Introduction to Obsidian • Hacker News Board

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#11

Post by kepano » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 8:44 PM UTC

on_the_train wrote: post #3

I'm just so bummed that multiple vaults are pretty much unusable. I can't sync my sensitive work notes. But I want to sync general programming notes between work and other PCs. But multiple vaults hardly work. The just open in a new window. Other than that, I love so many things about the program. Just linking and graphs are weird and strangely overrated. Search and tags still rules over everything imo

What do you mean by "multiple vaults hardly work"?

If it helps Obsidian has a newish command called "Change vault..." that switches vaults without opening a new window.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#12

Post by NicuCalcea » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 8:44 PM UTC

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #5

for my obsidian is just my mobile markdown editor I just haven't been able find a better one, for desktop I use neovim and telekasten

It's the opposite for me, I use Obsidian on desktop but hate it on mobile, so I use Markor there.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#13

Post by greymalik » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 8:46 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #9

Three asks for Obsidian to make it my #1 tool (and I mean #1 tool): - First-class multi-vault support. It's difficult to keep personal / business / team separate. I want to keep shared notes for my team, but it's really hard. - First-class git support. The git plugin is dangerous and will overwrite changes from other devices. The mobile git plugin (which requires hacks to even use) is deadly bad with blowing away you…

> It's difficult to keep personal / business / team separate

I have one vault for personal, one for work. I open each one in a different window. They are both separate and easy to switch between.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#14

Post by dbvn » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 8:50 PM UTC

Daily Notes feature is a lifesaver. Just throw things in there throughout the day. Never lose anything

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#15

Post by raincole » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #9

Three asks for Obsidian to make it my #1 tool (and I mean #1 tool): - First-class multi-vault support. It's difficult to keep personal / business / team separate. I want to keep shared notes for my team, but it's really hard. - First-class git support. The git plugin is dangerous and will overwrite changes from other devices. The mobile git plugin (which requires hacks to even use) is deadly bad with blowing away you…

For me, it's a Wolfram Engine plugin. My notes now scatter between Obsidian vault and Wolfram notebooks. It would be nice if I can unify them.

But I understand that my use case is niche and I certainly don't want the Obsidian officially bloats itself into such feature creating.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#16

Post by rockooooo » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

I've tried obsidian so many times and want to love it but the sync situation - either the expensive official one, the approved options for mixed iOS/Windows clients (icloud) and third party tools like obsidain-livesync - were all way too issue-prone for me to ever trust it. I hope they figure this out

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#17

Post by tombert » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

I mostly use Obsidian for my blog nowadays (using Quartz and Cloudflare Pages). For that it's actually pretty great. It's super easy to write links to your own posts that automatically update, it's easy ensure that your attachments are handled correctly, it's easy to have whatever layout you want.

I liked the notes stuff, but I found I was spending more time with the bureaucracy of it instead of actually doing work, so I've kind of stopped using it.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#18

Post by iammjm » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 9:07 PM UTC

The aura of complexity/difficulty around Obsidian seriously baffles me, because to me Obsidian from the go felt like the most intuitive thing in the world: Create a note. Write some lines of text. Organize some of those lines into - bulletpoints, # Headings, or ## Subheadings. Turn an some idea into a [[note of its own]]. Add a #tag for better organization. Check out your notes in the list of your notes or directly in the vault folder. And people sell courses for this??? Like I know you can add plugins, tweak css to your liking, and basically turn obsidian into an all-encompassing monstrosity to match your particular software kink, but the 80/20 of it all is really pretty basic to anybody who has ever used a personal computer.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#19

Post by datadrivenangel » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #9

Three asks for Obsidian to make it my #1 tool (and I mean #1 tool): - First-class multi-vault support. It's difficult to keep personal / business / team separate. I want to keep shared notes for my team, but it's really hard. - First-class git support. The git plugin is dangerous and will overwrite changes from other devices. The mobile git plugin (which requires hacks to even use) is deadly bad with blowing away you…

What stops you from running git at the root level and doing a "git commit --all "notes" & git push" command?

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#20

Post by nout » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

My suggestions to new users are: Start small, just create notes for whatever you want to (actually) remember and create impromptu TODO lists. Ignore the whole Knowledge Database / second brain thing. Learn the obsidian keyboard shortcuts really well. You can build a structure in your notes later when you actually see what's good and what needs automation.