If nothing at all can be installed, exactly one shape of answer survives: a browser tab pointed at a vault that lives in a git repository. That means github.dev, which is free and already attached to every GitHub repository, or a notes-shaped editor like OB Lite. Every other route on this page needs an install, a browser extension, a server, or a USB stick — and each of those is a separate thing your employer may have blocked.
But settle one question before you pick anything: are these your notes, or your employer's? If they are work notes, moving them into a personal GitHub account is not a clever workaround — under most acceptable-use policies it is company data leaving the company, and a private repository does not change that. The technical part of this problem is the easy part.
This guide is published by the team behind OB Lite, a browser editor for git-synced vaults. We are one of the options listed below. We have also written the section where the honest answer is "ask your IT department" — because for work notes that is the answer, and it is not us.
Two different walls: permission and policy
Almost every page written about this answers a question you did not ask. You wanted to reach your notes; you get a list of portable apps and USB tricks. That list is useless if the reason you cannot install Obsidian is that your employer decided you cannot install things — and it is actively risky if the notes in question are work notes.
So separate the two walls, because they need different answers.
- The permission wall is technical. Your machine refuses to run an installer. This is the wall a browser gets past, because a website is not an installed application.
- The policy wall is contractual. Your employer has rules about where company information may go and what may be connected to a managed device. A browser gets past none of it. A rule about company data does not care whether the data left through an installer or through a browser tab.
Nearly all the bad advice in this category comes from treating the first wall as the whole problem. The rest of this page keeps them apart.
The thing most people never try: asking
It is worth knowing that Obsidian sells a licence for exactly this case. Personal use is free, and a commercial licence is $50 per user per year. The wording in Obsidian's own pricing FAQ is unusually relaxed about it:
"You are not required to pay for a commercial license, however if you are using Obsidian for work in an organization we encourage you to purchase a commercial license."
Fifty dollars a year is less than most companies spend per seat on software nobody opens. A request that names a product, a licence and a price is a far easier thing for an IT department to approve than a request to "install an app". You may still get a no. But a surprising number of people build an elaborate workaround without ever sending the one-line email.
Which block are you actually hitting?
"I can't install anything" covers at least five different controls, and they do not block the same routes. Ten minutes spent identifying yours saves an afternoon of trying things that were never going to work.
- 1. No administrator rights
An installer asks for credentials you do not have, and that is the end of it. This is the mildest control, because some applications install into your own user folder and never ask for admin at all. Obsidian's Windows download is a single installer
.exeand the official download page lists no portable build (checked 22 August 2026), so the only way to know how it behaves on your machine is to run it once and watch. Requests on Obsidian's own forum for both per-user and all-users installation options have been open for years — linked in the sources, if you want a sense of how unsettled this area still is. - 2. Application allowlisting Only software on an approved list runs at all. You usually recognise this by the message: it names a policy rather than asking for a password. Nothing gets around it — not a portable build, not a renamed file, not a USB stick — and attempting to is itself likely to be a policy violation, logged. If this is your control, skip to the browser routes. They are not affected by it, because a website is not an executable.
- 3. Managed browser extensions Chrome and Edge on a managed device can be configured so that only allowlisted extensions install. This does not touch ordinary websites, but it does rule out every extension-based route below.
- 4. Web filtering
Some networks block whole categories, and "code hosting" is occasionally one of them. If
github.comitself does not open on the work machine, every git-based route on this page is closed. Test this before anything else. It takes five seconds and it determines whether the rest of the page applies to you at all. - 5. Removable storage blocked USB mass storage disabled at the policy level. Worth naming because "just run it from a USB stick" is the most common suggestion on forums, and on a genuinely locked-down machine it is usually the first thing that was turned off.
