Today we are making Obsidian Sync more accessible with the new _Standard_ plan which starts at $4 per month billed annually, or $5 per month billed monthly. Obsidian Sync is the easiest way to securely sync your notes across devices, with end-to-end encryption, version history, and collaborative shared vaults. Below is a comparison between the new Standard plan and the existing Plus plan, billed annually: | Standard | Plus ---|---|--- Price | $4 per month | $8 per month Synced vaults | 1 | 10 Maximum file size | 5 MB | 200 MB Total storage | 1 GB | 10 GB* Revision history | 1 month | 12 months Devices | Unlimited | Unlimited Shared vaults | Yes | Yes *Storage on the Sync Plus plan can be increased to 100 GB for $16 per month, billed annually. If you are an early supporter, the storage on your Sync Plus plan remains unchanged at 50 GB. As we state in our Manifesto, we believe that everyone should have the tools to think clearly and organize ideas effectively. We are committed to keeping Obsidian apps free to use without any requirement to sign up for an account. Our add-on services Obsidian Sync and Publish allow us to remain 100% user-supported, and help us fund continued development. Because Obsidian is built on local files that you control, our add-on services have many free alternatives and self-hostable options. Obsidian Sync is our approach to making the most intuitive and secure sync option. With this new plan, we're excited to make Sync accessible to even more people! Start using Sync → ### FAQ **As a current Sync subscriber what happens to my plan?** Nothing changes. Your Sync plan is now called _Sync Plus_ and has all the same features and pricing as before, including any discounts you may have. **How do these new plans affect early bird pricing, non-profit, or educational discounts?** Any discounts on your account can be applied to the new Standard plan. **Do shared vaults count towards the number of vaults?** Only remote vaults that you create count towards your vault limit. Remote vaults that are shared with you by another user do not count towards your vault limit. **Can I upgrade from Standard to Plus?** Yes. You can upgrade at any time and pricing is prorated. **Can I downgrade from Plus to Standard?** Yes. To downgrade you must first make sure that your account meets the constraints of the Standard plan — meaning that you have only 1 remote vault with less than 1 GB used. **Can I retain 50GB of storage if I downgrade to Standard?** No. If you are an early supporter and purchased the Plus plan with 50 GB before January 1st 2024, you must remain on the Plus plan to continue receiving 50 GB of storage. * * * More questions? Visit our Help site →

October is here, which means only one thing: Obsidian October aka O_O is here! And this year we're making O_O all about _speed_. Every year O_O has introduced developers to the world of making Obsidian plugins. Today, there are nearly 2,000 community-built plugins. We never imagined that the ecosystem would be so rich and expansive. So this year, we're switching things up. We want to encourage the developer community to revisit existing plugins to make them even better. In the last few months, we have put a major emphasis on app performance while continuing to expand the plugin API. We want to see more plugins adopt these new APIs, and focus on creating a snappy experience. This month you can join Obsidian October in the following ways. **Sign up for a plugin critique.** If you want to have your plugin critiqued by the Obsidian team, sign up on Discord. **Self-assessment.** Follow our checklists to improve your plugin, theme, or vault: * Plugin checklist * Theme checklist * Vault checklist **Join new Discord channels** to showcase your project and chat with other participants. * * * We hope everyone has a great time! 🍻

Today, we're introducing Obsidian Web Clipper a new extension that helps you highlight and capture the web in your favorite browser. Anything you save is stored as durable Markdown files that you can read offline, and preserve for the long term. Web Clipper makes it easy to shape Obsidian into a recipe book, a personal movie database, a travel planner, or read-it-later inbox. It turns your favorite browser into a sharper tool. Web Clipper is available for all major browsers on desktop and mobile, including Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Brave, Arc, Orion, and many more. It's also open source under the MIT license. ### Why? With Web Clipper we set out to solve three problems: **Take control of your archives**. The web is an increasingly unpredictable place. Web pages cannot be relied on as durable references. Information changes, pages move behind paywalls, and over time links rot and lead to 404s. **Bridge the gap between research and thought.** So much of our research process takes place in the browser — but browsers are primarily designed for reading and viewing rather than writing and thinking. It should be easy to highlight, annotate, and capture web content that can be referenced and expanded upon in your notes. **Connect your personal knowledge to structured world knowledge.** The web contains a treasure trove of metadata about everything from people to places, books, media, etc, which can be stored in Obsidian using properties. It should be easy to capture that data and make references in your notes more useful. ### Private, malleable, durable Following the principles in our Manifesto, Obsidian Web Clipper is private, easily customizable, and designed around the long-term durability of your notes. * Your data is not collected, and we do not gather usage metrics. The code is open source, auditable, and MIT licensed. * You can customize how content is saved based on the website with powerful templates that can be easily shared. * Your clips are saved to durable files with smart rules that convert complex HTML content to plain text, including tables, code blocks, footnotes, and math equations. * * * We hope you give it a try! Download Obsidian Web Clipper for your favorite browser. You can also explore the Web Clipper documentation, and join the official Discord channel to see how people are using it.

