The team at Obsidian have been making changes. Specifically, these changes have been coming to their mobile app. Today, I’m going to talk a bit about what I’ve noticed already and what I’m still expecting from the app’s upgrades in the future.
Let’s get started…
Mobile startup changes
The first thing I noticed about mobile was the icon’s new appearance when you launch the app.
A small change, I know, but a change nonetheless…
The second thing I noticed about the app’s startup was that it was considerably faster. The time to launch of Obsidian on mobile has long been one of its downfalls and it seems as though the team have given it some work.
Now that Obsidian boots up much faster on mobile this has reduced the barrier to opening the app and doing work. So I’ve started doing this more…
Why I like using Obsidian on mobile
I don’t always have my laptop around to work with ideas. For a significant time, I used Todoist to capture ideas even though it’s a tool much better suited to simple tasks. I thought it better to capture in Obsidian, but didn’t have a plan of how to do so.
Then I committed to learning to use the app on mobile and set up Apple Shortcuts to capture ideas and thoughts. Now they’re saved into my Obsidian inbox and I come back to them when I’m on desktop. Using sync I’ve got the privilege of approaching these ideas when I’m in the right space physically and mentally.
There’s more about this system in the article below:
With the improved features of quick startup and idea capture, I’m more drawn to doing work on the app when I get the chance…
Just recently I was sitting in the waiting room in the hospital (doing great now, don’t worry) and the queues were as long as usual. I got my phone out — as I hadn’t brought my laptop with me — and I put together a draft of a short post for a different platform.
Before, when Obsidian wasn’t as usable on mobile I wouldn’t have had a choice but to sit there doing nothing.
Even though mobile use is not as powerful as on desktop, with arguably more opportunities to context-switch, I’m very happy with the new changes and opportunities in situations like the above.
Let me give you some more insight (think rules and limits for use) into how I approach using Obsidian on mobile now…
Best practices for using Obsidian on mobile
First of all, it’s a companion for the desktop workspace at best. Don’t expect Obsidian on mobile to become a replacement for a good setup on a computer or laptop. It won’t ever be.
Set up your mobile to be best at things that you might want to do on the fly, for example capturing ideas and making quick updates to notes, rather than long writing sessions in your Zettelkasten.
On my MacBook version of Obsidian, I have 17 installed community plugins all doing various things (still minimal, I promise). On mobile, however, I have just 6 right now.
They’re the basics, allowing me to be able to do what I need to do and not any more. I don’t want to distractions from what I’m doing in the present moment.
Admittedly I’ve not been using mobile for too long, so if I come across another edge-case scenario where I need an extra plugin in the future I’ll be sure to add it, but up to now I’ve been functioning very well with just six.
Having said this, you can make system changes and use certain plugins on mobile only as well. If there are things certain plugins might do just on mobile to improve setup there, take them on board.
For a while, I used a plugin called Commander on mobile because I thought it would be useful to have access to more tools on my mobile toolbar.
Just remember that we’re trying to keep quite a minimal system and that often you don’t need as much as you think you do. After a while, I got rid of Commander because the small added function wasn’t worth the complexity of an entire added plugin.
Remember, you’re trying to make a companion to your desktop app, not something entirely new. This is important and is something the app Tana does really well…
I used Tana for a while when I was looking for the right app for work. They have a unique approach — their mobile app is simply a companion optimised to capture in as many ways as possible and get them on the desktop app seamlessly to work with later down the line.
You can’t access your main body of notes, only gather information and add to it.
Now you need to find the one thing that Obsidian mobile would be useful to you for and optimise for that. Like Tana, my Obsidian mobile app is optimised quite heavily for simple idea capture rather than long-winded writing, as I mentioned in the article I linked above.
What’s next for Obsidian on mobile?
In all honesty, I don’t know that much. I’m aware that they might be improving sync for mobile and boosting startup time but that might have rolled out for me already — I’m an Obsidian insider and get updates slightly earlier than others.
In checking the roadmap, I noticed that Obsidian was working on a mobile-native solution for information capture. This made me very excited as after all, I mentioned that information capture was the primary reason I use Obsidian on mobile. Although I have good shortcuts set up for this already I’m looking forward to seeing what additions they’re planning to add.
If this feature comes out I’ll likely write another piece to cover it and give my thoughts so keep an eye out.
As always, thanks for reading!
P.S. Seeing as there are all these upcoming upgrades to Obsidian on mobile and because I’ve started using it more heavily myself, I’m going to work on a mobile feature update to my system PARAZETTEL.
It’ll be the V3 of the vault, which is now in V2. If you want to learn more and be the first one to know when this V3 comes out then you should click the link below…
9 comments
A good mobile app is what drew me to Obsidian to start with. As I take the subway back and forth a lot, where cell service is spotty, I couldn’t really rely on other apps. But Obsidian works very well offline and can sync once I get back to street level. So I’m happy the company is working on improvements.
That’s a great use case for the offline capability Nick and I agree that Obsidian takes care of this like not many apps can. I’m sure other features I’ve mentioned in this piece take a back seat when you need something specific and Obsidian is far from being a poor app; even so, I’m sure that the improvements will be welcome when they arrive. Thanks for leaving a comment!
What version are you using?
It’s version 1.7 on iOS, which I believe you can only access in the beta version through Testflight through having a Catalyst license at the moment.
If these features are in the beta version I shouldn’t think it’ll be long before they’re released in the main version of the app though.
“Although I have good shortcuts set up for this already ”
Could you expand on this please ? Are you on Android or ios ?
Do you use the Tasks plugin ?
What did you do to replace Commander ?
Hi Paul,
Thanks for asking – I’m on iOS and I use Apple Shortcuts to quickly capture content. In short, it’s a shortcut to trigger a native text capture feature on either my phone or my Mac, with the content I type into it pasted into a markdown file in the ‘Inbox’ folder in my vault. If you want more detail about this workflow it’s in the other piece that I linked to from within this article above.
I don’t use the Tasks plugin, preferring instead to use a pen and notebook/index cards to capture the day’s tasks physically before carrying them out.
In terms of replacing Commander, I just removed it without seeking a replacement. The only reason I had the plugin installed at the time was to have an extra row on my mobile toolbar. It seemed overkill to have such a plugin installed for just that feature so I reduced the number of tools in my toolbar and went back to having just a single row, removing the plugin from my configuration.
Thanks for reading and asking questions, I hope that what I’ve given here helps to answer them! If you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
— Theo
Thanks for the answers.
I use Android phones/tablets so do not know much abbout Apple Shortcuts.
I seem to oscillate between using Obsidian Tasks, Google Tasks, index cards, small pocket notebooks, Todoist for task management. never settling on one system as they all have shortcomings.
My use of Commander on the desktop/laptop is to create a very personal task bar linked to QuickAdd actions… on the mobile I use it to just have an extra set of commands on a toolbar. May need to rethink that.
Looking forward to Parazettel 3.0 – do you have a planned release date yet ? Let me know if you want someone to look it over prior to release
Your answer resonates a lot about not being able to choose a task management system – I’ve written all sorts over the last couple of years about apps for tasks, pen and paper systems like bullet journaling and more. Recently I’ve just been doing what feels right and not dedicating much thinking or wondering about whether it works or not.
I noticed that Commander provided this ‘command on Commander bar’ feature – I thought it might be useful on mobile but seeing as I add ‘quick content’ as such from outside the app it never ended up working.
PARAZETTEL V3 doesn’t have an official date attached to it yet, although unofficially I can tell you it’s likely to be out within the next month. I’ll let you know when I’ve put more together and if you’re happy, you can have a look through, many thanks for the offer of help!