Chris Messina

Obsidian for Mobile β€” Your plain-text second brain on the go, for iOS and Android

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After months of private beta, the Obsidian mobile app is finally here! It has almost all the features of the desktop app, plus mobile-centric features like customizable toolbar and pull-down Quick Action.
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Get it today for a second brain on the go!

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Erica Xu
Hi Product Hunt! πŸ‘‹ Maker of Obsidian here. Obsidian is a personal knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. You can find our previous launch here. It's been a little over a year since we launched Obsidian, and we're finally releasing the mobile apps! TL;DR: Originally set out to build a lite mobile app, but we gladly changed our minds to build a full-featured mobile app that supports community plugins, graph view, panes, and sidebars. Basically all the things you love about Obsidian desktop app. Longer version: The mobile app has been in the making for more than 4 months. Why did it take so long? Originally, we wanted to make a lightweight mobile app that acts as a companion of the desktop app. It lets you view your notes and do some quick capturing on the go, and that's about it. However, our users have made sure to let us know that they don't want a half-assed mobile app. If it can only view and capture notes, how is it any better than the existing Markdown editor apps? Luckily, we were eventually convinced. And this begins our constant iterations to bring almost all desktop features to much smaller screens. Just countedβ€”we did 15 mobile private beta releases over the 4 months, and that's not including the countless internal iterations we did with our moderator team. This is in addition to the regular updates and fixes to the desktop app, thus the delay. But the wait is over! The mobile app now supports: - Customizable toolbar - Pull down Quick Action - Graph view - Community plugins - Themes - Sidebar pinning for tablet - iCloud vaults (on iOS) - Share to Obsidian (on Android, coming to iOS soon) - Pick any folder as vault (on Android) We want to take the chance to thank our Catalyst members to test the app during the private beta and to provide financial support that helps make Obsidian sustainable. Special thanks to Nezlok from Ubisoft for supporting our mobile app project! Lastly, thanks to our vibrant community for using Obsidian and supporting us! If you're interested, you can join our Discord chatroom and forum here: https://obsidian.md/community
Simon Barker
@erica_xu I've been waiting for this ever since hearing CGP Grey first talk about you on Cortex - time to download and get in the game
Nihal Bhushan
@erica_xu This looks Amazing. Would love to use it. Kudos
Filipe Donadio
I've been using Obsidian for several months, and it's my trusted place to put all my notes and research. Super exciting to see one of my favorite pieces of software available on mobile devices. Congrats to you @erica_xu and the Obsidian team! πŸ’œ
Ruchira
great to see obsidian on mobile now!!
Alex Briukhovetskyi
Love your idea to release app with more features based on customer's feedback. Good luck with the launch!
Ayan S
I absolutely love using obsidian on the desktop, it has the perfect combination of everything I'd want in a knowledge base and it's always fun to see the second brain grow and form links in the graphs, so I'm glad to see that the graph is on the mobile version as well! Great to see it finally coming to mobiles, can't wait to try it out. Congrats on the launch!
Erica Xu
@madebyayan Thank you so much Ayan!
David HC Soul
Personal Knowledge Manager really is a misnomer - this is a creative tool to not just manage Knowledge but to build it through a combination of synthesis of known and newly discovered concepts through personal writing to create something new. First class implementation of the concept.
Octavian Codrea
Oooh, that knowledge graph view got me interested.
Pete Sivak
I love Obsidian! After going through all versions of PKM apps and workflows over the years (Evernote, OneNote, DayOne, Roam...) I've settled on Obsidian and have been using it on desktop for a while. I tried using mobile workarounds like 1Writer, but it never worked. Seeing how fast the team iterates and takes users' feedback, it was a no-brainer for me to become a tester of the mobile, even when it was only available to contributors and patrons of the app.
ibrar
Have been using obsidian desktop for around a year now, and when i say its been a game changer, i actually mean that! Its one of those rare combination of beauty and performance without having to compromise any of core principles of the app! Big Thankyou to @_ericaxu @shida_li for making obsidian and everyone in Discord and Forum for helping out and all those awesome plugins!
Mert Aktas
Good luck on the launch!!
Erica Xu
@mert_aktas Thank you Mert!
Ashish Bhateja
A small step for Obsidian notes, and a giant leap for its note making community! Congratulations on the launch
Erica Xu
@ashish_bhateja Thank you Ashish!
Jon Clemons
Thank you! I love Obsidian desktop. I own the data. It's instant. It's extendable. Looking forward to trying out mobile too!
Erica Xu
@jonclemons Thank you Jon!
Alice Rodgers
very stylish design of the app
Noah Lenz
Looking forward to giving this a try! I've been enjoying Roam Research, which looks to be similar in a lot of respects, but the mobile experience is very lacking. This may be exactly what I need.
Joseph Abraham
@erica_xu Looks great, nice to see obsidian on mobile now! Way to go! Congrats πŸ™ŒπŸΌ
Anthony Baker
Been using Obsidian Mobile for a few months now and it's wonderful. An experience that closely mirrors the desktop with support for the majority of desktop plugins, full theming capability and customizations, the works. Runs beautifully on both tablets and phone. As always, the development team is wildly responsive and cranking out feature updates with ungodly regularity. At the same time, the broader Obsidian community is producing plugins at a fantastic pace, meeting various user needs, both obscure and broadly-desired. Best of all, everyone is wonderful, open and supportive of each other β€” power users and newbies alike. It's a product you love using, a community you're happy to be associated to and is supportive of one another, and a service that you can feel confident in over the long haul, with security and data ownership being a primary concern. I cannot praise Obsidian enough. My hats off to @_ericaxu and @shida_li and everyone involved. Lots to be proud of here.
Rahul Nair
Sounds interesting and cool features. Congrats on your launch.
Dilpreet Singh
This is going to be game-changer. Love it. Congratulations !
Marek Sotak
Thank you! πŸ‘ I have been using Obsidian on Desktop for a while, to capture and organize my thoughts and notes. Great stuff!
Ruben Wolff
Congrats on the launch! I didn't know about Obsidian before, it makes me want to give it a try on mobile to see how much of my numerous daily thoughts I can organize in notes