It doesn’t work too bad for me. But I find it super annoying that, depending on which UI element was last in focus, you have to double tap a tab to get it to switch.
I was able to get people to reproduce this on the iPad with a totally fresh vault. Doesn’t seem to be something they’re interested in figuring out or fixing. :(
I tried to put my tasks all in Obsidian, but I eventually moved to Apple Reminders. Reminders sends me notifications about the task. Maybe Obsidian can, too, with a plug-in, but I don’t want to fuss with that. I also had problems entering a task in Obsidian on my computer and then having it show up on my phone quickly or vice versa, whereas (because I have both an iPhone and Mac) this is not a problem with Apple Reminders. Again, may be solvable with a plug-in but I don’t particularly feel like looking for a plug-in for something like this, no matter how irrational that feeling is.
Last time I checked, Reminders doesn’t have markdown support, and I’m not even sure if it lets me make line breaks. Not great for tasks that I need to write lots of detail about. But those tasks are usually far and few between, because I tend to write down the immediate next step to big tasks instead of writing down the big task and all the details I have to know about it.
Good to know for PC. I also just checked on my phone and it looks like I can also do line breaks in the notes. Not sure if I misremembered things or if they added this as a feature recently.
I manage tasks in Obsidian using the Tasks plugin. Takes a little extra time to input the tasks so I use it primarily for important activities.
I have sections in my weekly notes to list due and overdue tasks. And I have a “task overview” note that groups tasks according to different filters.
I’ve started tracking tasks for other people (that I need to follow up) by using their initials as a hashtag, I can then filter these in/out depending on what I need to see.
Works brilliantly for my purposes and I have an easy way of seeing any outstanding tasks
I love this! I’m working on it too and have used tools for GTD such as everdo and omnifocus. Learning new strategies for organizing my notes and tasks together but obsidian is robust enough to do it. Just takes setup willpower. Not sure about notifications yet but time sensitive stuff goes in my calendar. Obsidian not only has amazing use for tools but can track habits and journal so well, then give a birds eye view of each area from habits, tasks, completed tasks, and daily logs from a one week to one month etc. Life changing for me as i’ve fallen off the journal bandwagon many times but including it in one app makes it best for me.
It’s interesting to read this as I move my tasks from Things into Obsidian (experimenting)
Maybe l’ll report back and LYK. 😆
I do think it’s important to carve out the cruft. Maybe Tasks/Todos is cruft for you, and some other facet of the app is for another. It’s interesting to me!
I’ve drifted back and forth between keeping tasks in Obsidian via Tasks, and keeping tasks separate in Todoist but connected via the Todoist plugin.
I’ve finally settled for Todoist for now. I think until the Obsidian developers make good on their promise to make Obsidian task management a more comprehensive, native thing; there’s going to be too much friction for me keeping my tasks in Obsidian.
Most of my task capturing is either via email or iOS, neither of which are as easy as Todoist. Additionally, Todoist is much easier to process on mobile.
Yep its that plug in, Im not a big fan of having everything on one note, especially daily notes that I use to dump stuff, so I do full notes for each event I mark in the calendar.
I’ve used obsidian on android very briefly (I was still on android when I started using it) and the issues are definitely there. Maybe it’s not as half-baked as the iPad app, and doesn’t stand out as much in the horrible android app landscape, but the issues are certainly there.
I am sorry you are getting downvoted for expressing your opinion. I realize people who use iPhones don’t like Android. It’s why they prefer I phones, right?
Anyway, I consider it a good app. Like you said the sync is great (I pay for that feature happily). The start up time does bug me.
To deal with the UI issues I use a plugin that replaces the menu when you pull down from the top of the app. It lets you type in a command (any command) so really I basically don’t use the menus much. For me the app is mostly used for reviewing data on the fly, for which I find it more than adequate.
You can always edit your markdown files with any other app and Obsidian will handle that well (just make sure it runs to sync). Not sure if you can access the files on the iPhone like that, though?
Maybe that’s where I’m going wrong. I want an app that gives me everything obsidian does on PC, with the same ease, on my phone. But maybe that’s just not easy to achieve.
Downvotes shmownvotes 😁
I used android pretty much since it first released, I’m entitled not to like it.
As a developer, I can see the line they are walking. It’s a choice they made to try to keep the experience the same but using completely different interfaces. There’s going to be rough edges. I am fine with it but I do know what you mean. I’m not doing any heavy lifting on mobile. Capture, review, checking items off lists - that’s what I’m using it for.
I think the app is great but within the parameters of the big choice to work the way it does.
I actually used to use emacs on my phone for a long time via an ssh session so I guess I’m fairly tolerant of unorthodox interfaces (was doing this to have full org-mode experience). To each their own.
Yeah I mean compared to emacs of all things, obsidian on iPhone is a dream.
Compared to apple’s own app, for instance? It’s a lot behind. And I don’t mean in terms of what you can put on notes (my notes are almost 100% text-only and I want nothing but markdown), but in terms of how usable the interface is.
I find I have to remember to open the iOS app daily to make sure it’s in sync with the vaults on 2 Macs. I’m also mindful to disable all non-essential plugins on phone.
