by ddanieltan on 1/17/24, 1:11 PM with 368 comments
by dustincoates on 1/17/24, 1:57 PM
The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. And, please, don't buy one of these $500 Obsidian courses. It's just not necessary.
With that said, I have started extending out my own setup, and one of the plugins that I like the most is DataView, which allows me to automatically link to other notes, or pull in tagged text, or to-do items. It has allowed me to really take daily recaps reliably for the first time ever, because, even if I have nothing to write, I at least have a repository of what I was doing for that day.
by hoherd on 1/17/24, 2:11 PM
Obsidian looks awesome to me, and for a long time I've been thinking about adopting it, but this licensing issue caused me to back away and look for alternatives. I'm not suggesting that paying for software is a bad idea, but the free distribution of it led me to believe that it is FOSS, and it is not.
by PurpleRamen on 1/17/24, 3:14 PM
For example, it's not possible to open any random folder with it, you need to first register the folder as a vault, and then can open the vault. It also doesn't handle file links under Linux correctly. For whatever reason, any link pointing to a file inside the vault, disappears. Probably some flaw in their file system-abstraction, but that made several workflows for me impossible. And then there is the problem with every vault having its own isolated configuration. Basically, every vault has a folder ".obsidian" which contains all installed plugins, configurations and whatever. For any new vault, you need to link this folder, and for whatever reason they are still unable to let obsidian handle this automatically.
Overall, Obsidian is designed to have mainly one, or at least just a very low number of vaults. But considering how poor obsidian scales with file numbers, this is not working well for every one. For me, this removed any motivation to use Obsidian for everything.
by zschuessler on 1/17/24, 1:44 PM
Case in point: one of my favorite productivity plugins is a full-fledged Kanban board. It has deep integration into Obsidian features:
by Multicomp on 1/17/24, 2:00 PM
I settled on OneNote because I'm always trying to capture context with my notes, codify my knowledge. Usually that means screenshots, handwriting, file copies, rarely video or audio embeddings.
I'm not going to try to convince you to use onenote, I want to instead complain about how this makes me boring and uncool, I see how trendy/popular the 'markdown files plus some goodies' notetaking applications are, but somehow I just don't get why those have enough ROI for my usecase, but still, my ego of not being a cool 10x developer who uses only certified organic grass-fed markdown files for my notes means I write rant comments like this.
Anyways, that's much ado about nothing on my part, again, thanks for sharing!
by _fat_santa on 1/17/24, 1:54 PM
by kisamoto on 1/17/24, 1:50 PM
For those looking for an open source alternative (or don't want to pay the Obsidian fees for professional usage) check out Logseq: https://logseq.com/
by Otternonsenz on 1/17/24, 7:22 PM
Where I have used pen and paper in the past to track everything, Obsidian has supercharged my ability to sit down and flesh out my homebrew world in a way that was hard to do for myself prior. On top of the ease of writing and linking together notes, it also allows me to simultaneously tie in my pre-written lore with the session notes I take, so I don’t forget stuff that happens or that my players are supposed to pick up on.
I’ve also encouraged my players to use it, so that if they are taking notes on the right things, they can piece together stuff or make their own assumptions to inform how they choose to play.
It works for us, I get it’s not for everyone. But versus my old DM Binder in OneNote, it works perfectly for my needs!
On a similar, yet separate note, I’ve found the folder/note structure to be conducive to learning new TTRPG rules and essentially having my personal SRDs for different games (currently chunking my way through the Shadowrun 6e SRD and making my own notes or expansions on it to make it make more sense).
by CrypticShift on 1/17/24, 3:42 PM
He stated that the goal is "greater understanding," and then he just (in all honesty) states that the nice graphical topology represents my learning journey and keeps me motivated.
That is exactly the problem: motivation and a history of learning do not always lead to "greater understanding." On the contrary, I find that our 'notes' are often transient while our internal understanding morphs subtly yet swiftly (especially when learning something new).
That is why I think 'organic linking' works better for very large AND more definitive content. Wikipedia is the best example.
For personal use, I prefer more structure. The outliner/database combo (like logseq) is the best tool for that.
And Frankly as long as I can easily download my data in a readable format, I'm OK with any tool. It does not have to be built as plain text files.
