Why would they donate server space to you on top of giving you free (beer) software?

The way some of you think is very odd to me.

Back up your own shit or pay for sync.

Not the point here. Using it in a commercial environment for free was a violation of the terms, now it’s not anymore.

SyncThing for me, but yeah.

I use it to track everything…

Quick notes knowledgebase Follow up (personal and work)

The great thing about Obsidian is how flexible it is. The bad thing about Obsidian is how flexible it is… 😀

I have seen may people comment, or outright leave, Obsidian because because there was too much to learn… or too many plugins to explore…

Personally, I only look for plugins if I need something specific. Don’t see the point of trying random plugins. Is like spending time finding solutions to a problem you may not have…

Also, I work on tech and many documents are in markdown. Obsidian makes it easier to read those. Specially the collapse / expand functionality is really great for exploring large docs… as long as the creators properly used sections (basically # for level 1, ## for level 2…and so on)

Not daily, but their canvas feature has a feature that lets you embed previews of your files into the flow charts you make. It’s pretty nice, since you can have shorter files entirely visible with everything else. Makes it pretty good for software development and project management, in my experience.

Careful not to go overboard with it, though. I feel like a lot of people fall down the “productivity pipeline” when using it, where they end up procrastinating by trying to optimize every little thing and end up doing nothing at all.

Weekly.
As a personal knowledgebase and todo list.

Daily journal Task list / project management Note taking Mind mapping Resource archive

I’ve got my vault automated pretty well at this point. I honestly don’t know what I would do without it.

For those of you that are wondering, everything is markdown independent, all of my plugins address UI or vault automation processes that leave all of my information entirely portable.

I use Obsidian as a tool to help my shitty memory.

I want to have one single place where I can go search for a thing I know I saw somewhere but can’t remember where or what it was exactly

“Did I watch movie X” -> Obsidian -> Watchlist -> Movies and there it’ll be.

Same for tv-series, anime, books, games. Yes there are services that do it like Trakt, Imdb, Letterboxd, TVMaze and god knows how many for games. They all get enshittified eventually requiring you to pay for basic functionality (looking at you trakt…)

I’m building a tool for getting my data out from all those services into Obsidian markdown format, maybe It’ll get finished some day :D (IMDB and Goodreads work, but you need to do a manual csv export)

“How did I install that finicky piece of software last time” -> Obsidian, I wrote something down because I knew I couldn’t remember it. Then I’ll improve the guide + refresh with new data.

Now I have a pretty good step-by step guide on how to set up a computer, no matter the OS, just how I like it - all in Obsidian. Mostly just commands I copy-paste and some manual steps that I can’t be arsed to automate.

Same with my daily notes, I just write down what I did maybe with some tags so I can find them when I start wondering when did I visit X or put up the curtains in the bedroom.

Daily notes. I have a template that prompts me to fill out a number details I might otherwise forget.

A wiki of people that helps me remember details about people I meet or have worked with. Makes it much easier to keep in touch and to remember important dates in their lives.

Sortable todo lists, with due date and urgency information. I can add to the lists directly from any other note using a Dataview formula with the Tasks extension.

Career plans. Project plans. Gardening plans. Recipes (there’s an awesome extension that imports recipes from the web).

Any random writing I might want to do, from short stories to rough drafts of letters to stream of consciousness mind spew that I want to review later.

I use the Auto Note Mover and Dataview extensions, along with backlinks and tags, to keep all of my notes organized automatically. I use the Linter extension to make sure things are formatted nicely. When I started using Obsidian, I used the Importer extension yo easily pull in all of my existing notes and lists from Evernote and Google Keep.

Honestly, that barely scratches the surface.

I use it as a work journal and personal knowledge management (PKM). Each day I open a daily journal note (built from a template with an easy shortcut) that contain rough notes on what I did that day. From that note I link over to project notes for any project I worked on or complex issues, scratch notes, etc. I do split windows, one with a narrow view of the daily note and then a larger panel for content notes (like documenting the project or create a scratch note or searching for a note on a problem I had 2 years ago that I need to remember about). There are many useful plugins but Templater and “Various Complements” are my favorite. Templater allows me to configure a template for any note I want to configure, so I can create a new note then hit a shortcut that will prompt me for a page title and auto fill the note with my template (that includes tags, headings, etc) for a meeting or new project or scratch note. Templater can also organize the note and move it around on my filesystem. Various Complements plugin allows me to build a dictionary of anything I want that will then fill in like an IDE when I’m typing in a note. So I use it for all my coworker names, I type 4 letters of someone’s name and it pops up suggestions where I can tab-complete their full name.

