Obsidian Markdown Editor: An Honest Review of Editing in Obsidian

As an obsidian markdown editor, Obsidian is fast, local-first, and free. It has three editing modes and a plugin for every gap. It's also opinionated: it only edits files inside a vault, has no desktop toolbar, and adds syntax that doesn't render anywhere else. This review covers the modes, the editing features, the plugins worth installing, export, and when a plain editor is the better tool.

Is Obsidian a Markdown Editor?

Yes, though Obsidian describes itself as a knowledge base rather than an editor. Every note is a plain .md file on your disk and the editor is CodeMirror underneath. You can open the same files in VS Code or any other tool at the same time. Nothing is locked in a database.

The distinction matters because Obsidian's design decisions follow from the knowledge-base goal. Links between notes, backlinks, the graph view, and the vault model exist so that thousands of notes stay connected. If you want those, Obsidian is the best free tool we know. If you want to open README.md from a random repo, edit it, and close it, the vault model gets in the way, and we'll come back to that.

What Do the Three Editing Modes Actually Show?

Obsidian has three views, and the help page on views defines them precisely. Ctrl+E (Cmd+E on macOS) toggles between editing and reading, and the view switcher icon in the top right does the same.

Source mode shows every character of Markdown as written. Tables are pipes, links are brackets, bold is asterisks. This is what a traditional split-pane editor shows in its left pane, and it's the mode to use when spacing or nesting misbehaves.

Live Preview is the default. It renders formatting inline and hides most syntax until your cursor enters the formatted text, at which point the markers reappear. Bold text looks bold, a table looks like a table, a callout looks like a box. It's close to WYSIWYG without a toolbar, and it's where most people write.

Reading view renders the note with no syntax at all and no editing. It's the equivalent of a preview pane.

The trade-off with Live Preview is that it hides mistakes. A link with a typo in its target still looks like a link. A table row with a missing pipe renders as a broken table only when the cursor leaves it. In our experience the fix is a hotkey for "Toggle Live Preview/Source mode", which the help page suggests assigning. Switch to Source mode before committing a file to Git.

Editing Features Obsidian Has and Doesn't Have

The app ships with more editing help than it first appears, and one conspicuous gap.

Slash commands run any command by typing / at the start of a line or after a space: insert a table, toggle a checkbox, insert a callout. The table editor, added in version 1.5 in December 2023, lets you right-click a table in Live Preview to add, delete, sort, and move rows and columns. Tab moves between cells. Multiple cursors, folding of headings and lists, and a word count in the status bar are all built in.

The gap is a formatting toolbar on desktop. There isn't one. Bold is Ctrl+B, italic is Ctrl+I, and everything else is a command or typed syntax. The mobile app does have a customisable toolbar, which the mobile help page describes, and the mismatch surprises people who start on a phone. Changing a list item into a heading is also manual: delete the - , type ## . Plugins fill both gaps, and we cover them below.

HTML is allowed but sanitised, and Obsidian's docs state that Markdown syntax is not rendered inside HTML elements. A <div> wrapper around a bold phrase shows the literal asterisks. Keep HTML to a minimum, which is good advice for any Markdown anyway.

Obsidian Flavored Markdown vs Standard Markdown

The parser reads CommonMark and GFM and adds Obsidian's own extensions, which its Obsidian Flavored Markdown page lists. The ones that matter for portability:

Obsidian syntax	Standard equivalent	Renders elsewhere?
[[Note name]] wiki-link	[Note name](Note%20name.md)	No, shows literal brackets
![[image.png]] embed		No
==highlighted==	<mark>highlighted</mark>	No
%%hidden comment%%	HTML comment	No, the text is visible
> [!note] Title callout	Blockquote, or GitHub alert > [!NOTE]	Partly; GitHub supports five alert types
^block-id block reference	None	No

Our Obsidian cheat sheet documents the syntax itself; this post is about what happens when the file leaves the vault. Paste an Obsidian note into the editor below and the wiki-links, highlight, and comment stay as literal text. That's exactly what a GitHub README or a docs site would show.

