It’s no secret by now — I use Obsidian to take notes.
I talk about the app an awful lot, but there’s a method to my madness. It’s the one app that’s quite literally changed my life. It got me through my first year of university whilst starting a habit of writing online which has led to digital income.
The app is almost perfect — it’s under active development, with exciting updates coming out regularly. An example is the Properties feature that became available to Insiders recently, adding a UI to YAML metadata.
I think there’s a strong argument for almost everyone to be using Obsidian to take notes, regardless of the PKM requirements and in this article, I’m going to go into why this is.
I don’t normally make a piece like this, but Obsidian’s one special note-taking software, so I think it’s deserved. Hopefully, this convinces you that Obsidian is the right note-taking app for you.
Let’s get started…
1. Obsidian is free
For all of you out there who want a free tool, don’t worry!
Obsidian is free, without hiding any features under a paywall. This disregards Sync and Publish, but there are free ways to go about these two things as well.
There are a lot of apps coming out at the moment that require a monthly subscription.
I’m thinking of Reflect, Noteplan, Roam Research and more. They’re all good offerings, but Obsidian can do much of the same things, in the same way, without charging you for using the software.
Obsidian has to make money, however, and they do this through:
- Obsidian Sync
- Obsidian Publish
- Catalyst License
Sync allows you to open a remote vault that you can access on all your devices, syncing notes between them.
Publish allows you to publish your vault to the internet so that anyone in the world can gain access to and read your notes.
Sync and Publish cost $8/month apiece, so still very reasonable considering the functionality. There’s also a student discount of 40% that they offer to those studying.
Catalyst licenses give you access to Insider Builds, containing early access to new features as well as a Discord badge and a few other things I don’t use. It costs $25 as a one-time payment.
I have a catalyst license without Sync and Publish. This decision was driven by the want to commit more fully to a note-taking platform so that I wasn’t tempted to mess around and procrastinate with other systems. I think it was a very good investment.
2. Obsidian can serve all purposes
Last year I was reading and learning from personal growth books and resources. This changed to being a uni student and taking notes on biology topics. Again, this changed to writing content whilst on my summer holiday from university.
Obsidian can adapt.
There are plugins for every need, whether this is linking your content highlights so they’re imported into your vault, transforming information into a format that can be exported to your flashcard app, or exporting a scientific paper into a neatly-formatted PDF output.
I always preach to make your note-taking system as minimal as possible for your use case, and Obsidian can do this too — you can deactivate all the core plugins until you’re left with a simple markdown editor that’s there to capture any notes that put into it.
Find a happy medium between absolute minimalism and overcomplicating things that won’t hold you back but at the same time won’t distract you from creating work.
On the other end of the spectrum, Obsidian can be used for audio, AI, drawing, writing, task management, planning, kanban and more, all within a single app.
Find another offer that can do the same, I’ll wait.
3. The Obsidian community is fantastic
Ever since I first found out about the app, there hasn’t been a thing I could learn to do by following the guidance of someone in the community who’s done it before me.
There are forums on the website, a Reddit community, a Discord server and more, where plugin suggestions, bug submissions, questions and more get dealt with in a quick and friendly way.
You can follow step-by-step guides on YouTube and here on Medium in the Obsidian Observer, and Twitter along with the Obsidian Roundup are great places to go for up-to-date news on the software, its development, plugins and more.
Where you might not want to use Obsidian
Perfection doesn’t exist, and Obsidian’s no exception.
There are some (but very few) use cases where the app might not serve you in the best way possible.
One is collaborative editing. Many cloud-based apps offer real-time editing alongside someone else but being offline in nature, this isn’t possible with Obsidian.
Another is synchronising your work between devices. This is possible through third parties such as Dropbox, iCloud or Syncthing if you don’t want to pay $8/month for the service, but this friction is enough to turn people away.
Aside from this, Obsidian is very functional, and I along with many others, trust and love using it for PKM. If you haven’t already, I encourage to you try it out! I hope this article’s given you some new information and as always, thanks for reading!