Have to leave the app to customize CSS. Why can't you save snippets in the app?? Overall, it feels like they intentionally make it as difficult and roundabout as possible to use.
And of course I followed the instructions, created the snippet in the secondary text editor Obsidian makes you keep around if you want to do things like this, quit the app, reopened it, and... it didn't work. Because, of course it didn't work. Why would following the instructions WORK, when it's so much more of a waste of time if it doesn't? I'm so glad they made this so complicated. This is so much harder than if they just had a place in the preferences to enter custom CSS, and, who doesn't love things to be as hard as possible?
Buzzwords. There aren't folders and metadata, there are "vaults" and "frontmatter", for no apparent reason other than to complicate things conceptually. This is America, people, if you can't speak English, at least speak Navajo, or Spanish. Don't just make up new words, or people like me get irate and have to write down zegnvortzes like this and maybe start making up our own needless cradinks too just to show how silly it sounds.
The beauty of open-source software. I tried to duplicate a folder, and got this:
VERY opinionated. you'll do it Obsidian's way and you'll like it. Maybe with a ton of custom programming you can get what you want. Were you looking for a note taking app, or a notes app programming IDE? I really just wanted to take notes.
Typical modern power-user app design: it gives you tremendous power to do things exactly the way the person who wrote the app thinks they should be done, otherwise, you're on your own. You want to do it the way you think, instead of the way he thinks? Hey—write your own app, bucko, this here is Obsidian! (The typical Obsidian forums response to "How do I do this thing I need to do?" isn't "Here's how to do it", it's "Why do you need to do it that way? Here's a different thing you can do." I actually saw one guy tell someone else he shouldn't need to look at his recent notes, he should use the "map" and learn to see things in terms of "thoughts" instead of "time". Huge help: "If you want to use this app, just change the way you think and work!")
I got everything set up the way I wanted it, created a second vault because I need my personal notes segregated, opened it and... turns out ALL configuration is per vault. Got separate vaults? Have fun setting everything up AGAIN. Why the hell is the presentation locked in a vault with specific content? Why can't you have app-wide setup so you don't have to keep recreating things? What a pain.
Oh, and good news! Even the css snippets are stored per-vault instead of app-wide, so if you're more comfortable with a separation of concerns, then when you create the new vault you'll have to recreate EVERYTHING, the entire environment.
I set it up several hours ago and I'm *still* googling for help. I remember when I started using Apple Notes, which does 99% of what I need, the length of time I had to google to figure out how to use it was, exactly, zero minutes.
Markdown. My hated enemy. It's not 1982 anymore, folks, you don't have to be afraid of rich text and inline images. And, what's worse, it doesn't treat markdown as markup or content... it treats it as both. So if you create a prominent headline with headline formatting, instead of seeing "#headlline" or **HEADLINE**, you see "**#HEADLINE**"
You have to dive two contextual menus deep to get your inline text formats like bold. No convenient keystroke, like most apps have had for, er, 42 years, because, why do things the easy way when you can overcomplicate them?. Again, there may be a programming solution to this, and again, were you looking for a note taking app, or a notes app programming environment?
Little abstract monochrome unlabeled hieroglyphics. Lots of little abstract monochrome unlabeled hieroglyphics
Here's a good one. Here's the beauty of using a retrograde, poorly-thought-out format like Markdown. Here's my list of notes in my new vault:
Notice that note called "Pasted image 20260512212310"? That's not a note. That's because I have an inline image in the "Obsidian Annoyances" note. If you want an inline image, you permanently get image files cluttering up your notes list, as if they're notes, as if it serves any purpose to have them there except as a visual detritus left lying in full view due to a terribly-designed note taking app. Brilliant. I can only imagine what my notes list will look like once I have a number of notes with screenshots in them. It'll be complete garbage, tons of files I don't need listed. Unless there's some way to hide them—but if there is, why isn't that the default? Who needs a list of screenshots they inlined in their notes mixed in with their list of notes?
No underlining... you literally have to code the ability to underline text yourself with a coding plugin.
Have I mentioned how much I hate markdown? I want asterisks around words sometimes as ordinary punctuation. I have used that as ordinary punctuation for 40 years. If I want words italicized, I'll select an italic style. I want what I type to be what I see. I don't want to type one thing and then see something else onscreen because software has reinterpreted my typing.
Can't open multiple vaults in one window.
I'm so glad I just wasted 4 hours beating my head against a wall to try to get a note-taking app that everybody loves to where it would even be just barely usable, and completely failed to. Terrific. Really, it's so much better than doing something productive.
