time and then decide it was worth upgrading was just much easier.
Erica, would you consider a discount on add-on services for commercial subscribers? A 25% discount would put the price a bit closer to Dynalist pro and make it feel like I was actually getting something for the commercial subscription other than just permission to use it for work. Or maybe a discount for existing Dynalist pro subscribers?
I really love the work you all are doing, here and on Dynalist, just a bit hung up on the cost here.
Side Note: If you folks would like a portable version for Windows (non-installable version that can run from a cloud folder, portable drive, etc), let me know. PortableApps.com has a few Electron-based apps now.
If anyone's interested ... two very (very) minor things I've noticed in my 20mins of usage (apologies if these are solved - I haven't got to the literature yet):
- same-same appearance of sub-list markers (I prefer alternative icons for tiered lists)
- Headline / filename special characters conundrum. Many of my docs had headlines in them that weren't suitable as filenames, I found myself repeating the non-filesafe headline on the first line. I wonder if there's some kind of front-matter setup that could resolve this?
Can you share the rough number of users in each tier/service?
I know that Obsidian has roots as "database is a directory of markdown files", but I will say that the last remaining feature request I have for the app is about versioning: I want to browse my vault at a point in time, not look at old versions of files. Specifically, I want to delete a file, then do a text search in 6 months, find a match in the deleted file, and browse my notebook at the date before I deleted the file.
I realize they are just markdown files, but they use a proprietary "Obsidian" markup that will require painful conversion if I ever need move to another app. I've been through this before and it has always been a massive headache.
Also the fact that i can easily use syncing with E2E encryption (though not sure if it's been reviewed yet.. would be nice) is awesome.
I'm still using Logseq as my PKMS app by default, but seeing how active you've been with pushing genuinely new (and useful) changes, I might just reconsider this.
I use Vimwiki in vim and Obsidian outside of Vim -- they can be configured to use exactly the same pile of Markdown files as a vault/wiki.
I use it for every aspect of knowledge management, building a personal wiki, personal logging and writing, task tracking, reading notes, academic paper notes+metadata, planning, and more. Other tools offer similar features, but they all seem to have tradeoffs on data ownership or offline support or lack of extensibility or non-standard text format (i.e. not markdown). I wrote last year in another HN post that it's remarkable that the Obsidian team has delivered a superior product in a _very_ crowded note-taking / PKM space, and 18 months later it remains the single tool that I couldn't imagine abandoning.
E: Dang. Same thing. Installs and launches, but when I go to create a vault I get "Failed to create vault. Unable to create directory, unknown reason." Both on internal storage and the SD card.
I granted it permissions upon install, so who knows. My phone might just be too old and busted.
If you're on macOS/iOS a lot of this is now at the OS level, and has gotten really quite good.
I ask this as someone who much prefers atomization with good interoperability to bloated everything applications (and who has a phone and laptop with active stylus.)
I've tried many different tools in the past and I find I can't stay organized. I don't want to sit there linking stuff together, I just want to jot down a quick note or thought and have it link up with enough stuff that I can find it easily later.
I was thinking of making a personal tool based on some kind of database like datalog. Where I can dump a bunch of facts and have the computer automatically tag and link items.
I'd love something that knows I'm currently in a meeting with X,Y,Z persons while I took a note and automatically links it with them and any keywords etc from my note to other notes and topics.
I saw a demo for outreach? I think that did some cool stuff for sales, listening to phone calls and making notes linking people etc. I want that but for _everything_ haha. Have it link in with JIRA, slack, GitHub, Gmail etc. One stop shop.
I happily pay for Obsidian Sync even though I could use iCloud or OneDrive to sync my vaults because I want to support them
I would love to have a system where my notes are automatically linked with notes from other users who have the same ideas or goals.
EDIT: The Sync feature is far too expensive. I pay about $22/year for Evernote: https://evernote.com/compare-plans Syncing is a core feature, and I'm not going to use any notetaking tool if it can't sync my notes between mobile and desktop. I don't really want to switch to a tool that will cost $96/year. I'd be comfortable paying up to $25/year.
Even better if there was a self-hosted database that I could run on my own server, or a way sync via Dropbox or Google Drive (that also works on mobile.) Maybe iCloud is an option.
I ask as i can think of several times ive been stuck with just a work laptop or similar and it would suck to not at least have a browser version or something.
Thanks
If the bracket notation is a commonality among note taking systems like this one, then I may just be too much of an outsider to jump in easily to this app. But I, as someone who was interested in using the app enough to press every button I could see, couldn't figure out how to link notes until I exhausted my possibilities in the app, looked at your Web page, scrolled through the comments here and finally found someone linking to the page I needed. I knew that linking is the main feature, but I couldn't find it.
Filtering out dumb users like me may be a design decision, but if not, I would encourage something upon app installation that offers to tell new users how to link notes, even if it's just a link to a YouTube video ("new to Obsidian? Watch this 1 (2?) minute video to get you started.")
* Takes pages from my browser
* Uses github to sync across platforms
* Has offline reading on mobile
* Tagging and a todo list for triaging notes.
Haven't found one yet.
https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git will help you sync across platforms
Obsidian has all files locally so can be read offline
I use a mix of tagging and two plugins (dataview and tasks) to accomplish the last one.
Another option is to write a document up in Obsidian, then upload the markdown to google docs. Or there are obsidian plugins converting obsidian notes to Word format.
