Obsidian - Connected Notes Reviews

I’ve used this app desktop since December and the mobile app for a couple of months.

The longer I use it, the less and less I open other apps. Creating a new note is fast and editing your standard Markdown is fast and easy, enough that I never use the Markdown shortcuts bar.

I use this app for three types of notes. First, I use it for daily notes, much like a digital bullet journal. Second, for project notes and references, and finally for my personal second brain/zettelkasten, and I work on all three types of notes in the same vault without any confusion.

Couple of caveats:

1. WYSIWYG not available yet, so you write in Markdown. You can flip from edit to preview mode to see “pretty” text, but I just look at Markdown all day. I’m ok with that, but it might drive you nuts.

2. App and desktop/mobile synch are free, but I pay a monthly fee for this app’s synch rather than muss about with settings to manage synch myself. Plus it’s encrypted end-to-end.

3. Finally, I think it would be easier if you *started* on desktop and then *also* worked on your phone. I think desktop makes it easier to really get into and figure out the workflow and organization system that works for you.

Whatever you choose, I definitely recommend you commit and use this app for a couple of weeks to really try it out. It’s so flexible, you need some time kick all the tires and see which ones you like.

The reason I'm writing this is because the this app mobile app has finally been released, much to my glee. 'Glee', that's a word that I hate to describe myself with because it has an almost humiliatingly over-emotional charge to it, but it's fitting enough in this case. Obsidian is excellent. It's excellent for many reasons that set it apart from any other note taking app:
- Hyper-customizable shortcuts to do almost anything you could want to do in Obsidian as quickly as possible. With keyboard support.
- The same, wonderful network visualization of your entire notebook, complete with tweakable physics.
- Custom styles that can be written in pure CSS or selected from the set of community themes
- Notes are saved to your phone's files as raw .markdown files which you can do anything you want with later.
- You can sync your notes with this app's own "Sync" service, or you can even use Git. iCloud is also an option.
- Third party plugins (you can even write your own!) which allow complete changes to app functionality.

These features combined are, to me, absolutely staggering to see in an iPhone app. The developers of this app, in porting their desktop application to mobile, have simultaneously created what I think is one of the most powerful tools I've ever had on my phone.

Remember the days… like 30 years ago… when you discovered a new app … like a spreadsheet or a word processor … and you realized pretty quickly that you'd never go back? Well, this app is that level of a game changer. Having a Second Brain is the Killer App of the next decade, and this app is by far the best attempt at it.

Sure, Markdown is a bit annoying but all of the other features far overwhelm. And the data is open and future proof. And having a "what you see is what you get" feature is on the developers roadmap, so that complaint will soon be allayed.

Truly, take the jump - if you embrace it, you'll never want to leave. And your phone will be an this app phone, on which you occasionally perform other "less useful" apps… - Z2K

And it’s working alright but sometimes the editing of a previous paragraph lets me type but it never overrides the sentence. It’s a weird and annoying bug. Fortunately, I can just leave the vault and come back in. Other than that, I love the cloud syncing and how minimal it all is. Everyone talks about plug-ins and themes, I stay away from all that. I need a decent editor to keep me from becoming distracted and at the base install this app does that. I would probably still use Notion instead but at last, only this app has offline mode. So you win.

Edit: So I’ve been using this app for 3 months straight full time and I’m sick of the editing bug. If I type for a good 15-30 minutes and edit any paragraph above, it breaks the editor. I’m now at the point that I’m about to move my project to another application.

This was a 4 star app but it’s crazy that in this time the bug hasn’t been fixed.

This is one of the best note Ive used. Very reliable and fast-reacting. In this way, it beats Notion and Xmind. I love it’s graph function very much! Yet there is of course more to add to make it better.

1. Add a google drive upload button so that we can fast upload and sync files everytime.

2. Self editing appearances. I know we have many themes yet there are always somethings we don’t like (font or color or size or positions or pic size) in them. Can we edit these after choosing a theme?

3. Better management of files and pics. Everytime when I add a screenshot or file to my work, it appears on the left side bar parallel to main works. I have to build a file case to drag them in and separate them from main works manually. Please give these chips a place to stay.

4. More specific functions. This direction will help this app beat Notion totally. Notion as many templates. If we have this option, we can make it a Tally Book, a Reading Extract, a lab log etc. for now, it’s not module-ish enough for a quick stitch for different daily usage.

Best wishes to the wonderful team!

Syncing from Mac to iPhone takes forever. My edit on my Mac don’t show up after even 40 minutes and the iCloud image on my Mac just keep syncing saying it’s 93/94kb something like that. Then I just restart my Mac and the sync then went fine. When it happened the second time I also do a restart and then the sync went through. I really like the desktop app but this app’s iCloud sync implementation is not working for me. I don’t know if this is a strategy to push customers to buy their own survice. Honestly I will be willing to pay similar price for this app compared with Bear app. When exporting markdown out of Bear a lot of image links breaks down. Plus I really enjoy the desktop app (except for the fact that wiki link and standard markdown image link can’t be customized separately). But this iCloud sync to iOS is not ready.