But I do like Obsidian :)
by Brajeshwar on 1/17/24, 2:08 PM
by keep320909 on 1/17/24, 3:18 PM
Obsidian is commercial closed source app with subscription. Free for personal use only, commercial license is $50/year. I am not going to build my PIM around proprietary tool with subscription!
by hannofcart on 1/17/24, 1:44 PM
On desktop: Nvim with some markdown plugins plus Goyo
On mobile: Obsidian
Syncthing for sync (though previously I've Dropbox as well for the same)
On desktop I find Obsidian's vim mode slightly uncanny valley-ish. Close enough to be able to emulate my vim flow. But not _quite_ right.
On mobile, I've found Obsidian to be just top class. Though admittedly most of my real note taking happens on desktop, on the few occassions I've had to jot down something quick on mobile, Obsidian app has been perfect.
by Bo0kerDeWitt on 1/17/24, 2:02 PM
I don't pay for syncing or anything. If I need a note on my PC from my phone, I send it via Bluetooth. It's a system that works for me.
by kuter on 1/17/24, 2:14 PM
I am using Emacs Org Mode and quite happy with it. You can link different files, include images, embed and view LaTeX, encrypt your notes with GPG and much more. I think it will stand the test of time better than Obsidian which is something I care a lot for note taking and journaling.
by fsiefken on 1/17/24, 1:47 PM
by midasz on 1/17/24, 1:43 PM
by px43 on 1/17/24, 1:41 PM
by crossroadsguy on 1/17/24, 5:03 PM
by Lazare on 1/17/24, 10:57 PM
Obsidian out of the box is a bit limited; plugins are great and add tons of features, but then you start hitting issues with plugin maintainers abandoning plugins you rely on, or needing to make a decision between three different plugins that all do the same thing slightly different. Depending on your use case and expectations that may not be a big deal, but I really missed not having what I personally saw as core features not being officially supported.
(Also, FWIW, the sync service is a bit pricy for what it is. I get that it's how they're trying to monetise it, but...I would have preferred another pricing model, even if the total cost was just as high.)
I've personally switched to Trilium Notes which I'm finding nicer. One element I particularly like is that it has first class suport for notes being able to exist at multiple places in a tree simultaneously. I know it's a very personal thing, but for me personally being able to file notes in multiple locations "clicks" in a way that tags didn't.
Trilium Notes: https://github.com/zadam/trilium
And here's a nice writeup on ways to use Trilium (although much of it applies to Obsidian too): https://github.com/zadam/trilium/wiki/Patterns-of-personal-k...
by hiq on 1/17/24, 3:29 PM
I just started this split so maybe I'll come back to it, realizing limitations I'm not aware of yet, but at least for now I feel way better not having a proper note-taking workflow.
Compared with Zettelkasten-based systems, this might make it harder to add connections between pieces of knowledge, but I never got around to actually using a Zettelkasten so I am not entirely sure what I'm missing. On the other hand, one's brain is IMHO the best way to connect pieces of knowledge together, and recalling the vertices frequently might be enough to recall the edges of this knowledge graph as well.
I haven't seen this (lack of) "approach" mentioned before so I'm curious if I'm alone with this realization and mistaken somehow.
by boiler_up800 on 1/17/24, 2:06 PM
by rabbitofdeath on 1/17/24, 1:53 PM
by mortallywounded on 1/17/24, 5:34 PM
by Waterluvian on 1/17/24, 1:33 PM
by stemlord on 1/17/24, 2:42 PM
by stared on 1/17/24, 2:28 PM
by ryangs on 1/17/24, 2:23 PM
by ezst on 1/17/24, 10:53 PM
As I was about to give up, I found out about Trilium which checks all the good marks when it comes to data modeling and consistency, in a super simple and straightforward manner. And on top of that, it's opensource, local first, self hostable, syncable, has a web UI so you don't have to install anything if you can't, and lends itself to emacs levels of hackability. IMO, anyone claiming to be managing a large collection of notes should give it a serious look.
by pers0n on 1/17/24, 2:39 PM
by paradite on 1/17/24, 3:00 PM
It has a couple of minor UI/UX issues, even with the plugins.
Anyone tried both? How does Obsidian compare against Joplin?
by avgcorrection on 1/17/24, 4:57 PM
I’ve never really gotten into synch. since I tend to monocompute a lot.
I write things in Org Mode. Not a power user of that thing, just the markup I use. I don’t use links in Org but I would like to. I sometimes make very informal and tedious links. So that would be a welcome feature.
