 | |
 Obsidian open with a chemistry note, graph view, and calendar | |
| Original author(s) |
|
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Dynalist Inc.[1] |
| Initial release | March 30, 2020; 5 years ago (2020-03-30) |
| Stable release | 1.8.10 / April 22 05, 2025 |
| Written in | Electron,JavaScript,HTML,CSS |
| Platform | Windows,macOS,Android,Linux,iOS |
| Type | |
| License | Freemium[2] |
| Website | obsidian |
Obsidian is apersonal knowledge base andnote-taking application that operates onmarkdown files.[3][4][5]
Obsidian allows users to makeinternal links for notes and then to visualize the connections as agraph.[6][7]
Obsidian is designed to help users organize and structure their thoughts and knowledge in a flexible, non-linear way.[8]
Obsidian was founded by Shida Li and Erica Xu while quarantining during theCOVID-19 pandemic.[9]
Li and Xu, who had met while studying at theUniversity of Waterloo, had already collaborated on several development projects.[10]
Obsidian was initially released on 30 March 2020.[11]
Version 1.0.0 was released in October 2022.[12][13]
Version 1.1, which added the Canvas core plugin, released in December 2022.[14]
In February 2023, Steph Ango joined Obsidian as CEO.[15]
Obsidian is built on thecross-platformElectron framework, allowing for the application to run on desktop operating systems likeWindows,Linux, andmacOS.
A special version is also available for mobile operating systems such asAndroid andiOS.[16]
Aforum andDiscord server are hosted by the developers.[17][10]
Obsidian operates on a folder of text documents named a "vault";[18] each new note in Obsidian generates a new text document, and all documents can be searched from within the app.[16][4]
Obsidian allows internal linking between notes, with links forming an interactive graph that visualizes the relationships between notes.[16][10][4]
Text formatting in Obsidian is achieved throughmarkdown, with the ability to switch between raw text and a pre-rendered mode.[16]
Users may customize their Obsidian vaults by addingplugins andthemes, which enable users to extend the software's functionality with additional features or integration with other tools.[16]
Obsidian differentiates between core plugins, which are released and maintained by the Obsidian team, and community plugins, which are open-sourced throughGitHub and are contributed by users.[19]
Examples of community plugins include aKanban-style task board and a calendar widget.[4] There are over 200 community made themes to use with the app.
While Obsidian is free and does not charge users to access any core features,[2][20] the developers have launched paid services into the application for additional needs.[3][16] All services are shipped as plugins and can be disabled per-vault.
In February 2025, Obsidian updated their commercial licensing policy to be optional. Their reasoning being simplicity: "The Commercial license terms were confusing and added unnecessary complexity to our pricing". Companies who optionally choose to purchase 25 or more commercial licenses are featured on theObsidian Enterprise page.[20]
Obsidian Publish is aweb hosting service that allows subscribers to publish their Obsidian vaults onto theinternet. Vaults that are published with the service are typically formatted similarly to the application, with a graph view provided for links between pages. The service provides support for using custom domains, themes and analytics solutions. Much like Sync, it is aplug and play alternative tostatic site generators that require being configured to be both automatically generated with each new version and uploaded to the web.[21]
Obsidian Sync is afile synchronization service designed to synchronize vaults across multiple clients running Obsidian. Files and vault settings areend-to-end encrypted while being synced between devices, and allow forfile versioning to be enabled. Additionally, vaults can be shared to other users who can access and/or edit any files on the vault, allowing forcollaborative editing.[22] The service is positioned as an alternative todo-it-yourself solutions both inside and outside of the application, which typically require some amount of manual configuration.[23]
Today, we are familiar with interlinked pockets of information in the form of hyperlinks on webpages such as Wikipedia. However, in the context of personal knowledge systems, the last year has seen an explosion of 'Personal Knowledge Graph' (PKG) tools such as 'Roam Research', 'Obsidian', and 'Notion', which digitise and personalise this powerful concept.
The two main recent entries in the linked data PKM field are Roam and Obsidian