A new design called "Fractal" is now available on the Softwear merch store. You can get this design on t-shirts and hoodies, silkscreened using high-opacity colors. The artwork was created by Obsidian user Shaun Yue. It is an anime-inspired fractal explosion of the Obsidian logo. Shaun is the VFX artist behind sci-fi interfaces you've seen in Andor, Rogue One, Prometheus, Pacific Rim, Mission Impossible, The Dark Knight, and many more movies and shows. See links at the bottom of this post for a wallpaper version of this artwork. Place your order before December 2 to receive it by December 25, if you're located in the US. Worldwide shipping is also available, but delivery may take longer depending on your country. All items are available through Cotton Bureau and ship from Pennsylvania. There are three variations of the Fractal design: 1. T-shirt with big graphic on the front, no art on the back 2. T-shirt with little logo on front, big graphic on the back 3. Hoodie with little logo on front, big graphic on the back Here's the hoodie with a two-sided print. Small logo on the front, and large graphic on the back. The t-shirt is available in two print styles. Either with the artwork on the front as shown below, or as a two-sided print like the hoodie above. * * * Visit the Softwear store to place your order, and explore other Obsidian merch items. Download the artwork as a 5K resolution wallpaper in two variations: * Fractal graphic wallpaper * Fractal logo wallpaper

Early this year we shared our new Security page and first independent audit of Obsidian, coinciding with the release of Obsidian 1.5.3. Since then we've made numerous improvements to Obsidian. Continuing our commitment to security and privacy, we asked the Berlin-based security firm Cure53 to perform a second penetration test and source code audit of the Obsidian apps, across all platforms. Special attention was given to hardening the new Web viewer plugin ahead of its first release. We invite you to read a summary of the findings and the full report. We were pleased to hear from Cure53 that incremental updates since Obsidian 1.5.3 maintained the highest degree of attention to security. No new vulnerabilities were found in public versions of Obsidian. Quoting from the summary: > The security standing of the Obsidian client component has improved since the previous audit, as evidenced by the identification of only a single rather serious vulnerability, which addresses a new browser webview feature (see DYL-03-007). Particular emphasis was placed on hardening the Web viewer plugin during its development process, to ensure it would pass our strict security standards. > The new web viewer plugin implementation was carefully analyzed for common security pitfalls of the WebViews components, with the focus on its Electron interactions. The WebView tag configuration was inspected for security misconfigurations. The implementation neither utilizes any custom and potentially vulnerable _webpreferences_ configuration, nor enables unsafe and dangerous attributes like _nodeintegration_ or _disablewebsecurity_. The project concluded in October 2024 and identified six vulnerabilities primarily related to unreleased versions of Web viewer. Fixes were incorporated into the first version of Web viewer in Obsidian 1.8.0, which was released to early-access users on December 18th, 2024. We’re proud to report that the Cure53 team reviewed the resolutions and concluded that their recommendations have been properly followed. From the report summary: > Concluding, it needs to be highlighted that Obsidian's swift response to address the identified issues of this audit demonstrates their commitment to ensuring a good level of security for their client. By continuing to monitor for new vulnerabilities and taking proactive measures to address them, Obsidian can further strengthen the security posture of their client component. We look forward to publishing more security audits and updates, so you can continue to feel confident trusting Obsidian apps and services.

2024 is over and that means it's time to nominate your favorite projects from the Obsidian community for our Gems of the Year awards! To nominate projects go here: Gems of the Year 2024 Nomination Nominations are due by January 11th, 2025. We look forward to your nominations! Voting will begin soon after. Project can be nominated in any of the following categories: * Plugins * Themes * Tools — e.g. bookmarklets, browser extensions, publishing tools, scripts, etc * Content — e.g. videos, blog posts, etc * Templates — templates for vaults, notes, and Web Clipper A few words on nominations: * Anyone can nominate, no login or account is required. * You can nominate new projects created in 2024, or existing projects that were updated in 2024. * You can nominate your own project. * You can submit multiple nominations. Once nominations are in, the Obsidian team will select projects for the voting phase. Nominations help us gather a list of projects, so the number of nominations per project doesn't affect the outcome. Once nominations end, you'll have the opportunity to vote on your favorite projects for the final awards and prizes!

