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Obsidian (software)
Knowledge base and note-taking software From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Obsidian is a proprietary personal knowledge base and note-taking application that operates on markdown files.[3][4][5] The software is free for personal and commercial use; only the offered cloud services, optional commercial licenses, and early access versions are paid.[6] It is available as desktop versions for macOS, Windows and Linux as well as for mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android,[7] but not as a web application.
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History
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Shida Li and Erica Xu, the two eventual co-founders of Obsidian, met while studying at the University of Waterloo.[8] They both collaborated on several development projects, including note-taking software Dynalist.io since 2015.[9]
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck and they were left quarantining, they founded Obsidian—which had been envisioned two years before the first beta version released.[10] Obsidian's first beta release came not long after on March 30, 2020,[11] and released its 1.0.0 version on October 13, 2022.[12][13]
On December 5, 2022, Obsidian launched its Canvas core plugin in early access version 1.1.0.[14] This feature was later released to all Obsidian users on December 23, 2022 in version 1.1.9.[15]
On February 6, 2023, Steph Ango joined Obsidian as CEO after his contributions to Obsidian version 1.0.0 and involvement in the community.[16] Previously, he'd been working at the startup Lumi before it was acquired in 2021.[17][18]
On November 11, 2024, Obsidian launched its Obsidian Web Clipper browser extensions for all major browsers on desktop and mobile, including Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and other Chromium-based browsers.[19]
On February 20, 2025, Obsidian announced that its commercial licenses were now completely optional, citing, "The Commercial license terms were confusing and added unnecessary complexity to our pricing" as the reason for the change. Companies that purchase 25 or more commercial licenses are featured on the Obsidian Enterprise page.[20]
On May 21, 2025, Obsidian launched its Bases core plugin in early access version 1.9.0.[21] This feature was later released to all Obsidian users on August 18, 2025 in version 1.9.10.[22]
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Availability
Obsidian is built on the cross-platform Electron framework, allowing for the application to run on desktop operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS. There are also available native apps for mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS[23] using the cross-platform Capacitor native runtime.[24] While built using web technologies, it is not available as a web app.
Obsidian is free for both personal and commercial use; they offer paid premium services (Obsidian Sync and Obsidian Publish), an optional commercial license, and the Catalyst license, which grants users access to beta versions of Obsidian.[6]
A community forum and Discord server are hosted by the developers.[25][8] Both allow users to ask for help, share tips & workflows, and discuss knowledge management. The forum can additionally be used for submitting feature requests and bug reports.[26]
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Usage
Obsidian is particularly suitable as a knowledge database for personal knowledge management and as software for creating notes that works with Markdown files.[27][28] It is designed to help users organize and structure their thoughts and knowledge in a flexible, non-linear way.[23]
Obsidian has also been described as a tool that facilitates a digital method of Zettelkasten, a note-taking methodology which heavily involves connecting related notes together, due to its internal linking and graph visualization features, which can reveal connections between notes.[29][27]
Obsidian has been used for a wide variety of use-cases, in large part due to the extensibility of the app through plugins, which allow users to tailor Obsidian to their needs by keeping it as simple or advanced as needed.[30] Some use-cases include writing,[31] task management,[4] and learning.[29]
Features
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Obsidian operates on a folder of text documents named a "vault";[32] each new note in Obsidian generates a new text document, and all documents can be searched from within the app.[23][4] Text formatting in Obsidian is achieved through markdown, with the ability to switch between a raw text (Source Mode) and a pre-rendered (Live Preview) mode while editing.[23]
Obsidian allows internal linking between notes, formatted either as Wikilinks or traditional markdown links, with links contributing to the interactive graph view that visualizes the relationships between notes.[23][8][4]
Plugins
Users may customize their Obsidian vaults by using plugins, which extend the software's functionality with additional features or integration with other tools.[23]
