Obsidian - Connected Notes

I like the flexibility of Obsidian & the ease of retrieving and linking notes. However, I do like handwriting my notes and, in theory, using the iPad and Apple Pencil should give the best of both worlds. In reality, it’s frequently frustrating with Pencil written text appearing in CamelCase or the text editor locking onto the last word so that it gets overwritten. I frequently end up writing my notes in another text editor and copying into Obsidian, which is daft!

please fix asap, I am getting after update my phone

This has to be one of the best tools available to a knowledge worker. One of the first things I install on any new computer

Reporting this to Apple as well. Showing fake message “waiting for sync with iCloud” and forcing the user to pay for their sync service. Well, to the developer, you are royally screwed. You have just violated the Equality Act 2010 law in the UK and the consequences will follow shortly. You have to be lacking basic understanding showing that fraudulent message when the Obsidian vault is to be “kept downloaded” and never offloaded from the device by iCloud. Regardless of how quickly you fix this, I am still going to put the screws into you and will drag you to court just to teach you a lesson. Edit: it has been a while and the developer is still ignoring and insisting. For a developer you have to pretty dumb to insist files that are kept offline at all times “need” time to sync.

On a desktop or laptop, Obsidian can be brilliant. Once you get through the initial setup, it offers immense freedom to write, link notes, and create a massive web of ideas and content. But, unfortunately, that's where the praise ends. Obsidian is starting to feel a lot like WordPress for websites – fantastic, but with a long list of 'buts'. Add-ons, plugins, and the constant temptation to dive into unnecessary complexity leave you with something overwhelming, sluggish, and hard to manage. Now, I get that the Obsidian team need to make a living, but charging for the one thing everyone needs? Bad business move. Charging for extra features? Fair enough. But charging for basic sync functionality? Come on. In 2024, nearly every app—whether free or paid—has built-in sync with cloud services like iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox. It's just the norm to expect this, allowing you to access files from any device. Without it, most people won't even consider an app. I certainly wouldn't. After grudgingly paying for Obsidian Sync for a few months, I decided to try iCloud syncing instead. Why pay for something that most apps offer for free? Big mistake. My vault isn't enormous—around a couple of thousand notes with a few plugins—but Obsidian on my iPad Pro (with a solid ethernet connection) simply refused to load from iCloud. Even though my files were synced through iCloud's Files app, Obsidian just wouldn't play ball. I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall the app just to get it to recognise my iCloud vault. And even then, the app is painfully slow. The message "Waiting for iCloud to synchronise Obsidian configuration files" feels like a joke—it's as if the app is designed to make you suffer unless you use their paid Sync service, which costs a fiver a month, of course. Why can every other app, even those dealing with massive video or design files, sync in seconds, but Obsidian takes several minutes—if it opens at all? I don't mind paying for a service that offers extra features or tangible benefits, but being forced to pay for something as basic as syncing in 2024? That just boils my blood.

Glad to see a version on iOS but is just SO SLOW to start up .. no other app I have takes as long as obsidian and recently seems to have got worse not better. (Sept 2024) I Don’t even have that many notes!!! I love the flexibility, local first plus e2e note protection and a half usable graph view but the painful startup times, occasional hanging and a “messy” feel about the iOS version stops me using it (the flexibility that is an advantage on desktop just makes for clutter and unintended actions on the small mobile screen ) One option I have tried which helps somewhat is to use the lightning fast Drafts app to capture notes instead (passing them into obsidian vault) but this shouldn’t be necessary

The app is amazing on desktop but don't think for a second it works the same on a mobile. You need to strip off all the configuration and extensions just to be able to load it like a normal app

Finally found the peace of mind from owning your notes and not having to worry about the longevity of a note taking app or it’s data security. Granted, there are a lot of beautiful apps out there with powerful capabilities (I’ve tried quite a few) but nothing compares to having full ownership of your notes. No subscription based service, no storage limit, a great alternative to external cloud servers. Fantastic app! Thank you Obsidian.

This app changed my life, due to its flexibility - I could finally to establish a system without worrying that smth would make me switch to other app… finally i am spending my time on ACTUAL WORK in my note-system, rather than always spend time setting it up like Notion, or having app features removed/added that mess my whole note-system like Evernote. God bless this team who made Obsidian and bless its community for making it irreplaceable! ❤️

Im paying a monthly fee for something which should arguably be free. I'm paying to synch my data. They prevent you from doing this to ios devices using your own cloud storage so I have to pay. When I log in it just keeps saying failed to load your remote vault. Absolutely shocking.