Today we’re thrilled to announce the winners of our fifth annual Gems of the Year awards! After our panel narrowed down the selection and the community voted on the entries, we’re now excited to announce the winners. Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to the winners! We will be in touch with winners soon so you can receive your prizes. This year's categories include: 1. New plugins 2. New themes 3. Existing plugins 4. Tools 5. Content 6. Templates 7. Integrations ## New plugins For the first time this year, **Best new plugin** is focused solely on the work of individual developers creating standalone plugins for Obsidian. ### Winner 🏆 Advanced Canvas by **Developer-Mike** > Expands Obsidian Canvas capabilities with presentations, flowcharts and more. ### Runners up * PDF++ by **RyotaUshio** adds annotation and highlighting for PDFs. * Lazy Loader by _**alangrainger**_ speeds up load time by delaying when plugins are loaded. * Iconic by **gfxholo** lets you customize icons throughout the app. * Vertical Tabs by **oxdc** displays tabs vertically. * Ink by **daledesilva** lets you add handwriting and drawing to notes. * Image Converter by **xRyul** helps you convert, resize, and annotate images. * Note Toolbar by **chrisgurney** adds toolbars in your notes. ## New themes ### Winner 🏆 Cupertino by **aaaaalexis** > Cupertino brings a native experience to your Obsidian vault, for a clean, focused, and mobile-friendly writing experience. ### Runners up * Fancy A Story by **ElsaTam** creates an immersive environment to write stories and build worlds. * Underwater by **Seniblue** a customizable theme with a wide variety of color schemes. ## Existing plugins This category highlights the community's favorite plugins that haven't previously won community awards. ### Winner 🏆 LaTeX Suite by **artisticat1** > Make typesetting LaTeX math as fast as handwriting. ### Runners up * Homepage by **mirnovov** opens a specified note, canvas, or workspace upon launch. * List Callouts by **mgmeyers** lets you create callouts in lists. * Spaced Repetition by **st3v3nmw** for reviewing flashcards & notes using spaced repetition. * Hover Editor by **nothingislost** transforms page previews into a working editor. * Calendarium by **javalent** for crafting mind-bending fantasy and sci-fi calendars. ## Tools This category highlights bookmarklets, browser extensions, publishing tools, scripts, and any other non-plugin tools that work with with Obsidian. ### Winner 🏆 Git Sync by ViscousPot > An Android git client that aims to simplify the process of syncing a folder between a git remote and a local directory. It works in the background to keep your files synced with a simple one-time setup and numerous options for activating manual syncs. ### Runners up * Actions For Obsidian by **Carlo Zottmann** brings automation to Obsidian using macOS/iOS Shortcuts. * Plugin Stats by **Ganessh Kumar** lets you explore Obsidian plugins with a variety of filters and categories. ## Content ### Winner 🏆 TTRPG Tutorials by **Josh Plunkett** > Josh Plunkett is a Dungeon Master developing tutorials and templates to help TTRPG players learn how to unleash the power of Obsidian.md for campaigns. ### Runners up * Zsolt's Visual Personal Knowledge Management by **Zsolt Viczián** , a YouTube channel about visual tools and techniques for Personal Knowledge Management by the creator of the Excalidraw plugin for Obsidian. * Obsidian: The King of Learning Tools by **Odysseas** , a YouTube video guide to using Obsidian for reading, writing and thinking. ## Templates ### Winner 🏆 Bag of Tips TTRPG Template Vault by **Bag of Tips** > Obsdian template vault, filled with templates, CSS, and plugins for TTRPG players. It is perfect for those who want everything made for them, to start a new campaign. ### Runners up * Web Clipper Templates by **kepano** , a set of Web Clipper templates for various websites like Arxiv, IMDB, Goodreads, Letterboxd, and YouTube. * LifeOS for Obsidian by **quanru** is a vault template that combines P.A.R.A with Periodic Notes. ## Integrations With this new category we're highlighting the work of individuals and teams creating plugins that rely on other services, including paid services. ### Third-party services #### Winner 🏆 Instapaper plugin by **Instapaper** > Integrates with your Instapaper account and allows you to sync your highlights and notes to your Obsidian vault. #### Runners up * Relay plugin by **System 3** adds multiplayer mode to Obsidian. * Enveloppe plugin by **Enveloppe** helps you publish your notes on a GitHub repository. ### Language models #### Winner 🏆 Copilot plugin by **logancyang** > Use LLMs to chat with your notes, and talk to your entire vault for answers and insights. #### Runners up * Smart Connections plugin by **brianpetro** lets you chat with your notes and see links to related content with AI embeddings. * Ollama Chat plugin by **brumik** allows you to ask your local LLM about your own notes. * * * Congratulations again to all who won and participated! Previous Gems of the Year: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

People in over 10,000 organizations use Obsidian for work. Starting today, the Obsidian Commercial license is optional. Anyone can use Obsidian for work, for free. If Obsidian benefits your organization, you can still purchase Commercial licenses to support development. Nothing else is changing. No account required, no ads, no tracking, no strings attached. Your data remains fully in your control, stored locally in plain text Markdown files. All features are available to you for free without limits. Why make this change? Simplicity. The Commercial license terms were confusing and added unnecessary complexity to our pricing. Furthermore, as the Obsidian Manifesto states: "_we believe that everyone should have the tools to think clearly and organize ideas effectively_ ". This change brings us closer to that principle. People in over 10,000 organizations use Obsidian. Many work in high-security environments, like government, cybersecurity, healthcare, and finance. Some of the largest organizations in the world, including Amazon and Google, have thousands of employees using Obsidian every day. These teams rely on Obsidian to think more effectively and keep total ownership over private data. Previously, people at companies with two or more employees were required to purchase a Commercial license to use Obsidian for work. Going forward, the Commercial license is no longer required, but remains an optional way for organizations to support Obsidian, similar to the Catalyst license for individuals. Organizations that support Obsidian are now featured on the Obsidian Enterprise page. Your organization can be showcased by purchasing 25 licenses or more. Along with Commercial and Catalyst support, our add-on services, Sync and Publish help Obsidian remain 100% user-supported. In the future, we hope to offer more services designed for teams. As always, these will be optional.

Supply chain attacks are malicious updates that sneak into open source code used by many apps. Here's how we design Obsidian to ensure that the app is a secure and private environment for your thoughts. ### Less is safer It may sound obvious but the primary way we reduce the risk of supply chain attacks is to avoid depending on third-party code. Obsidian has a low number of dependencies compared to other apps in our category. See a list of open source libraries on our Credits page. Features like Bases and Canvas were implemented from scratch instead of importing off-the-shelf libraries. This gives us full control over what runs in Obsidian. * **For small utility functions** we almost always re-implement them in our code. * **For medium modules** we fork them and keep them inside our codebase if the licenses allows it. * **For large libraries** like pdf.js, Mermaid, and MathJax, we include known-good, version-locked files and only upgrade occasionally, or when security fixes land. We read release notes, look at upstream changes, and test thoroughly before switching. This approach keeps our dependency graph shallow with few sub-dependencies. A smaller surface area lowers the chance of a malicious update slipping through. ### What actually ships in the app Only a handful of packages are part of the app you run, e.g. Electron, CodeMirror, moment.js. The other packages help us build the app and never ship to users, e.g. esbuild or eslint. ### Version pinning and lockfiles All dependencies are strictly version-pinned and committed with a lockfile. The lockfile is the source of truth for builds so we get deterministic installs. This gives us a straightforward audit trail when reviewing changes. We do not run postinstall scripts. This prevents packages from executing arbitrary code during installation. ### Slow, deliberate upgrades When we do dependency updates, we: 1. Read the dependency's changelog line-by-line. 2. Check sub-dependencies introduced by the new version. 3. Diff upstream when the change set is large or risky. 4. Run automated and manual tests across platforms and critical user paths. 5. Commit the new lockfile only after these reviews pass. In practice, we rarely update dependencies because they generally work and do not require frequent changes. When we do, we treat each change as if we were taking a new dependency. ### Time is a buffer We don't rush upgrades. There is a delay between upgrading any dependency and pushing a release. That gap acts as an early-warning window: the community and security researchers often detect malicious versions quickly. By the time we're ready to ship, the ecosystem has usually flagged any problematic releases. * * * No single measure can eliminate supply chain risk. But choosing fewer dependencies, shallow graphs, exact version pins, no postinstall, and a slow, review-heavy upgrade cadence together make Obsidian much less likely to be impacted, and give us a long window to detect problems before code reaches users. If you're curious about our broader approach to security, see our security page and past audits.

