Screenshot: Khamosh Pathak
It isn’t difficult to find an app designed for journaling. In fact, it’s more challenging to choose one from the sea of options out there. Worse yet, most lock their features behind a subscription service, and store your notes themselves, making it hard to switch apps in the future. But you actually can journal for free and maintain full control over every word you write—with Obsidian.
How Obsidian works
Obsidian is a minimal, fast, free note-taking app trying to carve a place of its own in a world dominated by Notion, Evernote, and even Apple’s own Notes app.
The hook? You own the data. Instead of uploading your notes to a service that can change subscription plans at a whim (I’m looking at you, Evernote), you choose where to store all your notes in simple text files. They can be on your computer, if that’s where you spend the majority of your note-taking time, or you can put them in a cloud-based storage solution like iCloud Drive or OneDrive. Better yet, when you manage your own storage, all of Obsidian’s myriad of features are free. If you want Obsidian’s own sync feature, it will cost you $8 per month.
Speaking of features, there are quite a few stand-outs. The show-stealer is how notes can be linked to each other effortlessly, like hyperlinks to web pages. These notes can be stored in any folder, but can be connected using good old hypertext. Start linking notes religiously, and the app will create a visual map of all your connected notes. There is also support for a wide variety of extra features using community plugins.
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How to set up Obsidian as a journaling app
Obsidian is a powerful, complex knowledge base that you can take your time exploring. However, you can leave all that aside and focus on what makes Obsidian such a great notes app: the writing environment.
If you’re only starting to use Obsidian, it might sound overwhelming, but take your time to explore. Once you get into the zone, you’ll get a lot out of this seemingly eccentric note-taking app. After installing the app, create your Obsidian Vault in iCloud Drive or OneDrive. Then, there’s not much setup left. Create a folder structure from the sidebar and click the Daily Note button from the sidebar panel (it looks like a Calendar icon). You can also start a daily note by searching in the Command Palette (Command/Control + P keyboard shortcut).
Obsidian will instantly create a new note in the current directory with today’s data at the top. From there, you’re free to write your journal entry. The app supports Markdown, and you can use the traditional keyboard shortcuts for formatting. The note can handle images, links, tables, and even checklists if you want to use the daily note as a way to manage your day.
Once you get used to Obsidian, we would suggest you take a look at community plugins. Find them in Settings > Community Plugins > Browse. Here, search for plugins related to things like bullet journaling and task management. Obsidian Memos is a great plugin if you’re a fan of quick, visual journaling.
