Obsidian

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R1] 5/5 · US My go-to for EVERYTHING: The title’s not a joke. Currently, I’m using obsidian to plan and write my novel (yes, inside obsidian!), manage long-term work projects, budget & track finances, and study blender. If it involves information, notes, data, studying, mood boards, you name it, there are plugins to shape this app into virtually anything. Sync is fairly cheap too, and I am happy to support the
2. [R34] 5/5 · US Incredibly powerful: The more I do with Obsidian, the more I find I can do. It takes a fair amount of upfront configuration but the flip side is you can do pretty much what you want with it. I manage my home, my family and my business with it. Great integration with plugins. Constantly surprised just how much is possible from the iOS version - it’s very full featured and I can do all sorts of thin
3. [R39] 5/5 · US Notion for people who are actually tech-savvy: I used Notion for a while then discovered Obsidian. It's truly like night and day. While it takes longer to set up, Obsidian undoubtedly has many more features than Notion via plugins. You can take handwritten notes, insert images, make your own website, free calendar integration, etc. Syncing without the paid Obsidian Sync was a pain to set up but I
4. [R65] 5/5 · US Amazingly customizable notes app: I have started using this app recently and it is so customizable and makes you feel and assure full control
5. [R15] 3/5 · US No free sync: Great app for world building the only issue is you can’t access vaults made on one device from another which sucks. I love this for world building but I don’t want to pay 4 dollars a month to sync the vaults once! It slows the entire process and makes me want to use another app
6. [R17] 5/5 · US World building: As an aspiring author, this has by far been the best tool I’ve come across when it comes to world building, developing my characters, and building links and connections between everything. Thank you so much for this app! :)
7. [R16] 5/5 · US Inevitable: If you like to think - this is inevitably your brain.
8. [R28] 5/5 · US The Best Future Proof Notes App: Files over app, even if this app stops receiving support your files will still exist, your notes can carry over to the next app of your choosing. So many philosophies for taking any kind of note from visual, to zettlekasten, to bases and tags, card view, ratting systems, not to mention SEARCH-ABILITY! if you ever forgot the name of a note or have to many files to
9. [R44] 5/5 · US Powerful, private and actually mine!: Obsidian is one of the few apps that feels like it respects my brain instead of trying to trap my attention. It is fast, clean, works offline, and gives me real ownership of my notes instead of making everything feel locked into someone else’s system. What I like most is that it can be as simple or as deep as I want. I can quickly write notes on my phone, but
10. [R66] 5/5 · US Finally found the perfect app: I spent a while looking for the perfect markdown app. I used Bear for a while, but I could not justify paying a monthly subscription for it. Then I tried Obsidian which allows you to create a vault in a local directory and optionally synced through iCloud. This means I am no longer tied to using the application to write markdown, I can use whatever text editor I wish
11. [R18] 5/5 · US Life changing software: Obsidian has made me take notes everyday (for the past 2 years)and my mental health has improved significantly. The dev team has such an eye for design and function; all of your other apps will feel pale in comparison. My favorite features: highly customizable input mechanisms (toolbar for mobile, native vim mode, everything can be a shortcut), daily notes, links and back
12. [R21] 5/5 · US Best app: It’s really the best app out there. Yes out of all apps that exist in the world this one is the best. It provides limitless freedom, and the community driven plugins just add even more value. Use it for just about everything and anything for yourself.
13. [R53] 5/5 · US Incredible for Notes: An app that is simple to use for notes and has the ability to be incredibly complex and detailed. Has cross-platform support, doesn’t collect any data, and a dev team that is mostly human (one cat) and respects its users. That alone deserves recognition. I enjoy having an environment that is custom to me and my workflow and Obsidian allows that.
14. [R11] 5/5 · US good design: use icloud as base, I can sync the PC and mobile side notes, very powerful by MD format
15. [R82] 3/5 · US Could be better: This is the Swiss Army Knife of apps. Great to work with markdown and the plugins extend its functionality. Could praise it a lot more; it is indispensable. However: 1. The side bar/ribbon and menu bars are an ugly mess. 2. The iPad iOS apps will not recognize my global folder, that does appear on my Mac. This makes it difficult to find files without OmniSearch. 3. Worst of all,
16. [R8] 1/5 · US Does not load even in new phone: Does not load. Black screen, just sits there. When it does load, very slow.
17. [R20] 2/5 · US So slow to open: App is so slow to open on mobile , especially in low latency environments (often on mobile). It's getting to the point where I may even switch off as it just takes so long to get to an editor.
