What Is the Obsidian Forum?

Updated

The Obsidian Forum is the official community discussion site for Obsidian users, hosted at forum.obsidian.md. It's a Discourse-based platform where people ask for help, report bugs, request features, discuss knowledge management, and share plugins, themes, and workflows. It's useful if you want searchable, threaded discussions you can return to later; if you prefer real-time chat, the site points to Discord channels instead.

What the forum covers

The forum is organized into categories, each with a distinct purpose:

Category What it's for
Help Getting help from fellow Obsidian users; separate sections exist for API and CSS questions
Bug reports Reporting bugs, with a request to search for duplicates and read the Troubleshooting Guide first
Feature requests Suggesting features for core Obsidian; likes (hearts) act as votes
Knowledge management Discussing PKM methodologies
Share & showcase Showing off plugins, themes, CSS snippets, workflows, templates, and hacks
Devs: Plugins & API Plugin interface and technical discussion, alongside Dev Docs
Devs: Theme Design & Custom CSS Designing themes and snippets with CSS
Meta Topics about Obsidian or the forum itself
Plugins ideas Ideas for third-party plugins you'd like to use
Archived sections Bug graveyard, Feature archive, Basement, and an archival-in-progress Plugins ideas area

How to use it effectively

  1. Search before posting. The bug report and feature request categories explicitly ask you to check for duplicates first.
  2. Pick the right category. API and CSS questions have their own sections under Help, and completed plugins or themes belong in Share & Showcase rather than the dev categories.
  3. Use hearts as votes. In Feature requests, likes count as votes, so adding a like to an existing request is more useful than posting a duplicate.
  4. Read the linked guides. The Help category points to the User Guide, and Bug reports points to the Troubleshooting Guide.

When to use the forum vs. Discord

The forum is the better fit when you want a durable, searchable record of a problem or discussion. The site itself notes that if you prefer chatting, there are Discord channels—including #plugin-dev and #theme-dev—for real-time conversation. For questions about inclusion in the community directory, the forum directs you to a Discord forum instead.

What to expect

The forum is powered by Discourse and is best viewed with JavaScript enabled. Guidelines, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy are linked from the site. Topic counts visible on the homepage show that Help and Bug graveyard are among the largest categories, so you're likely to find prior discussion of common issues before starting a new thread.