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Discussion Sentiment
72% Positive
Analyzed from 4529 words in the discussion.
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#obsidian#notes#files#sync#using#vault#don#things#git#different
Discussion Sentiment
Analyzed from 4529 words in the discussion.
Trending Topics
Discussion (111 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
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 very clean and usable (and agent accessible) md vault. I can open it in Obsidian or other md file viewer (as well as my own code editor). I opted for obsidian.
Setup was super straight-forward. I do miss the visual editor in Notion (obsidian editor is not as smooth, and i find myself just writing the files in text instead of using their visual mode).
for sync, i use icloud, and it syncs between the iphone and the mac app flawlessly, didn't have any issue with corruptions (yet). I use the phone app as mostly an intake, and the desktop app for mostly visualizations. I also tinkered with adding git to track history (has to put the .git folder outside the repo with --separate-git-dir).
Obsidian has a terminal support (which i suppose folks can use to run agents in there) although i found it easier (habbit perhaps) to run my agents separately. They provide massive unlock as their turn my knowledge to an actual insight and can connect things that i didn't think it was possible before.
Overall, 75% happy. From first principle, file is as simple as it gets and i think this is good enough personal knowledge management. I do miss sharing capabilities as well as multi-user in Notion, so i don't think this is useful for 2player/team/corp.
As for multi-user, the Relay plugin is amazing.
Are you somehow showing raw markdown source text and also rendered markdown in Obsidian side by side? That would sound awesome.
Nothing against it, you just need the warning early on to avoid the timesink if you want things done and follow the wrong guide.
The amount of data has grown to too many TB now, so deduplicating things is the first step of cleaning up.
It remains to be seen if the reorganised files will be a sane and measured thing, or if I will go too far in the other direction and create a way too elaborate system of organization for my files.
I have been toying with the idea that since I am currently using hashdeep to get file hashes of all paths on different drives, I could collect all the files organized purely by hash in terms of paths on the file systems, and keep the hashdeep records for future reference, imported into queryable DuckDB databases to help me find related files etc. (For example, to find back to which other files were once under some given directory path.)
Blob storage basically. Perhaps something along the lines of Perkeep (formerly Camlistore) https://perkeep.org/
But I would really like to also do an effort of having the data organized in a way that makes it easy to determine which files I need more copies of (favorite photos of important moments, etc) and which ones I need fewer copies of (random screenshots of games, etc), and which files I can discard completely.
What do y’all do to organize all of your files? And how much data do you guys have that you consider important for the rest of your life?
I'm really averse to meticulous organisation so a good search function is key. Tagging and categorising stuff will never work for me. I've been thinking about looking for other plugins for that.
This is a perfect analogy.
More than a hobby. There's entire businesses that are just moving from one system to another and convincing your followers that they have to move too.
You know about markdown syntax, about #tags, about [[linking]], but a lot of people who first hear of Obsidian don't.
Part of what inspired my post was to help people who don't need the extra complexity of a bottom-up note system, Zettelkasten, ever-green notes, atomic notes or other areas of Obsidian, but also to give direction to someone wants to explore these.
For example I'm very happy with my bottom-up approach for knowledge notes, I have been using it for multiple years now and I can still find the things I need, and it doesn't feel messy or anything.
I have an inbox folder that is where all new docs go. Then daily notes. That's it. I tag lines with #thething #theotherthing.
Tagging acts as the organization, lowers the barrier of entry and keeps things discoverable.
I use logseq but Obsidian seems way more widespread, but I am struggling to give up tag inheritance
My theory is that those courses aren’t selling you on how to use obsidian, but are instead selling “how do I organise knowledge and information. Oh btw we’re using obsidian”
They aren’t marketed like that, but I think that is what they’re really doing
It’s like taking a course of office organisation. I mean filing cabinets are easy right, it’s just putting labels on folders and putting them places.
Except I would absolutely be terrible at that job and would pay nearly anything to be good at it.
Probably org-mode envy ;-)
(To be clear, it's the same story - using simple plain org-mode is easy, but some people love to customize like crazy)
/proceeds to write 10 steps
It's easy to start with the detail when users are looking for their story to match the software.
How people can grow into it can be different, sometimes it's good to just start, and then learn about implementing the other concepts.
Honestly, you kind of lose me here. I want to spend exactly zero time organizing things like tags. Literally zero.
I touched a bit on this in the bottom-up / smart notes section.
Obsidian is the simplest thing in the world. Write text.
Having said that I have the organisational skills and affinity of a baboon so I really need to be able to dump my notes somewhere and still find them back somehow. This is not too typical for this kind of package, I notice a lot of people are meticulous and follow complex structures like zettelkasten.
For me that will never work though. It'll just subconsciously mark the system as "not worth the hassle" and never touch it again.
It does most of what Obsidian does but has a free sync version where you just use your cloud drive as the storage.
The main thing missing, from what I've found, is that it does do the "notes mind map". But I never really found that useful.
It's pretty simple. Just get Google Drive Desktop to mount your Google Drive to your filesystem, then point obsidian to work within that mounted directory.
So if I am correct the "cloud drive as the storage" option is syncing with a the local SQLite db and to get local files one would need to be syncing the local db with both the cloud drive and the local filesystem.
With Obsidian I sync from local files direct to a cloud drive.
The reason for having multiple vaults is simple: I find that the usability of the one big ĂĽber-vault drops off sharply if you're not disciplined in maintaining organisation, and a consistent workflow, and, if you're storing a bunch of disparate things in a single vault, an organisation/workflow that's universal enough to encompass everything rapidly becomes a pain in the arse to maintain. Inversely, topic-specific vaults tend to rapidly develop their own bespoke structures and workflows that match the topic closely and are very natural to work in.
