Obsidian (software)

Last updated

Obsidian
Original author(s)
  • Shida Li
  • Erica Xu
Developer(s) Dynalist Inc. [1]
Initial releaseMarch 30, 2020;4 years ago (2020-03-30)
Stable release
1.7.6 / November 12, 2024
Written in Electron, JavaScript, HTML, CSS
Platform Windows, macOS, Android, Linux, iOS
Type
License Freemium [2]
Website obsidian.md

Obsidian is a personal knowledge base and note-taking software application that operates on Markdown files. [3] [4] [5] It allows users to make internal links for notes and then to visualize the connections as a graph. [6] [7] It is designed to help users organize and structure their thoughts and knowledge in a flexible, non-linear way. [8] The software is free for personal use, with commercial licenses available for pay. [3] [9]

Contents

History

Obsidian was founded by Shida Li and Erica Xu while quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic. [10] Li and Xu, who had met while studying at the University of Waterloo, had already collaborated on several development projects. [11] Obsidian was initially released on 30 March 2020. [12] Version 1.0.0 was released in October 2022. [13] [14] Version 1.1, which added the Canvas core plugin, released in December 2022. [15] In February 2023, Steph Ango joined Obsidian as CEO. [16]

Features

Obsidian is built on Electron. [9] It is a cross-platform application that runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, as well as mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS. [9] There is no web-based version of the software. [11] Obsidian on all platforms can be customized by adding plugins and themes, which enable users to extend the software's functionality with additional features or integration with other tools. [9] Obsidian differentiates between core plugins, which are released and maintained by the Obsidian team, and community plugins, which are open-sourced through GitHub and are contributed by users. [17] Examples of community plugins include a Kanban-style task board and a calendar widget. [4] There are over 200 community made themes to use with the app.

Obsidian operates on a folder of text documents; [18] each new note in Obsidian generates a new text document, and all the documents can be searched from within the app. [9] [4] Obsidian allows internal linking between notes and creates an interactive graph that visualizes the relationships between notes. [9] [11] [4] Text formatting in Obsidian is achieved through Markdown, but Obsidian provides the instantaneous previewing of formatted text. [9]

A forum and Discord server are hosted by the developers. [19] [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME Evolution</span> Personal information manager software and workgroup information management tool for GNOME

GNOME Evolution is the official personal information manager for GNOME. It has been an official part of GNOME since Evolution 2.0 was included with the GNOME 2.8 release in September 2004. It combines e-mail, address book, calendar, task list and note-taking features. Its user interface and functionality is similar to Microsoft Outlook. Evolution is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

foobar2000 Freeware audio player

foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, and formerly Windows Phone, developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design, which provides user flexibility in configuration and customization. Standard "skin" elements can be individually augmented or replaced with different dials and buttons, as well as visualizers such as waveform, oscilloscope, spectrum, spectrogram (waterfall), peak and smoothed VU meters, which all of them are analysis-oriented, at least for built-in visualizations. foobar2000 offers third-party user interface modifications through a software development kit (SDK).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphviz</span> Software package for graph visualization

Graphviz is a package of open-source tools initiated by AT&T Labs Research for drawing graphs specified in DOT language scripts having the file name extension "gv". It also provides libraries for software applications to use the tools. Graphviz is free software licensed under the Eclipse Public License.

The landscape for instant messaging involves cross-platform instant messaging clients that can handle one or multiple protocols. Clients that use the same protocol can typically federate and talk to one another. The following table compares general and technical information for cross-platform instant messaging clients in active development, each of which have their own article that provide further information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tomboy (software)</span> Notetaking application

Tomboy is free and open-source desktop note-taking software written for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, and BSD operating systems. Tomboy is part of the GNOME desktop environment. As Ubuntu changed over time and its cloud synchronization software Ubuntu One came and went, Tomboy inspired various forks and clones. Its interface is a word processor with a wiki-like linking system to connect notes together. Words in the note body that match existing note titles become hyperlinks automatically, making it simple to construct a personal wiki. For example, repeated references to favorite artists would be automatically highlighted in notes containing their names. As of version 1.6 (2010), it supports text entries and hyperlinks to the World Wide Web, but not graphic image linking or embedding.

The following tables compare general and technical information for many wiki software packages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TiddlyWiki</span> Personal wiki software

TiddlyWiki is a personal wiki and a non-linear notebook for organising and sharing complex information. It is an open-source single page application wiki in the form of a single HTML file that includes CSS, JavaScript, embedded files such as images, and the text content. It is designed to be easy to customize and re-shape depending on application. It facilitates re-use of content by dividing it into small pieces called Tiddlers.

Textile is a lightweight markup language that uses a text formatting syntax to convert plain text into structured HTML markup. Textile is used for writing articles, forum posts, readme documentation, and any other type of written content published online.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Markdown</span> Plain text markup language

Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.