Obsidian October is back! Every October, the community comes together to hack on plugins, themes, vaults, videos, and other projects. We'll host office hours on Discord to help you polish your creations, ship updates, or kick off that project you've been itching to build! ### Polish and release If you don't know where to start, take a look at our self-assessment checklists. We've updated these checklists with the latest requirements and recommendations to make your plugins and themes more performant, more secure, more mobile-friendly, and more cohesive with Obsidian. * Plugin checklist * Theme checklist * Vault checklist ### Try something new with Bases Recently we launched Obsidian 1.9 with Bases, a new core plugin that lets you display dynamic views of your notes as tables, cards, and now lists. Today, we're releasing Obsidian 1.10 beta with Bases APIs to help you create your own custom view layouts. As an example, we've created a new open source plugin called Maps that adds map views to Bases. We've also written a guide to help you build a view. Bases can be a playground for new kinds of workflows, templates, and vaults. Educational content can help other Obsidian users discover the power of Bases. Want some feedback on your blog post or video? This is the time for it! ### Join the fun Now's the time to share your Obsidian October projects and get feedback from the Obsidian team and other participants! Join our new Discord channels to showcase your project and chat with other participants.

Today we are making Obsidian Sync more accessible with the new _Standard_ plan which starts at $4 per month billed annually, or $5 per month billed monthly. Obsidian Sync is the easiest way to securely sync your notes across devices, with end-to-end encryption, version history, and collaborative shared vaults. Below is a comparison between the new Standard plan and the existing Plus plan, billed annually: | Standard | Plus ---|---|--- Price | $4 per month | $8 per month Synced vaults | 1 | 10 Maximum file size | 5 MB | 200 MB Total storage | 1 GB | 10 GB* Revision history | 1 month | 12 months Devices | Unlimited | Unlimited Shared vaults | Yes | Yes *Storage on the Sync Plus plan can be increased to 100 GB for $16 per month, billed annually. If you are an early supporter, the storage on your Sync Plus plan remains unchanged at 50 GB. As we state in our Manifesto, we believe that everyone should have the tools to think clearly and organize ideas effectively. We are committed to keeping Obsidian apps free to use without any requirement to sign up for an account. Our add-on services Obsidian Sync and Publish allow us to remain 100% user-supported, and help us fund continued development. Because Obsidian is built on local files that you control, our add-on services have many free alternatives and self-hostable options. Obsidian Sync is our approach to making the most intuitive and secure sync option. With this new plan, we're excited to make Sync accessible to even more people! Start using Sync → ### FAQ **As a current Sync subscriber what happens to my plan?** Nothing changes. Your Sync plan is now called _Sync Plus_ and has all the same features and pricing as before, including any discounts you may have. **How do these new plans affect early bird pricing, non-profit, or educational discounts?** Any discounts on your account can be applied to the new Standard plan. **Do shared vaults count towards the number of vaults?** Only remote vaults that you create count towards your vault limit. Remote vaults that are shared with you by another user do not count towards your vault limit. **Can I upgrade from Standard to Plus?** Yes. You can upgrade at any time and pricing is prorated. **Can I downgrade from Plus to Standard?** Yes. To downgrade you must first make sure that your account meets the constraints of the Standard plan — meaning that you have only 1 remote vault with less than 1 GB used. **Can I retain 50GB of storage if I downgrade to Standard?** No. If you are an early supporter and purchased the Plus plan with 50 GB before January 1st 2024, you must remain on the Plus plan to continue receiving 50 GB of storage. * * * More questions? Visit our Help site →

October is here, which means only one thing: Obsidian October aka O_O is here! And this year we're making O_O all about _speed_. Every year O_O has introduced developers to the world of making Obsidian plugins. Today, there are nearly 2,000 community-built plugins. We never imagined that the ecosystem would be so rich and expansive. So this year, we're switching things up. We want to encourage the developer community to revisit existing plugins to make them even better. In the last few months, we have put a major emphasis on app performance while continuing to expand the plugin API. We want to see more plugins adopt these new APIs, and focus on creating a snappy experience. This month you can join Obsidian October in the following ways. **Sign up for a plugin critique.** If you want to have your plugin critiqued by the Obsidian team, sign up on Discord. **Self-assessment.** Follow our checklists to improve your plugin, theme, or vault: * Plugin checklist * Theme checklist * Vault checklist **Join new Discord channels** to showcase your project and chat with other participants. * * * We hope everyone has a great time! 🍻

Today, we're introducing Obsidian Web Clipper a new extension that helps you highlight and capture the web in your favorite browser. Anything you save is stored as durable Markdown files that you can read offline, and preserve for the long term. Web Clipper makes it easy to shape Obsidian into a recipe book, a personal movie database, a travel planner, or read-it-later inbox. It turns your favorite browser into a sharper tool. Web Clipper is available for all major browsers on desktop and mobile, including Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Brave, Arc, Orion, and many more. It's also open source under the MIT license. ### Why? With Web Clipper we set out to solve three problems: **Take control of your archives**. The web is an increasingly unpredictable place. Web pages cannot be relied on as durable references. Information changes, pages move behind paywalls, and over time links rot and lead to 404s. **Bridge the gap between research and thought.** So much of our research process takes place in the browser — but browsers are primarily designed for reading and viewing rather than writing and thinking. It should be easy to highlight, annotate, and capture web content that can be referenced and expanded upon in your notes. **Connect your personal knowledge to structured world knowledge.** The web contains a treasure trove of metadata about everything from people to places, books, media, etc, which can be stored in Obsidian using properties. It should be easy to capture that data and make references in your notes more useful. ### Private, malleable, durable Following the principles in our Manifesto, Obsidian Web Clipper is private, easily customizable, and designed around the long-term durability of your notes. * Your data is not collected, and we do not gather usage metrics. The code is open source, auditable, and MIT licensed. * You can customize how content is saved based on the website with powerful templates that can be easily shared. * Your clips are saved to durable files with smart rules that convert complex HTML content to plain text, including tables, code blocks, footnotes, and math equations. * * * We hope you give it a try! Download Obsidian Web Clipper for your favorite browser. You can also explore the Web Clipper documentation, and join the official Discord channel to see how people are using it.

