Is there a web version of Obsidian? No, and five ways around it
Obsidian has no web version. Five ways to reach a vault from a browser anyway, from GitHub's free editor to the real app on a server, and what each costs.
PS
Prashant Shaw
Founder, Sumibako
7 min read
No. There is no web version of Obsidian. You cannot sign in to it from a browser, and the Chrome extension that used to be called "Obsidian Web" is a helper for the desktop app that has since changed its name, possibly out of guilt.
That is the whole answer, and you are welcome to leave with it. But people have been asking since 17 June 2020, when somebody opened a feature request that began: "A version of Obsidian that runs on the web (browser)." It now has 248 posts and more than 260,000 views, and the newest reply arrived six days before I wrote this. So this post is for everyone in that thread: the student on a school Chromebook, the person whose work laptop will not install so much as a font, and anyone who has stood at a borrowed computer wanting one note.
Below is why there is no web version, then five ways to reach your notes from a browser anyway, in order from "ten minutes" to "you now run a server". Everything is linked to its source and was checked on 8 October 2026. One of the five involves the notes app I build, and I will say which.
🧱 Why there is no web version
Obsidian is built on one idea: your notes are plain files in a folder on your own device, and the app is a window onto that folder. Its download page offers Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, and that is the list.
A website's natural home for your files is somebody's server, which is the exact thing Obsidian exists to avoid. So as far as I can tell this is less a missing feature than a position, held politely for six years while the thread underneath it grew to the size of a small novel.
gained a "Headless client for Sync", described as: "Sync vaults via Obsidian Sync without running the full app." That is not a web version. It is a way to keep a live copy of a vault on a machine with no screen, and it makes the fourth way below a good deal less painful.
🗺️ The five ways, at a glance
Way
Cost
Can you edit
Is it still Obsidian
Install it after all
Free
Yes
Yes
The vault on GitHub, edited in a tab
Free
Yes
No. Your files, a different editor
Obsidian Publish
$8 a month
No
A website made of your notes
The real app on a server
A server and an evening
Yes
Yes, in a tab
A copy in a notes app that is a website
Free
Yes
No. A copy, somewhere else
1️⃣ Check whether you can install it after all
This one costs nothing to try. Most Chromebooks run Android apps, and Obsidian has one in the Play Store. A Chromebook with the Linux environment switched on can run the Linux build too: Obsidian's own install guide has a note for Chromebooks about a missing package, which is the kind of note that only gets written because people keep doing it.
The catch is the word "managed". A school or company device usually has the Play Store and Linux both switched off, by somebody whose job is to switch things off. If the store is greyed out, this way is closed. Move on, and do not email them. They have heard it.
2️⃣ Put the vault on GitHub and edit it in a tab
The best free answer, and the one that gets the least credit. A vault is a folder of text files, and looking after folders of text files is the only thing GitHub has ever really been for.
Keep the vault in a private repository. The community plugin Obsidian Git commits it and syncs it from the desktop app.
On any computer, open the repository on github.com and press the full stop key. That opens github.dev, an editor GitHub says "runs entirely in your browser" and is "available to everyone for free on GitHub.com".
You get a real editor with search across the whole vault, and every save is a commit, so you get version history as a side effect. You do not get Obsidian. There are no plugins and no graph, and a [[wikilink]] is just some text wearing brackets.
⚠️WARNING
Private means private. A public repository of your notes is a published diary with a search box. Check the padlock before the first push, and again after, because you will not believe yourself the first time.
3️⃣ Obsidian Publish, if reading is enough
Obsidian Publish turns the notes you choose into a website. It costs $8 a site per month billed annually, or $10 month to month, per the pricing page, and it is the only way on this list that Obsidian itself sells.
It is for reading. You cannot write a note from the browser. You can only admire the ones you wrote at home. That is perfect for a handbook, a set of course notes, or a recipe collection you want on the kitchen tablet, and useless for the lecture you are sitting in right now.
4️⃣ Run the real Obsidian on a server
Here the hobbyists take over, and I say that with love. Two projects put the actual app in a browser tab.
Ignis announces itself with "Run Obsidian in the browser. No remote desktop required." It stands in for the desktop plumbing Obsidian expects, so the real app runs in a tab while the vault stays on your server. It is independent. Its README says it is "not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with" Obsidian's makers, and that some plugins and features are limited.
LinuxServer.io's Obsidian container takes the blunter route: the whole desktop app in Docker, streamed to your browser as a picture you can type into. Its documentation contains two sentences worth reading slowly. "By default there is no authentication." And the password option it does offer is "suitable only for a trusted local network".
Pair either with Headless Sync and the server's copy stays current with your other devices. Headless is in open beta and needs an Obsidian Sync subscription.
This is the only way to get real Obsidian, with most of its plugins, in a browser. The price is a server, an evening, and being the person responsible when it is 11pm and the certificate has expired. If the phrase "reverse proxy" made you flinch, this is not your way, and there is no shame in that.
5️⃣ Keep a copy in a notes app that is a website
The unglamorous one. Leave Obsidian as home, and keep the notes you need at school or at work in an app that already lives in a browser. Because a vault is Markdown, nearly every notes app with an import button will take it.
This is where the thing I build comes in, so adjust your trust accordingly. Sumibako is a notes app that runs in a browser tab, and its importer reads an Obsidian vault: zip the folder, drop it in, pick which notes come across, and your folders arrive as nested pages. The import guide is named after Notion, and the same importer does both. The free plan holds a thousand pages, and every page exports back out as Markdown, so the copy is not a trap.
What does not make the trip, said here rather than discovered later. Images and attachments stay behind. A [[wikilink]] arrives as plain text, not as a link. There are no plugins, no graph and no canvas. And it is a copy, not a sync: what you write there does not flow back into your vault unless you carry it. So it suits "my course notes, at school" far better than "my entire second brain, live".
🧭 Which one
If you are
Try
On a device that lets you install things
The first. You were done ten minutes ago
A student on a managed Chromebook
The second if GitHub is allowed, the fifth if not
On a work laptop that blocks everything
The fifth, or the second
Showing notes to other people
The third
The owner of a home server and a free weekend
The fourth, obviously. You were always going to
The feature request turns ten in 2030. I expect it will still be open, still polite, and still gaining a reply every few days from somebody who has just been handed a Chromebook. Until then: the vault is only a folder of text files, and a folder of text files can be carried almost anywhere. That was the point of it all along.
🙅
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