Minimal notetaking with Neovim and Obsidian.

WHY?

Several years ago, I experimented with Obsidian for a while, finding it useful initially. However, as an advocate for free and open-source software, I discovered that Obsidian wasn't open-source, prompting me to abandon it.

Present Situation

By 2024, I found Neovim to be immensely satisfying, although not for note-taking purposes. My needs were simple - I required a platform to jot down daily tasks, links, or to-dos, without any frills. While I attempted to use Neovim for this, the challenge arose when I wasn't always near my laptop. Hence, I sought a solution to synchronize my notes with my phone. My initial thought was to sync them using Syncthing (which I'll discuss further). However, I still needed to access the notes through a text editor on my phone, which wasn't ideal.

Solution

One day, I stumbled upon a YouTube video featuring TJ DeVries using Obsidian for note-taking. I was intrigued - how could a core Neovim maintainer use Obsidian? Upon researching, I discovered that Obsidian offered a Vim mode, which delighted me. However, this didn't fully address my issues:

1. Even with Obsidian's Vim mode, I often forgot to open the app.
2. Despite the Vim mode, I still had to resort to using the mouse to navigate between notes. While Obsidian provided shortcuts, it felt cumbersome to learn them solely for note-taking purposes.

Then it struck me - I could edit the notes directly within the folder where the Obsidian vault was located, simplifying the process significantly!

The Setup

Laptop

I installed Obsidian solely to create the vault/folder in my home directory. I would then use Vim to access it and make any necessary changes, while Syncthing handled the synchronization in the background.

Syncthing

What is Syncthing?

Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program that securely synchronizes files between two or more computers in real-time. Your data remains private, allowing you to choose where it's stored and whether it's shared with third parties.

I installed Syncthing on both my laptop and Android device, linking it to my Obsidian folder. You can find tutorials on how to do this by watching videos from creators like Mental Outlaw or DistroTube.

This setup ensured that my folder was synced in real-time whenever both devices were online!

Android

On my Android device, I installed Obsidian and Syncthing, selecting the previously created/synced folder from Syncthing.

Now, I could view and edit my notes wherever I wanted, with changes almost instantly reflected on my desktop too!

Moreover, this setup essentially provided two backups of my notes on separate devices!

I also considered creating a Git repository and writing a script to run a cron job for automatic backups on GitHub. After all, shouldn't Microsoft monopolize everything, right?!

Conclusion

There's no conclusion - I'll continue using this setup indefinitely, or until I decide to explore something entirely different. Who knows what the future holds!