A new design called "Fractal" is now available on the Softwear merch store. You can get this design on t-shirts and hoodies, silkscreened using high-opacity colors. The artwork was created by Obsidian user Shaun Yue. It is an anime-inspired fractal explosion of the Obsidian logo. Shaun is the VFX artist behind sci-fi interfaces you've seen in Andor, Rogue One, Prometheus, Pacific Rim, Mission Impossible, The Dark Knight, and many more movies and shows. See links at the bottom of this post for a wallpaper version of this artwork. Place your order before December 2 to receive it by December 25, if you're located in the US. Worldwide shipping is also available, but delivery may take longer depending on your country. All items are available through Cotton Bureau and ship from Pennsylvania. There are three variations of the Fractal design: 1. T-shirt with big graphic on the front, no art on the back 2. T-shirt with little logo on front, big graphic on the back 3. Hoodie with little logo on front, big graphic on the back Here's the hoodie with a two-sided print. Small logo on the front, and large graphic on the back. The t-shirt is available in two print styles. Either with the artwork on the front as shown below, or as a two-sided print like the hoodie above. * * * Visit the Softwear store to place your order, and explore other Obsidian merch items. Download the artwork as a 5K resolution wallpaper in two variations: * Fractal graphic wallpaper * Fractal logo wallpaper

Early this year we shared our new Security page and first independent audit of Obsidian, coinciding with the release of Obsidian 1.5.3. Since then we've made numerous improvements to Obsidian. Continuing our commitment to security and privacy, we asked the Berlin-based security firm Cure53 to perform a second penetration test and source code audit of the Obsidian apps, across all platforms. Special attention was given to hardening the new Web viewer plugin ahead of its first release. We invite you to read a summary of the findings and the full report. We were pleased to hear from Cure53 that incremental updates since Obsidian 1.5.3 maintained the highest degree of attention to security. No new vulnerabilities were found in public versions of Obsidian. Quoting from the summary: > The security standing of the Obsidian client component has improved since the previous audit, as evidenced by the identification of only a single rather serious vulnerability, which addresses a new browser webview feature (see DYL-03-007). Particular emphasis was placed on hardening the Web viewer plugin during its development process, to ensure it would pass our strict security standards. > The new web viewer plugin implementation was carefully analyzed for common security pitfalls of the WebViews components, with the focus on its Electron interactions. The WebView tag configuration was inspected for security misconfigurations. The implementation neither utilizes any custom and potentially vulnerable _webpreferences_ configuration, nor enables unsafe and dangerous attributes like _nodeintegration_ or _disablewebsecurity_. The project concluded in October 2024 and identified six vulnerabilities primarily related to unreleased versions of Web viewer. Fixes were incorporated into the first version of Web viewer in Obsidian 1.8.0, which was released to early-access users on December 18th, 2024. We’re proud to report that the Cure53 team reviewed the resolutions and concluded that their recommendations have been properly followed. From the report summary: > Concluding, it needs to be highlighted that Obsidian's swift response to address the identified issues of this audit demonstrates their commitment to ensuring a good level of security for their client. By continuing to monitor for new vulnerabilities and taking proactive measures to address them, Obsidian can further strengthen the security posture of their client component. We look forward to publishing more security audits and updates, so you can continue to feel confident trusting Obsidian apps and services.

2024 is over and that means it's time to nominate your favorite projects from the Obsidian community for our Gems of the Year awards! To nominate projects go here: Gems of the Year 2024 Nomination Nominations are due by January 11th, 2025. We look forward to your nominations! Voting will begin soon after. Project can be nominated in any of the following categories: * Plugins * Themes * Tools — e.g. bookmarklets, browser extensions, publishing tools, scripts, etc * Content — e.g. videos, blog posts, etc * Templates — templates for vaults, notes, and Web Clipper A few words on nominations: * Anyone can nominate, no login or account is required. * You can nominate new projects created in 2024, or existing projects that were updated in 2024. * You can nominate your own project. * You can submit multiple nominations. Once nominations are in, the Obsidian team will select projects for the voting phase. Nominations help us gather a list of projects, so the number of nominations per project doesn't affect the outcome. Once nominations end, you'll have the opportunity to vote on your favorite projects for the final awards and prizes!

