Obsidian - Connected Notes 4+

I have used, researched, and thought about more productivity apps than your average nerd… this is simply the best, in all cases. The development is done by a very small, very talented team. The updates, bug fixes, and announcements are lightning fast. They listen to the community but do not let it steer them in the wrong direction. They give you a million outs to not pay them a DIME. I have paid everything I can at the highest tier because this is my most used tool - but I didn’t really have to pay anything at all. I enjoy the desktop version more than the mobile version, but based on the insane features they just dropped on the desktop version (0.16) - I know the mobile version will be perfect at some point.

The app itself - amazing note taking app right out of the box that does not gate your data - take it and leave whenever you want. But, the reason I feel so strongly about it, there is an UNENDING level of customizability that comes from the deeply dedicated community and their custom plugins and themes - which the developer personally reviews and approves.

I could wax poetic forever. If you need more than basic note tools will give you then this is it. Forget Roam, Logseq, any of the other imitators - Obsidian is your answer.

Have been using Obisidan in beta for the past year and in the mobile beta since its inception. The combination is incredible and the Obsidian developers provide huge value for free across multiple platforms. Free full functionality in a data format that guarantees you can never lose access to your work. Support for the developers is only through their publish and sync services, neither is required to use all the functions of the product. It has spoiled me for any other note app. Best functionality is for knowledge management and longer form writing, for both of those it is a distinct pleasure to use. Lot’s of available community add-ons provide a wide variety of options for task management, calendar integration, kanban, data analysis and much more. In my opinion those are higher friction and I’d prefer other tools but if you are a bit technical and like tweaking on your own you will find those useful as well - beware that community plugins can be more hit or miss in the mobile version. With all that - this is THE most valuable tool in the entire Apple ecosystem for my day-to-day work.

Obsidian is well and truly a game changer. Ever since I downloaded it, I've been putting all my knowledge in here, step by step, linking it together, and creating a second brain. Plugins like Memos let you write down quick notes, Crossbow lets you automatically find tags, and many more. Themes like Anuppuccin let you customize Obsidian to be exactly the way you would like it to be. You can put in images, audio, files, anything, you can style every note to be exactly how you would imagine it, you can view a graph of all the links between your notes, you can create your own encyclopedia, your own personal knowledge base, your own second brain.

Obsidian is also a very stable app in my experience, I've only ever had it crash a few times, and it was usually the cause of plugins, which even don't crash that much either. Overall, incredible app, and while it may take a little while to learn how to use for some people, it's not too hard to get the hang of.

- PF