How do I work with Obsidian on Mobile?

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Note from dev: this post is legacy. Some information might still be useful, but Obsidian for Mobile has been officially released as of 2021/07/12.

Obsidian will have a mobile version! But it does not, just yet. Here are some options for working around that.

Your notes in Obsidian are kept in markdown files, which are at base plain text. Therefore, you can edit them with any text editor, and if you sync to your mobile device with any cloud service you can edit them there.

That said, what you choose for that depends on your circumstances and requirements.

For iOS

The most popular editors for iOS seem to be 1Writer and iA Writer. Both are well designed apps, with markdown editing at their core. 1Writer natively understands the linking and tag syntax that Obsidian uses, with the limitations that links to subfolders won’t work, neither will [[piped|links]]. iA Writer has several features dedicated to prose writing, such as detecting parts of speech. So, both have their uses depending on what kind of work you are doing.

Some users report that iA Writer works better with Google Drive, and 1Writer works better with Dropbox, but I’ve not been able to test that.

[Edit 2020-05-27] We’ve also had a report that mdnotes (app store link) is a good choice for a free markdown editor.

[Edit 2020-06-02] @tekacs has created a series of scripts for iOS markdown editor Editorial to emulate some of the features of Obsidian. You can find them here.

[Edit 2020-06-19] @ryanjamurphy has made a shortcut for 1writer to link to daily note here. Also @s0ph0s reminds us of Brett Terpstra’s ongoing roundup of iOS editors which is useful to look at.

For Android

iA Writer is also available for Android. Another popular option is Markor, some folks report that it is very good for rapid launching for quick note taking.

Using git

Gitjournal has been recommended for working with markdown notes in a git repository. It has versions for both iOS and Android. Working Copy (app store link) is an iOS-only tool for doing the same.

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Funny, I started a similar topic a couple hours ago:

Great minds and fools! Thanks for the info re: Android though.

edit: fixed broken link

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I’ll be recording a video on what I’m doing as an iPad first user…in the next few weeks.

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I’ve found that IA Writer on iPad works quite well for making notes on the go. You have to change it’s default file extension to .md though. By default it had .txt in my installation. Once that change is in place, I can just point Obsidian to iCloud folder for IA Writer and things get synced between my Mac’s Obsidian installation and iPad’s IA Writer nearly real-time.
.txt files do not show up automatically in Obsidian. Renaming those makes them visible straight away.

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I find the IA Writer is better on Android. Though what’s missing is obviously navigation through links.

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Navigation through links is something that 1Writer has. It will even search for a link if it doesn’t exist and if you hit the + button to create a note it will use the title you just searched for.

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Wait, how does the search work? Tell me more…

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I use Markor, and have for a while. It’s great!
For sync I use Resilio Sync. It lets me keep my files private and not rely on Dropbox et. al.

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Would 1writer be able to work with embeds? Seeing them and clicking through to them?

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Here is my workflow:
I found a markdown note-taking app on Play Store that can be integrated with git. So, I made my vault a GitHub repo. and now every note I take on my phone is pushed to Github. all what I have to do on my computer is git pull and I get all my notes from my phone.

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@Motlaq What’s the name of that app, please, so we can add it to the list?

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Working Copy can do this on iOS/iPadOS.

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Oh sorry, I thought I provided that. It’s GitJournal.

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You can see the [[Links]] and they are clickable as well as long as the note is in the same directory. Emeded ![[pages]] and ![[pictures.png]] don’t work unfortunately.
(using 1writer on ipad synced with a WebDAV server)

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Epsilon is another good one for Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ekartoyev.enotes&hl=en_US

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Does anyone have a good webapp they can use to quickly search/add/edit markdown from a mac or windows browser?

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Although I did not try as yet, for iOS Notebooks 10 app may be useful. Seems to create notebooks (actually folders) to organize the notes and support [[ ]] syntax.

I would love to hear feedbacks from the people who used it.

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But this doesn’t seem to have web app.

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In the latest version (0.67), the syntax for color and size no longer corresponds to that of Markor, but works the same as Epsilon Notes. I don’t know about any other differences, though Epsilon is Commonmark rather than GFM. iirc Markor is GFM.

I like both, but I’ve switched to Epsilon Notes because of this.

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Also noticed that markor renders "<!-- stuff meant to be hidden but Obsidian and Epsilon Notes hide it
The quotation mark needs to be removed - just added it so that it actually shows here.