Obsidian notes taking app
Have you considered organizing your thoughts, notes, and ideas in one place where you can access them? The Obsidian app may be the solution you are looking for. Obsidian is a personal knowledge base and note-taking software.
It uses a Markdown lightweight markup language, which means it may not be for everybody. Compared to other note-taking applications, it has a steep learning curve.
Table of Contents
Key Features of Obsidian
- It uses a markdown markup language that is becoming common today in most social media platforms.
- Obsidian allows you to import notes from other platforms like Evernote, Craft, Microsoft OneNote, Google Keep, among others.
- The application allows you to create both internal and external links to documents and images.
- It stores your notes locally, which means they are secure. However, you can subscribe and store them in the cloud. While on the cloud, you can synchronize from different devices.
- Obsidian generates an idea graph that links one note to another. This makes a very nice-looking graph.
- It supports plugins that the community of users can create and share to expand the functionality.
Who is Obsidian suitable for?
The app can be used by anybody who wants to organize their work, either classroom notes, personal thoughts, or projects. This means it is suitable for students, teachers, writers, researchers, content creators, and personal use.
Top usage
If you are doing studies or research, then the application can be suitable for organizing your work. You store your notes, link them either internally or externally. The app also allows you to give references where needed, which is important when writing your research paper.
Obsidian is suitable for journaling, daily logging of activities. If you intend to track a habit, then you can use Obsidian to keep a record and get summaries and reviews after a specific period.
Do you like reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube, then you can use the application to capture key notes for future review.
Using plugins like Kanban and Dataview, you can turn Obsidian into a task and project management platform.
Idea incubation: You have an idea that you want to think about for a long period. Obsidian can help you to note down any information you learn about your idea. The notes you create over time can help to build a concrete, implementable solution.
Obsidian Plugins
The core functionalities of the application are good; however, to improve its functionality, you can add plugins. They are mostly community-developed by lovers of the application. The top plugins that you can add include:
- Kanban boards: With the Kanban plugin, you can create drag-and-drop pins or boards that can be used to manage different tasks. It is more visual, which reduces the plain appearance of the core Obsidian interface.
- Calendar: By adding this plugin, you can be able to do daily journaling since you can link them to the date. It can also help to track how long you have done an activity.
- Dataview: the plugin helps your recorded notes work like a database where you can query for content. It allows for searching content, hence fast data retrieval.
- Templater: You have notes or activity that is repetitive; this plugin helps you automate the task.
- Advanced tables: Markdown language is not the best when it comes to managing tables. This plugin solves that problem by adding a spreadsheet-like table that is simple to manipulate.
Final thought
Obsidian is a very good personal knowledge base and note-taking software that is almost free. It also ensures your notes and ideas are safe since they reside on the local computer.
If you get past the learning curve of using Markdown language, which I believe is simple to learn, then Obsidian is great.
