Obsidian

What is this product

Obsidian is a powerful knowledge management and note-taking application. It solves the problem of organizing, connecting, and securely storing your personal thoughts, research, and information. Unlike cloud-based notes, Obsidian stores all your data as plain text files in a local folder on your computer, giving you complete ownership, privacy, and offline access. Its core strength is helping you build a personal, interconnected web of knowledge.

Application Scenarios

• Academic Research & Writing: Connecting literature notes, ideas, and drafts to form coherent arguments and papers.
• Project & Task Management: Creating hubs for projects, linking related tasks, meeting notes, and resources.
• Personal Knowledge Base (Second Brain): Building a lifelong, interlinked repository of learned concepts, book summaries, and insights.
• Creative Writing & Worldbuilding: Mapping out characters, plot points, and settings with bi-directional links.
• Technical Documentation & Coding Notes: Maintaining linked notes for code snippets, architecture decisions, and learning logs.

Main Features

• Local-First & Private: Your notes are stored as Markdown files on your own device. No vendor lock-in; your data is always yours.
• Bi-directional Linking: See connections between notes effortlessly. The "Graph View" provides a visual map of your knowledge network.
• Community Plugins: Extend functionality with hundreds of free community plugins for tasks, calendars, diagrams, and more.
• Powerful Editor: A capable Markdown editor with live preview, supporting wikilinks, tags, and embedded files.
• Backlinks & Unlinked Mentions: Discover how notes relate, even when you haven't explicitly linked them.

Pricing

Obsidian operates on a fair and transparent model:

• Free Personal Use: The core app for personal use is completely free, including sync via your own cloud storage (e.g., iCloud, Dropbox).
• Paid Services (Optional): The company offers optional paid services for convenience:
  • Sync: $8/month (billed annually) for official, end-to-end encrypted sync across devices.
  • Publish: $8/month (billed annually) to publish notes as a professional website.
  • Commercial License: Required for business use, starting at $50/user/year.

FAQ

• Where are my notes stored? All your notes are stored as standard Markdown (.md) files in a folder on your computer. You can open and edit them with any other text editor.

• How do I sync notes between devices for free? You can sync your vault (the folder containing your notes) using any third-party cloud service like iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Syncthing.

• Is there a mobile app? Yes, free Obsidian apps are available for iOS and Android. You can use the optional paid Sync service or your own cloud method to access your vault on mobile.