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r/ObsidianMD

▲ 3 r/ObsidianMD

So do you have a second vault for long-writing projects? I'm not sure what to do here or how to set mine up.

I'm a writer so i don't have much experince when it comes to using Obsidian for writing work i've tried in the past but it felt overwhelming. I am considering having 2 vaults 1 for life stuff and class notes even if end up doing creative writing as a subject and then a second one for more intense work like screenplays, novels, short stories and long-fics. Does anyone else have a similar set up or do you have all of your writing in one vault? it just feels so tedious to me but i can't find many videos on different set ups so i'd be so curious especially for people who write chunky stories.

Also how is the lag? i have a macbook m4 all i use it for is sims 3, and also youtube that's about it my main broswer is vivaldi so with that in the background i don't think i'll have any lag or run out of stroage soon i am just very curious about everyone's set ups and also plugins you suggest/? i am trying not to go to overboard as i am still very much a noob trying to figure it out. Also can you have two seperate themes in vaults? or do they all share the same one?. I'm more used to using scrivener, ms word and google docs and pages for refrence so i have no clue if it's a similar kind of set up here. thank you!.

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u/heyitsjustjacelyn — 4 hours ago
▲ 59 r/ObsidianMD

It Ain’t Much, But It’s Mine

I’m still very much a newbie, but this is actually making learning more exciting for me again! I like to categorise my interests and whatever cultural community/neurotype I fall under, as I can very much tie it back into my main interest (Psychology). There’s only one interest of mine that I can’t figure out how to integrate into an Obsidian folder (Minecraft).

I’m not sure how most of you write out your notes, but I like to write out semi-formal report-length essays with subsections.

I’ll be adding more in the university section later, but I’m still on sem break 🙂‍↕️.

u/u_jinx — 4 hours ago
▲ 21 r/ObsidianMD

Calendar Hub: click a date and see *every* note from that day, in any folder — not just your one Daily Note

I kept hitting the same wall: I generate a lot of dated notes — daily logs, meeting notes, AI-generated summaries — and they scatter across different folders. The built-in Calendar plugin only knows about my one configured Daily Note, so everything else was basically invisible on the calendar.

So I built **Calendar Hub**. Click a date and it surfaces *every* note dated to that day — matched by the date in the filename *or* in frontmatter — no matter which folder it lives in.

Example: click July 3 and it pulls up `Daily/2026-07-03.md`, `Meeting notes/team sync 20260703.md`, `Work log/work log 20260703.md`, and a research note that only has `date: 2026-07-03` in its frontmatter — all from one sidebar.

It's a fork of Liam Cain's Calendar, so everything you already rely on still works (monthly view, note-count dots, weekly notes, theme support). It uses its own plugin id, so you can run it alongside the original and switch over only once you're happy with it.

It's in the community plugin browser — search "Calendar Hub". Repo link in the comments.

Would love feedback, especially on date-matching edge cases.

u/Pitiful_Aide1310 — 3 hours ago
▲ 30 r/ObsidianMD

My experience on redesigning my vault

Hello all,

I wanted to share about my journey with Obsidian - maybe it can help others. I recently grew out of my vault and therefore searched a lot for ideas and principles on how to design it for the future and this is what I came up with. I have been inspired by a youtube video and an article:

https://stephango.com/vault

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq3R3uS0sQ4&t=1321s

The before:

My previous system was heavily relying on a folder structure and tags.

For example I had folders for work, travel, productivity, projects, politics etc...

The main issue with this system were the constraints of using a folder system. To give an example, let's say I had a note about a business travel, should I put it into the travel or the work folder? In the end I put it in the work folder and created a tag #travel  - not good.

The principles:

  1. Friction sucks. The new system must be as easy as possible to apply

  2. Scalability. My vault grew a lot and is still. I need a system that can grow without restrictions.

  3. Search is king. Omnisearch is cool on mobile, however on PC (Linux Fedora) I am using Neovim and Telescope - it's just the fastest way to access everything at the speed of light. I'm a nerd. Forgive me please.

The after:

YAML Frontmatter became one of my main helpers to give notes more structure and meta data. In order to reduce friction as best as possible I am using many templates. Inside frontmatter I am relying on three main fields for organization:

  1. "type": "What type of information is it?" Examples: Book, Article, Bookmark, Document, Quote. Important: I created those types before as separate notes and link them inside Frontmatter - for example: [[quote]]. This creates backlinks and makes it incredibly easy to use bases as filters

  2. "Contexts": "Where does it belong to?" - A list of contexts where this note belongs. For example [[travel]], [[work]]. You see: Also here I created contexts as notes and link them - super cool!

