Obsidian

You might have clicked into this post thinking to yourself “What is Obsidian?” and that would be a very valid question to have. Obsidian is a cross-platform application used mainly for note taking in markdown format but it’s far more flexible than just a note taking application; in fact, it’s one of those apps that I’m continually feeling as if I’m not using to it’s full potential. I can hear you now, “there are so many note taking applications, why use this one” and, rest assured, I hear you. I hear you; I’ve tried everything from Evernote and OneNote, to Joplin and Bear but Obsidian was the one that stuck with me.

Let’s get the big one out of the way first, to quote the Obsidian website, “Your thoughts are yours”. This is to say that your notes are all on your device(s) and not stored in the cloud so they’re readily available even if you’re in the middle of nowhere without Internet access. Additionally, there’s no proprietary format, the notes are all stored in plain text files that you can move anywhere you like or open in a different editor should you prefer that. The other big points would be:

• Wiki-style linking: you can create links between notes to connect ones that have relevance such as people you interact with to notes about the person themselves, or books and restaurants with the cities they’re in or the chefs that work there or the type of food they serve. The possibilities are huge.

• Graph your notes: as your collection of notes grows and you link them together you’ll be able to visualize their layout and how they’re connected. Would I personally say this is a game changer? No, but it is really cool to see. I’ll drop a screenshot of mine below for you - keep in mind that it’s abstract but you can hover over nodes to see the file name, click on the node to open the file, and drag nodes around if you like.

• Canvas: for the visual users of Obsidian this opens up a ton of doors and if you’re a user of services like Miro then this will seem very familiar. For everyone else, think of this as your own personal infinite whiteboard.

• Plugins: here is where we kick things up a notch or twelve… Obsidian’s plugin ecosystem increases the use cases for the application exponentially and they are always adding more to the library. Plugins cover everything from productivity and external accessibility to themes and the aesthetic side of things. The plugins I use and their use cases could fill up multiple blog posts and I may go into that eventually but for now here’s a few of the top ones I’m using:

  • Advanced Tables

  • Book Search

  • Calendar

  • Dataview

  • Kanban

  • Natural Language Dates

  • Periodic Notes

  • Templater

My Obsidian graph view

This all sounds amazing, what is it going to cost me? Here’s the thing… it’s free for personal use so if any of this has piqued your interest then please, go check it out here. Oh and I should mention that this is not in any way, shape, or form endorsed or sponsored by the folks at Obsidian - I’m pretty sure they don’t even know I exist.