It’s truly a great program, better for me than all the others I’ve tried: OneNote, TiddlyWiki, DocuWiki, Dendron, and emacs. I used TiddlyWiki for years and had to bend it to my will in many wonky ways, then Obsidian came around and did 90% what I wanted out of the gate and the 3 or 4 plugins I use did the rest. I’ve been using it for a few years now.

I use it for note taking at work. I like that I can add code into markdown. But yeah post notes and paste screenshots. Useful when I want to go over my old tech notes when I’ve fixed stuff. A personal knowledge base. The fact it’s markdown I could just upload this to somewhere like GitHub and it retains it’s formatting

I fucking LOVE obsidian, one of my most used pieces of software.

I have two note vaults.

One is my personal “everything” not vault, Anything I might need to write down goes there. No random sticky notes, or half used notebooks for me. Game notes, such as what equipment I’m looking for, or solutions to puzzles I’ll forget before I can use the information. More practically useful notes like conversion charts to use imperial measurements in blender and godot. Names of people I need to remember and what their handles are on social media, because most platforms don’t help you with that. Everything can be interconnected, so some notes are just indexes of other notes.

More impressive is my lore wiki. There is a book series that I will never write, and these notes document the setting. Characters, events, locations, other authors who have helped over the years. Anything that is a proper noun or is otherwise special to the setting is a link to a note of that name.

Obsidian also has “graph view” which visually organizes notes so that things that are connected are physically closer together. I just wish I could give these notes icons on the graph view so that they’d be more visually distinct.

I use it for pretty much everything. Any random crap i need to jot down go into the daily notes with a tag of some sort, Excalidraw extension for any sort of diagrams or a string board for connecting different notes/pictures together, code snippets, documentation etc.

I dont use their sync, but I have proton drive keeping the directory backed up in case of emergencies, and I have a git repo for when i want to officially keep something tracked.

here’s a bunch of possible applications:

1. simple note taking. like notepad except you have your notes at a place where you can search through them and even link one from another.
2. second brain. you can watch a video about it but basically to organize your thoughts, record things you learn, make connections between things to have a digital brain you can search or browse through.
3. work or school. notes, to do lists, reminders, links to sources, etc all in one place with references via links
4. journal. pretty straightforward, but you can imagine things you could do if you could link from your journal entry to a website, or another entry, or something from your movie collection.
5. database. eg maybe you have a movie collection and want to document all the details, including which ones you watched, which ones you liked, and what you think about them. you can have a file for each movie but also files for directors, actors, etc that you can link to and from, in which you have info on those, including images, tags for easy search.

so you watched a movie and wonder what other movies you own have the same starring actor: search movie, click link to the star page, check backlinks.

obviously not the best use case because imdb exists but this is personal and could be extrapolated to any collection you have, maybe even all of them. why not have the movie adaptation link to the original book?

TLDR

you can think about it like: imagine if you could make a bunch of wiki pages. the formatting isn’t quite as nice but essentially that’s what you’re doing. a bunch of pages with text, images, links and tags, that you can browse through. what would you use it for?

I truly is evolving with me. I’m no power user, but I’ve been using it for the last two years. Eh e I am at school it’s where I take my classes notes. When I needed to write to myself it was also there. I have it synched between my two computers and my phone. And it is where I put my documents like CV’s and Excels I share. It’s not directly Obsidian doing all of this. But basically it becomes a Hub of all I do.

Recently I started saving more pages online that are important as notes in Obsidian and still find new usage of Obsidian

it is fantastic for both lil notes and grand projects! and you can even link to those little notes and slowly evolve them into a grand projects

you can basically create a personalised Wikipedia! and Obsidian will help you with it, as it can detect when you write in plain text a word or phrase that also is another note’s title, then you just click and bam, it’s linked. And if you change a note’s title, all mentions will update too!

you can also make conspiracy boards with the canvas note type, all usual formatting works within them

it’s a great tool to keep a lot of information organised and linked together, without having to open a billion files and cross reference them (you can also open notes in split screen).

learning how to use it will only take an hour or so, and then you’ll be zooming

i’ve recently been using it to collect and organise information for a big project i’m working on, and being able to link mentions of things to bigger topics and themes as i’m doing the data collection is just wonderful, no more “(IMPORTANT LOOK HERE!!!)”

Project management

Anything I want to plan out goes into it

Obsidian is a note taking app. Todoist specializes in creating tasks and scheduling them. They are different tools for different jobs.

I use Obsidian between Ubuntu and IOS… Sync is a bit erratic… It always… eventually, refreshes, but have not been able to find how to force sync on IOS. Sometimes end up doing trivial changes to see if can get the sync on IOS to trigger.

Ubuntu client shows when it does sync and it does appear to do it fairly quick.