18. [R30] 2/5 · US So buggy: It’s a great Idea for an app, but it’s so buggy. Sometimes 10 minutes will pass before I can access a note - even on a very small vault.
19. [R36] 3/5 · US Obsidian - amazing, app - subpar: I love Obsidian so much. The tool itself is incredibly powerful. However, I have CONSTANT issues with the app. My vault functions as my second brain but half the time when I open the iPhone app it is stuck on “loading plugins…” so the thought I just wanted to document has now been sidetracked and, in my effort to refresh and load, the thought is often lost because
20. [R12] 3/5 · US The iCloud Sync is a little Glitchy: I downloaded this app on my phone and when I went to set up the sync, selecting iCloud as my option, after creating my vault, I got a black screen. There was nothing for me to select, it would not let me create a new note or anything, it was as if it crashed while trying to sync to iCloud or something. I closed out of the app, opened it back up, went through th
21. [R5] 1/5 · US Can’t locate my vault in iCloud: Good grief it should be super simple to tell it how to locate my vault that is in an iCloud subfolder.
22. [R43] 1/5 · US cannot create vault with iCloud: iPhone will become black screen. iOS 18.7.7
23. [R50] 1/5 · US Can’t connect to iCloud vault: I can’t acess my iCloud vault whenever I press iCloud it says no vault detected
24. [R10] 1/5 · US Onedrive: Can’t use onedrive to sync so all my pc notes are staying there ig🫩
25. [R22] 1/5 · US just an ad for sync: you hardcoded the path so users have no sync choices despite what documentation says. disappointing. i have my files already and the app just doesn't work for iOS files.
26. [R29] 3/5 · US Vault Locations Limited: The lack of versatility in vault locations on mobile is a real issue. It can ONLY be in their service, in the Obsidian iCloud folder, or local only. Let us pick where our vault is in Files.
27. [R37] 3/5 · US I use it because I need to: Still a struggle to use compared to the desktop app. Mobile needs to be overhauled for simplicity rather than trying be 1:1 with desktop.
28. [R61] 3/5 · US Great in theory, iOS app is pure pain: Having inter connected markdown notes. Brilliant. The macOS app also works great. But every time I use the iOS app it makes me want to pull my hair out. Why does it take 3 minutes or more to be able to use the app and do anything? Why is the formatting in the app, one of the things essential for utilizing mark down well, such an absolute pain? I’ve been u
29. [R80] 1/5 · US App does what it says on the tin: The app works well. My gripe is with the UI changes since the terrible liquid glass decision apple made. An option to revert those or all the tool bar to be at the top again instead of above the keyboard would be great.
30. [R84] 3/5 · US Glass redesign is trash: Unusable Update: Usable again now that you can disable glass on the edit screen, -2 star just cause not as polished as it was. Maybe bugs: - and only way to close search keyboard is to press search or slide right. - slight stutter on swipe and drawer transition overlays - seems like some icons like the line above and below square do nothing? - closing the command pall
31. [R4] 1/5 · US No search feature?!: Everything has always worked fine but the last few weeks the search feature is completely broken, displays no results, and attempting to use it will break the rest of the app too and make it impossible to use until i reopen it. Admittedly, I have hundreds of files, but they're only text files, I'm not sure what is causing this? Should I relocate my files to another vault or so
32. [R92] 1/5 · US Confusing and almost unusable: This has to be one of the worst notes app I’ve ever used. I really wanted it to work as I like the main concept of obsidian. However, the user interface for both the macOS and iOS versions makes absolutely no sense and is overcomplicated with toggle switches and unintuitive search boxes. Also many times search doesn’t Work or it needs to re-index.
33. [R316] 3/5 · GB mixed feelings: as a techie I love the markdown editor and the link capabilities of obsidian. the iOS app needs work. it's insanely hard to find a specific document right now. the search is hidden in menus and searching a title doesn't bring up the document
34. [R330] 3/5 · GB A promising start but quite buggy: First, this is the app I rely on to manage my life, and on the desktop it’s wonderful, but here on the iPhone and iPad it isn’t quite ready yet. - No multi-window support on iPad. This is a big one! - Searching within the current file simply does nothing. Cmd-F gives no response and it doesn’t work when accessed from the command palette either. - Poor trackpad s
35. [R62] 2/5 · US Every other writing app has a proper export option: How many years has obsidian been around? Since 2020, and there is still no dedicated “export to blank__.” Option . And we can’t use any plugins to find it. Its “not available for this device” for community (even though they seemed to work before) or NON EXISTED for the official ones. If I can’t get my documents off obsidian aside from text files
36. [R75] 5/5 · US Export As PDF: The app is awesome but it lacks exporting notes as PDF.
