Hi all,

A while back I created a cheatsheet for DataView and put it on GitHub. After getting a few stars and forks I realised some people found it useful, so I thought why not share it here in the community as well.

The way I use it personally, is I copied it over to my own vault so I can search it inside of Obsidian. It saves me time going to another app/browser to find the 'how to' do something.

Perhaps you'll find it useful too. Feel free to share any suggestions on what else to add, or if you like, create a PR on GitHub.

You can find it on my github

After some trouble Wirth the code for custom palettes, I finally figured it out. This is really nice visual habit tracking based on daily note properties. Easy!

It's pretty simple/minimal but I found it works pretty well for me.

General calendar and file explorer on the left, quick links and tracker in the main note, daily appointments and tasks on the right.

For the tasks I can tick when they are completed and I can add new ones, but different actions (deleting one, making new projects, editing an existing one) have to be done externally in Todoist. The calendar fetches my Google Calendar(s) and is read-only; not a big deal, these are both things I usually manage on the go from my phone anyway. Everything else lives within Obsidian itself, including the excel budget manager.

If you are curious about some plugins let me know and I'll post a list later.

One of the biggest challenges with reading many books is seeing how concepts connect across them. And it took me really a while to figure out how I best could capture my notes and manage my knowledge of books.

This is how I do it now:

• A central file for the book.
  • It will contain all the ideas, book notes, thoughts first.
  • The note title is the book and a property is the author, which is a note by itself.
• Then I create individual notes out of each "idea".
  • I'll try to apply the "Atomic notes" concept here.
  • When an idea is longer (or there are graphs, etc.) I put some content in the body and embed the content in the main file.
• Each atomic note has three properties
  • tags: How will I potentially apply this knowledge in life?
  • Topics: What topics are mentioned?
  • Source: A link to the book note.

I'll put some screenshots in the comment.

What I then do, is also putting this into an AI-powered space repetition learning system, so that I repeat the content of the books. Drop me a comment if you want to learn more.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

I have recently started using obsidian, but i am facing an issue in canvas it keeps putting the formatters like [[x]] exactly like this [[x]] not like this x with an underline you can see in the picture.

Please help

I love Obsidian’s feel and really want to use it as a simple, clean outliner—like Pages. I tried the Outliner plugin by vslinko, and while it seems promising, I just can’t get it to actually work.

Is there:

1. A better plugin for outlining?
2. A fix to make Slinko’s actually work right?
3. Or should I just give up on outlining in Obsidian?

Not looking for Zettelkasten or full-on Logseq—just smooth nested bullets, collapse/expand, and some focus.

Thanks!

hey,
wrote a new essay on how software became a lifestyle brand. it's about tools, taste, and why your dock probably says more than your instagram
cheers

Hi all,

First of all: I am sorry, if this question was answered before, but I‘ve tried to search reddit, youtube und google to find the right answer and couldn‘t succeed.

I am looking for a simple way to add two things to the meta-data of each note i create:

I want to automatically add when the note was createy (i.e. yyyy-mm-dd) and when it was last updated (also yyyy-mm-dd).

Is there an simple way - maybe even without installing an plugin?

Thanks for reading this post!

This has happened on and off with obsidian. I have to completely quit the app to re-open it.

For context I was on the "Classes 2025-2026" tab, maybe 4 days ago. I got sick as hell and stopped doing anything. I just opened the app again today and I try to open the "13.4 IP" to start studying again and it just shows this. The "new tab" was "classes 2025-2026", I didn't open a new tab.

When I open a new tab and try to open the file, it continues to put the failed to open error message - for ANY file I try to open, including the "Classes 2025-2026".

I don't have obsidian sync, and my files are in iCloud (but I don't sync with that, i don't sync at all).

It does this sometimes, where I'll open a file and it will just be.... blank. Even though I know there is info there. And I have to wait like a minute until the text will show up. I don't have big files either - maybe 5k words, MAXIMUM. Barely any images, maybe 2 maximum per file.

I really like Obsidian but I've tried to use it for so long and every time my vault gets any bigger than like 3 files it starts to throw errors like this. I don't want to have to deal with closing the app down EVERY time I'm done with it, no other apps I have act like this.

I shut down all the plugins I don't use. I don't have a theme. I only use the Hide Folders and Highlightr plugin. Im going insane.

When I paste the following into a note:

1. Heading 1
2. Heading 2
3. Heading 3
    1. Heading 3.1
    2. Heading 3.2
    3. Heading 3.3
4. Heading 4
5. Heading 5
    1. Heading 5.1
6. Heading 6
    1. Heading 6.1
    2. Heading 6.2
        1. Heading 6.2.1

It becomes automatically formatted to:

1. Heading 1
2. Heading 2
3. Heading 3
    1. Heading 3.1
    2. Heading 3.2
    3. Heading 3.3
4. Heading 4
5. Heading 5
    1. Heading 5.1
6. Heading 6
    2. Heading 6.1
    3. Heading 6.2
        1. Heading 6.2.1

As you can see below heading 6, it should be 1 and 2 instead of 2 and 3. This is conflicting with a plugin I've created and found the only solution was to disable Smart Lists in the settings.

if u/kepano or anyone has any solutions to this, please advise.

how? 😅😅

I had decided that I had way to much cloud storage and didn't want to pay for more to get Obsidian Sync.