The biggest issue I had was with folder permissions on Android. I also ended up paying for the sync functionality and have zero regrets.

I just paid for the sync 🤷🏻‍♂️

It’s $4 a month, I drink one beer less a month and I actually save 3€ 😀

Take a look a SyncThing! It’s a free FOSS app for syncing files and is available on all devices, and it’s all self hosted. I initially used it for Obsidian syncing, but it’s proved incredibly useful beyond that

I’ve had zero problems with Dropbox.

Did you try any of the sync extensions?

Note-taking app. Each note is a markdown file, so you can add formatting.

It’s like trillium, but not open source Here is an enthusiastic person talking about the state of the art of one year ago for 20 minute. https://youtu.be/XRpHIa-2XCE

Its a staggeringly powerful app. Utilizing the markdown format and the Dataview plugin to create queries with metadata in your notes allows you to build INSANE knowledge management systems.

Example of some set ups here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/14-example-vaults-from-around-the-web-kepano-nick-milo-the-sweet-setup-and-more/81788

Can you elaborate on this? I use logseq as an information dump and use tags and hashtags to associate the individual entries with a certain topic. I love that i do not have to think about the file structure (where do i have to put it?) and instead can just write it down immediately.

E.g: had a meeting with #name with regards to #project Z. We have a set of new requirements that need to be implemented in by Q3 2025….

Would this be significantly different in obsidian?

Nothing else is changing. No account required, no ads, no tracking, no strings attached. Your data remains fully in your control, stored locally in plain text Markdown files. All features are available to you for free without limits.

Doesn’t appear so but there is that potential in a future update as they’re in control of what the software actually does. If data is indeed stored in plain text files then hopefully an alternative software could be made to display that data.

Essentially, just a giant W.

Seems they’ll just keep making money on sync.

I like obsidian specifically because you don’t need to rely on some built-in sync tool. The files are right there and in a sane format, you can sync them however you want. I use syncthing for this at home, but the choice is yours

Have you looked at AnyType? Their free version includes 1gb of cloud storage. It’s far less mature than Obsidian, but may suit your use case.

I’ve been using it for a little over a year, and love it.

$4 a month?

There are sync plugins that use git, s3, WebDAV etc. Or you can use Dropbox or google drive or iCloud or sync thing.

It’s just a bunch of markdown files and unless you edit with multiple devices at the same time it’s easy to sync

Have you seen the community-made self hosted sync plugin?

I think the big difference is that you can use it for free without any account needed, and all your data is stored locally in a format that remains accessible to alternative apps.

So the moment they start doing questionable stuff you are not a hostage to their app. There are alternatives, they are just not as nice as this currently.

I’ve been really enjoying trilium as an open source alternative but fair warning it’s not as polished as Obsidian

least paranoid foss nut

I just cant wrap my head around why they’re willing to go so far to gain good will from people by having such a generous free tier, but somehow licensing the code under a FOSS license is out of the question??

Why not just go all the way and make sure everyone who cares about reading the souce could also give you free contributions?

It stores your data in plaintext, and simply uses the program to parse special formatting characters. There are no attempts at obfuscation or encryption, and it doesn’t lock you into a walled garden that refuses to play nice with other programs. The program itself is closed-source, but anyone could write an open source version to parse the same info… There just hasn’t been a good reason to do so. Even if Obsidian as a company and program ceases to exist overnight, your data is still safe on your machine and can be read by anyone who cares enough to dig into the file. Hell, you can even open it as the plaintext file and dig through it manually.

Obsidian stores the notes in a well known plaintext format on your computer. They can’t easily hold you hostage like with other closed source apps.

It’s regrettable that Obsidian isn’t open source. But the nice thing about it is that its data store is just a bunch of markdown files in a folder structure, and very easily migrated to any other application. They may have the code but they don’t take the data hostage like a lot of commercial software does.

It says it’s free, but then there’s a pricing and plans page?

A lot of alarm bells ringing for me about that app.

Thanks for sharing I didn’t know about this one and it’s robust as keep

i use notally for quick notes and reminders but i needed another organizer for longer text

i started trying notesnook after reading your comment and it looks like what i needed. I really like its customizability. I wish there was an option to choose fonts from file.

The only problem is that constant login reminder. Is there a way to get rid of it?

Can you selfhost a sync server? Be completely independent of them?

The community plugin “Google Drive Sync” is free, open source, and lets you (clunkily but effectively) bypass Obsydian Sync. One less server to manage.

I just wanted to toss out another thanks for mentioning Notesnook. After a week I’m completely won over.

Same. I’ve never heard of the Obsidian in the OP, so I was hoping they somehow left Microsoft and were looking for a game designer or something.