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Obsidian Mobile Frustrations — Are There Workarounds or Plans to Improve?

Hello everyone,

I’m a long-time planner and creative professional with over 30 years of experience. After retiring from a large advertising agency, I’ve spent the last 4 years building a more organized, idea-driven life using Obsidian as my second brain.

I previously used Evernote Premium for many years, but switched to Obsidian and haven’t looked back — especially for:

  • Planning and strategy work
  • Organizing prompts and AI research
  • Capturing ideas and inspirations
  • Managing a knowledge-based, self-driven lifestyle

Obsidian’s flexibility is a perfect match for me.
Unlike Notion’s structured templates or Craft’s visual polish (which I do admire!), Obsidian gives me the feeling of being a developer of my own knowledge system — even though I’ve never written a line of code in my life.

The combination of plugins, markdown freedom, and personal customization is deeply satisfying.

:red_exclamation_mark:BUT… I’m really struggling with mobile usability.

Despite paying for Obsidian Sync, my experience on iOS (iPhone & iPad) has been disappointing. The biggest issues are:

  1. Extremely slow loading times – Even with Sync enabled, opening the app often takes 5–10+ seconds, sometimes longer.
  2. Lack of proper background handling – If I briefly switch to another app and return, Obsidian often reloads entirely.
  3. Plugin limitations – Many desktop plugins don’t work or aren’t available on mobile, limiting essential workflows.
  4. Web clipping limitations – On desktop, I use structured markdown clipping, but mobile only allows saving a plain link.
  5. Limited input options – I can’t quickly capture ideas using audio or images directly within Obsidian on mobile.

These limitations often lead me to use other apps in parallel just to capture or retrieve ideas quickly on the go.

:man_raising_hand: Questions for the community:

  • Are others experiencing similar frustrations?
  • How do you overcome these mobile limitations?
  • Has there been any official roadmap or developer feedback about improving mobile performance or UX?

I’d love to hear your workflows, hacks, or thoughts.
I still love Obsidian — and I want to believe its mobile experience can grow to match the greatness of desktop.

Thank you!

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1. Once, Obsidian took almost 2000 milliseconds to load on Android, and I was very annoyed. Hasn’t happened since. On iPad, it’s usually under 800 milliseconds. I’ve never had 10+ second loading times. Sounds very frustrating.

4. Web Clipper works in Safari on iOS and in Firefox on Android.

5. On iOS, the “Insert attachment” command does the job for me. On Android, unfortunately, my best workaround is to do it in Keep then transfer to Obsidian later.

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Many desktop plugins don’t work or aren’t available on mobile, limiting essential workflows.

I think the community plugin section needs to have information about mobile availability when I search for a plugin.

Is this information available anywhere ?

I don’t want or expect every plugin to work on a tiny mobile screen.

4

Could you please make a separate thread for each topic, to keep the discussions focused and easy to follow? Thanks!

I also recommend searching the forum. Most of these have been discussed at some point, so that will give you a head start.