# Obsidian Obsidian is a powerful note-taking app, also known as a [[Tools for Thought (TfTs)|Tool for Thought (TfT)]]. It can also be configured as a productivity app. Many things make it really special. Top among which are that it's free for personal and professional use, it stores everything locally using an open file format called [[Markdown]], and your data remains yours forever. ![[2025-08-20 Obsidian cover.png]] I've listed many more reasons to love Obsidian here: - [[Benefits of Obsidian]] - [[Why Obsidian is All You Need - From Simple Notes to Complete Productivity (Article)]] ## Features Obsidian has tons of awesome features. You can explore all of them in the official documentation. I've also published notes about some of those, along with tips & tricks: <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #obsidian/features WHERE public_note = true --> <!-- SerializedQuery: LIST FROM #obsidian/features WHERE public_note = true --> - [[Obsidian Bases]] - [[Obsidian CLI]] - [[Obsidian Callouts]] - [[Obsidian Command Palette]] - [[Obsidian Canvas]] - [[Obsidian File Recovery]] - [[Obsidian Headless Publish]] - [[Obsidian Graph view]] - [[Obsidian Publish]] - [[Obsidian Quick Switcher]] - [[Obsidian Ribbon]] - [[Obsidian URL Deeplinks]] - [[Obsidian Community Plugins]] - [[Obsidian Sync]] - [[2026-05-14 Obsidian Sync Passes Cure53 and Trail of Bits Audits]] <!-- SerializedQuery END --> ## Makers Obsidian was founded by [[Shida Li]] and [[Erica Xu]]. They met while studying at the University of Waterloo and built Obsidian while quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic. They released Obsidian at the end of March 2020. Version 1.0.0 was released in October 2022. In February 2023, [[Steph Ango]] joined as CEO. The team also includes: - [[Liam Cain]] — Engineering - [[Johannes Theiner]] — Engineering - [[Matthew Meyers]] — Engineering - [[Tony Grosinger]] — Engineering - [[Rebbecca Bishop]] — Customer success ## References - Official website: http://obsidian.md - Pricing for Sync & Publish: https://obsidian.md/pricing - Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_(software) - Plugins - Official directory: https://obsidian.md/plugins - Unofficial plugin directories - Obsidian Hub (vault maintained by the Obsidian community): https://publish.obsidian.md/hub/00+-+Start+here - With stats: https://obsidian-plugin-stats.vercel.app - Categorized: https://github.com/marekbrze/categorized-obsidian-plugins ## Community - Official Forums: https://forum.obsidian.md/ - Official Discord: https://discord.gg/obsidianmd - Official Sub-reddit: https://reddit.com/r/obsidianMD ## Templates & Samples - [[Obsidian Starter Kit]] - [Ideaverse Pro](https://www.linkingyourthinking.com/ideaverse-pro) by [[Nick Milo]] - [[Steph Ango]]'s approach & template vault: https://stephango.com/vault. Backstory [here](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7sWNTLShMfrBckjBTsAVnh?si=oFjheFrEQPCdb6T7bfmLxA). ## Developers - Developer docs: https://docs.obsidian.md/Home - Official plugin template: https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-sample-plugin - My plugin template: https://github.com/dsebastien/obsidian-plugin-template ## Related - [[Electron]] — the framework Obsidian is built on - [[Tolaria]] — AI-native, MCP-first markdown app by [[Luca Rossi]] (open source, AGPL) - [[Logseq]] - [[Benefits of Obsidian]] - [[Why Obsidian is All You Need - From Simple Notes to Complete Productivity (Article)]] - [[Obsidian Keyboard Shortcuts]] - [[Obsidian Callouts]] - [[Obsidian URL Deeplinks]] - [[Useful resources for Obsidian]] - [[Obsidian Bases]] - [[Obsidian Publish]] - [[Obsidian Sync]] - [[How I synchronize and backup my Obsidian notes]] - [[How I manage books and summaries in Obsidian]] - [[Obsidian (MoC)]] - [[Advice for people getting started with PKM]] - [[My Key Beliefs About Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)]]