A personal wiki is wiki software that allows individual users to organize information on their desktop or mobile computing devices in a manner similar to community wikis, but without collaborative software or multiple users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zotero</span> Open-source reference management software

Zotero is free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF and ePUB files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, integrated PDF, ePUB and HTML readers with annotation capabilities, and a note editor, as well as integration with the word processors Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and Google Docs. It was originally created at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and, as of 2021, is developed by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship.

The tables below compare features of notable note-taking software.

This is a comparison of digital video recorder (DVR), also known as personal video recorder (PVR), software packages. Note: this is may be considered a comparison of DVB software, not all listed packages have recording capabilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zim (software)</span> Personal wiki software written in Python

Zim is a graphical text editor designed to maintain a collection of locally stored wiki-pages, a personal wiki. It works as a personal knowledge base and note-taking software application that operates on text files using markdown. Each wiki-page can contain things like text with simple formatting, links to other pages, attachments, and images. Additional plugins, such as an equation editor and spell-checker, are also available. The wiki-pages are stored in a folder structure in plain text files with wiki formatting. Zim can be used with the Getting Things Done method.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlantUML</span> Open-source software visualization tool

PlantUML is an open-source tool allowing users to create diagrams from a plain text language. Besides various UML diagrams, PlantUML has support for various other software development related formats, as well as visualisation of JSON and YAML files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KDE Gear</span> Set of applications and supporting libraries

The KDE Gear is a set of applications and supporting libraries that are developed by the KDE community, primarily used on Linux-based operating systems but mostly multiplatform, and released on a common release schedule.

Notion is a productivity and note-taking web application developed by Notion Labs, Inc. It is an online-only organizational tool with options for both free and paid subscriptions. It is based in San Francisco, California, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joplin (software)</span> Notetaking application

Joplin is a free and open-source desktop and mobile note-taking and to-do list application written for Unix-like and Microsoft Windows operating systems, as well as iOS, Android, and Linux/Windows terminals, written in JavaScript. The desktop app is made using Electron, while the mobile app uses React Native.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zettlr</span> Open-source note-taking application

Zettlr is a free and open-source note-taking application that works with Markdown files. Files may be exported and imported from a variety of different formats using an integration with Pandoc, whilst integration with reference managers allows for insertion of citations into documents. Internal links may be created between notes, which can be visualised as a graph, enabling its use as a personal information management system or digital Zettelkasten. The name Zettlr is derived from the German word Zettel meaning 'note'.

References

  1. ↑ "Terms of Service - Obsidian". obsidian.md. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  2. ↑ "Pricing". Obsidian. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  3. 1 2 Eastman, David (24 April 2022). "Obsidian and the Case for Using More Markdown". The New Stack. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Myrick, Andrew (15 September 2021). "Obsidian is the best note-taking app that you've never heard of". Android Central . Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  5. ↑ Shah, Parth (29 July 2024). "5 reasons why you should learn Markdown for taking notes in Obsidian". XDA. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  6. ↑ Pyne, Yvette; Stewart, Stuart (March 2022). "Meta-work: how we research is as important as what we research". British Journal of General Practice . 72 (716): 130–131. doi:10.3399/bjgp22X718757. PMC   8884432 . PMID   35210247. Today, we are familiar with interlinked pockets of information in the form of hyperlinks on webpages such as Wikipedia. However, in the context of personal knowledge systems, the last year has seen an explosion of 'Personal Knowledge Graph' (PKG) tools such as 'Roam Research', 'Obsidian', and 'Notion', which digitise and personalise this powerful concept.
  7. ↑ Hastings, Robin (September 2022). "Linked data tools to help users create webs of personal knowledge" . Computers in Libraries . 42 (7): 19–22. The two main recent entries in the linked data PKM field are Roam and Obsidian
  8. ↑ Pot, Justin. "How to Use Obsidian for Writing and Productivity". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Pot, Justin. "Obsidian Review". PCMag . Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  10. ↑ Le Cunff, Anne-Laure (6 August 2021). "Exploring the power of note-making with the co-founder of Obsidian". Ness Labs. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Ionescu, Stefan (4 August 2022). "Obsidian". TechRadar . Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  12. ↑ "Obsidian Release v0.0.1". Obsidian. 30 March 2020. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
  13. ↑ Rudra, Sourav. "Notion-like Markdown Note-Taking App 'Obsidian' is Out of Beta". It's FOSS News. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  14. ↑ "Obsidian Release v1.0.0". Obsidian. 13 October 2022. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
  15. ↑ "Obsidian Release v1.1". Obsidian. 20 December 2022. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
  16. ↑ "I'm joining Obsidian full-time as CEO". Obsidian. 6 February 2023. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
  17. ↑ "Plugins". Obsidian. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  18. ↑ Krasnoff, Barbara (16 November 2023). "The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data". The Verge. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  19. ↑ "The cult of Obsidian: Why people are obsessed with the note-taking app". fastcompany.com. 13 October 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.