Do you have an example of an app that’s offers a great phone and desktop experience? I find that it’s often less than ideal on desktop to prioritize the phone, or like #obsidian can be challenging to navigate with your finger what was meant for a mouse or trackpad.
@Colman@Sheltac@grabyourmotherskeys if I go a couple of weeks without loading on iOS then it can take as long as 15 minutes to fully sync and it can crash a bit.
I think I found the offending plugin that wasn’t happy on mobile and that’s why the delay thing you mentioned is something I’ll check out.
On mobile I just want to check something or throw a quick note on my daily page. I don’t do much more than that.
It’s fine for me on iphone 11. Only real issue is there are a few plugins that dont work, but it’s awesome they work at all! So may apps on apple dont have those features. I did have an issue with excalidraw file causing the app to crash on start. The file was synced from my laptop.
Do you use the kanban* plug-in? That’s one of the ones that seems to work worst for me. At some point it wouldn’t let me write on cards because the submit button was hidden behind the keyboard.
Personally not yet. I can see some use cases for it but dataview’s power is incredible. As long as i can pull up notes on my phone, then i’m good. I use a different app to write down things quickly. It then syncs to my obsidian inbox folder.
Great insight! This is one of those real “a-ha” moments that keeps me using Obsidian today.
One concept that backlinking and a bottom-up note structure gave me insight on was actually this exact concept of “emergence.” The idea that out of a large amount of chaos, order and structure can naturally form. I’ve been able to connect it to everything from philosophy to mental health to natural language and it’s very exciting.
I am a person with late diagnosed ADHD/autism so my life breeds chaos. The assurance that you can just write without having to worry about where the note goes is so powerful.
Nicole van der Hoeven is a great resource! If you’re looking for more YouTubers, I would recommend Artem Kirsanov. He has a couple of videos on bottom-up note taking/zettelkasten, but also has some really interesting conceptual videos on how people learn and retain knowledge. He’s a computational neuroscience student but he’s great at being interesting and not overly dry about his explanations. My primary Obsidian resource on YouTube is Bryan Jenks. I’ve basically stolen most of his setup because he also has the same pain points I do (namely having terrible working memory and issues starting tasks).
I started my wiki in TiddlyWiki, which by default means links and search were the only way to find notes. When I moved to Obsidian, I tried sorting everything into PARA-style folders, but… it’s way too much maintenance to mess about sorting everything so I’ve quit caring. I operate exclusively through links and search.
Everything is still in the folders but going back to a mostly-flat folder structure is on my to-do list. Since I’m already not using them to navigate my notes, though, I’m not in too big a hurry.
No need to apologize. Thank you for sharing your idea. I’ll keep an eye out for natural folders. I think I still have two folders that qualify for this as stated in my post: a diary folder and a template folder.
Personally, I almost wish Obsidian didn’t expose a folder structure - but the program is flexible enough to enable hiding the file browser, so that works for me.
Since TiddlyWiki doesn’t even mess about with the concept of folders, imo that forces users to dive in and really think about how they’re connecting notes through linking - which helps build a sort of mental roadmap through their notes. Roam and Logseq are similar, I believe.
I went through multiple steps of using and not using folders. In the end a had a moment where I asked myself a question. What is a page? What should it contain and how big it should be? Then it struck me and more questions popped up. Why do I need one way of linking when I link a page, but different way when I want to link a specific part? The answer is that I don’t need Obsidian. I need an outliner. An infinite fractal document which enables me to link specific parts of its tree. So I switched to Tana and then to Workflowy.
My method of organizing “pages” is quite simple. I use alphabet. It’s surprising to me that I don’t see it being recommended as a default option online. Instead I see Johnny Decimal, PARA, LATCH and other names just to sell an online course. Now what is a page in my system. It’s a search keyword and I associate with the information.
Next step that arises sooner than later is to reduce number of pages visible. I do this by progressively grouping pages into “folders” which in case of an outliner means nesting it under each other. For example I might discover a cool fact about Prague. I have a lot of pages that start with P so I group them. Then I notice that a lot pages start with Pr so I group them again and then I create Prague node.
Searching is simple as well. If I search for my friend John I might click through J > Jo > John but it is logical in my eyes and three levels are not that common anyway.
I’ve never had a paper-drawer notecard system, but one is described in the book The Mixed-Up Files of Ms Basil E Frankweiler and I’ve always sort of aspired to that. The way you organize alphabetically has those kinds of paper file / encyclopedia vibes to me!
That sounds overly complicated to simulate, what you already have: a search function. (unless you are talking paperback, but then why subscribe to ObsidianMD :D)
This community has a lot of good ideas. The most important one is the need for permanent notes. This allows me to forget stuff because I know I’ll find it in a shape that is useful for me.
Then there are ideas on how to do it. Zettelkasten, PARA, Johnny Decimal etc.
And finally what to write for example habit trackers, daily notes, ledgers etc.
I like looking at other people notes because it gives me ideas on how to improve my own notes. I’m not in a stage where I would blindly copy anything, but if something catches my eye I think how to integrate it into my notes. And that’s the value I get from this community.
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