Obsidian v1.9.4: Notes that outlive the app.

We don't review software by clicking through the onboarding. We move our life in and wait for it to break. For three weeks, Obsidian was the only notes app on four machines:

Speed, first. The app opens in under a second on every machine we tested, including the 2019 laptop where Electron apps traditionally go to die. Search across 1,300 notes is instant. This matters more than any feature: a notes app you wait on is a notes app you stop using.

Links, second. The [[backlink]] model sounds like a gimmick until week two, when your notes start assembling themselves into an argument. It is the one feature here that changes how you think, not just where you type.

The exit door, third, and most important. We exported the entire vault to raw Markdown in 40 seconds and opened it in three other tools without loss. No notes app has ever failed us on day one. They fail us on year four. Obsidian is the only one where year four is structurally safe.

The core is free forever; the company makes money on Sync ($4/mo) and Publish ($8/mo). We paid for Sync with the company card for the test period. It is end-to-end encrypted, it handled four machines without a single conflict we could see, and it includes version history. It is also, strictly speaking, optional:

Three weeks is long enough to find the seams. None are deal-breakers; all are things you should know before week one:

The bars on the right are not vibes. Each maps to one question we answer after the three-week test, and each question is about year four, not day one:

Obsidian scores highest on the question most apps fail: can you leave? You can, completely, in 40 seconds. That single property is worth more than any feature on the roadmap — and it's the reason the score is a 9.0 and the pick is ours.