Author vs Obsidian Web Clipper
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Author
This app serves as a companion to its macOS counterpart, offering a minimalist and powerful writing experience on iOS devices. It allows users to create and manage their written content seamlessly across platforms.
- Minimalist writing interface
- Powerful writing tools
- iOS companion app
- Syncs with macOS version
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The iOS companion to Author macOS.
Obsidian Web Clipper
Save web content directly to your personal knowledge base for offline access. Organize research, recipes, articles, and more with customizable templates and smart triggers. Your data is private, secure, and stored locally in durable Markdown format.
- Clip any web content
- Select page content or extract main article
- Customizable templates for metadata
- Smart triggers for automatic template application
- Seamless integration with Obsidian vault
- Save as local Markdown files
- Offline access to clipped content
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Bring the web to your personal knowledge base. Save content to your Obsidian vault so you always have access to it, even offline. Obsidian is secure, private, and designed around durable open formats that allows you to preserve your data for the long term. Whether you're researching for a project, saving recipes, bookmarking travel destinations, or collecting inspiring articles, the Obsidian Web Clipper helps you organize your ideas. - Clip anything: From news articles and blog posts to recipes, product pages, and research papers — if it's on the web, you can save it. - Select page content: Clip entire pages, selected text, or let the clipper intelligently extract just the main content. - Customizable templates: Create tailored templates to automatically extract metadata from web pages. Perfect for academics, movie buffs, book lovers, or anyone who wants structured notes. - Smart triggers: Set up rules to automatically apply the right template based on the website you're clipping from. - Seamless integration: all your clips flow directly into Obsidian, in the vault and folder of your choice. As with everything Obsidian, Web Clipper is designed to protect your privacy, and give you control over your data. - No lock-in: All your clips are saved in clean, durable, portable Markdown files — no proprietary formats. - Offline access: your saved clips are saved locally, and always at your fingertips, with or without an internet connection. - 100% private: all your clipped content is stored locally in your Obsidian vault. Your thoughts are yours. Obsidian helps you create connections and links between your notes so you can organize your thoughts. You can create links between everything — ideas, articles, lists, locations, books — anything you can put in a note, you can link to other notes.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Obsidian Web Clipper at Free against Author's $19.99. Obsidian Web Clipper also leads on rating (4.4 vs 3.0) and in-app purchases (none vs 2). On review sentiment, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Obsidian Web Clipper is free to download; Author costs $19.99 up front. Author sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Obsidian Web Clipper asks for nothing beyond the download.
Obsidian Web Clipper holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 3.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Obsidian Web Clipper has 98 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 72% of Author's written reviews are positive against 69% of Obsidian Web Clipper's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Author ships an update every 2 months, Obsidian Web Clipper every 9 days. The most recent releases landed on October 10, 2026 and October 13, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Author | Obsidian Web Clipper |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $19.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 3.0 (5 ratings) | 4.4 (98 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 71.5% of reviews — better | 68.8% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 5 | 98 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 9 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 15.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 28 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | The Augmented Text Company LTD | Dynalist Inc. |
Customer experience
Author
Obsidian Web Clipper
User reviews
Author
From 5 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- ✨ Clean, minimalist interface design
- 💡 Innovative concept mapping and mind mapping features
- 📚 Excellent citation and reference management
- ⌨️ Useful keyboard shortcuts and productivity features
- 🎯 Powerful outlining and document folding capabilities
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and data loss issues
- 📱 iOS/iPad app severely broken and non-functional
- 🔄 Syncing problems between devices
- 🎨 Limited formatting and customization options
- 📊 Poor image handling capabilities
Obsidian Web Clipper
From 98 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Fantastic web clipper
- 👍 Seamless and light on the system
- 👍 Intuitive and easy to use
- 👍 Powerful and customizable
- 🚀 Works flawlessly
Room to improve
- 🐛 Does not work on Mac
- 🐛 Takes over Obsidian startup on iOS
- 🐛 Extension not showing on macOS
- 🐛 Complicated to use, not working on important websites
Bugs and requests
Author
Reported bugs
20 issues- App crashes frequently, causing data loss
- iOS app shows blank screen and won't open documents
- iPad app completely non-functional
- Text disappears or becomes greyed out during iCloud saves
- Vision OS app lacks cursor for text input
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Ask AI feature shows infinite loading spinner
- Unexpected Russian pricing text displayed to US users
- App doesn't launch or open on some systems
- Files not detected in Downloads folder
- Cannot open documents created in desktop version on iOS
- Automatic file conversion to Liquid format breaks iOS compatibility
- Text rendering issues (white text on white background)
- Table function broken - cannot write in cells
- App lags and deletes lines when typing quickly
- Highlight feature not working
- Citations not resolving automatically
- Markdown export only exports preamble
- Copy-paste functionality issues
- French localization not working despite being advertised
- App not compatible with iOS 18 and latest macOS versions
Requested features
20 requests- iPad and iOS app that actually works
- Typewriter scrolling mode
- Variable screen width for large displays
- Complete LaTeX export with full file support
- Markdown support
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Better image handling and integration
- Find and replace functionality
- Dark mode for older macOS versions
- Inline predictive text support
- Nested list creation and editing
- Paragraph indentation options
- Photo support on macOS version
- Keyboard shortcut reference guide
- Table editing improvements
- Integration with reference management software (Zotero, EndNote)
- Local AI endpoints or BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) for privacy
- Better onboarding and UI guidance for new users
- Typeface options (Courier, American Typewriter, serif fonts)
- Line spacing options (1.5, double spacing)
- Color themes and dark mode options
Obsidian Web Clipper
Reported bugs
2 issues- Defining a file path with a subfolder does not work
- Doesn't wait for page load, resulting in missing content
Requested features
2 requests- Immersive reading experience with ability to hide top and bottom bars
- Autofill possible vaults for clipping
In-app purchases
Author
- Export & AIFree
- Eng$1.99
Obsidian Web Clipper
No in-app purchases