  3. Tags: "What is the status of this note?". for example #todo when the note is not finished and something important is missing. Or #want for a book that I want to read but have not done, or #closed for a project that has been finished. For me the key to success is having limited myself to just a handful of defined tags instead of inventing new ones every day.

I changed a couple of other things:

Folder structure simplified: I have only a couple of folders: notes, contexts, types, attachments, templates. That's it. Technically it could make sense to reduce even more by merging contexts and types into the notes folder - and I might even do so in the future. However for the moment I decided to keep it like this.

Field "Owner" added to some types, for example to a Bank account or an insurance contract. I link this to dedicated persons, such as [[me]] or [[wife]].

Lessons learnt:

- no system is perfect. I found again some things that might bother me in future

- A system that works for me might not work for you. Individual people need individual solutions.

- Having no or a bad system is better than not having any notes at all. You can still search and see it as a starting point.

There you have it. Hope you enjoyed the read and I am open to hear further ideas and suggestions, how to improve. Thanks

u/highcryer — 5 hours ago
▲ 3 r/ObsidianMD

Suggestions for a family health database

Hi all. I decided to move from some other apps to Obsidian mainly because of data ownership. Looking for suggestions for a small "project" so I can get familiar with Obsidian.

I want to build a "family health database" where I link person, consultation, doctors, symptoms and medications. From what I know about Obsidian, I'm thinking of just creating notes for each of these types of items, creating a folder for each type of note or just prefixing the note names (like "Doctor - James" or "Med/Paracetamol"). Then I would link the notes appropriately (like "Consultation2026-07-06" link to "Person1", to "Symptom1" and "symptom2", to "Med1", "Med2", Med3". From there, over time I would have some graph patterns and see history through backlinks.

This is the type of thing I would do with multiple tables and references on Notion or Airtable but I'm want to hear what some of you suggest. Would you build it differently? Any plugins that would be useful?

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u/never_username — 3 hours ago
▲ 78 r/ObsidianMD

Does anyone search the plugin directory anymore?

It feels like every other day a new plugin gets posted and the comments act like it’s a brand new idea, when there’s already a mature plugin that’s been doing the same thing for years.

I’m not against new plugins. Better implementations and new approaches are great.

I just wish more of the discussion was, “How does this compare to the existing options?” instead of treating every new release as if it invented the workflow.
The Obsidian plugin ecosystem is mature enough now that “this already exists” is often useful context, not criticism.

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u/SnailMailSniper — 15 hours ago
▲ 16 r/ObsidianMD

How do you keep track of the current “truth” of a project across notes?

For people who use Obsidian for projects:

How do you keep track of the current “truth” of a project when info is scattered across old notes, new notes, screenshots, PDFs, spreadsheets, and drafts?

For example, when older notes contradict newer decisions, or when you vaguely remember “I wrote this somewhere” but can’t remember where.

Do you keep a master project note, use MOCs, tags, Dataview, folders, search, backlinks, or just manually re-read things when needed?

I’m trying to improve how I manage project context inside my vault.

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u/Sufficient-Zombie917 — 12 hours ago
▲ 3 r/ObsidianMD

Organizing Notes, Review Material, and Paper Review: Want Your Thoughts

Hey,

Probably not unlike a lot of you, I like to invest in continuous education and read papers, but I’m at bit of an impasse and would like your thoughts on organizing my vault. First, I’d like to share with you my workflow when approaching a subject.

  1. Create a note that’s dedicated to the chapter of my book
  2. Scan my chapter as a first pass
  3. On a light second pass, I write down in my notes questions and concepts I think I should understand
  4. On third pass, I actively read and take interactive notes. I also write to a dedicated section called points of confusion
  5. I review my notes and create a review section where it asks questions I should know the answer to
  6. Cleanup. At this point, I take my sloppy bullet points and turn it into something structured. I’ll often break the page into more atomic pages organized by topic rather than chapter.

I do similar-ish things for papers.

