Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introduction to Obsidian

bryanhogan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 160 posts

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#151

Post by dtkav »

chrisweekly wrote: post #105
ahmadyan wrote: post #94

A few months ago, i took the bullet and migrated my notes from Notion to .md files. This was the second time i migrated my notes (last time from Evernote to Notion), and this time it was a lot easier. Kudos to the Notion team for making export so easy. Just downloaded the notes, then told Claude to organize and remove duplicate or index mds (Notion keeps a lot of random indexes) and clean up and within 30mins i had a…

Regarding your visual editor experience, be sure your Obsidian settings use both "Live Preview" and "Editing Mode", which combination makes for fantastic WYSIWYG note-taking. As for multi-user, the Relay plugin is amazing.

Thanks for the kind words Chris :)

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#152

Post by chrisweekly »

realityfactchex wrote: post #113
chrisweekly wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your visual editor experience, be sure your Obsidian settings use both "Live Preview" and "Editing Mode", which combination makes for fantastic WYSIWYG note-taking. As for multi-user, the Relay plugin is amazing.

> "Live Preview" and "Editing Mode" Are you somehow showing raw markdown source text and also rendered markdown in Obsidian side by side? That would sound awesome.

You can do that (side by side), but I prefer the unified (rendered AND editable) WYSIWYG view enabled by those 2 settings in combo. Whichever line has your cursor will typically show the raw markdown as you make edits, but the document as a whole is rendered.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#153

Post by zahir777 »

simlevesque wrote: post #23
rockooooo wrote: post #16

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

I recommend using syncthing. It's very easy to self host but I actually use a SaaS for it: syncding.com. It gets me 100gb to 1tb of disk in which I can create folders and keep them synced with my 2 laptops, my phone, my server etc... I have an Obsidian vault with Meld Encrypt to encrypt some files, a keepassxc file I share across my devices and my todo.txt It's simple to setup and will work forever instead of paying…

I should probably mention — I’m one of the co-founders of https://www.syncding.com

I originally built it for my own setup (multiple devices, encrypted files, etc.), and it kind of grew from there.

Not everyone has a NAS at home, so the idea behind syncding.com was to provide a simple, encrypted online Syncthing hub that just works without the usual setup — with built-in ZFS snapshots for versioning and recovery.

Always cool to see others using similar workflows.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#154

Post by simlevesque »

zahir777 wrote: post #153
simlevesque wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend using syncthing. It's very easy to self host but I actually use a SaaS for it: syncding.com. It gets me 100gb to 1tb of disk in which I can create folders and keep them synced with my 2 laptops, my phone, my server etc... I have an Obsidian vault with Meld Encrypt to encrypt some files, a keepassxc file I share across my devices and my todo.txt It's simple to setup and will work forever instead of paying…

I should probably mention — I’m one of the co-founders of https://www.syncding.com I originally built it for my own setup (multiple devices, encrypted files, etc.), and it kind of grew from there. Not everyone has a NAS at home, so the idea behind syncding.com was to provide a simple, encrypted online Syncthing hub that just works without the usual setup — with built-in ZFS snapshots for versioning and recovery. Alwa…

Haha now your comment might make it seem like I was trying to advertise for you, hence the downvotes.

As a disclaimer, no I wasn't paid and have never been contacted before by Syncding, just a happy customer.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#155

Post by tjarjoura »

I've had a lot of fun combining Obsidian with Claude Code. It's very much like having a personal coach. It's a low-friction way to have it remember things about me without having to re-provide a bunch of context on new chats.

Obviously you have to be careful what you share, and make your own decisions about the utility/privacy trade-off.

I also agree with keeping it very simple. I went down a rabbit hole where I installed a bunch of plugins and basically treated it as a dynamic web application. Now I keep it simple and have basically no plugins, no enforced structure. I don't try to do Zettelkasten or anything like that. Usually I just write in my daily note and link to other notes as makes sense, but I don't force it.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#156

Post by btreecat »

sReinwald wrote: post #145
btreecat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see myself needing to cross link my DnD, work, food, and home-lab nots significantly enough to not use separate collections.

Yeah, totally valid for things like D&D - I split that out too, for the same reason. Work and homelab overlap constantly for me though. I make heavy use of periodic notes, so even something like recipes would get linked in weekly logs for meal planning or tracking. The connections don't have to be deep to be useful - sometimes it might just be 'I made this thing on this day' and that's enough context to be worth havi…

I like that because it's just text, and obsidian is un-opinionated on organization, it allows us all to find workflows that suit us!

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#157

Post by bccdee »

nout wrote: post #20

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.

Everyone wants a scheme for organizing notes, and let me say: Just do it chronologically. It's fine. Taking notes is more important than reviewing them, and the older a note is, the less likely you are to need it.

You can add a layer of structure by periodically reviewing recent entries & updating an index, but I've never felt the need to.

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#158

Post by kelvinjps10 »

bryanhogan wrote: post #74
NicuCalcea wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I like Obsidian on mobile, so I'm not really using it, but I found the "Zettel Notes"[1] app to be a good markdown editor for Android also. [1]: https://www.zettelnotes.com/

seems to be what I need, I'm gonna check it out

Re: Introduction to Obsidian

#159

Post by indie-indie »

al_borland wrote: post #140
nout wrote: post #20

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.

I’d also say to ignore the graph interface. It makes for a cool tech demo, but unless you’re one of the 3 people zettelkasten makes sense for, it’s not all that useful and will encourage needless complexity while offering little to no benefit. I turned the feature off.

[dead]
Post reply on HN