For example, I have a large vault dedicated to Blue Prince (the game). As in several hundred megs worth of screenshots, over a hundred individual .md files (most of which are almost empty, but their existence is helpful in itself), folder structure that groups information on a per-puzzle basis, and it features pervasive use of tags to encode game features)
Another vault is a cookbook. I don't cook by recipe all that often, so that one mostly has reference tables for cooking times/temps for different foods in different appliances (I don't cook pearl barley often enough to remember how much liquid to use and what rice cooker programme to set).
However, every few weeks the official Obsidian sync makes an absolute mess of our shopping list (which has fairly frequent edits and deletions across our laptops and phones). I have no idea how to fix it.
This thread shows other users having the exact same issue as us: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-sync-incorrectly-duplic...
If it wasn't for this one issue I would be able to strongly recommend the tool but as it is now I just tell people it sort of works and I am mildly happy.
To be fair I don't think any of the popular alternatives like logseq or joplin even attempt to do automatic file merges and just dump files into a conflict mode.
What makes this issue really terrifying is its silent nature. I only noticed one of the notes having had its content replaced while casually exploring my library.
It took me an hour to restore the original content, which I only managed to do thanks to a (very obscure) macOS feature that keeps versions of most text files. It is only possible to see these versions when opening the file (in this case, the note) in TextEdit. I haven't found another place in the UI where these versions are exposed, which is yet another interesting thing I did not know about the OS I have been using for years now. I wonder why Apple does not expose this feature in the right click menu in Finder, for example.
In any case, as much as I love Obsidian I have been rarely and cautiously using it since this happened. File safety is the bare minimum requirement, so I cannot recommend Obsidian as it is right now.
[1] https://forum.obsidian.md/t/content-of-a-note-totally-replac...
Although there are some tools for better collaboration, but if it's just for one particular file it might be a bit "overkill".
But to give them a mention: Relay and Screen Garden are two community plugins that do it, HedgeDoc is a different app but it is a collaborative markdown editor, then the core team of Obsidian is also working on the multiplayer update.
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.
Moreover, with a basic setup, for the most part obsidian can be replaced by almost any text/markdown editor, so no lock in, nor security risks from using community plugins.
Apart from notetaking I also use obsidian to create slide presentations, which is probably one of the laziest ways to make presentations that look good enough.
I'm still building the habit for using it instead of scattering notes in text documents or self-DMs on various platforms, but during setup, the complexity was concerning, since I associate complexity in this kind of system with fragility. For now I am still in the exploring phase, so not ruling it out yet.
It's simple to setup and will work forever instead of paying for different providers that might shut down or increase their prices.
I'd pay for the option to host my own server with the official sync but they don't offer that for now.
I'm biased but I'd say the benefits over Google Drive are: 1. end-to-end encryption, 2. seamless integration with the app (e.g. version history), 3. granular control over what settings and files are synced for each device, 4. shared vaults.
In addition Obsidian Sync helps keep Obsidian 100% user-supported. Obsidian is not subsidized by advertising or any investors. And you can actually contact the team if you need help. See also: https://stephango.com/vcware
No person does actually.
[1]: https://www.zettelnotes.com/
https://github.com/Dullage/flatnotes
https://silverbullet.md/
What can I expect to gain by using Obsidian?
I have 0 community plugins. I use it for writing articles that becomes .qmd file for my quarto blog, I make lists, I track progress, and I have a standing file called scrip.md where I write tables, LaTeX equations, and screenshot and share them.
I have some folders, and I link some files. That's it. It has first class Linux desktop and Android experience, and that's all I want. No web browser, no internet dependence, no black box data processing, and complete freedom. If it is ever bought by potential enshittifiers, I just stop using it!
I don't use many Obsidian-only features to not be dependent on the benevolence of the creators.
For me, the 2 most powerful aspects are: - as mentioned in the article, there is no pricing plan, no limits, no enshittification or feature creep... Fully usable from now to eternity
- md format! So damn easy to export it to a proper pdf file, to copy it into a html page converter etc.
Great advice, I tried to get into Obsidian a few weeks ago and could immediately feel myself getting pulled into the "Workflow Optimization Spiral". I love nothing more than fruitlessly tooling with workflow stuff, in place of actually, you know, working. I kind of just decided to set it aside, rather than parse through exactly which parts would be actually helpful for stuff I needed that day. Really appreciate this blog post to help me revisit the app from a more practical starting place.
- 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 your entire git history. Do not use. Obsidian sync is cool and good and all, but I want git. And the existing git isn't just bad, it's deleterious.
- Spreadsheets. Literally just free-form tabular data would work too. Their "bases" thing isn't it. I just need to be able to sort data and keep it versioned. Google Sheets is a huge daily use product - if I had the same function in Obsidian, Gsuite would be dead to me.
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.
Have you tried some of the plugins that allow you to open CSV / TSV files within Obsidian?
But I understand that my use case is niche and I certainly don't want the Obsidian officially bloats itself into such feature creating.
Obsidian is appealing because it's available on iOS, but the whole approach ended up (for me) being more fiddly and less effective (again for me) than orgmode.
OTOH & to be fair, I've been using Org for a really long time.
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
If it helps Obsidian has a newish command called "Change vault..." that switches vaults without opening a new window.
If you want to sync only some of the things from a single vault and not other things, can't you just use different top-level folders? Have a "to-sync" folder and a "do-not-sync" folder, and only sync the to-sync one. I'm not sure if that's possible using Obsidian's paid sync, but it should be possible with other sync options.
I mostly use one Vault for my setup, then things like linking and search work the best: https://bryanhogan.com/blog/obsidian-vault
I wouldn't call it unsuable though? I have one separate vault for just journaling and that works well.