# Benefits of Obsidian
- Free for both personal and professional use
- Extremely fast
- Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS)
- Works wonderfully with AI (it's just text after all); cfr [[Use cases for AI and local knowledge bases]]
- Mobile support
- Faster and faster
- Widgets and quick capture on iOS (support for Apple Shortcut)
- Data stored locally
- You own the data (great for security and privacy)
- Works offline
- Tons of awesome features for Knowledge Management
- Links, backlinks, tags and nested tags, global/local graph views, automatic outlines, embedding, and MUCH more!
- Support for databases (called [[Obsidian Bases]])
- Support for visualizations (infinite canvas)
- Open specification: [[JSON Canvas]]
- [[Markdown]]
- Plain text
- De-facto standard
- Open and portable data format
- Supported by all text editors
- Highly customizable
- Huge library of plugins and themes
- Possible to create your own
- Assign hotkeys for anything
- Huge and friendly community (killer 'feature'!)
- Mobile support
- Various ways to publish and sync notes (e.g., Obsidian Publish, Obsidian Sync, etc)
- Can be used for task management, basic and advanced, with or without plugins
- No tracking or telemetry
## Related
- [[Reasons to use Obsidian]]
- [[Obsidian Starter Kit]]
- [[Why Obsidian is All You Need - From Simple Notes to Complete Productivity (Article)]]