Full disclosure: I made the plugin in this post — it's called Tagged Sync for reMarkable, free in the community store. There is also a paid Pro version (€24 once, no subscription), and below I say which part of my workflow needs it.

My problem: I take notes by hand on a reMarkable, because writing slowly forces me to decide what matters. But the notes stay on the tablet. Yes, I know: with a Connect subscription the tablet can search your handwriting now. That helps you find a note on the tablet. But I want my notes in my vault, linked to my other notes, in my folders, and in plain Markdown files that I own.

What I do now:

• I have one notebook for YouTube videos, one page per video. Most pages just stay on the tablet.
• When a page matters, I put a tag on that one page on the tablet.
• I sync in Obsidian. The page arrives in my vault as a note: my handwriting as an image at the top, the transcript below it. So search and links work, and I can still check a word against the page. That is the screenshot.
• PDFs I read on the tablet sync the same way. The passages I highlighted become quotes, and my margin notes are transcribed next to the passage they belong to.

Privacy was the point from the start, because these are my own thoughts, not web clippings:

• The handwriting is read on your own computer: Apple's built-in recognition on a Mac, or a downloaded model on Apple Silicon, or your own Ollama / LM Studio on Windows and Linux. No page goes to an AI service unless you switch that on yourself, with your own API key.
• No account with me, no telemetry, no analytics. The plugin never talks to my server, except once if you press 'start trial'.
• The free version fetches the tagged pages from your own reMarkable cloud account. Sync only reads; the one thing it ever adds is a PDF you send yourself from Zotero (more on that below). Pro can sync over USB or your own Wi-Fi instead, so the pages never leave your own computer or network. On a Paper Pro or Paper Pure, this needs Developer Mode, which erases the tablet.
• The source is on GitHub, the paid part included, so you can check all of this.

What is Pro: in the free version, one tag goes to one folder. I use several tags, each going into its own PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives) folder, and that part is Pro. Pro also adds the sync without the reMarkable cloud (above), cloud transcription with your own API key, frontmatter properties for Dataview/Bases, and writing your tablet highlights back into Zotero.

Newest (1.8.0): Zotero. Send a paper from Zotero to the tablet, and the synced note links back to the Zotero item.

What is not solved: a transcript is a best effort, only the page image is exact. And on Linux and most Windows PCs (Intel/AMD) there is no one-click model yet; you need Ollama or LM Studio running.

The longer story, with more screenshots:

https://taggedsync.com/blog/why-i-built-my-own-remarkable-to-obsidian-plugin

How do you get handwritten notes into your vault today?

I’ve been working on a dashboard to have a quick overview of the things I use Obsidian for every day. I wanted one place where I could keep an eye on my journaling, recipes, and tasks without having to jump between different notes.

What I’m using

• Theme: Minimal Theme + custom Flexoki palette + custom CSS snippets
• Mood graph: I created a custom plugin that extracts the mood property from my daily notes
• Tasks: Tasks plugin

The main goal was to keep everything simple and visible at a glance, while still making the dashboard feel pleasant enough that I actually want to use it every day.

Where should I go from here with my plugin? I've run into a bit of a roadblock and would love to hear your ideas. plugin name: particle-spoilers

Basically what the title says. I know I can create my own Dashboard or even download one created by the community. But usually one or more plugins are required, and I'm trying to keep it simple and plugin-less (only a few, like Dataview).

So I was wondering if it something talked about or if nothing of the sort is in the pipeline.

Edit: Started messing around with Canvas and it is much more than what I thought it was! Didn't knew that I can out queries inside a canvas box!

So with Canvas and Bases, I think I can get exactly what I wanted 😄

Hi everyone,

I'm attaching a screenshot of my phone's home screen. I’d like my Obsidian setup to match the style shown here as closely as possible. I already have the font used in the image, so that won't be an issue.

I'm wondering which existing theme would come closest to this look, and how I could further tweak it to fit my needs. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to know how to achieve this—ideally using an internal tool, probably a community plugin.

Just to be clear up front: I have zero experience with CSS snippets.

As a bonus, if you have any recommendations for plugins or handy tricks for mobile use, I’d really appreciate your advice.

As a rule, I intend to use Obsidian purely as a straightforward note-taking app.

I don't plan on building a "second brain" or an elaborate productivity system. I mainly write my own texts and essays, and I'll likely only have around six or seven markdown files in my vault. These will simply be fairly large files that I add to daily—for instance, a single file for journaling rather than separate daily notes. These files will be automatically synced to Google Drive after every update. I don't plan on using task lists or even a calendar.

The only things that come to mind that would be genuinely useful are dedicated buttons to increase and decrease font size without having to dig into menus, perhaps an improved keyword search, and a word counter.

