Obsidian "Live Preview" mode is in early beta for supporters

Obsidian has released v0.13 and v0.13.1 that includes the “Live Preview” (AKA WYSIWYG mode) experimental feature. The releases are available to “insiders” – users who $contributed to development.

The mode operates a bit like Typora – markdown code is “hidden” except when the text is edited. v0.13/13.1 comes with lots of caveats – there will be bugs, underlying editor code has changed, community plugins might not work, themes and CSS snippets might bread, etc. This is a thrill-seekers release – do not use it on data you care about.

But, it’s nice to see this frequently-requested feature is making it through the pipeline.

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From everything I’m reading on their Discord, I’m treating it just like an iPadOS yearly upgrade Beta……install only after the xx.5, 6 or maybe in this case 10 release. YMMV

Was thinking of switching from Craft back to Obsidian yesterday and saw that this was in the insider release notes. Instant switch for me, I’ve always found it a pain to switch between the editor and preview mode (or have two panes just for that).

After using it for the morning I haven’t run into any issues from what I can tell. Works exactly as expected, a la Typora. Hoping I didn’t just jinx myself but thankfully my Obsidian vault is relatively new and hardly has any notes right now :sweat_smile:

I’m looking forward to this getting even more polished off, and any other nice features they bring on board!

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Any word on how smooth tasks are out of the gate?

I turned my Obsidian into a Typora-style outliner some time ago with some custom code and CSS.

But tasks have been the only friction point, still lacking mouse support in editing mode, and requiring multiple backspaces to “uncreate”.

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I really hope it can get to proper WYSIWYG unless explicitly opened in markdown mode.

On a second thought, how is it even different from the preview mode right now? I can just toggle to preview mode if I am just reading. Or did I miss something

It’s basically what @jslp said – “live preview” eliminates the need to switch between edit and preview modes. It’s what the developers have said they would delivery. It’s a bit similar to what DEVONthink introduced earlier this year.

IMO, “proper WYSIWYG” gets you to the same point as RTF, and if that’s the requirement then why bother with a markdown editor at all?

Personally, I work with an edit pane (w/o live preview) on the left and preview synced with it on the right.

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Got it. Thanks!

I feel like it should be in live preview mode all the time, otherwise, it isn’t WYSIWYG.

It’s like showing everything in a web view mode, and as soon as you start typing on it, all the HTML tags start showing up :smile: . That isn’t WYSIWYG TBH.

What would be good is if live preview mode is the default mode for editing and viewing and no markdown syntax shows up, unless you explicitly switch to it. The files underneath are still markdown files so data mobility is easy. Not sure if that was technically challenging though.

But either way, whatever the devs decided. It’s a free app and also works well. But this doesn’t live up to the hype for me :man_shrugging:

(I think we’ve been down this road on the forum before.)

IMO: If you want proper1 WYSIWYG, then you’re talking about desktop publishing, à la Word, QuarkXPress, Pages, etc.

Otherwise, you’re talking word processors and editors. Some of which have previews or live previews.

1. Proper should be properly defined, to be proper.

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And that’s why the Dev calls it Live Preview, not WYSISWG.

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Hey everyone, I got in touch with the amazing people on the Obsidian discord server and they shared the video of how it looks like:

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PS: Original post was by @quorm. That’s how I came to know about this feature. Creating a new post here for visibility of the feature.

When is live preview available for Mac and iOS? One of the frustrations of trying to use Obsidian for long-form writing (I use it primary for research at the moment) is the clutter when using markdown It distracts from the thinking and writing flow–at least it does for me.

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Obsidian’s developers never announce release dates. As I mentioned in my original post, Obsidian live preview just had its first beta release for supporters. You can obtain that release by becoming a supporter, or waiting until the public release. Given the complexity of this new change, and the list of things that need to be incorporated, I wouldn’t expect this is public for a few weeks at best.

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Sorry I missed that in your OP. I’m an “insider” does that count?

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Yes!

Awesome, thanks!

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Just tested it, this is great–it eliminates one of my key frustrations with Obsidian!

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You might want to look into Eleanor Konik’s Obsidian Roundup, a weekly newsletter that recaps the news related to Obsidian.

h/t @anon41602260

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No plugin but CSS. Look into this thread: Adding Color to Obsidian--- A Rainbow of Possibility! - Feature requests - Obsidian Forum

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That editing mode looks fantastic. Once that is in, and manual file tree sorting is in, that’s my whole wishlist.

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NotePlan is quite good at tasks. I know some people use it in conjunction with Obsidian, but don’t know the details.
I do know @ryanjamurphy wouldn’t steer us wrong.

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