Specifically this CSS snippet stopped working:
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/how-to-stop-the-blinking-cursor-...
I went searching for something I could store in the cloud and locally and could understand markdown. Lo and behold Obsidian kept coming up in recommendations. I've been using it for 3 months now and I love that it uses simple filesystem heirarchies to store the .md files. I can put it into a git repo and fit it neatly into my existing workflow. It is basically the perfect note taking app for me. Well done and keep up the good work!
And then there's [[hypertext]]. Love it!
There is afaik no such thing as an org-agenda in Obsidian, which is a deal breaker for me. Also to do list handling is shoddy at best (it would probably be a perfect app if that got integrated, e.g. via a todo.txt format with a calendar) but alas.
If I weren't an org-mode user, Obsidian would probably be my pick. It is very nice in everything it does, but it just doesn't have that "edge" of creating a setup that is ugly, complicated an unrecognizable from its default. It may be ugly, but at least it's _your_ ugly.
Use mine for Zettelkasten style knowledge tracking, Zotero and Vim plugins are awesome ... I guess I should donate some money because I am pretty happy with Obsidian!
Honestly the beta version was already stable and feature rich enough to consider it it a v1 :)
If one of the key features is a new UI, can I advise to put a couple screenshots in the announcement?
Will this be retrocompatible with plugins on v.15?
They've marked them all as legacy and are removing the legacy label as theme developers are updating them.
Huge milestone. Congratulations! I will be trying out the flatpak on my Linux build and keeping an eye out for your progress. Well done!
Which tool would be the best for assembling distinct documents from a large of pre-written paragraphs/sentences. I frequently need to write a set of docs with extensive cross-referencing, however, (a) the exported output docs needs to have referenced paras/sentences 'inlined' into the final version, and, (b) 'locking' the exported output docs should lock all the paras used by that doc while leaving the remaining ones editable.
Thanks.
A tip that people on HN will probably enjoy: add --disable-smooth-scrolling to your shortcut to make scrolling more responsive.
For this use case it is the absolute best of the bunch. I've used a lot of these sorts of complex second brain things and I've settled on a very minimal approach wherein Obsidian was the clear 'best in show' for what I needed.
Obsidian seems to be single user based, Athens is "collaborative" and "for startup teams". But does anybody actually have any experience using a graph based knowledge tool for your teams knowledge management?
What would I use Obsidian for? Is it just for writing stuff down? And if so; how would I access these notes on something like my phone? I tend to just write down things and store attachments in "Saved Messages" on Telegram. That way I can access it all via my phone, home computer, work computer or the web.
How would Obsidian be better?
They do provide mobile apps that work well but it's just markdown files so you can really access them however you want. I just have the entire vault in my Google Drive.
Advance - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3NaIVgSlAVIDaYB0yeH3lnB9...
My usage of Reflect has made me very curious about other apps that do similar things (e.g. Obsidian)
Has anyone here tried Obsidian _and_ Reflect?
[^1]: https://reflect.app/
(I have a fair amount of content already in plain Markdown, as you can see here: https://taoofmac.com/static/graph)
I ask because there was one other note taking app that couldn't cope with the semantics of Google drive's write activity (been a while and i've forgotten which one) and consequently I lost data
On the personal side, I dislike aesthetics and wouldn't ever use it 'cause of Electron, tho. I'm spoiled by native note-taking apps like Bear and Noteplan on macOS which have much nicer UX and UI, especially on mobile.
One plugin I am wish will arrive soon is Google Calendar integration.
Obsidian has completely changed my notes workflow over the past year. It's so lightweight, and has just the right amount of structure for me. Thank you for building it! The new interface looks fantastic.
Does this include an update to the iOS app?
Also more performant and less plugin-dependent.
Tip for anyone wondering: if you need encryption, gocryptfs works great.
Now I just need to wait for Flathub to update…
Also I really want the file name to be independent of the heading, like it used to be.
Also it is great and I gave you my money.
Obsidian has changed my life. Everything about this software is chefs kiss.
Thankyou.
Funny, that was the exact title of my personal wiki that I started in 2006 or so.
After using Roam I can never go backwards to plain text, I need a block based editor with infinite nesting. I’ve recently switched to Tana.
Here I recorded a comparison https://imgur.com/a/6QzpwYw
Will give it a chance, looks so good and has several interesting features that I may didn't know that I needed. Kudos to the Obsidian team.
Also, from what I can see, there is no 2FA, am I wrong?..
It's both a pre-configured knowledge base (with a structure, plugins, templates, etc) and a detailed user guide with theory and practical how-to guides.
It's not free but might be a good investment if you want to spare time when diving in.
Things I like about the app:
* (Generally) good keyboard support
* Syncing (but I'm paying for it)
* Good native apps on mobile
Things that aren't so good
* Editing code blocks
Kudos to the team!
[1]: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-obsidian/1515/2...
Does anyone have any experience with their Android app? How well does it work these days?
[0]: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-release-v1-0-0/44873
I don't even use half the features/capabilities but as a simple markdown editor w/ links it's fantastic.
Delete, good bye, auf wiedersehen!
My epiphany of the decade.
Thank you SO MUCH!!!
Sorry I don't want to sound disrespectul but I didn't found an quick and easy parsable description. If I would show this my parents, I wouldn't be sure if they could guess. :/
"Obsidian is a powerful and extensible knowledge base" ?????