One setting reduces the damage. Under Settings, Files and Links, turn off "Use Wikilinks" and Obsidian generates standard [text](path.md) links for every new link. The help page says autocomplete with [[ still works and simply produces a Markdown link.

Existing wiki-links aren't rewritten by that setting. The built-in Format converter goes the other direction (it converts Roam, Bear, and Zettelkasten syntax into Obsidian's). Converting old notes to standard links needs a community plugin or a script. The callout guide covers the callout versus GitHub alert overlap.

Plugins That Make Obsidian a Better Editor

These are the community plugins we'd install for editing specifically, not for knowledge management. All of them are listed in Obsidian's official plugin directory, and names and authors are as they appear there. Community plugins are third-party code that runs with full access to your vault, so read the source or the reviews before enabling one.

• Editing Toolbar (pkm-er): the desktop formatting toolbar Obsidian lacks, with configurable buttons.
• Linter (platers): formats notes on save, including heading spacing, list markers, and YAML properties. Pair it with our Markdown guidelines if you want consistent files.
• Advanced Tables (Tony Grosinger): table navigation, formatting, and formulas. The built-in 1.5 table editor covers most of what it did, but the auto-formatting of pipes is still useful for files you'll read in Source mode.
• Outliner (vslinko): Workflowy-style list manipulation, including moving and indenting whole subtrees.
• Paste URL into selection (denolehov): select text, paste a URL, get a Markdown link.
• Typewriter Scroll (deathau): keeps the current line centred while you write.

The one we'd add first is Linter. It removes the "which style did I use in this note" problem that Live Preview otherwise hides.

How Do You Export Notes from Obsidian?

Obsidian's built-in export is PDF. In our testing, the note's More options menu offers Export to PDF with page size and margin choices, and that's the only format it exports natively. There is no HTML or DOCX export in the app itself.

For Word, the Pandoc Plugin (oliverbalfour) adds commands to export to DOCX, ePub, and PDF through pandoc, which you install separately. The Markdown to Word guide covers the pandoc command and the browser alternative. The Markdown to PDF guide compares that route with a stylesheet-based converter, which matters if you need page breaks or a specific font.

Because notes are plain files, the pragmatic route for a one-off export is different. Replace the wiki-links, open the .md in the Markdown to DOCX tool or the editor, and export from there.

When Obsidian Is the Wrong Markdown Editor

Three situations send us to a different tool.

Loose files. Obsidian opens vaults, which are folders. To edit a single .md outside any vault you have to open its parent folder as a vault, which creates a .obsidian configuration folder inside that project. For a quick edit to a README in someone else's repo, a browser editor or VS Code is faster and leaves no trace.

Portable output. If the file's destination is GitHub, a static site generator, or a colleague on another tool, Obsidian's extensions become a liability unless you're disciplined about avoiding them. A plain editor with a standard preview shows you what the reader will see.

A web app. Obsidian has no browser version. Searches for "Obsidian web" or "Obsidian markdown editor online" end at Obsidian Publish. It publishes notes as a read-only website ($8 per site per month, billed annually) and doesn't let you edit in the browser. The core app is free, including for commercial use, per Obsidian's pricing page. Sync, at $4 per user per month billed annually, is the other paid add-on.

Our opinion: use Obsidian as your notebook and a standard editor as your publishing check. The two aren't in competition, because the files are the same. Our best Markdown editors roundup places Obsidian among the alternatives if you're choosing one for the first time.

Obsidian Markdown Editor FAQ

Judged strictly as an obsidian markdown editor, the verdict is this: excellent modes, a good plugin ecosystem, real limits on loose files, toolbars, and portability. Keep your notes in Obsidian and turn off wiki-links if the files travel. Before you publish, paste the note into the editor to see what a standard renderer makes of it.