Today we’re thrilled to announce the winners of our fifth annual Gems of the Year awards! After our panel narrowed down the selection and the community voted on the entries, we’re now excited to announce the winners. Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to the winners! We will be in touch with winners soon so you can receive your prizes. This year's categories include: 1. New plugins 2. New themes 3. Existing plugins 4. Tools 5. Content 6. Templates 7. Integrations ## New plugins For the first time this year, **Best new plugin** is focused solely on the work of individual developers creating standalone plugins for Obsidian. ### Winner 🏆 Advanced Canvas by **Developer-Mike** > Expands Obsidian Canvas capabilities with presentations, flowcharts and more. ### Runners up * PDF++ by **RyotaUshio** adds annotation and highlighting for PDFs. * Lazy Loader by _**alangrainger**_ speeds up load time by delaying when plugins are loaded. * Iconic by **gfxholo** lets you customize icons throughout the app. * Vertical Tabs by **oxdc** displays tabs vertically. * Ink by **daledesilva** lets you add handwriting and drawing to notes. * Image Converter by **xRyul** helps you convert, resize, and annotate images. * Note Toolbar by **chrisgurney** adds toolbars in your notes. ## New themes ### Winner 🏆 Cupertino by **aaaaalexis** > Cupertino brings a native experience to your Obsidian vault, for a clean, focused, and mobile-friendly writing experience. ### Runners up * Fancy A Story by **ElsaTam** creates an immersive environment to write stories and build worlds. * Underwater by **Seniblue** a customizable theme with a wide variety of color schemes. ## Existing plugins This category highlights the community's favorite plugins that haven't previously won community awards. ### Winner 🏆 LaTeX Suite by **artisticat1** > Make typesetting LaTeX math as fast as handwriting. ### Runners up * Homepage by **mirnovov** opens a specified note, canvas, or workspace upon launch. * List Callouts by **mgmeyers** lets you create callouts in lists. * Spaced Repetition by **st3v3nmw** for reviewing flashcards & notes using spaced repetition. * Hover Editor by **nothingislost** transforms page previews into a working editor. * Calendarium by **javalent** for crafting mind-bending fantasy and sci-fi calendars. ## Tools This category highlights bookmarklets, browser extensions, publishing tools, scripts, and any other non-plugin tools that work with with Obsidian. ### Winner 🏆 Git Sync by ViscousPot > An Android git client that aims to simplify the process of syncing a folder between a git remote and a local directory. It works in the background to keep your files synced with a simple one-time setup and numerous options for activating manual syncs. ### Runners up * Actions For Obsidian by **Carlo Zottmann** brings automation to Obsidian using macOS/iOS Shortcuts. * Plugin Stats by **Ganessh Kumar** lets you explore Obsidian plugins with a variety of filters and categories. ## Content ### Winner 🏆 TTRPG Tutorials by **Josh Plunkett** > Josh Plunkett is a Dungeon Master developing tutorials and templates to help TTRPG players learn how to unleash the power of Obsidian.md for campaigns. ### Runners up * Zsolt's Visual Personal Knowledge Management by **Zsolt Viczián** , a YouTube channel about visual tools and techniques for Personal Knowledge Management by the creator of the Excalidraw plugin for Obsidian. * Obsidian: The King of Learning Tools by **Odysseas** , a YouTube video guide to using Obsidian for reading, writing and thinking. ## Templates ### Winner 🏆 Bag of Tips TTRPG Template Vault by **Bag of Tips** > Obsdian template vault, filled with templates, CSS, and plugins for TTRPG players. It is perfect for those who want everything made for them, to start a new campaign. ### Runners up * Web Clipper Templates by **kepano** , a set of Web Clipper templates for various websites like Arxiv, IMDB, Goodreads, Letterboxd, and YouTube. * LifeOS for Obsidian by **quanru** is a vault template that combines P.A.R.A with Periodic Notes. ## Integrations With this new category we're highlighting the work of individuals and teams creating plugins that rely on other services, including paid services. ### Third-party services #### Winner 🏆 Instapaper plugin by **Instapaper** > Integrates with your Instapaper account and allows you to sync your highlights and notes to your Obsidian vault. #### Runners up * Relay plugin by **System 3** adds multiplayer mode to Obsidian. * Enveloppe plugin by **Enveloppe** helps you publish your notes on a GitHub repository. ### Language models #### Winner 🏆 Copilot plugin by **logancyang** > Use LLMs to chat with your notes, and talk to your entire vault for answers and insights. #### Runners up * Smart Connections plugin by **brianpetro** lets you chat with your notes and see links to related content with AI embeddings. * Ollama Chat plugin by **brumik** allows you to ask your local LLM about your own notes. * * * Congratulations again to all who won and participated! Previous Gems of the Year: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

People in over 10,000 organizations use Obsidian for work. Starting today, the Obsidian Commercial license is optional. Anyone can use Obsidian for work, for free. If Obsidian benefits your organization, you can still purchase Commercial licenses to support development. Nothing else is changing. No account required, no ads, no tracking, no strings attached. Your data remains fully in your control, stored locally in plain text Markdown files. All features are available to you for free without limits. Why make this change? Simplicity. The Commercial license terms were confusing and added unnecessary complexity to our pricing. Furthermore, as the Obsidian Manifesto states: "_we believe that everyone should have the tools to think clearly and organize ideas effectively_ ". This change brings us closer to that principle. People in over 10,000 organizations use Obsidian. Many work in high-security environments, like government, cybersecurity, healthcare, and finance. Some of the largest organizations in the world, including Amazon and Google, have thousands of employees using Obsidian every day. These teams rely on Obsidian to think more effectively and keep total ownership over private data. Previously, people at companies with two or more employees were required to purchase a Commercial license to use Obsidian for work. Going forward, the Commercial license is no longer required, but remains an optional way for organizations to support Obsidian, similar to the Catalyst license for individuals. Organizations that support Obsidian are now featured on the Obsidian Enterprise page. Your organization can be showcased by purchasing 25 licenses or more. Along with Commercial and Catalyst support, our add-on services, Sync and Publish help Obsidian remain 100% user-supported. In the future, we hope to offer more services designed for teams. As always, these will be optional.

