Why I Chose Obsidian to Keep My Journal (And All My Writing)

2025 is the year I was determined to keep a journal. And, instead of having to spend money monthly on an app like Day One, I decided to give Obsidian a try. There’s no going back.

I Wanted a Solid, Simple, and Intuitive Journaling App for 2025

I’ve thought about journaling for years now but have never done it. In the past, I’ve used physical notebooks to keep my Bible reading notes, but that never really lasted. Outside of those reading notes, I’ve never actually kept a journal before.

So, when 2025 started, I wanted to keep a journal to see how I liked it. I had seen so many people do it and talk about how beneficial keeping a journal was, so I decided to give it a try myself and see if it was as transformative as they said (it was). I was also challenged by a friend to keep a journal for the first 30 days of the year—just a month. Instead of trying to use a physical notebook, I wanted to go digital for my journal and daily Bible reading. I did some research, and started my journaling journey with an app called Day One. I had considered using Apple’s official Journal app, but the fact that it’s exclusive to iPhone and not on Mac, iPadOS, or any other platform (like Windows) is what pushed me to Day One.

I started my journaling career on January 1, 2025, using Day One. I really liked the app. It was clean, worked well, and also had daily prompts to help jumpstart your writing. The daily prompts were almost enough alone to keep me on Day One. Add to that how clean the user interface is and how well it kept my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook in sync, and you have a winning combo.

Day One Was Great, but It Left Me Wanting a Little More

Don’t get me wrong, Day One is fantastic. I really enjoyed it — for the most part. It was the little things that started to get to me. On Windows, I had to use the web app. Then, there was the fact that I would have to pay for yet another subscription to use Day One on more than one device. And there were some formatting oddities that it had. The formatting within the app itself was consistent, but Day One uses a flavor of markdown that I’m not ultra familiar with. So, I had to change how I wrote in Day One compared to all the other Markdown programs I used, and I just wasn’t a fan of that.

It was a great app, and I think that, for many people, Day One will be a fantastic journaling app. It just simply left me wanting a little more. So, after a few days, all the annoyances piled up to eventually overflow into me searching for a Day One replacement. At the same time, a friend of mine was consistently pestering me to try a writing app that he swore by. Since I was still on the 30-day free trial of Day One, I decided to give another app a try: Obsidian.

Initially, I kept Day One around and just accessed the web app to copy the daily prompt into Obsidian. But, that became cumbersome after a while, and I simply just stopped using Day One entirely and completely moved over to Obsidian full-time.

Obsidian Solved My Journaling Woes and Gave Me a New Home for All My Writing

Obsidian is a markdown editor that gives you the option to keep all your files local or to pay for its syncing service. One of my favorite features of Obsidian is that you can store your files “locally” in iCloud or Google Drive, having them sync to any device or computer you use.

It took me a little while to get used to writing in Obsidian. But, two full months in, I’m absolutely loving it. I started out my Obsidian journey by using a third-party plugin to import my Day One entries. After that, I began to do all of my writing in Obsidian. I ended up not just using Obsidian for journaling and Bible reading, but now I write all of my articles for How-To Geek, my Sunday School lessons, sermons, notes, homelab documentation, everything in Obsidian.

Instead of paying for Obsidian’s syncing service, I use iCloud to keep everything up to date across my devices. This allows me to use Obsidian on my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone with ease. Plus, using iCloud on Windows, I can even keep my desktop up to date with the rest of my devices. All without having to pay for yet another subscription.

There are lots of plugins in the community repository for journaling, but I simply choose to use Obsidian as a standard markdown editor for that aspect of things. I do use several plugins, though, with my favorite being this Bible references one that lets me insert a verse in line with my text. It makes both my daily Bible study and Sunday School prep extremely fluid and simple.

My other favorite plugin is called Make.md, and it allows me to drag and drop notes in the side panel in any order I want. This might sound simple, but by default, Obsidian only lets you sort notes in ascending or descending order by title, date, or a few other metadata points.

For journaling, I have a folder called “Daily Journal,” in which I keep sub-folders for each month. The daily entries are titled with the date like so, “2025-03-07.” I know it’s not very “fun,” but it helps keep things in order and allows my mind to simply flow onto the page instead of trying to come up with a unique title for each day. And after two months of journaling, I can say that it really is as transformative as everyone says it is. If you’ve not tried journaling yet, you should definitely give it a shot.

The fact that Obsidian syncs with all of my devices means I can journal from everywhere. When my wife and I were in the Great Smokey Mountains last month, I used Obsidian on my MacBook to journal. I’ve used my phone and my iPad as well when I didn’t want to grab my laptop or go to my desktop.

And, when doing any other form of writing, I just dive into Obsidian. It works fantastically, is free, and is cross-platform.

At the end of the day, Obsidian replaced all of my writing apps for me. I left Day One and use Obsidian for my journal. I no longer use Notion for sermon notes or Sunday School lessons. I’ve migrated from writing my articles in Asana or ClickUp to writing them in Obsidian.

Even my to-dos for my homelab, vacation ideas, books I want to get, places I want to go for landscape photography, and more are all kept in Obsidian.

If you’re looking for a great, free markdown editor to use for writing, give Obsidian a try. It has a robust plugin library and is an extremely simple app that simply works without costing a dime.