> Obsidian’s choice to work with plain text files make it future-proof
Future-proof yes. It is. But as a customer this doesn’t sound that exciting. A company could offer to print all my data and mail it to me when I terminate the plan. That’s also future-proof.
Ditto with
> Obsidian allows structure to grow organically
I haven’t read the links but 95% of the time this means “because there isn’t any structure (YOLO)”. Yeah okay I am free as a bird, cool. But I can’t make a decades-spanning personal wiki based on completely unstructured data and links alone.
All in all: most MD tools kind of fade into the background for me. People want all kinds of bells and whistles with that semi-language like a dedicated editor so that they can write headers and unordered bullet lists with a preview. Overall the marketplace feels excessive.
by n8henrie on 1/17/24, 7:00 PM
I'm still using (and loving) Notational Velocity on my Mac. Thankfully it's open source, so I was able to hack together arm64 support even though I don't know C/ObjC/C++ [0].
On my iPhone, I've been very happy with 1Writer, which has a similar interface, and is scriptable with JavaScript for power users.
I have NV configured to store plain-text notes that are stored in 1Writer's iCloud folder, so syncing happens seamlessly between them.
Finally, I sync that same directory with Syncthing to my Linux machines, where I mostly use neovim for editing.
The only feature that I'm often wishing I had is shared editing with my wife. At some point I whipped up some launchd scripts to automatically move notes tagged with `#shared` to a shared subfolder, but it never worked very well. Thankfully my wife is not really all that interested in sharing notes, so we just use Apple Notes when needed.
Tried Obsidian but was miffed at the inability to recognize / store as .txt files instead of .md (or perhaps it was vice versa) without a community plugin, and I prefer FOSS, so uninstalled after a couple days.
Have LogSeq installed but can't convince myself to use it, what I have fits my needs well enough. I'm also concerned about their funding model and the longevity of the project, the other side of the coin of FOSS I suppose.
[0]: https://github.com/n8henrie/nv [1]: https://apps.apple.com/app/id680469088
by hiAndrewQuinn on 1/17/24, 1:42 PM
by mtriassi on 1/17/24, 8:15 PM
Though that's also the most interesting part about Obsidian. What works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another. When i presented my template to my colleagues i definitely got some comments like: "oh man, my brain doesn't work that way" or "this feels overly complex". It's interesting how a simple markdown editor has become this analogue for some of our brains.
[^1]: https://github.com/m-triassi/obsidian-workvault-template - This is still a work in progress, but if anyone has suggestions or things they'd like to share i'd be open to feedback or even PRs!
by tamimio on 1/17/24, 3:56 PM
by nigamanth on 1/17/24, 4:29 PM
by basedrum on 1/17/24, 1:52 PM
by mofosyne on 1/17/24, 1:44 PM
Too bad the project has ended as there is no clear approach for the Dendron team to make it financially sustainable (with their cloud sync subscription, much like Obsidian Sync). But it's basically opensource now so hopefully can be forked and the lessons learnt from Obsidian be applied to it (e.g. Any folder of textfile should be openable under Dendron. Unfortunate at the moment you have to initialize a separate repo and then port it over)
by pilgrim0 on 1/17/24, 5:32 PM
by bbx on 1/17/24, 2:36 PM
But I recently finally found a great use case for it: saving code snippets. Specifically: code snippets found on Stack Overflow and ChatGPT.
You can simply select the answer (usually written in markdown), copy and paste it into Obsidian, and it retains all the formatting, and even applies language-specific color schemes.
Here is an example: https://i.imgur.com/GBFr431.png
It's absolutely brilliant.
by tristor on 1/17/24, 5:12 PM
Before I used Standard Notes, I was mostly satisfied with a private Github repo, containing Markdown files and NeoVim.
by geokon on 1/17/24, 3:22 PM
I keep plenty of notes in asciidoc and orgmode files, so I'm genuinely curious to hear from someone with experience. I've tried running Logseq and didn't really get what I was supposed to do...
by barbazoo on 1/17/24, 6:32 PM
There was a comment to a Notion related submission the other day that talked about something Notion like but self hosted, that's be fine too but I can't find it right now.
by joemccall86 on 1/17/24, 4:33 PM
by DLion on 1/17/24, 7:06 PM
I also wrote an article about why I switched from Notion to Obsidian a few years ago.
https://domenicoluciani.com/2021/12/17/why-did-i-switch-from...
by some_guy_in_ca on 1/19/24, 5:05 PM
The fact that everything is in plain text files on my computer is very important for me and future proofed.
by rcarmo on 1/17/24, 2:46 PM
by jpgvm on 1/17/24, 2:17 PM
by innethread on 1/17/24, 2:04 PM
by Biganon on 1/18/24, 12:08 AM
What do you people write about? Do you really have genius ideas all day long that you need to write down? Or do you want to keep track of everything you've seen / discussed?
