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Obsidian

Last updated by Simon Späti

Obsidian is a Second Brain and note-taking app. It is a powerful and extensible knowledge base that works on top of your local folder of plain text files.

Obsidian is a wrapper around your folders and Markdown files, including one single folder called .obsidian in your root. That’s it! In case you like to use another editor such as vim, VSCode or just any other  Text Editor you might have, open all your files individually. Or, in case you want to open all notes in one go, use open Obsidian.

# The Power of Obsidian

I use Obsidian for all aspects of life, but not for everything. For example, I don’t it for toDo’s or planning that have reminders/deadlines I must not forget. It’s not a todo app. I have weekly todo lists, but it’s a different workflow.

But regarding notes, thinking, thoughts, ideas, doctor and health information, what I talked with friends, names of friends kids, they go all in one Vault in Obsidian. The power only comes, if you have a place where notes can be, and also be found years later. That’s where Obsidian shines. Twitter

# Second Brain

Not everyone needs a second brain is what Matt Jones is saying. To me I don’t mind how you call it.

In the old days, we called it notes app, or note-taking app. I call it second brain, as in Obsidian I can connect notes, which is after using it for a while, is quite the game changer, as I don’t relay on folders. And because I can find notes based on backlinks (e.g. a friend told me a tool or a quote, but I forgot the tool/quote, I just go on my note of my friend, and find the backlink).

Again, I don’t mind how you call it, but having a notes app is definitely something everyone should have. Start simple, add features only if you need them. KISS principle. I share more on My Obsidian Note-Taking Workflow.

# Why Obsidian

See Why Obsidian.

I struggled with that as well. And I noticed over time, I automatically linked less. I like the example. Over time, you will change and update your notes and also feel when to use a connection and when it’s obvious.

Also, to relax your brain, e.g., I wanted to link everything to Obsidian as it was the root for many things I’m writing. But even though you do not link it, you will still see the connections in Unlinked mentions. This helps me not to think I will lose the note.

Usually, every note should at least be linked to one note. I also do that with my template that has an Origin and References. If I didn’t come up with a link through the text, I make sure that I at least link it to one reference that I think relates most, so it’s more likely to come up months or years down the line. Most of the time, the link also comes from Origin, as it’s usually a person or a blog that I already have in my Second Brain.

Here is the footer I add automatically to each note:

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---
Origin:
References:
Created <% tp.date.now(&

Sometimes, I even create an intermediate new note to the next, as it helps me to find and categorize my thoughts better.

But again, with time, you will figure that out; these come naturally. Especially when you check backlinks to a note, and you have 100s of them, they get a little useless. Therefore, you naturally add fewer in the future.

See also why quality software deserves your hard-earned cash and Local First approach. Find all my configs for Obsidian (hotkey, plugins, etc.) on my linked dotfiles.


From Obsidian: The Good Parts - YouTube

There is also Named Links (Obsidian), that you can give your link a name. Apparently full supported by the Obsidian:

I do similar things with Origin: LINK, that will tell that this link was the origin. But it does not show up on the graph:

Does it need to?

# How to Use Obsidian for Work

For work, keep in mind that meeting notes are the least valuable of them all, so don’t try to make them more than they are. Just keep one note with this structure like:

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# Project / Person / Recurring meeting topic  
  
## Logs  
  
### Date 1  
Participants person 1, person 2, new also [[Person 5]]

discussed:  
- bla bla  
- Bla  
- ? why we need X  
  
Decisions made:  
- We use [[Project Z]] to optimize [[Problem YY]]  
  
### Date 2

And then make sure when you have some time, that you focus on the follow up, and potentially work on the note [[Problem YY]] by just clicking on it (will create a new note).

# Price and Features

Let’s get this out of the way, Obsidian is entirely free! You can add two  paid features, 1. if you want to use their integrated sync tool, or 2. if you want to share your notes, including the fancy graph and outline view.

But yeah, as it is plain text stored on your hard drive, you can use Dropbox, Google Drive, or any other sync tool! As I’m using  Sync.com with end-to-end encryption for all my files, it does not work nicely on my mobile. That’s why I added Obsidian Sync. I could have added it to Dropbox, but I didn’t want to give them my most private notes.

If you want to check out all the other features, see the complete list at  Obsidian.md or find more customization with  25 core and  329 community plugins, 60+ themes, plus custom styling, you can tweak Obsidian to work and look exactly how you want it.

Some community plugins do a single thing extremely well, like  Calendar and  Kanban. Others unlock endless possibilities:  Dataview and  Templater are great examples.

See more on How to Take Notes in 2021?.

# Plugins

More on Obsidian Plugins.

# Synchronisation

# Four Modes of Writing

Four modes of Writing

# Vim-mode

I use Vim Motions in Obsidian, they work very nicely.

# Zen-Mode

I wanted a «Zen mode» to focus on Obsidian the same way I have in Neovim with <leader>z. So, I added a shortcut to my .vimrc in Obsidian to hide the right bar and tab bar. It’s simple but effective.