I have 5 top level directories:

- Reading/Lecture Notes
- Sloppy notes taken from when I read the chapter
- These really don’t link to anywhere and are just orphaned notes organized by Book/Chapter1.md
- Knowledge Base
- This is where the cleaned up version of chapter and lecture notes live
- Paper Review
- I didnt touch on this, but I integrate Zotero and specifically paper reviews and thoughts under this directory
- I keep this separate from my knowledge base, but these are cleaned up thoughts on papers. Ill often reference these papers in my knowledge base
- Anki
- I create a directory dedicated to Anki. I use Obsidian to Anki
- Fairly messy, but I organize by topic
- Project Notes
- For my ongoing projects, I keep lessons learned and thoughts here. Also fairly disjoint

This structure doesn’t feel ideal. The graph it create is rather disjoint. I would really like to better integrate review material into Obsidian. The Anki cards are kind of a monster, but work well enough. My paper organization also feels disjoint.

Want your thoughts and your setup if you do something similar?

reddit.com
u/Due_Battle_9890 — 9 hours ago
▲ 322 r/ObsidianMD

belki 0.4 is out — a calm, local-first Todoist-like task manager for Obsidian

Hey everyone,

I just released belki 0.4.0, and instead of only listing what changed in this version, I wanted to give a clearer overview of what belki includes now.

belki is a calm, Todoist-like task manager for Obsidian. It is not a Todoist integration, does not require an account, and does not use an external sync service. Tasks stay inside your vault as local Markdown files.

What’s included so far:

  • Inbox, Today, Upcoming, Projects, Filters & Labels, Activity, Completed, and Search views
  • Local Markdown-based task storage inside your vault
  • Due dates, deadlines, priorities, labels, descriptions, and attachments
  • Recurring tasks with daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and custom repeat rules
  • Sub-tasks with completion counters and expandable previews directly in the main task list
  • Project creation, rename/archive/delete actions, and project colors
  • Label colors, plus label rename/delete management
  • Quick add from the command palette with belki: Add task
  • Wikilinks in task titles and descriptions
  • Image previews and file attachments stored locally
  • Mobile-friendly composer, task detail screen, date picker, repeat controls, and task move actions
  • Activity view with completed-task stats and a lightweight 26-week heatmap

0.4.0 focuses especially on activity history, faster capture, better project/label management, clearer navigation, more useful sub-task visibility, and mobile/responsive polish.

The plugin is still young, so feedback is very welcome. I’m especially interested in hearing how people would want belki to fit into real Obsidian workflows: daily notes, existing Markdown checklists, Tasks plugin workflows, GTD-style setups, or anything else.

You can install it from Obsidian Community Plugins here:
https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/belki

GitHub:
https://github.com/aribuga/obsidian-belki-tasks

Thanks again to everyone who tried it, reported issues, or suggested improvements. I’d love to hear what you think of this version too.

u/aribuga — 23 hours ago
▲ 363 r/ObsidianMD

My Obsidian dashboard helped me land a job! (Appreciation post)

Three years ago I started with Zettelkasten and tags, thinking of tags as a hierarchy. That mindset carried forward when Bases came out, tags became frontmatter properties, and it completely changed how I built my folder structure and dashboards.

Since then the system has evolved a ton: values tracking, project management, wireframes, iterations, too many CSS snippets.

In a recent interview, the conversation turned to how I learn. I started talking about my note taking system, how long it's taken to build, the thinking behind the wireframes, and ended up pulling it up and showing them the actual dashboard.

That system was built for me, not for anyone else. Turns out it also showed exactly how I think, iterate, and stay accountable to myself. Got the job.

If you've ever wondered whether all the time you sink into your vault "counts" for anything outside it, it can. Thanks Kepano and the Obsidian team! Can appreciation flair be added? If this is not allowed, please remove.

Edit: here's the link to my Github repository of the vanilla system I'm running: https://github.com/NPHILL66/Obsidian-Vault-Template/tree/main

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u/Only-penguins-414 — 1 day ago
▲ 1.1k r/ObsidianMD

my dashboard!

Dashboard showcase, with an explainer image for plugin etc info!

This is the anuppuccin theme, with zillions of custom css snippets, and a handful of plugins.

I posted a vault showcase earlier this year but i've changed it soooo much since then so thought I'd share again! Only my dashboard for now, but might share more at some point

Before anyone asks, I'm more than happy to explain or help you replicate anything i've done here, but i'm not going to be sharing it outright! It's mine, made for me.

u/kristenbouchard — 1 day ago
▲ 0 r/ObsidianMD

Plugin that colors notes (and ideally graph view) by note property tags

Basically I'm using Obsidian for my work and I have tags with clients, projects and products. I'd like to have all the notes with the property tag clients colored in a certain way in the files view and, ideally, in the graph view.

