Bogdan Petrovan / Android Authority
Obsidian sat unused in my app drawer for months. I tried playing around with it when I first set out to ditch big tech from my digital life, but I found it far too intimidating and clunky. I’d poke around in it every now and again, and then scurry back to Google Keep. Obsidian clearly wasn’t for me. Then, something subtle shifted that made me reconsider the purple app.
So now I’m doing something I never thought I would: singing the praises of Obsidian. Now, I no longer stare blankly at the screen and then close the app. Instead, that initial confusion has turned to genuine appreciation for all of its intricacies, and even some of its quirks. Obsidian has become an indispensable part of how I organize my digital life.
Do you use Obsidian? 11 votes It's my main note-taking app. 9 % I've tried it but it didn't stick. 9 % I've heard of it but never tried it. 27 % I've never heard of it. 55 %
I dismissed Obsidian at first
Obsidian's community plugins A Daily Notes template A messy Obsidian setup
The name itself is intimidating compared to other note-taking apps: Evernote, Keep, and Samsung Notes. These apps sound helpful, even friendly. The name Obsidian sounds like a rock monster from a fantasy novel. Opening the app felt less like starting a new note and more like being dropped back into 1993 with only a DOS system and a blinking cursor waiting for input. It felt cold and unwelcoming.
I tried to use it nevertheless. I’m familiar with markdown, so there was no problem there. What turned me off was the app’s almost aggressive lack of structure. Unlike Notion, with its clear page hierarchies and thousands of templates, or the simple tagging system of Evernote, Obsidian was a vast, empty space. I dove into Obsidian’s plugins. The sheer number of extensions promised customization, but that led to a sense of overwhelm. Daily notes, Templater, Dataview, mind maps…each one fragmented the app.
The name Obsidian sounds like a rock monster from a fantasy novel.
Ultimately, the very customizability that is touted as Obsidian’s strength became its biggest weakness for me from the get-go. It morphed from a completely blank slate into a messy digital sandbox. My notes were practically impossible to locate in this mess, if I even knew where to start one in the first place.
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