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 to primarily by users.[33][Note 1]
Core plugins
Canvas
Obsidian Canvas provides a freeform, infinite 2D space where users can spatially arrange, group, and connect notes, attachments, and web pages to visually map out ideas (akin to a whiteboard).[34][35][36]
Canvases created in Obsidian are stored as .canvas files, using the JSON Canvas file format, which was designed for Obsidian.[37] This format is open source under the MIT license.[38]
Bases
Obsidian Bases enables users create database-like views of their notes. A Base allows a user to view, edit, sort, and filter files and their properties. Each Base can have several "views," with different layouts such as tables, cards, and lists.[39]
Bases can be embedded into markdown notes either through embedding a link to a .base file in a user's Obsidian vault, or by creating a code block with the language set as base.[40]
As of November 29, 2025, Obsidian has plans on their roadmap for a Base search feature, a Kanban view type, and a calendar view type.[41]
Graph
The graph view in Obsidian allows users to quickly visualize the connections between their notes. The graph is composed of nodes representing files (typically markdown documents) and edges between nodes representing the internal links that connect notes together.[42]
Users can customize the appearance of the Graph view by filtering out unwanted notes, coloring certain nodes that fit a criteria, modifying the values in the "Display" and "Forces" configuration.[43]
Beyond the "global" graph view (which shows every note in the vault by default), users can also open a "local" graph view, which only shows the currently focused note and all of its backlinks and outlinks.[44]
Community plugins
As of December 04, 2025, there are 2,692 community plugins available for Obsidian.[45] Community plugins are primarily developed by members of the Obsidian community under open source licenses (although the Obsidian team does develop Importer and Maps as community plugins).
Theming
Users may customize the appearance of their Obsidian vaults through the use of themes and CSS snippets. Themes and CSS snippets are made using CSS. Themes are typically much more complex, modifying large portions of the app, whereas snippets are smaller CSS files that might only modify one or a few things.[46][47]
Web Clipper
Obsidian Web Clipper is a set of browser extensions that allow users to highlight and "capture" information from the web and save it in their vault in a markdown format.[48]
It is available on all major browsers including Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. It also supports many of their derivatives, including Brave, Arc, and Orion.[19]
Web Clipper is open-source under the MIT license, with its source code being hosted on GitHub.[49]
Premium services
Obsidian follows a freemium model, where core software features remain free and certain add-on services are paid.[2][20] Although the plaintext storage of notes in Obsidian enable users to employ their own synchronization and backup methods, the subscription-based "add-on" services for Obsidian, Sync and Publish, supply users with features they would otherwise require do-it-yourself solutions or rely on plugins for, which often have limitations or complex or manual setup.[50]
Within Obsidian, these services are core plugins, which can be enabled or disabled on a per-vault basis, and can be configured in the same way any other core plugin would.[51][52]
Sync
Obsidian Sync is file synchronization service designed to synchronize vaults across multiple devices running Obsidian. Files and vault settings are end-to-end encrypted while being synced between devices, and are able to be versioned. Additionally, vaults can be shared to other users who can then read and/or edit any files on the vault, enabling collaborative editing.[53]
Publish
Obsidian Publish is a web hosting service that allows users to publish entire vaults or select notes from Obsidian onto the Internet. Content that is published with the service is formatted in the same way as it is in Obsidian, except for Canvases and Bases, which are currently unsupported.[41] Publish sites provide a Graph view to show links between pages, and supports the use of custom domains, themes, and analytics solutions.[54]
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Development
Obsidian is developed by a small team of just eight people: Shida Li (Co-founder - CTO), Erica Xu (Co-founder - COO), Steph Ango (CEO), Liam Cain (Engineer), Johannes Theiner (Engineer), Matthew Meyers (Engineer), Tony Grosinger (Engineer), and Rebbecca Bishop ("Customer success").[55] Obsidian is owned by Dynalist Inc., a company based in Ontario, Canada which is named after its original product, Dynalist.io.[56]
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See also
- Comparison of note-taking software – Comparison of computer software designed for taking notes
- Comparison of wiki software – Software to run a collaborative wiki compared
- Personal wiki
Notes
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
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