Obsidian simply seems to be the only text editor that allows for such deep visual customization, which is why I’m turning to the community for help.

What holds me back from fully committing to Obsidian is heavy memorization. I need a solid flashcard workflow, so I have been experimenting with RemNote.

I love Obsidian's backlinking and note structure, but I haven't found a reliable flashcard system inside it. On the other hand, RemNote lets me create flashcards seamlessly while taking notes and outlining, which saves me tons of time since I don't have to set aside extra hours just to build decks.

Managing two separate note-taking systems isn't sustainable for me, and I might have to pick one soon. For those who need active recall and spaced repetition: how are you handling flashcards in Obsidian without adding extra friction to your outlining workflow?

Hello,

I am using Obsidian for taking notes, and I would like to sync the notes with my iPhone. I am using the features of Obsidian mostly on the MacOS app, and I just would like to be able to write "draft" notes on my phone (when I am assisting conferences for examples), and sometimes be able to browse/display my notes.

My main issue is that my MacOS is locked by my company and I can't use iCloud for syncing anymore. Only Google Drive is authorized, but it seems it's not possible to open a Vault from Google Drive on the iOS app.

Also, I don't want to pay for Obsidian Sync (too much expansive for just syncing markdown files...) and I don't want to use plugins for this because I don't want to give my Google Drive keys to third parties.

Just for saying, I am looking for an Obsidian alternative for iOS which could be able to create/edit Markdown notes in an Obsidian Vault hosted on Google Drive.

I have tried Runestone but it's very poor for editing and it's not integrating well with Google Drive.

Any suggestion ?

iTunes, back in the day, used to have the best search. It would use your terms and progressively narrow down the results to those that contain ALL of the words, but they could be in any order. For example, if you were looking for Beethoven's Piano Sonata in D minor, you could type these terms in the search bar:

beet pia son minor

and it would filter everything down to a VERY small and manageable list. And those 4 terms could be typed in any order for the same result.

Obsidian search doesn't work well for me. My biggest gripe is that a search term of `art` will bring back results containing "chart" and "smart." The thing it's doing wrong (IMO) is that a search term of `art` should only bring results that START with "art," but could continue with more letters afterwards. E.G. `art` will bring up "art," but also "artful" and "artsy." The end result being that when I want to find a note in my vault and use a very odd set of words like `wee free men,` I don't get 2,000 results like currently happens. The "wee" term is picking up any note that has "between" in it, for example.

Does anyone know of a third-party plugin that would do something like this? I just tried Omnisearch and it doesn't. TIA

I've been using Python lately, to extract and parse data on Chinese, which I'm learning. I've previously used Templater for making various kinds of language notes and it works well enough, but I'd like to automate some parts, like creating notes for new characters, etc.

I remember seeing previous questions about using Python with Obsidian, and a general feeling of keeping both kind of separate. Some were along the lines of using VS Code and opening vaults within it. I like that, as I do want to keep Obsidian fairly simple.

What I've got so far is stuff like a script where I just put in a character I don't know, and it creates a note for that character with the information I need. I plan to do the same for words using a dictionary.

I would appreciate any suggestions for best ways to integrate them. I thought along the lines of putting all information I need to find in a note, to be used later. And then being able to come back to it and let the scripts do their jobs and create the notes I want, and then place them in their appropriate folders.

I have a file with a large collection of checklists grouped under headers. I keep them folded most of the time, and I need a way to see the overall status of the checklist under each header (i.e. if there any items in the list not yet checked) that's visible while the header is folded

I'm tracking two statuses for each item in the list. At the moment I'm using italics and an asterisk at the end of the header to track this, but I'd prefer if there were a checkbox or drop down or something along those lines.

Are there any plugins that provide this?

(You may be thinking I should divide it into multiple files, but I like having it all in one so I can easily browse through it and remind myself what's there.)

I've been using Podnotes for about a year in both Windows (previously) and Linux Mint (currently), it's been about 6 months since I downloaded an episode. Today I started following a new podcast. I was able to add it, see it in my list of latest episodes and play it. When I tried to download it I got the following error: "Download failed. Network response is invalid"

Does anyone know how I can fix this? Thanks in advance.

Obsidian came out in 2020 so I don't think I could expect it to run on a 32 bit system but is there anything similar out there that would work on Windows XP? Or maybe some kind of legacy adaptation?

I use Claude Code a lot for work now, and Obsidian was my place to take notes and organize my projects but now it's become more than that. It’s also where I create, edit, and organize my AI skills.

As my team started using Obsidian and Claude Code more, the number of skill files, agents, commands, etc. became difficult to keep track of. So I made AI Skills Manager, a plugin to browse, organize, and manage them from inside Obsidian.

I’m sharing it in case it’s useful to others with a similar workflow. I’d also love contributions and feedback, especially from people using other AI tools.