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Comment by lelandfe | Hacker News Reader

My one gripe – and it's a big one – about Obsidian is that it just does not give one whit about trying to integrate with macOS. It feels like an Electron app that the developers just checked the "macOS" checkbox on; like I'm stepping into the captain's chair of a capable but ugly tugboat when I Cmd-Tab over. (Which is a shame, because it is a capable boat.)

Basic hotkeys are modal, somehow (Open Help from sidebar. Try to use Cmd-W to close). No interface tabbing support (this app is likely an a11y fire). No proxy icons. The menu bar is supremely basic – and they don't capitalize their own app's name ("About obsidian"). The command palette calls Finder the "system explorer." Somehow no print support, anywhere. Custom context menus abound.

Best one: close the main Obsidian window on macOS and try to figure out how to reopen it. (Reopening the app is one... there's one other way!)

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Apple makes it difficult to develop apps from another platform (unique low level libraries like Metal, requiring a Mac for publishing). I think one result of this is that cross-platform app authors who aren't ALSO primarily MacOS users just kind of throw their code over the fence and hope it works. I can't blame them.

>My one gripe – and it's a big one – about Obsidian is that it just does not give one whit about trying to integrate with macOS.

This might get better soon.

@kepano, the developer of Minimal, is working on a new "default theme" for Obsidian. He said it "will follow many of the same design principles as Minimal, particularly in making Obsidian feel native across platforms. It will differ in that it will prioritize accessibility and affordances more than Minimal does. In addition the new default theme will make customization and theme development easier than before."

Not sure how much a theme will address this stuff, but I am glad people are paying attention.

I like Obsidian, but yea, there are some fundamental weirdnesses as a result of it basically being a web app. It'll never feel all that native.

For me though, much of the real issue is the iOS app. I feel like it needs some big modifications to how it operates in order to make quickly doing particular things a lot easier.

When I'm on my phone, the biggest thing for me is I need to take a quick note. I'd love to just open Obsidian, click a button to let me put a note in an inbox, then when I'm on my Mac I can sort the inbox like I would a task manager. I don't generally do deep work on my phone, I only really perform reference and quick notes type actions.

There is a guide for "macOS integration"

https://minimal.guide/Guides/macOS+configuration

As mentioned elsewhere, solves none of my list. This mostly moves stuff around and hides certain UI elements.

This is wonderful news to hear. Minimal is a fantastic theme once configured with it’s plugin.

The OS style theme options really do wonders for making it feel more native on macOS. It’s especially nice with dark mode enabled

Be sure to also check out the Prism theme, i personally prefer it over Minimal;

Light: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/damiankorcz/Prism-Theme/ma...

Dark: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/damiankorcz/Prism-Theme/ma...

Repo: https://github.com/damiankorcz/Prism-Theme

Use the Minimal theme, and apply the settings tweaks per https://minimal.guide

Feels pretty macOS-like to me.

This looks nice and solves none of the problems I listed. Frameless mode is, if anything, less native

Most of these issues are being addressed in Obsidian 0.16 :)

Is there somewhere one can view that work? I have to admit I'm skeptical, because most of the parent comment's complaints are pretty fundamental to how the app is built.

But I share their gripes, and it's similarly important to me. And I'm currently trying to choose a tool in this category to adopt.

Release notes can be found on the Obsidian forum[0]. Roadmap is on Trello[1]. You can also learn more via the official Obsidian Discord group.

The app will continue to be developed with Electron, however Electron does provide APIs for things like native menus. Making Obsidian feel native is a high priority currently.

The latest public release (v0.15) contained several improvements towards that goal: multiple window support, native fonts, native scrollbars, native app menus.

Currently in progress is a new default theme I am working on. I previously made Minimal[2] as a community theme, which was designed around the goal of making Obsidian feel native on macOS.

[0] https://forum.obsidian.md/c/announcements/13

[1] https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap

[2] https://minimal.guide

Awesome, thanks for sharing and thanks for your work!

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