Maybe I'm just an idiot
by subpixel on 1/17/24, 3:45 PM
I landed on Workflowy which has it's own quirks but has seen a lot of improvement since I last kicked the tires, including mirroring etc.
It does a great job of staying out of the way so I can just get notes done.
by adhamsalama on 1/17/24, 7:51 PM
by twiclo on 1/17/24, 1:47 PM
by inferense on 1/17/24, 1:40 PM
I'll go ahead and do a shameless plug for an alternative built with similar philosophy around privacy & data ownership aimed at developers https://acreom.com
by georgejfrick on 1/17/24, 2:50 PM
1. You can turn on support for other file types, so you can move source code/etc in.
2. I have the Day Planner plugin; but it's just JavaScript; so mine is highly customized and uses various sources to generate me a daily calendar/planner in the morning.
3. I don't use Zettelkasten; but all of those systems have something to learn from them in regards to organization. I have a setup I like; but with a personal rule that if I'm not finding something or I feel stuck; I spend time reorganizing.
4. I use tags a lot now; it would take an entire blog to explain why - but the TLDR is that I switched to focusing on WHEN and TAGS instead of trying to perfectly put the right content in the right place.
5. I'm able to use Obsidian on a plane really well - tablet on tray, K380 on lap. I'm frequently getting out 2,000 words on a flight.
6. I manage my work (software dev), campaigns (D&D), personal project, etc all on Obsidian. I even have some code in it when appropriate and its nice.
7. !!! Templates. I've started creating and using templates. So if I want a checklist, ctrl+shift+t/cmd+shift+t and I choose one of my markdown templates and it gets inserted. I currently have "meeting", "1:1", "Pomo Checklist", "Campaign Session".
8. I mentioned this; but I don't hesitate to go into plugins and just change their code to do what I want; it is one of my favorite features.
by Lord_Zero on 1/19/24, 3:25 PM
We use Git sync today and its very cumbersome.
by rocky_raccoon on 1/17/24, 3:27 PM
- an iPhone - Google Workspace (+ Google Drive) - Multiple desktops/laptops - Dropbox
Is there a single solution that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
by diimdeep on 1/17/24, 7:22 PM
by poulpy123 on 1/17/24, 3:55 PM
by wey-gu on 1/17/24, 2:30 PM
by ncrmro on 1/17/24, 2:28 PM
It seems like they really want you to use iCloud
by NoMAD76 on 1/17/24, 4:39 PM
Somehow I seem nobody noticed anytype - https://anytype.io/ They're still in beta, looks like they draw inspiration from Notion but it's more closer to what I need.
by borg16 on 1/17/24, 3:14 PM
by ladyanita22 on 1/17/24, 2:39 PM
by igtztorrero on 1/17/24, 2:17 PM
by sgt on 1/17/24, 2:06 PM
Right now I am making do with creating little sections where I put monospaced fonts, but it's not ideal. I just need to plop down code between my notes once in a while, and Markdown's ``` makes that very easy.
by ska on 1/17/24, 4:39 PM
by COMMENT___ on 1/18/24, 2:19 PM
by bongripper on 1/17/24, 3:19 PM
source?
by jimmytucson on 1/17/24, 1:27 PM
> allows structure to grow organically
> powerful feature ... Internal Links.
> plain text files
Doesn't HTML have all of these features - hyperlinks, folder structures, "plain" text? Isn't HTML also future proof? It's been around long enough. And doesn't it also work offline? There's a bunch of different apps out there that support viewing these both on and offline.
So, do people just use Obsidian/Markdown because they like dislike "<em>HTML</em>"?
edit: I'm not saying it's "wrong" to dislike HTML. I'm 50% trolling and 50% saying none of these are features of Obsidian. They're features of HTML (and Markdown is its shorthand).