I’ve been a solid user of this app for a few months, starting with organizing my research for animation. I’m so pleased with how it held all my work for free, with such flexibility, that when they announced it would be a mobile app as well, I was ecstatic!

There’s very few places in which the mobile app can’t keep up with the desktop version, and frankly it’s all in the community plugins. The core app without anything additional functions flawlessly, and I’m in love with it.

I’m looking forward to more support for community additions in the future. For right now, it’s fantastic just to use sync and keep my information close at hand.

I’ve used the this app desktop application for the past several months and have seen improvements in my creativity, writing, and memory. I’m excited to use the new app to boost my idea capturing process. I use the mobile app to capture my thoughts and new information in a daily note and and integrate them later into my Personal Knowledge Management framework. It has all the goodies found in the desktop version and works great on iPad if I want to work from iOS. Overall, I find it liberating that I can now carry my entire second brain in my pocket and reference it or modify it whenever I need!

I’ve tried basically every enhanced notes apps under the sun and this app sets a new standard. Prioritizing plain text, local files and fostering community support is just an excellent combination. I don’t have to worry about not having my notes without internet. I don’t have to read privacy policies to figure out if a service can read my stuff. I just write and feel comfortable knowing that even if this app goes away some day, I’ll always have my writing.

That’s not even touching on the stellar feature set and excellent community plugins. this app is great!

There are many great notes applications out there, but this app is special. I’ve been using it for a while now on my Mac and iOS (beta) and I can honestly say Obsidian is one of a kind. If you are interested in writing notes in Markdown, saving and managing your data as plain text files and are curious about a vibrant plugin community - you need to give this app a try. They offer a dedicated sync service if you want but I just use iCloud - your mileage may vary. I hope you give this app a chance - you may really like it like I do.

There is so much to Obsidian. Plug-ins, community themes, different ways of managing and organizing. It can be overwhelming, especially when you see the insane lengths that people have taken Obsidian to.

But…it’s also really good. Once you start vibing with the interface there is a stunning amount of depth and usability. The fact everything is just markdown files also opens up a ton of automation possibility. The team and the community are also incredibly responsive and helpful.

An excellent transition to iOS.

I have used the this app desktop app for the past 2 years, because it is so simple and so powerful with its linked notes. It also handles large quantities of notes well (where Bear really struggled) and keeps the editor nice and simple with markdown. Most importantly by allowing me to sync to my encrypted cloud storage, it allows me to secure my notes with a major cloud storage provider. So happy the iOS app is available and fully featured!

I’ve been using this as a companion to my desktop app for awhile and with Sync its very useful. Since I can scribble notes in with my Apple Pencil I can jot down fleeting ideas and then work them into more permanent shape when I get close to a keyboard. Discovering this app and learning how to take smart notes has significantly improved my ability to use the information I read in both my day job and my creative work.

I’ve used basically every note taking app that’s come onto the market in recent years. this app was an early player in the PKM space and has just smoked every other app I’ve used in terms of features and development speed. The community is great and Obsidian is a joy to use. It’s a tool that’s re-inspired me to advance my reading and learning. Can’t speak highly enough about this app.

iCloud doesn’t even sync file renames on Windows (with windows store version). So conflicted files happen very often if Windows is involved.

It could be the same on other platforms but I’m not sure.

The real problem here is the restriction to use iCloud or pay for this app sync. Given I’ve had at least *15* conflicted files (even disappearing WHILE editing on mobile right after creating it), I don’t consider iCloud sync to be functional. Give us WebDAV and files support. Give us open source sync. You’re killing your own product.

this app is a really nice, easy-to-use notes app... That will delete your notes without warning. Just today, I went to check my D&D notes, and months of notes had vanished. Thankfully I still had a copy of Obsidian open on a device that hadn't synced yet!

And then I went on the forums to see if this was a known issue, and the only response is that iCloud sync is "unreliable". Well Devonthink has lost zero items in years of syncing on iCloud.

Use a notes app that will actually keep track of your data instead of just dropping it on the floor and blaming Apple.

This was the fifth note taking app I tried when I wanted to digitize my notes. And it has basically everything you can ever want because if you don’t like something you can change it. Don’t like the look, make a custom css theme. Doesn’t have a feature, make a plug-in. And if you don’t know how to do it you can always hire someone to do it for you.

this app is the first knowledge management software I've used that gives me the confidence to forget information because I know I can easily retrieve it in a fast, intuitive manner. Raw markdown, easily integrating new information with existing, and a vibrant community are only a few of the things that will convince you to dive in headfirst once you realize the capabilities this tool unlocks.

I can barely state in words how positively impactful this has been in the way I organize and relate to my ideas. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a review but just had to to help get the word out! I recommend diving into the community and exploring what is possible with this app — you will be astonished by what you find!

The this app mobile app has around 95% of the functionality that the desktop app has. Paired with this app Sync, notes are shared between devices extremely smoothly with an easy setup process.

I'm looking forward to be able to edit, review, and write new notes when I'm not at my desktop! this app is the best.