First: I tried Syncthing for awhile then I moved to Resilio Sync for awhile. I preferred Resilio Sync but they both suffered from the same major problem, being peer-to-peer I had to have all three of my devices with me in order to do any syncs, this just didn't work for me.

Second: I tried pCloudDrive, I still use pCloud for storage but the sync speed was so slow it was unbearable and unusable.

Third: I tried Mega.nz(io), this was a lot faster but had a lot of issues especially on Android, but also to some extent on Linux, because of this I had way to many failed critical syncs.

Now this all didn't happen over night, probably a couple years of suffering.

So, very late last night I signed up for Obsidian Sync. The initial sync took a little while but it finished without error. Then I synced my two android devices, they would have been quite quick except for a directory name mishap that was on me that I never noticed before. Once that was fixed, everything just worked.

Just wish I had done this a long time ago.

Anyway that's my story in a nutshell.

I'm just curious about other users experience, I came from Notion because their privacy policy is a bit invasive in my point of view and the second brain and free canvas feature were a very attractive to me.

I have to confess, I own way to much stuff and usually can't find anything when I have to. So a while ago, I create a little private inventory management system in Notion. It worked quite well, it was nice looking and had quite some features - but it was just too slow. A system like that, lives from me keeping it up to date but with a delay of just one one or two seconds my brain thinks it is too much effort.

So after switching from Notion to Obsidian, I also recreated the inventory management system and here it is:

• There are two types of entities: things and locations.
• There is also one MOC for things as well as one for locations.
• Every entity (thing, location) gets its own note.
• A thing note contains:
  • A title, which is the name of the thing.
  • A tag to define it as a thing, for me that is #tg (for additional information this can be extended e.g. #tg/camping).
  • A link to a Location.
  • A link to the MOC things.
• A location note contains:
  • A title, which is the name of the location.
  • A tag to define it as a location, for me that is #loc.
  • A link to the MOC locations.
• The MOC Things is empty.
• The MOC Locations is empty as well.

What it can do / how to use it

• Add a new location: Create a new location note with the information stated above (use a template for ease).
• Add a new thing: Create a new thing note with the information stated above (use a template for ease). Remember to add the link to the respective location note.
• Find a thing: Use the Obsidian search with "tag:tg" and add the search term.
• Find the location of the thing: Look into the thing note for the linked location.
• Find all things in a location: Look into the backlinks of the respective location.
• Find all things in the system: Look into the backlinks of the MOC things or search for the #tg tag.
• Find all locations in the system: Look into the backlinks of the MOC locations or search for the #tg tag.

Additional infos:

• Use templates to become faster.
• Use keyboard shortcuts to create new things. Adding a new thing excluding the description should take less than one second.
• You can nest locations to facilitate shelfs, rooms or different buildings.
• If you are very fancy, you can create a link to a location and make a QR code from it and stick it to the box. So you can find it very fast in Obsidian on a mobile device.
• You can link to things in packing list or other project notes, which is quite handy.
• Finding my things offline is quite nice (I am looking a you notion ....).

Stats and graph:

• Things: 261
• Locations: ~15 (and some orphans)
• Graph legend: MOC things (yellow), MOC locations (blue), things (red), locations (green)

I'm not very technical and have hard time confirming it 100% but does 'auto run' feature only works when Obsidian is in the foreground? That is the desired behavior for me and I got an impression this is the case since Obsidian doesn't have 'background app refresh' in the system settings

But I wish someone more technical would be able to confirm this definitely so it don't wake up after some time and realize my iPad have been trying connect to some server every single minute it's turned on heh

I've updated my 2022 app review of Obsidian https://www.noteapps.ca/obsidian-for-android-review-2025/

Hello everyone. currently I am using obsidian on my windows laptop, and after I finish this semester of college I plan to switch from windows to linux. I was wondering is there any possible way that I can make the switch and still keep my notes when I install obsidian on linux? with the same formats and everything else.

I believe I will have to download the my plugins again and settings will reset to the default, but thats not an issue, all I care about is the notes themselves and their formatting.

ty in advance

Hi. I am new to obsidian (prior notion user).

I would like to know if there is a way or a plugin that allow me to organize texts through identation and by coloring the back ground color just as in notion. Something different than the double equal sign for highlighting, or at least, how to use different colors. That textmark yellow do not please me.

It really helps me organizing long and detaild explanations on a topic inside a long note. So I would like to keep this formating style now moving into obsidian.

