Obsidian isn't the first app that comes to mind for the Steam Deck. The independent note-taking app is undoubtedly one of the most powerful productivity tools around, but it's not exactly designed for use on a handheld like the Steam Deck. But, if you're a madman like me, you can install Obsidian on the Steam Deck and sync your notes.

It's actually useful, too. If you're just taking a few odd notes while playing games, Valve has a basic note function built into Steam that's automatically synced across your devices, or at least it's supposed to. If you find yourself already using Obsidian, though, getting it set up on the Steam Deck isn't too difficult, and you don't even need to pull out a keyboard and mouse for a quick look at your notes.

Obsidian just works on the Steam Deck

It's literally in the Discover Store

Installing Obsidian on the Steam Deck is actually easier than installing it on Windows. You don't even need to go to the Obsidian website, and you certainly don't need to open a terminal window. All you need to do is go to desktop mode on your Steam Deck by using the power menu, open the Discover Store, search for Obsidian, and install it. Getting Obsidian on your Steam Deck is the easy part, but it's built to work in desktop mode, not game mode. Thankfully, you can easily add Obsidian to Steam and configure it to work with the Steam Deck's controller.

Once the app is installed, right-click (left trigger on Steam Deck) on Obsidian, and select Add to Steam. Then, head back to game mode. You should see Obsidian in your non-Steam apps category, but if you're like me and have thousands of emulated games taking up that category, you can just search for it. Obsidian is accessible in game mode this way, but there are a couple more setup steps you should take.

First, launch the app, and open the Steam overlay. Select Controller settings and change your layout. You can adjust everything manually if you want, but unfortunately, there aren't any community profiles available. Turns out Obsidian isn't the first app most people install on their Steam Deck. I've been using the Web Browser template that's available from Valve, and it's worked a treat. You can use the touchpad for mouse controllers, and there are several useful shortcuts set up, such as tying the keyboard to the X button.

Finally, you'll need to give the app some art in game mode. If you already have Decky Loader set up on your Steam Deck, you can use the SteamGridDB plugin to add the various pieces of media that Steam shows. To my surprise, there were actually a handful of community-made assets for Obsidian that I was able to apply to my Steam Deck. The auto-match feature of SteamGridDB defaulted to a 1997 PC puzzle game of the same name, but there are assets for the Obsidian note-taking app available, too.

Syncing Obsidian and using it on the Steam Deck

More useful than you suspect

The obvious use case for Obsidian on the Steam Deck is to, well, take notes. Games like Tunic, Blue Prince, Animal Well, and Void Stranger are dense with puzzles and secrets that require notes, and you can quickly swap between your game and Obsidian from game mode using the Steam overlay. For me, I want to be able to see the notes I take across multiple devices with Obsidian, which means syncing my notes.

There are a few ways to accomplish this. First is to just pay Obsidian. The app itself is free, but you can pay for a subscription of $5 per month ($4 per month if you commit to a year) to automatically sync your notes. That's the easiest way to go about it, and you'll be supporting the developers. But the great thing about Obsidian is that you don't need to pay for it to sync your notes. An Obsidian vault is just a folder with markdown files; that's it. You can use literally any cloud storage service, as long as it's syncing that folder across your devices and Obsidian is pointed in the right direction.

You can just use Obsidian to track your gameplay notes, but if you search around for a few community plugins, you can actually make Obsidian far better than the notes function available in the Steam overlay. There are plugins like Game Search, which hooks into the RAWG database for game metadata. With it, you can search for the game you're playing and create a note, complete with all the metadata you need. Combine it with a plugin like Templater, and you can have some beautiful game notes within a few taps on the Steam Deck.

There's a lot more you can do with a little creativity, though. Maybe, like me, you're hopelessly terrible at fighting games and also hopelessly want to get better. Combo Colors turns text notation into proper combo strings, while Fight Note takes that idea further with combo notation specifically for Tekken. Or, maybe you're like our own Simon Batt who uses Obsidian to play tabletop RPG sessions. Bring along your Steam Deck next time for an ultra-portable setup.

Cool, not ideal

I won't pretend using Obsidian on the Steam Deck is ideal, not only when it comes to getting around the dense note-taking app, but also dealing with the on-screen keyboard. But the app itself is basically flawless when it comes to stability and syncing, and with the right blend of plugins, it's an extremely powerful tool to have access to in your Steam library.