How do I work with Obsidian on Mobile?

I am using Obsidian on my Mac. I am using Google Drive to sync the notes (md, images, and audio).

I am an iPhone user and I downloaded Google Drive app to view my notes (md, images, audio). Google drive don’t let me view md file and gives unsupported error.

I tried few free markdown ios apps ( Pretext, Blockquote etc.) which failed to open markdown file from File app where Google Drive is available as an option.

I used Safari browser and accessed drive.google.com. I was able to view markdown in preview.

I was able to open the markdown file for editing in Safari browser using Google Drive open with stackeditor option. Stackeditor add some config code in each file which is bothering.

I also found an app called Quick Editor - Text & Code which integrates with Google Drive and let me view and edit single markdown file effectively on iphone.

Remember its not full blown markdown editor which show inline image or link etc. It is an ad supported app. I am satisfied with it as of now. However I like to have a better md app with Google Drive integration.

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I’m debating whether to buy 1Writer or Notebooks. I see that just two weeks ago, Notebooks released a bunch of updates to the way the app handles internal links:

  • Notebooks 10.2 reliably opens linked documents by trying to autocomplete their names if necessary.
  • When clicking a Wiki link (or any other Notebooks internal reference) and the target document does not exist, you can now create a new document and insert a so called backlink (a link back to the referencing document). This makes it easy to create cross references.
  • Pasting notebooks:// links into plain text or Markdown no longer produces broken links.
  • New setting to activate and highlight Wiki Links in plain text already.
  • Options to control how smart Notebooks may be when resolving internal links. In the case that a document with the exact title as given in the link does not exist, Notebooks may look for alternatives containing the link in their title, or even in their contents.

Has anyone tried this? Any insights on how it compares to the way 1Writer handles links?

Oh interesting. I use 1Writer, but I’ve owned Notebooks for a while I’ll give it a shot and let you know if it’s as effective.

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Well, how about that. Guess I’m switching to Notebooks. It lets you click through links and coolest of all, if I have a double bracket link for a page that doesn’t exist, it says “create page with backlink” You get a new page Titled the same with an auto-link underneath in proper format that will bring you right back. That’s fantastic.

Not to mention that Notebooks is just a power program period, it has all sorts of endless features baked in though you can use it as a nice looking editor full stop. You need to go in and change a couple settings for Markdown and Linking. Also, I highly suggest using Dropbox but that goes for 1Writer too. However, in Notebooks case, it does not use iCloud syncing.

It’s really nice, it hops around in preview mode, the moment you hit the screen to edit it automatically pops into Markdown.

I’m very happy you mentioned this! Going to play around a lot more of course. I want to mess around on my iPad, but it worked great on iPhone.

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I’ve now tried both Noteplan and Notebooks and both are intriguing but not perfect…noteplan doesn’t seem to really work with Dropbox, which is a shame as that is what I need for syncing…
Notebooks is a little confusing to me, but got me thinking through its “extract tasks” function. Unfortunately you can’t just extract all the tasks from all the notes in one go, one has to do it note by note. However, there seems to be an app called Imdone.io that does exactly that - search through a folder of markdown files and extract tasks. Unfortunately this is not available for mobile, but it got me thinking if Shortcuts iOS could do the same? Can it extract a certain text defined by a marker (- [ ]) ? Then split the text into task name (save the world), tag (@heroic) and due date (tomorrow at 9am) and create a task with these bits in, say Todoist or reminders or Omnifocus? Or even the calendar? Is that possible? Or does Shortcuts only handle a single file?

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Have you tried moving your vault to the CloudKit method on Noteplan? That is really something and tasks will show up on your “Review” pane on Noteplan.

That said, there are still a lot of problema in using Noteplan as an iOS solution for Obsidian notes, mainly the problem with [[links|with pipes and other stuff]] and the title of notes.

Still it’s the most reliable syncing method I’ve found thus far.

You should use Nextcloud Notes!

Thanks, I have but I need it to work with Dropbox reliably for a variety of reasons (one of them being that I’m on a PC at work that I have very little control over, but they do let me use Dropbox). Other than that I quite like Noteplan.

I’ll check it out!

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Are there any iOS or iPadOS apps that support linked mentions?

The linked mentions pane is super useful in Obsidian, but I’m not finding any iOS apps that support it. This kind of limits the usefulness of my vault on mobile :confused:

No, not at this time. This may be the case with NotePlan 3 soon (it is available on the Mac).

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Gitjournal supports backlinks to a note (backlinks section displays all notes that link to the current note like obsidian backlinks panel)

Tried most of these options, but don’t see a reliable way to search across files on either android or iPad. Anyone find a good solution for searching across your entire vault, say if you have it in Google Drive?

iPad=1Writer!

Any recommendation for iOS with Obsidian vault stored on Google Drive.

1Writer doesn’t have Google Drive support apparently (just tested) also see people asking for it on Twitter here

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it would be really cool to split recommendations out between iOS and Android into respective threads?

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I don’t need to create notes on the go but definitely need access to them at all times. I use 1Writer on my iPhone and iPad for that and it works very well. However, Obsidian’s syntax for adding images to a document doesn’t work in 1Writer (images don’t show up in 1W). Yesterday, I switched to classic markdown links and that worked. It worked both ways. But adding an image that way doesn’t display its caption in 1W. Also, I see that 1W does not render highlights using == keys.

I have Notebooks10 installed on my iPhone but I cannot get it to sync with my WebDAV. I use Box to store my Obsidian vault. I have a 50GB Box account which I got as part of some promo years ago. Hence using Box, which syncs well with 1W.

Any help on getting Notebooks10 to sync is much appreciated!

Thanks a lot!

GT

I am sharing what I have already tried and what issues I still face. Let’s see if someone can help me or learn something rom what I did :slight_smile:

  1. Obsidian Vault on Windows synced with GDrive and GitHub
  2. I use a TiddlyWiki to generate html page whenever a file is pushed in GitHub Repo.
    • That html goes on gh-pages branch -> which publishes it on the GitHub pages
  3. I use a GDive folder sync on my android phone to sync my vault in a folder which is then edited using Markor.
  4. I have a few apps installed for Markdown editing in my iPad but they don’t seem to create file in the Drive, though I can edit existing file and save them. (Weird iOS)

The current system lets me create a published view of my notes via TiddlyWiki. TiddlyWiki supports markdown, wikilinks ( [[ ]] ) and even the backlinks (linked and unlinked mentions --> very cool). The graph view can also be added to the wiki, but its kinda old and heavy, so I avoided it.

So, I can read my notes anywhere but can edit only via android app or iPad app. Tiddlywiki does support editing on the go but it doesn’t push to github as individual files but rather as a whole html. So can’t be used, alas.

The problems with the system are:
On Android or iPad, I cant really get the full advantage of backlinking, but I can still capture my notes. I wish there was something that allowed me to edit with linking. (GitJournal felt very crude and unusable to me).

I couldn’t find a good app on iPad to commit changes to Github. Or to clone a repo on iPad, else it would have been much easier.

Figured I’d share my experience so far:

Using Obsidian on my Mac, along with iAWriter on my phone / 1Writer on my iPad with the vault stored in DropBox works really well EXCEPT for when attempting to write in links for notes with Zet ID’s on mobile. iAWriter doesn’t support linking, and 1Writer doesn’t have a “link autocompletion” functionality.

For now I’ve just been putting placeholder “!!” around topics I’d like to link but will have to wait until I’m at my computer proper.

Does anyone know of a mobile app that can autocomplete file names for linking?

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Tap the link button in 1Writer’s keyboard bar!

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