Thank you in advance

Since my last post here was really well received and I got a lot of questions, I thought I’d share a basic overview of how I personally use Obsidian. (Of course, with the understanding that everyone uses the app differently and there’s no right or wrong way to do it.)

Finances:

I track everything related to money. That includes my daily expenses like groceries, etc., and at the end of the month, I summarize my total spending. I also make a note of how much I’ve saved. I keep a list of all my monthly fixed costs like rent, subscriptions, and more. This gives me a clear overview. Usually, I organize everything into different tables, but all within a single note.

Fitness:

I track my workouts, including time, intensity, and duration, along with my daily calorie intake and water consumption. If I exceed my daily calorie limit, I highlight that value. If I stay under the limit, I just log it normally.

Work:

I have a dedicated note for work-related stuff like my hours, projects, and everything else I do on the job.

Content Creation:

I keep track of everything related to my content creation. This includes inspirations, helpful websites or tools, music videos, games, and podcasts I enjoy. I also save images, basically anything that helps me create content online.

Other Stuff:

I store a lot of images and notes in my vault. I love using emojis and a clean, dark theme. It’s really important to me that I feel comfortable while working. When I open Obsidian, the first thing I see is my homepage, which I’ve designed to feel cozy, with images, quotes, and links to my most-used notes. There are lots of other things I keep in Obsidian too, like upcoming games, music, movies, or ideas for designing my future apartment. Basically, it’s become my second brain where I write down everything.

My number one rule is:

Everything has to be tidy and organized.

Maybe this gave some of you a few ideas or a little inspiration. :)

Help needed!

Previously, I synced vaults between my Mac and iPhone on iCloud. I am moving to syncthing and mobius. I've set those up, and the file sharing is working, but I have not been able to successfully move the obsidian app library folder to a new location. The App Library obsidian folder seems to be a prerequisite for opening vaults on IOS. There biggest problem is that I am able to open vaults in the new location on my Mac, but I am not able to do so on my iPhone. I am able to see the markdown files on my iPhone but not open them as a vault. My most important vault has a lot of community plug ins, templates, and datatviews, and I really want to avoid having to set all of that up again.

I am currently using the web clipper to save interesting articles from the web. If I highlight interesting paragraphs (using ==lorem ipsum==), I have to manually extract those to the top of the note to create a summary. Is there a way to gather the highlights from an article in a dynamic manner (so that the note is updated when I add another highlight?)

Ideally, I am looking for something that runs on dataview or some core plugin, but if needed, a third party plugin is also fine.

I'm very new to obsidian so I'm not even sure how to ask this exactly. But, I am enjoying it so far. I'll probablly invest in it fully eventually but I am currently frustrated by completely losing the leftmost work menu for no discernable reason. I don't know what I clicked to make it disappear, but I want the menu to return as it is in the sandbox vault. I am not using any plugins. Just the base install on Windows. I have an image below to show what I'm talking about. Even after systematically clicking on everything I can't figure out how to restore it. I'm using the dark theme and the sandbox vault is the light theme. Thanks for helping a total beginner.

https://postimg.cc/ygyyvVQy

A sentiment I see a lot in this sub is that Obsidian is only a tool for solo work. I used to agree, but first please enjoy this timeline:

This is taken from a conference talk my cofounder and I gave recently. We work on screen.garden, but this post isn't really about that: it's about how we can and should be making Obsidian into the platform we want it to be.

I've tried so many notes apps. So many. And in the end every single one was defeated in the same way: I wanted total control over my notes in a format that will outlive me.

Obsidian hit me like a thunderbolt. Now I had control! Obsidian itself could vanish from the Earth and my notes would still be there. But then I hit a problem I suspect many of you have: my coworkers wanted my meeting notes, or I needed to quickly jam on an idea with someone, and invariably we'd end up in Google Docs or Notion.

Those apps are black holes. They're not markdown and they have terrible search. Backlinks are either unsupported or less than ideal. I wanted to stay in Obsidian!

The beauty of Obsidian is that it is infinitely extensible. I love seeing folks' setups. Why shouldn't we be able to extend it to be multiplayer? Opt-in, collaborative notes alongside private ones in the same vault. You can do this today, with our tool or others, without giving up markdown or what makes Obsidian great.

The next time someone here asks about collaboration I think it'd be great if we entertained the idea. Obsidian is what we make of it—that's why it's so amazing to see people's incredible bespoke setups here. Expanding it to try and fight the black holes of Notion/Google Docs/Confluence is a real challenge, but it's one I think we should try all the same. There's a world in which your coworkers/family/friends can link their thinking up with yours, and it's already here. Thanks for reading :)

can anybody tell me how i use the plugin? it seems like i cant get it to work. tryna write in gdscript but im doing something wrong to trigger it somehow

Hello, guys. I want to export my notes to pdf, but I can't center image with my css files and plugins. Could u help me with it. It would be nice.