Fully agree here. They’ve been killing it in the dev department!
Even in its current alpha state, the mobile app has changed the way I interact with my notes for the better. I can’t wait to see what it looks like in a polished state.
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I was playing around on Obsidian Mobile with Alex Rondeau’s PDF Highlights plugin. PDFs can be opened (from the vault) in Obsidian. Alex’s plugin extracts all the highlights from the PDF into a new Obsidian note. This all works as expected on mobile and macOS Obsidian. It’s one of the “it just works” features on mobile that will make working with notes on iPad a leap ahead of the alternatives, IMO.
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How do you access Obsidian quickly on the Mac? I can’t transition from nvALT as it has a system keyboard shortcut to quickly show and hide the app.
I’m fine using ⌘-Tab (with Contexts) or invoking Alfred and typing ob + Return but if that won’t cut it there are a bunch of options, here’s a few ideas:
In the past I’ve used Keyboard Maestro macros to toggle app visibility with a hot key very quickly.
You could probably do it with AppleScript or Automator and bind it to a hot key with FastScripts, Alfred, Karabiner Elements or maybe even the shortcuts section in System Preferences though I’ve never tried that before for a script.
I assume LaunchBar, Lacona or Raycast could also you launch a script with a hot key.
It might be possible to automate it with BetterTouchTool or at least run a script from a hot key there.
I’m not sure if it still works on modern macOS versions but Tuck might be an option.
One other idea, I believe you can point nvUltra at your Obsidian vault and just use it for quick edits.
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It has been a long time since I have felt this excited about an iOS app.
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Excellent! I think I finally have a good notes system.
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To keep the hype going, the developers have added URL scheme support in the latest alpha build.
As I hoped, plugin-registered obsidian:// URL actions work just fine (so long as the plugin has been designed to work on mobile). This means plugins can be designed to tap into URL scheme-based automations on iPhone and iPad. It’s pretty exciting!
Users who have access to the alpha have started to collect Shortcuts on the following thread on the Obsidian forums. iOS Shortcuts - Share your ideas! - Share & showcase - Obsidian Forum
Nothing mind-blowing as yet, but it isn’t hard to imagine how this might play out. For instance, it should be possible to build a plugin that returns data from your Obsidian vault via URL callback to render it in Shortcuts-based widgets. Not to mention the templating implications. Fun stuff!
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The other useful addition in the current alpha (0.0.13(1)) is the ability to insert images from Photos or documents from Files into text in Obsidian. Since Obsidian keeps attachments locally in the vault, the inserted image or document is copied into the folder in the vault designated for attachments.
(A bit buggy; will get fixed.)
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Hook already works with Obsidian desktop. @ryanjamurphy is talking about Obsidian on iOS/iPadOS, where Hook is not yet available.
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Agree whole heartedly, especially with iPad Pro, particularly in Split view, external keyboard and Apple Mouse. UI is less user polished, in my opinion, with iPad Mini (screen is too small) especially when compared to the Pro. But everything is SO new at this point. I will say I have not been using 1Writer or Taio, and my workflow hasn’t suffered. Can’t wait to see what the future holds with these Devs.
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They deserve to get the Oscar for the programming world. They are truly “Rockstars”!
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How do you get access to the beta?
Currently it’s only available to folks who’ve paid into the VIP level via their Catalyst program:
It’ll be rolled out to further tiers as development progresses.
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I’ve got Fig and Discord to set to send me alerts as soon as the next level is announced!
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For the last few weeks the mobile beta has been open to any Catalyst user. I picked it up this past week and set it up with iPad Pro today and moved my 1800+ notes from the last 10 years from Dropbox to iCloud (Dropbox doesn’t enable the type of use and editing that Obsidian needs) and it was running in 10 minutes. I am so happy.
I had 1200 markdown notes on my Mac hard drive that I moved Obsidian Vault to over see in June or July of 2020. It replaced my 8 months dead NValt and I loved it. In October or November I moved by directories of notes to Dropbox to try mobile access, which was passible with 1Writer.
Obsidian Mobile for iOS in beta is really quite good and fantastic to have access to so to edit and curate during downtime. Also nice for just sitting and reading and dropping notes in.
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For those of you who use Obsidian and have used nvALT or nvULTra, how do you go about quick show and hide feature?
I am so used to a global shortcut for “CMD+.” to show/hide nvUltra that I cannot bring myself to work with Obsidian where I have to manually click to show the app and then search and in some cases change vaults.
I use Keyboard Maestro to open my “home” note in Obsidian.
If changing vaults is cumbersome, you might try putting everything in one vault and using folders instead of multiple vaults.
It should be fairly easy to set up a keyboard maestro macro to show Obsidian and go to the Search tab to await your input.
Another option might be an Alfred workflow where you could open Alfred, type something like ‘obs mynote’ and have Obsidian open and search. I haven’t used Alfred’s workflows much, but sounds feasible.
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