The options, by how much they need installed
Sorted by the only axis that matters on a locked-down machine. The first three rows need nothing but a browser tab. Everything after them needs something your employer may have blocked.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column →
| Route | Needs installed | Where notes live | Cost | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| github.dev | NothingA browser tab | Your GitHub repository | Free | It is VS Code in a tab. It edits Markdown perfectly but does not behave like a notes app — [[wikilinks]] are plain text — and GitHub's own docs note there is no compute, so "you won't be able to build and run your code or use the integrated terminal". |
| OB Lite (ours) | NothingA browser tab | Your GitHub repository | Free tier, or $6.99 once | The vault has to be in a git repository, and every save is a commit. The full free-versus-paid line, and where it does not fit, is in its own section below. |
| github.com file editor | NothingA browser tab | Your GitHub repository | Free | Fine for fixing a typo, rough for anything longer. It renders GitHub-flavoured Markdown, so wikilinks do not resolve, and the mobile web interface is not built for writing. |
| Obsidian on a device you own | The official app, on your own phone or tablet | Wherever you sync it | Free for personal use | Sidesteps the work machine rather than solving it — and that is sometimes the right answer. It is the only route on this list where the notes never touch company equipment at all. |
| Obsidian Vault Editor for Google Drive | A Chrome extension | Your Google Drive | Free | No application install, but extension installation is one of the first things restricted on a managed browser — block type 3 above. |
| Browsidian | A server, or local file access on the machine | Your own disk or server | Free, open source | Genuinely good on a machine you control, which is the opposite of this situation. Reaching a home server from a work network usually means a tunnel, and that is squarely a policy question. 85 stars, last code push March 2026, no licence declared (checked 22 August 2026). |
| Remote desktop to your home machine | Usually a client, sometimes a browser | Your home computer | Varies | Commonly blocked outright, and where it is not, it is frequently named in the acceptable-use policy. Also the slowest imaginable way to add one line to a note. |
Obsidian's desktop and mobile apps are free for personal use; work use in an organisation is what the $50/user/year commercial licence covers. GitHub describes github.dev as "Free" and "Available to everyone on GitHub.com".
If the notes are yours
This is the simpler case, and the one most people are actually in: a personal vault — reading notes, a journal, a side project, study material — that you want to reach from a machine you do not control.
The setup that survives every block except a network-level ban on GitHub:
- On your own computer, put the vault in a private GitHub repository. Private repositories are unlimited on GitHub's free plan, and private means what it says — "accessible to you and people you share them with". This step happens at home, on a machine where you are allowed to install things.
- From then on, the work machine only ever needs a browser tab. Nothing installed, nothing downloaded, nothing plugged in.
- Pick the tab by what you are doing. Fixing a typo between meetings: github.com's own editor is right there and costs nothing. Actually reading and writing notes that link to each other: that needs something shaped like a notes app.
If your vault is currently a plain folder and git is unfamiliar, step one is the real work — and it is a one-time ten minutes with a graphical app and no command line. We wrote a step-by-step guide for exactly that, because it is the single most common reason people give up on this whole category.
If the notes belong to your employer
Meeting minutes, customer details, incident write-ups, anything with a colleague's name in it. Here the honest answer is not a tool recommendation.
Do not route work notes through a personal account. Not a personal GitHub repository, not a personal Google Drive, not a personal sync service. The repository being private is not the point. The point is that the account sits outside your employer's control, which is what "data leaving the company" means in most acceptable-use policies. It also creates a problem nobody thinks about until they change jobs: the company's notes are in an account the company cannot administer, and you are the only person who can hand them back.
Three routes do not have this problem:
- Ask for Obsidian to be installed properly. Name the commercial licence and its price — $50 per user per year. That turns "let me install an app" into an ordinary software request with a vendor and an invoice, which is a category your IT department already knows how to say yes to.
- Use what is already approved. If VS Code, Notepad++ or anything similar is already on the machine, it opens Markdown files. You lose the graph, the plugins and the polish; you keep the files, and the files are the part that matters. Your notes also stay on company equipment, where work notes belong.
- Use a repository the organisation owns. If your company already uses GitHub, GitLab or Azure DevOps, a browser editor pointed at a company-owned repository is not data leaving anywhere — the notes never move. This is the route that turns the whole problem into an ordinary access request.
"Install" in a browser is not the same install
Browser-based tools, ours included, will sometimes offer to "install" themselves — a prompt to add the site to your desktop or home screen. The word is doing two different jobs, and it is worth knowing which one.
A progressive web app added this way is still a website. It does not write to Program Files, it does not run outside the browser's sandbox, and it does not need administrator rights. That is a real technical difference from an installer, and it is why these tools work on machines where installers do not.
It is also still an action on a managed device, and some policies are written broadly enough to cover it. We are not going to tell you it does not count, because we cannot read your employer's policy. The practical point is simpler: you never have to press it. Every browser route on this page works in an ordinary tab, and a bookmark does the same job with none of the ambiguity.
Where OB Lite fits, and where it does not
This is our own product, so here is the shape of it before the pitch.
