Been trying Obsidian for 12 days

[alvinc]

As Obsidian has released v1.9.12 which has improved mobile significantly, I gave it a try again. This time, I have stayed long for more than 10 days.

I used to resist this plain-text markdown because it doesn’t work well with images. I encountered issues on Obsidian before, and I didn’t know how to deal with the location of the images. I also show concern for the possibility if I will be distracted by the plugin.

Yes, at first I spent a lot of time on googling almost everything I need, and the results directed me to the official forum or help. I also had to configure some settings, like adding some hot keys on the keyboard. However this didn’t last long, and I just slowly added notes from Apple Notes and iA Writer. (I have no intention of directly importing)

Now I have a hundred of notes, with some notes created on Obsidian. I like how the links of images are also updated immediately if they are renamed, and moving to other folders won’t affect the notes. (On iA Writer, they can be broken when you preview your content).

On speed, as I don’t expect too much on Electron-made apps, the app is not as fast as native for sure but not too slow like Evernote. I don’t expect too much on iCloud Drive sync but it looks like faster in Obsidian than iA Writer. Sometimes I may need to force quit the app and reopen. Bugs? Inevitable but unlike other apps which affects my workflow.

Everything is great in detail. For instance I can have a look on my outline easier than on Bear, and all the words of the headings are shown not cut.

I am also surprised the iPad version is as great as on desktop, like tabs and split views.

Do mention that I have not, and have no plans to explore community plugins as the core plugins are more than enough for me. The only thing I have tried is the themes but I ended up staying in the default. I only changed the accent colour.

The reason why I switched from Apple Notes is the stock Notes app is great to do some (causal) thinking atm from the scratch, but as I have more and more contents, it’s not always easy to find them (due to the unrealiability of search). Before switching to Obsidian I drafted in Apple Notes and had copies of important contents like blog articles on iA Writer. And the OS of my MacBook Air (Intel 2018) can’t be updated whereas Obsidian still supports older OS like v10.15. I have no plans to replace this laptop in the short run.

I am neutral on Markdown. If I have I will use, and I don’t mind if there isn’t. But Markdown does have some benefits, like I can use iA Writer to write (if necessary), and it will be automatically updated to Obsidian.

In short, Obsidian is so great that I don’t have any complaints. For most apps I usually identify some pain points when they have advantages. Not to mention the electron app is not bad, in which I don’t understand why Evernote still sucks especially the iPad version is like a giant phone. Time will tell if I keep using Obsidian.

(I will keep Apple Notes and iA Writer to some cases.)

[oldblueday]

I have a similar approach to Obsidian as you’re contemplating, and I’ve probably been using it since they released the mobile versions. It has pros and cons, as does any system. I have 2,373 notes in 278 folders. I was coming from a decade in Evernote that I wanted to migrate when it seemed like their future was uncertain. I used Byword for many years with text files in Dropbox after that. Now, everything is in one place. The only thing in Apple Notes are notes I share with family.

Note system wants…

I wanted a note system that was

1. non-proprietary,
2. easily searchable,
3. accessible on phone, laptop and ipad
4. supported tables and images, and
5. links out to other notes.

An additional benefit is live preview that hides markdown formatting characters.

Plugins

I try to limit my plug in use to the stock ones. I made a few exceptions:

• Dataview: I use sparingly but I have notes with embedded tasks that I keep a list of still open tasks at the top.
• Minimal: it’s a theme, but uses plugins to customize it. Could live without it, but it’s pretty.
• Excalidraw: to embed quick diagrams and drawings. As of late, it has been inconsistently working so I’ve stopped using it. Now I draw diagrams with pen and keep a picture of it in Dropbox.
• Vextab: recently installed this to test it, but writing guitar notation in text (like we did in the 80s and 90s) still seems easier.