Supply chain attacks are malicious updates that sneak into open source code used by many apps. Here's how we design Obsidian to ensure that the app is a secure and private environment for your thoughts. ### Less is safer It may sound obvious but the primary way we reduce the risk of supply chain attacks is to avoid depending on third-party code. Obsidian has a low number of dependencies compared to other apps in our category. See a list of open source libraries on our Credits page. Features like Bases and Canvas were implemented from scratch instead of importing off-the-shelf libraries. This gives us full control over what runs in Obsidian. * **For small utility functions** we almost always re-implement them in our code. * **For medium modules** we fork them and keep them inside our codebase if the licenses allows it. * **For large libraries** like pdf.js, Mermaid, and MathJax, we include known-good, version-locked files and only upgrade occasionally, or when security fixes land. We read release notes, look at upstream changes, and test thoroughly before switching. This approach keeps our dependency graph shallow with few sub-dependencies. A smaller surface area lowers the chance of a malicious update slipping through. ### What actually ships in the app Only a handful of packages are part of the app you run, e.g. Electron, CodeMirror, moment.js. The other packages help us build the app and never ship to users, e.g. esbuild or eslint. ### Version pinning and lockfiles All dependencies are strictly version-pinned and committed with a lockfile. The lockfile is the source of truth for builds so we get deterministic installs. This gives us a straightforward audit trail when reviewing changes. We do not run postinstall scripts. This prevents packages from executing arbitrary code during installation. ### Slow, deliberate upgrades When we do dependency updates, we: 1. Read the dependency's changelog line-by-line. 2. Check sub-dependencies introduced by the new version. 3. Diff upstream when the change set is large or risky. 4. Run automated and manual tests across platforms and critical user paths. 5. Commit the new lockfile only after these reviews pass. In practice, we rarely update dependencies because they generally work and do not require frequent changes. When we do, we treat each change as if we were taking a new dependency. ### Time is a buffer We don't rush upgrades. There is a delay between upgrading any dependency and pushing a release. That gap acts as an early-warning window: the community and security researchers often detect malicious versions quickly. By the time we're ready to ship, the ecosystem has usually flagged any problematic releases. * * * No single measure can eliminate supply chain risk. But choosing fewer dependencies, shallow graphs, exact version pins, no postinstall, and a slow, review-heavy upgrade cadence together make Obsidian much less likely to be impacted, and give us a long window to detect problems before code reaches users. If you're curious about our broader approach to security, see our security page and past audits.

Obsidian October is back! Every October, the community comes together to hack on plugins, themes, vaults, videos, and other projects. We'll host office hours on Discord to help you polish your creations, ship updates, or kick off that project you've been itching to build! ### Polish and release If you don't know where to start, take a look at our self-assessment checklists. We've updated these checklists with the latest requirements and recommendations to make your plugins and themes more performant, more secure, more mobile-friendly, and more cohesive with Obsidian. * Plugin checklist * Theme checklist * Vault checklist ### Try something new with Bases Recently we launched Obsidian 1.9 with Bases, a new core plugin that lets you display dynamic views of your notes as tables, cards, and now lists. Today, we're releasing Obsidian 1.10 beta with Bases APIs to help you create your own custom view layouts. As an example, we've created a new open source plugin called Maps that adds map views to Bases. We've also written a guide to help you build a view. Bases can be a playground for new kinds of workflows, templates, and vaults. Educational content can help other Obsidian users discover the power of Bases. Want some feedback on your blog post or video? This is the time for it! ### Join the fun Now's the time to share your Obsidian October projects and get feedback from the Obsidian team and other participants! Join our new Discord channels to showcase your project and chat with other participants.

Today we are making Obsidian Sync more accessible with the new _Standard_ plan which starts at $4 per month billed annually, or $5 per month billed monthly. Obsidian Sync is the easiest way to securely sync your notes across devices, with end-to-end encryption, version history, and collaborative shared vaults. Below is a comparison between the new Standard plan and the existing Plus plan, billed annually: | Standard | Plus ---|---|--- Price | $4 per month | $8 per month Synced vaults | 1 | 10 Maximum file size | 5 MB | 200 MB Total storage | 1 GB | 10 GB* Revision history | 1 month | 12 months Devices | Unlimited | Unlimited Shared vaults | Yes | Yes *Storage on the Sync Plus plan can be increased to 100 GB for $16 per month, billed annually. If you are an early supporter, the storage on your Sync Plus plan remains unchanged at 50 GB. As we state in our Manifesto, we believe that everyone should have the tools to think clearly and organize ideas effectively. We are committed to keeping Obsidian apps free to use without any requirement to sign up for an account. Our add-on services Obsidian Sync and Publish allow us to remain 100% user-supported, and help us fund continued development. Because Obsidian is built on local files that you control, our add-on services have many free alternatives and self-hostable options. Obsidian Sync is our approach to making the most intuitive and secure sync option. With this new plan, we're excited to make Sync accessible to even more people! Start using Sync → ### FAQ **As a current Sync subscriber what happens to my plan?** Nothing changes. Your Sync plan is now called _Sync Plus_ and has all the same features and pricing as before, including any discounts you may have. **How do these new plans affect early bird pricing, non-profit, or educational discounts?** Any discounts on your account can be applied to the new Standard plan. **Do shared vaults count towards the number of vaults?** Only remote vaults that you create count towards your vault limit. Remote vaults that are shared with you by another user do not count towards your vault limit. **Can I upgrade from Standard to Plus?** Yes. You can upgrade at any time and pricing is prorated. **Can I downgrade from Plus to Standard?** Yes. To downgrade you must first make sure that your account meets the constraints of the Standard plan — meaning that you have only 1 remote vault with less than 1 GB used. **Can I retain 50GB of storage if I downgrade to Standard?** No. If you are an early supporter and purchased the Plus plan with 50 GB before January 1st 2024, you must remain on the Plus plan to continue receiving 50 GB of storage. * * * More questions? Visit our Help site →