OB Lite is a browser editor for Obsidian-compatible vaults that live in a git repository. There is nothing to install: you open it in a browser on a phone, a tablet or a locked-down laptop, connect it to one repository, and your notes are there — wikilinks you can tap, frontmatter and checkboxes rendered, search across the whole vault. It is not a sync service. Your notes stay in your repository and on your device, and our server never receives the content of a note.
It solves exactly one part of this problem: reaching and editing your own notes from a machine where you cannot install software. It does not get you past a policy, it does not work on a vault that is not in git, and it does not make a personal account an acceptable home for work notes.
What it costs, in full
- Free, permanently: reading your whole vault, editing and saving existing notes, offline drafts, search, recent files, dark and light themes, 3 bookmarks, and up to 10 new notes a month.
- $6.99 / ¥980, one time: unlimited new notes, rename, move and delete, wikilink jump and the outline drawer, image upload, Dataview tables, the Moon theme, unlimited bookmarks, and expiring share links.
- Every new account starts with a 7-day trial of everything, no card required. There is no subscription of any kind, because there is no server-side storage to pay for — the storage is your repository.
Try it from the machine in question
The demo is a real vault you can browse and edit in the page — no account, no sign-in, no email. Opening it on the work laptop is also the fastest way to find out whether the network lets this kind of tool through at all.
FAQ
Can I install Obsidian without administrator rights?
It depends entirely on which control your employer uses, and the only reliable way to find out is to run the installer once and watch. Obsidian's Windows download is a single installer .exe, and the official download page lists no portable build (checked 22 August 2026). If the machine uses application allowlisting rather than an administrator prompt, no installer of any kind will run, and the browser routes on this page are the answer.
Is there a portable version of Obsidian?
Not one that Obsidian publishes for Windows or macOS. The official download page offers a single .exe for Windows and a .dmg for macOS, with no portable or zip build listed (checked 22 August 2026). On Linux the AppImage behaves like a portable executable. Requests for per-user and system-wide installation options have been open on Obsidian's own forum for years, which is a fair indication that this is unsettled rather than solved.
Do I need a commercial licence to use Obsidian at work?
Obsidian's pricing FAQ says you are not required to pay for one, but that if you are using Obsidian for work in an organisation they encourage you to purchase one. It costs $50 per user per year. If you are asking an IT department to install it, quoting that licence and price usually makes the request easier to approve rather than harder.
What can I use if I genuinely cannot install anything at all?
A browser tab pointed at a vault that lives in a git repository. github.dev is free and opens on any GitHub repository — press the full stop key while viewing it, or change github.com to github.dev in the address bar. If you want something that behaves like a notes app rather than a code editor, that is the gap OB Lite fills, with a free tier that covers reading and editing existing notes. Both require the vault to be in a repository, which is a step you do at home.
Is it safe to put work notes in my personal GitHub repository?
Private is not the same as permitted. Under most acceptable-use policies, moving company information into an account your employer does not control counts as data leaving the company, regardless of the repository's visibility setting. If the notes are work notes, use a repository the organisation owns, ask for Obsidian to be licensed and installed, or use an editor that is already approved on the machine.
Can my employer see my personal notes if I open them on a work machine?
Assume yes. On a managed device, monitoring can cover browser activity and screen content regardless of which site you are using, and nothing on this page changes that. If you would not be comfortable with a colleague reading a note over your shoulder, the answer is a device you own rather than any browser route on the work machine.
Does the browser route work on a phone as well?
Yes, and for many people the phone is the real destination. The same vault in the same repository opens in a mobile browser, which is the case OB Lite was built for. If your own phone is unrestricted, that route avoids the policy question about company equipment entirely.
Sources and method
Every price, download format and product detail on this page comes from a primary source — the vendor's own pricing page, download page, documentation or repository — checked on 22 August 2026. Where we describe another product's limitations, the limitation comes from that product's own material rather than from our testing. We have not tested any employer's device controls: the descriptions of those are generic, and your own IT department is the authority on which one applies to you.
- Obsidian pricing, including the commercial licence and its FAQ wording — obsidian.md/pricing
- Obsidian download formats per platform — obsidian.md/download
- Obsidian forum, request for all-users / system-wide installation on Windows — forum.obsidian.md
- Obsidian forum, request for single-user installation on Windows — forum.obsidian.md
- github.dev cost, availability and limitations — docs.github.com
- GitHub Free plan, private repositories — github.com/pricing
- Browsidian, stars and last code push — github.com/blamouche/browsidian