# How to Get Started with Obsidian

It depends a little on what phase you are in (do you already have a note app, etc)? But generally, I’d start with plain Obsidian, don’t install any plugins. Just take notes and create a simple folder structure that makes sense to you (I’d add 4 folders to begin with -> Areas, Project, Resources, and Archive). And then you start using it. That’s it. You can always optimize later on.

The video I stole my initial folder structure from is from Zowie from Systematic Mastery; this video has great explanations if you want to know a little more: (old but still worthwhile).

If you want some more inspiration, I made a video about my Obsidian note-taking workflow: (or as a blog post). This is after 10 years of using One-Note and 2-4 years of Obsidian, so don’t try to replicate from the beginning if you just start out. My Obsidian Note-Taking Workflow

But the best thing about Obsidian is not Obsidian itself, but it’s open file format, Mardown. As the CEO likes to say, “File over app”.

# Explainer Videos

# Comparison to Apple Notes or Notion

Here’s my thought on someone wanting to go away from Apple Notes as it’s deleted half of her work.

If you want t e simplest solution for simple text, use Obsidian. Don’t start with plugins or customizing, just start using it and make an Map of Content (MOC) for your scripts, and link them back to it. So you don’t lose the overview. Obsidian can’t be simpler, because the files are local on your machine, so nobody is fiddling with or tampering with your data. You can work offline and use any sync tool (e.g., Dropbox, Drive, GitHub, etc) to back up.

It’s a million times faster than Notion, as it’s locally on your machine, no network required. The only thing it won’t work for is if you need to share or collaborate, that’s when you can use Notion, still, I’d say. But that’s why Obsidian makes the perfect “Second Brain” as it’s yours, and you don’t need to collaborate, just deep uninterrupted thinking.

Additionally, because it’s just local text files, you can even open it up with different editors, e.g., if you write a long article, or a book, or a deep note, you could open it with iA Writer or similar, to be even more focused. AND because it’s not proprietary files like Notion, Apple, and all cloud services, you can extend, upload to a website, and customize to all your needs. But that should be done later in the process.

# Misc

# Market

See StackOverflow Survey 2024, most desired besides Markdown. .

# Feature Wishes

It serves almost all my needs already; if I have to wish:

  1. mobile opening up within 1-3 seconds, not 10.
  2. smart connections with local-llm integration trained/aggregated with my vault notes
    1. Second Brain Assistant with Obsidian (NoteGPT)
  3. integrated OCR image search
  4. respecting my existing Neovim configs for native vim navigation

# Optimize Obsidian Mobile

  • 5 Killer Hacks to Boost Your Obsidian on Mobile. | by Lohith dhaksha | Obsidian Observer | Medium

  • Background battery optimization for obsidian and Brave/chrome:

    • Initial Launch takes too long : r/ObsidianMD: I have about 2.5 GiB of data, in more than 6k notes and some hundreds or thousands of attachments. Obsidian takes less than 8s every time (8s is the slowest since 1.7.7), and usually between 5s and max to start.
    • What I see that makes a difference is RAM memory and excluding the app from battery optimization so that it doesn’t get killed.
    • Mine stays active for a day this way, so opening it – except for the first time – is instantaneous.
    • Also, reindexing shouldn’t occur often. If it is, there’s something that’s changing your files metadata or creating too many of them while Obsidian isn’t running.

Reddit - Dive into anything:

  • If I am not wrong, if you set battery to unrestricted for both Chrome browser and Obsidian, it will stay in background. Read it somewhere.
  • I used to try this but then again, sometimes leaving it in background cause me more problems. Dataview not updated. Editor goes haywire. Eventually gave up on keeping app in background.
  • Then again, maybe it is just my phone problem.

More Obsidian Mobile Troubleshoot.

# On Linux

I use it heavily since 6 month or so in Arch Linux Omarchy. it works great, i think you need some parameters to start (I dont think they are a must, but there are some one Omarchy).

Sync, writing and all the plugins work as on macOS. i only have two issues:

  1. I use vim mode, and 2 or 3 times a day, probably in combination with lists, I cant get back to normalmode and markuos are not rendering anymore. So I quickly restart Obisidian.
  2. The second, less important, but still a pity, is that the graph view is seriously slow. it barely works with one neighbor level (I have 10k+ notes tough). But that worked much better on macOS. I thought is was the computer, but in the meantime, I have a ultra fast laptop, and its still the same.

# Technical

# Illegal Symbols

So there are basically two reasons why characters would be considered illegal by Obsidian:

  • links invalidation: []#^|
  • file systems limitation: \/: and ? for Android

Other than these most characters are legal, like those emojis being unicode characters, and most other unicode characters, like stuff with accents/diacritics: áāãőůçĉ, and national characters like æøåßþƴðđ.

So feel free to use characters rather freely. See also  Internal links and special characters - #2 by holroy source

# Troubleshooting

Obsidian Mobile Troubleshoot

# Settings

# Further Reads

Origin:
References: Second Brain
Created

Interactive Graph

Backlinks