Connected Files & Obsidian
Connect folders of markdown files, edit them in place, and let their tasks, dates, and tags flow into your planner. Obsidian-friendly throughout.
Your notes might already live somewhere: an Obsidian vault, a folder of markdown in iCloud Drive. Finalist doesn't ask you to import them. Connect the folder and the files stay exactly where they are, editable in place, while their tasks, dates, and tags flow into your planner.
Connecting files
From the Notes home, choose Add Folder… to connect a whole folder (every markdown file inside, subfolders included) or Add File… for a single file. iCloud Drive folders keep syncing wherever they normally sync; Finalist reads and writes the files in place and never moves them. Got a huge vault? Long-press a subfolder and Unload it to skip it.
Tasks inside your files
Finalist speaks the Obsidian Tasks dialect. A line like this in any connected file:
- [ ] Send the proposal 📅 2026-08-14 #work
becomes a real task in Finalist: it appears on August 14 on your Daily page, checkable right there, picked up by Smart Lists, carrying its #work tag into the tag cloud. Checking it off in Finalist writes the [x] back into your file. Scheduled dates, start dates, and priorities in the emoji syntax are understood too, as are Dataview-style inline fields like [due:: 2026-08-14].
Task statuses beyond done
Extended statuses render with their own icons: [/] in progress, [-] cancelled, [>] forwarded, [<] scheduled, [!] important, [?] question. Change a task's status from its long-press menu with Set Status. In Settings under Markdown Files you decide, per status, whether it hides from outstanding views and whether it gets the strikethrough treatment.
Links that go places
[[Wiki links]] and standard [text](note.md) links navigate between your notes inside Finalist, on iOS and Mac. Your vault's internal links keep working; they just work here too.
Frontmatter
Files can carry YAML frontmatter (tags, date, pinned), and Finalist reads and honors it: frontmatter tags merge with inline #tags, a date surfaces the file on that day, and pinning works like any pinned note. Edit the frontmatter directly with the </> button in the file editor, or just change tags and dates in the app and Finalist updates the file.
The point of all this
Your notes stay portable plain text that works in Obsidian, in any editor, and in twenty years. Finalist adds the planning layer on top: the tasks inside your notes meet the rest of your day, one page at a time.
Related: Notebooks & Notes · Writing in Markdown · Lists & Tags