# Obsidian (software)

Obsidian is a personal knowledge base and note-taking application that operates on markdown files.

## Usage

Obsidian allows users to make internal links for notes and then to visualize the connections as a graph.
Obsidian is designed to help users organize and structure their thoughts and knowledge in a flexible, non-linear way.

## History

Obsidian was founded by Shida Li and Erica Xu while quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Li and Xu, who had met while studying at the University of Waterloo, had already collaborated on several development projects.
Obsidian was initially released on 30 March 2020.
Version 1.0.0 was released in October 2022.
Version 1.1, which added the Canvas core plugin, released in December 2022.
In February 2023, Steph Ango joined Obsidian as CEO.

## Availability

Obsidian is built on the cross-platform Electron framework, allowing for the application to run on desktop operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS.
A special version is also available for mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS.
A forum and Discord server are hosted by the developers.

## Features

Obsidian operates on a folder of text documents named a "vault"; each new note in Obsidian generates a new text document, and all documents can be searched from within the app.
Obsidian allows internal linking between notes, with links forming an interactive graph that visualizes the relationships between notes.
Text formatting in Obsidian is achieved through markdown, with the ability to switch between raw text and a pre-rendered mode.

### Plugins

Users may customize their Obsidian vaults by adding plugins and themes, which enable users to extend the software's functionality with additional features or integration with other tools.
Obsidian differentiates between core plugins, which are released and maintained by the Obsidian team, and community plugins, which are open-sourced through GitHub and are contributed by users.
Examples of community plugins include a Kanban-style task board and a calendar widget. There are over 200 community made themes to use with the app.

### Premium services

While Obsidian is free and does not charge users to access any core features, the developers have launched paid services into the application for additional needs. All services are shipped as plugins and can be disabled per-vault.
In February 2025, Obsidian updated their commercial licensing policy to be optional. Their reasoning being simplicity "The Commercial license terms were confusing and added unnecessary complexity to our pricing". Companies who optionally choose to purchase 25 or more commercial licenses are featured on the Obsidian Enterprise page.

#### Publish

Obsidian Publish is a web hosting service that allows subscribers to publish their Obsidian vaults onto the internet. Vaults that are published with the service are typically formatted similarly to the application, with a graph view provided for links between pages. The service provides support for using custom domains, themes and analytics solutions. Much like Sync, it is a plug and play alternative to static site generators that require being configured to be both automatically generated with each new version and uploaded to the web.

#### Sync

Obsidian Sync is a file synchronization service designed to synchronize vaults across multiple clients running Obsidian. Files and vault settings are end-to-end encrypted while being synced between devices, and allow for file versioning to be enabled. Additionally, vaults can be shared to other users who can access and/or edit any files on the vault, allowing for collaborative editing. The service is positioned as an alternative to do-it-yourself solutions both inside and outside of the application, which typically require some amount of manual configuration.