October is here, which means only one thing: Obsidian October aka O_O is here! And this year we're making O_O all about _speed_. Every year O_O has introduced developers to the world of making Obsidian plugins. Today, there are nearly 2,000 community-built plugins. We never imagined that the ecosystem would be so rich and expansive. So this year, we're switching things up. We want to encourage the developer community to revisit existing plugins to make them even better. In the last few months, we have put a major emphasis on app performance while continuing to expand the plugin API. We want to see more plugins adopt these new APIs, and focus on creating a snappy experience. This month you can join Obsidian October in the following ways. **Sign up for a plugin critique.** If you want to have your plugin critiqued by the Obsidian team, sign up on Discord. **Self-assessment.** Follow our checklists to improve your plugin, theme, or vault: * Plugin checklist * Theme checklist * Vault checklist **Join new Discord channels** to showcase your project and chat with other participants. * * * We hope everyone has a great time! 🍻

Today, we're introducing Obsidian Web Clipper a new extension that helps you highlight and capture the web in your favorite browser. Anything you save is stored as durable Markdown files that you can read offline, and preserve for the long term. Web Clipper makes it easy to shape Obsidian into a recipe book, a personal movie database, a travel planner, or read-it-later inbox. It turns your favorite browser into a sharper tool. Web Clipper is available for all major browsers on desktop and mobile, including Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Brave, Arc, Orion, and many more. It's also open source under the MIT license. ### Why? With Web Clipper we set out to solve three problems: **Take control of your archives**. The web is an increasingly unpredictable place. Web pages cannot be relied on as durable references. Information changes, pages move behind paywalls, and over time links rot and lead to 404s. **Bridge the gap between research and thought.** So much of our research process takes place in the browser — but browsers are primarily designed for reading and viewing rather than writing and thinking. It should be easy to highlight, annotate, and capture web content that can be referenced and expanded upon in your notes. **Connect your personal knowledge to structured world knowledge.** The web contains a treasure trove of metadata about everything from people to places, books, media, etc, which can be stored in Obsidian using properties. It should be easy to capture that data and make references in your notes more useful. ### Private, malleable, durable Following the principles in our Manifesto, Obsidian Web Clipper is private, easily customizable, and designed around the long-term durability of your notes. * Your data is not collected, and we do not gather usage metrics. The code is open source, auditable, and MIT licensed. * You can customize how content is saved based on the website with powerful templates that can be easily shared. * Your clips are saved to durable files with smart rules that convert complex HTML content to plain text, including tables, code blocks, footnotes, and math equations. * * * We hope you give it a try! Download Obsidian Web Clipper for your favorite browser. You can also explore the Web Clipper documentation, and join the official Discord channel to see how people are using it.

A new design called "Fractal" is now available on the Softwear merch store. You can get this design on t-shirts and hoodies, silkscreened using high-opacity colors. The artwork was created by Obsidian user Shaun Yue. It is an anime-inspired fractal explosion of the Obsidian logo. Shaun is the VFX artist behind sci-fi interfaces you've seen in Andor, Rogue One, Prometheus, Pacific Rim, Mission Impossible, The Dark Knight, and many more movies and shows. See links at the bottom of this post for a wallpaper version of this artwork. Place your order before December 2 to receive it by December 25, if you're located in the US. Worldwide shipping is also available, but delivery may take longer depending on your country. All items are available through Cotton Bureau and ship from Pennsylvania. There are three variations of the Fractal design: 1. T-shirt with big graphic on the front, no art on the back 2. T-shirt with little logo on front, big graphic on the back 3. Hoodie with little logo on front, big graphic on the back Here's the hoodie with a two-sided print. Small logo on the front, and large graphic on the back. The t-shirt is available in two print styles. Either with the artwork on the front as shown below, or as a two-sided print like the hoodie above. * * * Visit the Softwear store to place your order, and explore other Obsidian merch items. Download the artwork as a 5K resolution wallpaper in two variations: * Fractal graphic wallpaper * Fractal logo wallpaper

Early this year we shared our new Security page and first independent audit of Obsidian, coinciding with the release of Obsidian 1.5.3. Since then we've made numerous improvements to Obsidian. Continuing our commitment to security and privacy, we asked the Berlin-based security firm Cure53 to perform a second penetration test and source code audit of the Obsidian apps, across all platforms. Special attention was given to hardening the new Web viewer plugin ahead of its first release. We invite you to read a summary of the findings and the full report. We were pleased to hear from Cure53 that incremental updates since Obsidian 1.5.3 maintained the highest degree of attention to security. No new vulnerabilities were found in public versions of Obsidian. Quoting from the summary: > The security standing of the Obsidian client component has improved since the previous audit, as evidenced by the identification of only a single rather serious vulnerability, which addresses a new browser webview feature (see DYL-03-007). Particular emphasis was placed on hardening the Web viewer plugin during its development process, to ensure it would pass our strict security standards. > The new web viewer plugin implementation was carefully analyzed for common security pitfalls of the WebViews components, with the focus on its Electron interactions. The WebView tag configuration was inspected for security misconfigurations. The implementation neither utilizes any custom and potentially vulnerable _webpreferences_ configuration, nor enables unsafe and dangerous attributes like _nodeintegration_ or _disablewebsecurity_. The project concluded in October 2024 and identified six vulnerabilities primarily related to unreleased versions of Web viewer. Fixes were incorporated into the first version of Web viewer in Obsidian 1.8.0, which was released to early-access users on December 18th, 2024. We’re proud to report that the Cure53 team reviewed the resolutions and concluded that their recommendations have been properly followed. From the report summary: > Concluding, it needs to be highlighted that Obsidian's swift response to address the identified issues of this audit demonstrates their commitment to ensuring a good level of security for their client. By continuing to monitor for new vulnerabilities and taking proactive measures to address them, Obsidian can further strengthen the security posture of their client component. We look forward to publishing more security audits and updates, so you can continue to feel confident trusting Obsidian apps and services.