Obsidian is a proprietary personal knowledge base and note-taking application that operates on markdown files. It's designed to help users organize and structure their thoughts and knowledge in a flexible, non-linear way. Shida Li and Erica Xu of Dynalist Inc. created Obsidian, with its initial release on March 30, 2020.
Obsidian is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. The core app is free for personal and commercial use. However, optional add-ons such as Obsidian Sync (for syncing notes across devices) and Obsidian Publish (for publishing notes to a website) come at an extra charge. Sync is offered at $5 per user per month, and Publish is $10 per site per month. A Catalyst license, which provides early access to beta versions and supports the developers, is available for a one-time payment starting at $25.
Key features include internal linking between notes, a graph view for visualizing connections, and extensive plugin support for customization. Obsidian stores notes locally as plain text Markdown files, giving users control over their data and ensuring long-term accessibility.
