Notes in Obsidian are stored as plain text files, which makes them incredibly portable. By writing your notes in plain text, they'll outlive any app—even Obsidian itself. If you plan to keep your notes for a long time, this is great news!

## Create a new note

To create a new note:

1. Press Ctrl+N (or Cmd+N on macOS) on your keyboard.
2. Type "Obsidian" as the name of your note and press Enter.
3. Copy and paste the following text into your note:

> Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

## Format your note

Obsidian also supports [Markdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown)—a markup language for adding formatting to plain text files.

1. Copy and paste the following text at the top of the Obsidian note:

   > \# A second brain, for you, forever.

   The hashtag (#) turns a row of text into a heading.

2. In your note, select the text "knowledge base" and press Ctrl+B (or Cmd+B on macOS) to make it bold.

To learn more about how to format your notes using Markdown, refer to [[Format your notes]].

## Learn more

Learn how to [[Link notes|link notes]] to create a network of connected thoughts.
