I would certainly do that too, but let’s not push the developers with these kind of demands. They are busy doing a great job for which I want to congratulate them Blythe way ;-)!
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I’d pay for Android and might occasionally use iOS if it were free.
I do think that, from a sustainability point view, mobile might be better as a paid option. Not expensive for basic functionality, but with option to add ‘Pro’ features later if there were enough demand.
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Agree, but it’s on the roadmap, and any ideas might be helpful when the time comes. We already know it’s envisioned as a limited reading/writing app, not full whiz-bang.
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I would certainly do that too, but let’s not push the developers with these kind of demands. They are busy doing a great job for which I want to congratulate them Blythe way ;-)! @RikD
The developers have in place a system for requesting features and to date have shown quite a resilient approach to those requests. Not sure they need us serving as gatekeepers to ‘protect’ them.
I do think that, from a sustainability point view, mobile might be better as a paid option. @Dor
I’d certainly pay for an ipad app but the way app stores work can be tricky for sustainability - a large cut off the top and complex rules that can trigger a cut of subscription services. The Devs have a workable ipad tool for Dynalist though so I’m hopeful…
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I’d love, love to have an iPad/iPhone app.
My workaround at the moment is using Dynalist. My iPad is my mobile device - after 15 years, I bought an iMac to replace my Macbook - and am thoroughly enjoying having a desktop agian. I made that decision because the iPad (Pro) has gotten to the point - with pencil and keyboard - that it can function as a laptop. I love this combo. I love being able to take handwritten notes (using OneNote, if you’re wondering) when I need to, plus highlighting documents, etc. And, also being able to do all of the other remote work that I need to do is possible with the iPad Pro.
Now, enter Obsidian. This application is remarkable for what it does. I’d love to see a feature rich version of it on the iPad - even the features in the current pre-1.0 version would be wonderful to have. I know it will be a while, but I started to distill the contexts of my devices and arrived at the following approach, for now:
I use 1Writer via iCloud as my Obsidian synced database, while remote. I rarely do write there. Instead, I’ve found Dynalist to be excellent for capturing quick thoughts, our even outlines of ideas from PDFs, books, etc. that I read while I’m on my iPad. Dynalist content is easily copyable into Obsidian when I get back to the iMac.
The added benefit of this approach, which I wasn’t really thinking about until I implented this flow, is that when I’m capturing notes and ideas in Dynalist, I’m not busy fiddling with potential linkages in Obsidian. But, the process of copying to Obsidian forces two things on me. First, even copying and pasting reinforces notes that I took. Second, as I digest my note, I can start thinking about links, which have emerged from unexpected places. But, if I really want to write a longform note, I can quickly pivot over to 1Writer to create a document. The Dynalist method, however I’ve found to be a great augmentation to the remote approach.
Upside of iOS14 is that I can ‘float’ dynalist over-top OneNote, PDF Reader (or just about anyhting), so when I scribble something, I can formalize it quickly in dynalist. Now, I could do the same with 1Writer, but I like the feature set of Dynalist.
Again, this is imperfect, but it’s been working for me for the last few weeks.
I’d love to have full functionality on the iPad, but this his what works for me, for now.
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Hi man, thanks for that, I followed exactly your setup and it seems to work well. There is some problem or limitation that you have discovered so far? It will work also for accessing the same vault from different machines?
@roguefury That is pretty much an exact description of my current workflow. One minor frustration there is that Dynalist export options don’t include markdown. Closest option is plain text with the dash option checked. I have placed a request regarding that on the Dynalist Discord server - if you’re interested you might support that request.
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The only limitation that I can think of is in relation to [[]] links. NotePlan doesn’t have support for absolute/relative link formats yet, so [[Folder/Note]] will create a note called Folder/Note if you click on it in NotePlan. I think also as a general practice new links have to be created from within Obsidian for Obsidian to register them properly. I haven’t had issues with this yet as I generally use NotePlan only for my tasks / daily notes, or notes that don’t require linking.
Got it thanks! I wrote a post on NotePlan Reddit pointing at some difficulties that I encountered, maybe you can take a look and join the conversation or give me some suggestions if I haven’t understood something.
@greasemonkey - Will do. Based on the level of interest that people are showing for Noteplan, I’m also trying it out on the iPad.
