I have been using Obsidian for well over a year now. It is my go-to tool for knowledge building and synthesising information. Five stars.

Obsidian is a simple text-based information management system.
It uses markdown language (basically a shorthand way of formatting your text) to build and organise personal notes. It also allows you to link those notes in both structured (hierarchical folders) and more organic ways (linking and backlinking).

I don’t use Obsidian for stuff like clipping websites, filing documents, saving recipes (I use Evernote for that), or writing blog posts (Ulysses), or recording diary entries (Day One).

Instead, I use Obsidian for my personal study. For trying to remember stuff (the study part) and trying to build & integrate my understanding of the world (the deep thinking bit…well, as deep as my shallow brain permits).

Here is a list of features that seal the deal for me:

• Obsidian is free for personal use.
• Simple and clutter free look.
• Syncs across all my devices.
• Information is not stored on 3rd party servers. Remember when you hear the term ‘the cloud’ it really means other peoples computers.
• Great search and cross-linking capabilities.
• You can embed files, videos, and pictures if you want.
• Graph view. Shows a ‘constellation’ graph of all your notes and the relationships between them.
• A whole suite of plugins are available to custom additional functionality to the app.

I think this app is a great option for anyone who is studying or wants to collate and integrate text-based information. Interested?
Check this video to get a better idea of what it is all about.