For people who’ve used Obsidian on the desktop the launch of a mobile version for iOS & Android is a welcome addition. Obsidian is a new note-taking app that supports Markdown. The team behind Obsidian believes that their app works like a “second brain” to connect ideas within notes; it functions to emulate the connections that the human brain makes, which link thoughts & eventually result in logical thinking.
Obsidian supports CommonMark & GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) – Code fence with syntax highlighting, Markdown table, Task list, Strikethrough, Tag, LaTeX math, Footnotes, Internal links & Filename to embed notes & other files.
Markdown is used for a lot of technical & documentation writing, & Obsidian supports it in the most intuitive fashion. As an IDE the platform easily translates Markdown into HTML for publishing to the Web – in fact, Obsidian offers a “Publishing” plugin that people can use as a hosting platform to run Websites at a nominal monthly cost. Web publishing supports custom domain names.
There is a learning curve with this new note-taking app, but once users get the gist of it, note taking, or any other writing including code syntax writing, becomes 2nd nature. The main features that set the app apart includes the writing structure on offer. Users are encouraged to organize their writing into logical “sections”, such as directories (which Obsidian calls “Vaults”), folders & files. Each new Vault can be stored on app, locally or backed up to the cloud (iCloud for iOS & Google Drive for Android).
The app offers a “Graph View”, which truly demonstrates the unique functionality of Obsidian. This view allows users to see at a glance how their notes (thoughts) are interconnected through links & tags that have been used on individual notes. This option allows users to reference, & utilise previous work effectively. Another cool feature is the search facility that gives users quick access to their work by using tags or titles to locate their notes.
Obsidian offers many 3rd party plugins (some require payment) which enhance its functionality, & the basic app is absolutely free to use.
Image credit: Obsidian
