Obsidian: what owners actually say

Owners feel the official Sync service at ~$100/year is too expensive; multiple users say they'd happily pay ~$30 but instead resort to Dropbox or other generic file-sync tools.

Users report spending excessive time configuring and maintaining plugins, forgetting setup steps when things break. Each plugin needs configuration, and feature-rich ones with no support become a maintenance burden.

On iOS, creating a quick note is delayed because Obsidian must finish syncing and surface plugin notifications before navigation to a new note is possible, making it slower than Apple Notes for capture.

Some owners feel the broader note-taking ecosystem (including Obsidian) is overly focused on features like node-graph views and backlinks that serve obsessive note-takers rather than people who want to actually use their notes for output.

Owners warn that when maintaining a note-taking system starts to feel like work, it's the first step toward abandoning note-taking entirely — heavy plugin stacks accelerate this.

Owners switched specifically so their notes remain theirs — plain local markdown files that almost any tool or AI agent can read, with no cloud lock-in.

The Canvas file format is text-based JSON you can open in Notepad++, sharply contrasted with OneNote's opaque binary format. Owners appreciate this transparency and portability.

Beyond brainstorming, owners use Canvas for code-review workspaces, writing/drafting dashboards, and project conception stages — collecting links, sketches, and notes in a zoomable layout.

The API and plugin system let owners build or install functionality that turns Obsidian from a casual tool into a daily driver, including AI integrations for client-memory databases and note analysis.

Owners feed their vault to Claude, Codex, or MCP-based tooling via local markdown folders, enabling trend analysis, action-item extraction, and contextual memory across notes.