Attention, if you didn’t know obsidian and you still haven’t found a note taking app that suits your needs, because maybe this app will make you see things differently. Literally. For this reason, keep in mind that we are talking about deep productivity, which requires a commitment from the user that not everyone is willing to give, although of course it has its benefits in return.

So let’s start by dividing the meaning behind note-taking into two: on one side is the meaning Light, any app helps me to take notes either I’m fed up with Google Keepand hardcore, my whole life is in these notes either I fired up every single feature of Evernote. Between one and the other is a section where many nuances fit. However, Obsidian is a bit further.

To save distance, we could buy Obsidian with Notion, although if the reference isn’t worth it because you don’t know Notion…

So let’s say obsidian is a classic note manager at heart, but in a modern way: classic because at the end of the day you have a typical panel with your notes that you will write almost as plain text, like Windows notepad…; and modern, because beneath that facade of simplicity lies great power, the benefit of which, yes, requires a learning curve that will frighten many.

But don’t be discouraged before you start, because the effort pays off and I might be exaggerating a bit… For an idea, Obsidian looks like this:

As you can see, everything seems to be in its place: on the sidebar there are notes and several buttons with different functions; in the middle is an open note and stands for redundancy, the other in the background, as you can guess on the bar; and on the right is another block with some graphics, which we’ll get to later because it’s one of Obsidian’s features. On the other hand, there is a to-do list in the mobile app.

What is special about Obsidian, or for that matter, the model it proposes, that is neither original nor exclusive to it?

Obsidian, a self-managed knowledge base

The first thing to keep in mind is that Obsidian is an application, not a service. It is important to point this out because there are many pros to this distinction, but also some cons. In fact, its developers don’t even refer to Obsidian as a note-taking app, but as “a powerful knowledge base that runs on top of a local folder of plain text files.”

What does it mean? That all the notes you make in Obsidian will be stored in va local database (folder with files) that you are responsible for keeping. In other words, you’re in charge of keeping your notes safe, and you’re also looking for your life to sync them between devices if that capacity is—and most likely is—important to you. This is a good example of the pros and cons of Obsidian being an app and not a service.

The ease of downloading the app or accessing it via the web from another device, logging in and having all your notes there is therefore not something you will find in Obsidian. With an important nuance: the synchronization problem was solved as a service. There is actually a service model behind Obsidian, though not in the usual way. So let’s talk about this aspect before proceeding with its characteristics.

Obsidian is a free app. And yet there is a pricing plan on its site, with two payment plans in exchange for contributing to the development of the project and having access to early versions of the application, some nonsense like community badges to distinguish yourself on the forum… or technical support and a license for commercial use, which doesn’t make much sense.

There’s also Obsidian Sync, a service that makes it easy to sync notes, which costs a whopping $8-10 a month depending on whether you pay monthly or annually; because there is a note publishing service that costs twice as much. In both cases they are services added as extras, which is where the developers at Obsidian seem to affect the business. Right now it’s just these two.

However, Publication is a very specialized utility, not to mention that exporting a publication note is a matter of a few clicks, even if the process is manual and not automatic; and the sync question… let’s say you can handle it yourself with tomorrow’s minimum much cheaper, if not completely free. Of course, everything will depend on the type and extent of use of Obsidian.

By the way, Obsidian is an app from the creators of Dynalist, if that tells you anything. No way? into a mess

Markdown and plugins, the ‘core’ of Obsidian

Obsidian differs from the most popular note managers and is similar to the huge batch of applications that have appeared in recent years, because it is based on markdown markup language, an essential piece for formatting everything you write down. This can already return more than one, in case you have to enter code instead of pressing the button to insert bold, italic or link… But the truth is that using basic format elements in Markdown is really simple… although the more you ask, the more complicated it becomes.

I won’t go into Markdown now, as that’s not the purpose of this article, but if you’re unfamiliar with it and are interested in learning more, Wikipedia summarizes the main points and shows you some examples.

Overall, it’s worth pointing out three big advantages of Markdown, or the reasons why many people prefer to “play around” with these things rather than use a word processor:

• The first is that Markdown is, as I said, very easy to learn, at least when it comes to applying basic formatting.
• The second is, derived from the first, that precisely because of its simplicity, Markdown is a great ally for those who type a lot and prefer to separate themselves from the keyboard – for example, pick up the mouse and click a button – as little as possible.
• And the third and most important thing is that Markdown is an open format in plain text, which guarantees its compatibility in the long run.

In short, if you do a lot of writing, you might be interested in learning about Markdown if you don’t already know it. Once you notice, it’s everywhere. In Obsidian, it’s at that level.

Another very interesting fact in this regard is «live editing«, so unlike most Markdown editors where you have to choose between displaying the code with highlighting or reading it with the final format, Obsidian offers one that combines both, and that’s one of the wonders of the app.

In no case do not make the use of Obsidian conditional on knowledge of Markdown, because although it is recommended, especially if you think in the medium or long term, another characteristic of the application is its support plugins that can be used to extend the default options. And among many other plugins, you can install a toolbar with formatting buttons so you can use Obsidian as if it were Word.

Obsidian’s sauce is in the plugins, as there are hundreds of them, most of them developed by the community, as is the case with code editors like Visual Studio Code. If you dare to give Obsidian a try and it lacks the customization options or features you’d like, chances are a plugin will cover that need (if not, you can always develop one yourself, but that’s another story).

Be careful, because with the help of plugins, you can turn Obsidian into a very complete productivity suite that comes close to a word processor with features and add-ons like calendar, tasks, contacts…

In Obsidian, everything is connected

Behind the form is the background, and Obsidian, as mentioned in the headline, is going through the ambitious goal of being “your second brain”. This is where the idea of ​​creating a “knowledge base” comes from, because everything in Obsidian is connected. Which wiki, Obsidian allows link some notes to others create a graphic visualization that will remind you of a neural network.

This is definitely one feature of Obsidian that I won’t go into, as I think it’s only useful for those who hold fast to the idiosyncrasies of the app. But beyond that feature, it’s the connections between notes, the internal links that help create that knowledge base that powers the second brain for writing, replacing almost any other note or personal information manager.

This represents many linked notes

And we’ll almost leave it at that, because what was supposed to be just an introduction to Obsidian took longer than it needed to.

Well, a bit more and the reason I’m devoting this space right now is the recent release of Obsidian 1.0, a version that brought with it new features such as a more than welcome visual tweak to the default themes and also to function just as interestingly as the card stacks. Still, its developers caution that this doesn’t mean Obsidian is considered complete or bug-free in terms of features. There is a long way to go.

But it’s good to introduce Obsidian to society… Or at least to society that didn’t know it. In fact, I have only explained a little of what you will find if you dare to try. Obsidian is available for PC (Linux, Mac, Windows) and mobile (Android, iOS).