Markdown editor that lets you add links to other files. You basically have a "project" consisting of a folder with various .md files.

So what is difference to vscode here? I can see a cool graph view of my links. I guess the target is not directly developers when looking at their paid sync addon, because I would simply put this into a free closed gitlab repo. I will definitely try out the free version this week :)

Edit: Found md-graph that also has the same neat graph: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ianjsike...

In my opinion links and images work much better. If you move a Markdown file or an image file to a different subdirectory, links gets fixed automatically. Absolute timesaver over a custom script I had to use previously.

And plugins! I can put a search query right within Markdown and it works. I have a unified interface over Markdown's to-do syntaxes I've left in various files. I can put a button that triggers some internal Obsidian command. I can have templates that pull from APIs and auto-populate some fields. I have variables I can easily query over. There's a git plugin you can use to auto-push/pull. There's a fully-featured mobile app (nearly feature compatible with the desktop app, plugin support and all). I have some subfolders that automatically get published on multiple websites that use a different CMS/SSG.

It's nothing you can't achieve with some custom bash/python scripts, but I don't like to spend my free time maintaining custom scripts, and Obsidian is truly a remarkably extensible product that allows me not to do that. It's easily in top 3 software products I use the most (next to a browser and a terminal emulator), I can't praise it enough.

It is mainly easy of use of the links and being backed by .md files (easy to backup anywhere and future-proof). I think of Obsidian as Org mode 90% there and easier to use.

Two example of easy of use:

- You can type "[[" anywhere and start entering the title of a new or existing note (and follow that link). If the note already exists it will fuzzy match inline as you write.

- While on a note, you can change the title and all the references get updated.

There are also plugins with extra feature like note of the day, which creates and opens a file in the format 2022-10-13 so you can easily have a file for each day. Vim node also works very well.

Plugin community - stuff like pulling tasks from notes, helping with various organisational systems, etc.

Editing in a somewhat rendered markdown - it's not quite full wysiwyg, but e.g, your heading blocks are sized right, your lists are rendered as bullets until you're editing that line, etc.

Notes first UI: Stuff like the rendered view toggle, links, inline image previews are more acccessible than in vs code due to their higher relative importance.

One big difference is that it works on desktop and mobile.

> I guess the target is not directly developers when looking at their paid sync addon, because I would simply put this into a free closed gitlab repo.

You could, and people do, but there's a bit less friction with the built-in sync.

How does it compare to wikis, eh? Isn't that what they do.

It's basically a wiki but running locally that you can sync with a remote, and based around normal (well, almost "normal") markdown files.

It's trying to be a wiki without a server. Or at least, that's how it started. It's a note taking app that uses markdown and plain text files. Gives some nice organizational views.

That requires setting up a server, which filters out 99% of the population.

I used TiddlyWiki for a while, but it was too fiddly. E.g. saving to google drive was a hack. Obsidian, at a very low price, gives me a reliable app -- Tiddly wiki, running within the browser, often got slow when I had a few hundred diary entries.

I’d start with the plugins. It allows for easy integration into my current workflow.

There are plugins and extensibility that can be added as well.

https://github.com/search?q=obsidian

It's a note taking app that uses markdown and plain text files. Gives some nice organizational views. That's it.

1st 2 sentences: true. Last sentence: not even close. It integrates w/ a Calendar, with Excalidraw for notes in images and vice versa, and via Dataview and DQL supports querying... its featureset is incredible.

As front page says, it's a tool for building a knowledge base. Organizing your stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base

It’s a fantastic markdown editor. Have been using it daily for a year now as an organization and note tool and couldn’t be happier.