Obsidian

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8.8of 10

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Obsidian Review

Free personal knowledge management tool for creating links between notes. Obsidian is one of the most popular new note-taking applications for expanding your thinking.

What is Obsidian?

Obsidian is an easy-on-the-eyes application that takes time to learn but offers a world of opportunity for your notes.

Note-taking inside of Obsidian presents an advanced layer to your notes, allowing you to connect notes up using "backlinks" and presenting

Obsidian Features

Obsidian offers an array of features and includes a lot in their free plan:

Networked note-taking: Obsidian uses a graph database to create connections between notes, which allows for flexible and non-linear note-taking.
Markdown support: Obsidian supports Markdown formatting, which makes it easy to create rich and detailed notes.
Backlinks: Obsidian creates backlinks automatically, which makes it easy to see how different notes are related to each other.
Local storage: Obsidian stores all notes locally on your device, which means you can access them offline and have complete control over your data.
Customizability: Obsidian is highly customizable, with support for custom themes, plugins, and scripts.
Graph view: Obsidian allows you to view your notes as a graph, which makes it easy to see connections and relationships between different notes.
Publishing: Obsidian allows you to publish your notes as a website, which makes it easy to share your ideas and collaborate with others.
Daily notes: Obsidian creates a new note for each day, which makes it easy to keep track of your daily tasks and notes.
Integrations: Obsidian integrates with a variety of other tools, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and GitHub, which makes it easy to incorporate Obsidian into your existing workflow.
Community: Obsidian has a vibrant and supportive community of users, with active forums, Discord channels, and a knowledge base.

Our verdict on Obsidian

Obsidian is really for those who want a free, PKM tool.

PKM standing for "personal knowledge management" attracts more hardcore note-takers and those who like to bring their notes together in one location. We'd recommend this for those who want to get into more advanced note-taking without too much hassle.

Obsidian Alternatives

Obsidian is one of the best free tools out there for managing your notes. Alternatives include the likes of Reflect Notes, Logseq & Roam Research.

Local Hosting

You can use Obsidian offline and online and store it locally within your folders area. Protecting your vault from online attacks, and using the markdown files locally too.

Community Plugins

Developed by community members, Obsidian offers an array of 3rd party developed applications to take your Obsidian further - with habit tracking, calendar apps and more - all developed by those using Obsidian.

Reliable

Obsidian's community almost never complain about the speed and pace of the Obsidian application on any device. People like how you can use it offline and online with Obsidian Sync, with no issues.

How Obsidian Works

Understanding Obsidian further

Is Obsidian Free?

Yes.

Obsidian has a free plan that allows you to locally store your notes, but also a paid options where you can sync to the web, or even publish to the web - popular with digital gardens.

Is Obsidian hard to learn?

Yes and no.

Obsidian comes with a learning curve, but it can be learnt. We'd recommend learning the basic premises of "PKM" and "bi-directional linking" first and once you have those basics, you're good to go. You can unlock the power of Obsidian with the Obsidian Made Simple course.

Why store files locally?

A lot of things are on the web now, notes are a very personal experience and many sites like Supernotes and others are offering encryption - if you wanted your notes to only be locally stored on your device, Obsidian could be for you.

Obsidian or Notion?

Obsidian and Notion are different apps. We'd recommend looking at what your needs are, if your needs are note-taking, without the need for complex tools like databases or project management, then Obsidian could be for you.

Otherwise, Obsidian offers a more traditional note-taking set-up than Notion.

Does Obsidian charge premium pricing?

Yes, Obsidian offers two plans. Sync and Publish allowing you to connect your vaults to cloud storage and in the case of Obsidian Publish externally share your notes, perfect for digital gardens and client facing notes.