Images

Images kept in the Obsidian vault led to a very large vault that slowed loading of the app. Now images are in a separate public Dropbox folder from where I embed the images. The trick is to take the Dropbox supplied link and edit the end removing the dl=0 and make it raw=1.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ajvlvz8w4l1diuwt0yvz3/2025-06-24-Coronal-Brain-Structures-Movement.jpg?rlkey=2fixu0g36173zo2xv1yg3ccql&st=66ejbbfl&dl=0

becomes

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ajvlvz8w4l1diuwt0yvz3/2025-06-24-Coronal-Brain-Structures-Movement.jpg?rlkey=2fixu0g36173zo2xv1yg3ccql&st=66ejbbfl&raw=1

and then embed with

This process is more clunky than keeping them in the Obsidian vault, but the faster-loading, smaller vault is worth it.

[MitchWagner]

I used Obsidian heavily for several years, quit in October and picked it up again about 10 days ago. So far, I like it. I plan to keep my setup nice and simple this time around; my previous vault was loaded with plugins.

As for images, the best advice I’ve seen is to set a default location or locations in the vault for images, and then just forget about 'em. You can easily set up a Bases filter to search for orphaned images — images associated with notes that you deleted — and delete those every once in a while.

I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one with a folder-heavy Obsidian setup. I always feel like I’m using Obsidian wrong. I use a modified PARA setup with Obsidian; one folder per project, which leads to dozens of folders every year.

I say “modified PARA”—what I mean is that I read about PARA a year or two ago and said to myself, “Huh. That’s how I’ve been organizing information for 25+ years.” It just seems to make sense to me: One folder per project. Every once in a while, do a sweep and move completed projects out of the way (Archive). Separate folders for never-ending areas. And another area for evergreen reference materials. Even when I haven’t explicitly set up four separate spaces, that’s how my mind remembers where to find information. In particular, I often don’t bother with archiving.

[iApple]

Another +1 for Obsidian. I switched from DEVONthink to Obsidian years ago. Still have some old files and images on DEVONthink but all new stuff resides on Obsidian, app gets better and better.

[KVZ]

I’ve used Obsidian since day 1 of its release, actually. I use it every day. I have a main personal notes vault, and a second research vault. I use plugins liberally, but not constantly, if you know what I mean. My personal vault has a wonderful catalog of my book library (physical and ebooks), and all my book notes. My daily journal in the main vault has daily notes that I’ve kept up without missing a day for hundreds of weeks.

I index my vaults in DEVONthink because documents are only kept in DEVONthink. I purposefully keep in the vault only markdown files and the images I use to decorate my dailly notes. Everything else is in DEVONthink, and has been for nearly three times as long as I’ve used Obs, so there’s no reason to use one or the other app. (I admit I do not and have never used DEVONthink for note taking.)

Katie

[OogieM]

Another Obsidian fan. Moved everything out of DEVONThink into Obsidian. Also moderately folder heavy with 166 folders and over 7,000 items in my main vault. I am exploring some more ways to group items and that will include folders. All projects that need supporting documents get their own folder. I have images and other types of documents (LibreOffice files, PDFs etc.) scattered all over my vault.

I do use plug-ins but am paring down the list as I often try something for a short test and I wasn’t consistently removing older unused plug-ins for a while so I still have some junk installed. It’s jut not a priority to keep the plug-in list squeaky clean at the moment.

I know a lot of people complain about the speed on mobile but I’ve never experienced any problems. I especially love that I can include all my LibreOffice documents in the project folders where they belong and I can view and edit them on my iPad and iPhone easily.

[sgtaylor5]

Can you increase the size of the print in mobile?

I tried out obsidian yet again (6th time) and it feels like it’s a lot better. But there’s just so many choices and options. It’s a little bit overwhelming.

And I just had cataract surgery - my eyes aren’t as good as they should be, yet. Hopefully they will get better but I now I have to worry about font size like I never had to before.

And it’s good to see that images and documents are better supported.

[alvinc]

You can do this in Settings > Appearance so everything from the note list to the contents becomes bigger.

Tap on the image to enlarge so you can zoom it as you do in other apps.

On pdf they have the embedded and you can zoom it (buttons provided too).