April 13, 2026
Notes or just vibes?
An Introduction to Obsidian
Obsidian 101 ignites love, rants, and tweak anxiety
TLDR: Obsidian’s intro sells a simple, own-your-files note app with optional plugins, not pressure. The crowd split fast: some praise the focus on basics, while others slam weak multi-vault and risky syncing, with veteran power users calling it fiddly and graph eye-candy over substance — a simplicity vs. tinkering showdown.
Obsidian’s big pitch is simple: your notes are plain text files you control, with optional add‑ons called plugins. The intro post leans hard into “keep it simple” — no fear-of-missing-out, no theme rabbit holes, just write. It even nods to Obsidian’s CEO’s “file over app” mantra and compares it to Notion. Sounds chill… until the comments lit up.
The loudest chorus? Simplicity vs. the “Workflow Optimization Spiral.” One fan confessed Obsidian tempted them into tinkering instead of working, while another shrugged that the flashy link graph looks cool on social but “meh” at the desk — “search and tags still rule.” The mobile crowd chimed in with a curveball: for some, Obsidian is just the best phone note editor, while desktop life belongs to code editors. Meanwhile, a battle flared with longtime [Org-mode] fans (a power-user note system in Emacs), calling Obsidian “more fiddly and less effective” despite its iPhone appeal.
Then came the feature ultimatums. Power users demanded real multi-vault support to keep personal, work, and team notes separate, and blasted sync headaches: one called the Git add-on “dangerous.” The meme of the day: graph view as a screensaver, and tweak-addicts forming a support group. Verdict: lovers, skeptics, and tinkerers are all here — and they’re loud.
Key Points
- •Obsidian stores notes as local Markdown files, promoting data ownership and portability.
- •The app supports interlinking notes, offers core and community plugins, and has desktop/mobile feature parity.
- •The author recommends keeping setups simple and tailoring Obsidian to actual needs to avoid complexity.
- •Use cases include content creation, bottom‑up knowledge management, project tracking, and media tracking (with Obsidian Bases).
- •Sync/backup approach uses Google Drive (Windows), DriveSync (Android), and periodic GitHub backups; graph view and Canvas are used sparingly.