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Comment by dSebastien | Hacker News Reader

I haven't tried Zettlr, so I can't compare, and I'm not here to criticize, but what I miss in many tools in this Market is the ability to install and create extensions. That's why I'm a huge fan of Obsidian [0].

I publish my notes [1] using Obsidian Publish [2], and find the experience really good. I'm able to customize almost every aspect I need to.

There's also Quartz [3] that is a good compatible alternative to Obsidian Publish.

[0]: https://notes.dsebastien.net/30+Areas/33+Permanent+notes/33....

[1]: https://notes.dsebastien.net/

[2]: https://obsidian.md/publish

[3]: https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/

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I was a heavy Zettlr user for a few years, but I've since switched to Obsidian and haven't looked back. The extensibility is great, the editor feels snappier, and it's an overall better editing experience. Especially when you install plugins like Excalidraw for adding drawings straight from within the tool.

I also enjoy a similar workflow, but am increasingly running into the editor experience being a little janky: list items jump around when wrapping onto a new line, live mode not being truly wysiwyg, pdf styling being different from the reading view, etc.

This can all be worked around, but it makes for a less polished editing experience than some other offerings. We're also at a point where some major plugin functionality should rather be part of the main app, as it's becoming exceedingly difficult to maintain plugin CSS styles and async functionality without interfering with other plugins.

That said, I'm still a fan.

The way I do these days, is to have a minimal setting with the minimal plugins. Now, have that working `.obsidian` folder as a backup or a Starter Kit. Whenever Obsidian starts acting up, it is likely that I have a new plugin or there are too many; I just remove and get back my working Starter Kit `.obsidian` and I'm as fresh as New. Also, try not to have many non-text (or Markdown) files as much as possible in the Vaults.

Are you really pimping your 70 EUR Obsidian "starter kit" in a comment? WTAF?

I've used Obsidian for a couple of years, mostly for private to-do things

I used iCloud to sync between phone and laptop.

It worked great until recently.

Now I experience extreme jankiness: App sometimes takes forever to load, files missing, or suddenly disappearing as I open them. The problem, as far as I can read, is iCloud aggressively removing files locally when they're not used. I haven't tried Obsidian Sync yet.

Try with Dropbox (if you are using it) and set that folder (Vault) to sync offline. I use iCloud mostly to sync the computer settings, share amongst family members, but not for something which I need access locally such as the Obsidian/Markdown files. It works so far. I have over 5 or more Vaults (folders) managed by Obsidian via Dropbox.

The plugin "Remote Sync" works well too . It supports S3 , Drop box and many other cloud targets

iOS18 will bring "keep this always local" option for iCloud files

There's a setting to debug the starting time. It's interesting to find out the culprit (often a specific plugin)

Obsidian Sync is great, was worried you were describing it for a sec there

If you are on a Mac, you have to disable in sys prefs iCloud “Optimize Mac Storage”.

Your files should no longer be removed.

> I'm able to customize almost every aspect I need to.

Are you, though? I've not seen a single site that I know to be published with Obsidian Publish that does not have the content graph. And when I checked out Publish, I found no way to get rid of it and use that real estate for content of greater value to the reader. Has that changed?

I believe there was some custom CSS extension? If so, just add `.graph-view-outer { display: none; }` or similar.

Huh, I hadn't even noticed that the content graph was in the corner of every Obsidian docs page. That's a bit pointless.

There are settings, but at the end of the day it's just html/css/js. The publish site is not the easiest to customize, but it's possible.

We can create a js and css file.

I didn't need/want to change much, but I know I could. I just added tags, creation and update times, my newsletter form, plausible analytics etc.

One feature I lack is the ability to define canonical links..

What references and/or examples do you recall being the most useful as you transitioned form Obsidian User to Obsidian Plug-in Author?

I have some really basic html pages and cgi scripts I'd like to port in as a plug-in, but haven't sat down with it yet.

Wow, Quartz looks really good. Thank you for sharing!

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