That said, I’d really like to see some sort of logical linkage between two great products in Dynalist and Obsidian.
Does anyone have any advice on how to create a seamless Android-to-Web experience?
I’ve tried giving storing my vault on GitHub and using GitJournal but keep losing changes as it only uses master branch and the pull/push system isn’t smooth.
Using something like Google Drive or Dropbox seem like okay solutions but I’m still a little worried about stuff getting out of sync.
I don’t have the time to develop my down application at the moment, and don’t particularly want to if one is planned by Obsidian themselves
I’ve had no problems using Dropbox, though I keep backups as well.
I make no attempt to use links on Android (or iOS), though I think Epsilon Notes can be persuaded to add wikilinks. I use wikilinks because I prefer them and shortest path because it’s the most functional within Obsidian.
I accept any friction that produces (not much actually) in the expectation that a mobile app will appear at some point.
1Writer handles backlinks just fine. Images work with a conventional
syntax.
So backlinks and images on 1Writer are fully compatible with Obsidian?
I’m looking for a way to have the same effect both on mobile and desktop.
PS: sorry for the dealy, I’ve been testing TiddlyWiki in the meantime: it’s very good, but I like having all my knowledge in the very open .md format.
“Fully” compatible might be too strong of a decree. You need to be careful of a few things. For example, you typically need to use Relative links (Preferences → File). You also can’t use heading links (or block references) in 1Writer. There might be some other gotchas. (Search around on this forum/this thread to see others discussing it!)
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ok, so I have read through all of this, but what I would like to know is how to get my notes out of Obsidian and into Word without them being a brackets mess. iA Writer seems to offer this, though the simplicity and the ability to click on links in 1Writer appeal. So, I know these are to some degree two different problems, but I thought I could combine my iOS problem (how to access notes, and how to add a note quickly) with my .doc problem in one swift solution without going to another app.
So, I saw that 1Writer exports/shares to PDF and rich text, but it didn’t say where to it would share the rich text? How does that work?
And now that I have read through all of this, I’m as confused as ever - can I tap a link in iA Writer and it will take me to that note? I’ve lost track…or would Noteplan do any of this?
I do this sometimes. Open in iA Writer and export to Word is gonna be your best bet. You are going to need to find/replace the [[ wikilinks ]] brackets though.
You might be able to avoid this by using Relative links (Preferences → File) and by using Markdown links (Preferences → Editor). I’m not sure how 1Writer/iA Writer handle those links, but it’s worth a shot, because they’d just convert to linked text in Word. (We’ll see an exporter eventually that will deal with this automatically, I imagine.)
However, if you’re linking to things that don’t exist to the Word doc, you might get a bunch of broken links!
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and this reminded me of block embeds…exporting them from Roam didn’t work, so I am assuming they won’t work easily either here. this will be a huge problem if I am compiling text from multiple source notes (e.g. quotes from literature notes).
just checked out iA Writer - whoa, expensive!
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That’s true. Again, the dream is an exporter! Hopefully soon/eventually.
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Finally wrote up a guide on NotePlan 3 + Obsidian: Using NotePlan as an Obsidian companion (iPhone and iPad compatibility!)
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I want to second this - NP3 works very well as mobile companion for Obsidian. And this is a great, detailed writeup - nice work @ryanjamurphy.
I’d been waiting until NP3 was out of beta to mention it again but for me the headlines are that NP now supports folders for its “notes” section, so [[wikilinks]] generally work as expected, and using CloudKit the sync is more or less instantaneous. It’s pretty darn close to a “just works” solution if you’re all in on Macs/iOS. I don’t typically use blocks or transclusion in Obsidian, so for me the hardest thing is just to remember to make the first line of the note and the file name match.
NP3 will be a subscription app, which reasonably enough many people don’t like. But for me NP has been a great tool, and it keeps getting better by leaps and bounds. NP3 is really nice, both on desktop and on iOS. I made the call to drop a couple of other subscriptions to make room for it.
And just as a last big picture note, I’m using Obsidian to handle some work specific long notes that change quite often during the day, NP to make changes to those notes from my phone and iPad, and to manage more “life” stuff, and then the whole mess gets indexed into DevonThink, which has extremely powerful search and file manipulation, as a long term archive.
-Robert
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