37. [R94] 1/5 · US Lacks Print and PDF Export on iOS: You’re about to go into an important meeting and need to share a note with a colleague. You can’t print out a copy. You can’t export a PDF. Your notes are trapped! These feature requests remain open since 2021.
38. [R151] 3/5 · US Export PDF please + Fix selections in iOS: There is no way to print from Obsidian in iOS and iPadOS. Why? Come on. It's not even that hard to just ALLOW USERS to print using the built-in system function, but you've disabled it. Come on guys! Mobile users need PDFs too. --- original: I love Obsidian and use it daily. I do not love selecting text in the iOS app. It's one of the most frustrating in
39. [R35] 4/5 · US The last update broke the iPhone app.: After the last and second-to-last updates, the note interface started glitching, plugins would reload every few seconds, the note would reopen, and some of the text would be lost. Ultimately, it became unusable. Nothing else was done to the app other than updating it, and no additional plugins were installed. Device: iPhone 13 mini, iOS 17.5.1 Update: Only a
40. [R56] 2/5 · US Suddenly unusable after many great years: Complex but feature-rich. Always challenging to use but did the job better than anything else out there. Now the app just reloads in a loop on all my iOS devices and can’t be used. And the new share sheet intercept dialog breaks all my information capture. So it’s now unusable and I will probably have to abandon Obsidian if these issues aren’t fixed very s
41. [R71] 1/5 · US iCloud no longer syncs: The latest updates have broken my beloved obsidian on iOS. Half my notes don’t show up anymore. Per some tips online that said it’s a kink with recent Apple updates, I made a new folder on iOS and copied all my notes into the new folder. Still happened where folders with a dozen notes will show as having 3 on iOS. I wish I could roll back to the pre-glass version (I’m on an
42. [R98] 1/5 · US Can’t connect to my vault via the obsidian sync after the last update: That makes it not usable
43. [R9] 1/5 · US Not responding: App is not responding and cannot open notes
44. [R38] 4/5 · US Sidebar sux: Way too narrow to be useable. Need to be able to change the width of the left sidebar.
45. [R47] 4/5 · US The last file is not visible: After expanding all files in the left sidebar of the software, the name of the last file is hidden at the very bottom, showing only a small, incomplete portion. · translated
46. [R48] 3/5 · US Has become unusable: Everyone I open it the “indexing..” goes on for 20+ seconds. Back and forth if switch out to copy paste text for a minute. Doesn’t stay in reader mode. I try to select text and when I do it switches out of reader mode despite me not wanting to write . So now I have to be careful to notice if I hit space bar to deselect text and not erase it, because if I don’t deselect and t
47. [R3] 5/5 · US Five stars: I really like this app, but it disappoints me to find out you can’t change the color of the line and arrow connecting things, but please add that it would be cool
48. [R13] 5/5 · US Best app ever, what I wanted for 25 years: Solves so many problems
49. [R67] 1/5 · US Charging to log in on separate device: Switched phones and after I logged in they tried to charge me 45-over 100$ to import my old notes. This is absolutely one of the craziest scams I’ve ever seen on an app.
50. [R32] 1/5 · US Limited sync options: Obsidian on iOS lacks the ability to sync with any other service aside from Obsidian Sync or iCloud.
51. [R70] 2/5 · US Please add the ability to use all finder locations: You are forced to use iCloud for your own device syncing. You should easily be able to allow selecting a folder in finder (aka my Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive) so that I don’t have to use iCloud. Please do this. I would like to sync with my PC and iCloud is NOT great on PC.
52. [R100] 3/5 · US Mobile app is buggy: I love Obsidian on desktop. Can’t work without it! I used to feel the same way about the mobile app but in the past few updates it’s grown too buggy. The “smart environment” loading delays note entry for several minutes. The button saying smart load is deferred on mobile then delays it more. And just as I’m starting to finally type a note the Smart Environment button starts th
53. [R206] 3/5 · US Desktop app is A+, this needs polish: Obsidian is a fantastic tool and I would recommend the desktop app wholeheartedly. However the mobile app could do with some polish, and more thinking about how this design should translate. For example, it’s hard to quickly access notes with the small touch targets of the sidebar. Impressive that they managed to make it work, but more specific design attentio