I've tried a few plugins but some didn't work, some provided a rainbow of colors I couldn't edit. I'd love some suggestions on how can this be done.

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u/vaidab — 14 hours ago
▲ 64 r/ObsidianMD

Blackboard: draw with Apple Pencil directly in Obsidian Canvas nodes and Markdown embeds (free & open source)

I take handwritten notes on my iPad and always wanted to sketch with the Apple Pencil right inside Obsidian, instead of drawing in another app and exporting an image. I couldn't find one that let me draw directly on a Canvas node, so I made Blackboard.

The main idea: pen-down starts drawing immediately on a Canvas node or a Markdown embed. There's no "open the drawing to edit it first" step.

  • Pressure-sensitive freehand (Apple Pencil / stylus), built on perfect-freehand
  • Palm rejection: the stylus draws, your resting hand doesn't; touch pans and pinch-zooms instead
  • Pen, highlighter, and eraser on one small floating toolbar
  • Drawings are stored as plain JSON (.blackboard), so they diff cleanly in git; optional SVG export
  • Made for iPad + Apple Pencil, but works on desktop with a mouse

It's free and open source under MIT: no paid tier, no account, nothing to unlock. I built it for my own notes and I'm maintaining it.

The README has a demo and screenshots. Would love feedback, especially from other iPad/Pencil users, since WebKit on iPad has some quirks and more real-world testing helps. Happy to answer questions.

github.com
u/jameswolensky — 21 hours ago
▲ 17 r/ObsidianMD

Using Obsidian for PhD - where to start?

Hi. I want to switch to Obsidian after using Notion for the first 6 months of my PhD. I'd love some advice and tips on how to start as a newbie.

Also, if anyone can suggest some YT channels that advise on all things Obsidian and Academia.

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u/deadshotkeen — 22 hours ago
▲ 4 r/ObsidianMD

Noob Question: I don't understand this behaviour. Why is Obsidian turning these headings blue (ie links to notes)?

u/someyob — 1 day ago
▲ 68 r/ObsidianMD

My Vault after 1 year

Its a mix of religion, philosophy, habits, Real Estate and investment notes. Zettelkasten is the best :)

u/Practical-Bar-1393 — 1 day ago
▲ 25 r/ObsidianMD

BeautyTasks — a Todoist-style task & project manager that lives inside Obsidian (every task is one Markdown note)

For a long time I kept my notes in Obsidian but my tasks in Todoist — and I hated the split. Whenever I tried to move tasks into Obsidian, I ended up with either giant checkbox lists or a setup so complex I stopped trusting it. What bugged me most: my tasks were either locked in someone else's app, or buried in Markdown I couldn't really work with.

So as a side project I started building the thing I actually wanted: a task setup where every task is a single Markdown note with frontmatter, but with a fast UI on top so it still feels like a real task app instead of editing YAML by hand.

A few design choices I'd love thoughts on:

  • One note per task instead of checkboxes in a big file. It makes each task a first-class thing you can link, add notes/attachments to, and back up — but I keep wondering if it's overkill for people who just want quick checkboxes. Curious how others here feel about that trade-off.
  • Projects vs. Areas (borrowed from PARA) — projects finish, areas are ongoing.
  • Natural-language quick capture in English and German, since I think in both.
  • Everything stays local, no account, no other plugin required — mostly because I wanted to be sure the data outlives the plugin.

It's still early and I'm a solo dev, so I'm mainly here for feedback: what would make a Markdown-first task workflow actually stick for you? What breaks your current setup?

If you want to poke at it, it's open source here (screenshots in the README): https://github.com/avnibilgin/BeautyTasks

Happy to answer anything about how it stores data or how it compares to the Tasks plugin.

u/avnibilgin — 1 day ago
▲ 244 r/ObsidianMD

Cross-References in the Bible

I made a plugin that allowed me to setup any .md file as a structured verse-aware document, its called Verse Markers.

This allowed me to have the entire Catholic Bible in my native language (Spanish) on the version that I like most, organized within folders as I see fit, and be able to have references between all chapters from all books (both from the original footnotes and my own custom ones).

References can be made to one verse, multiple verses, and even verse-ranges skipping through other verses using a single wiki-link.

I can also write normal notes and cite specific verse-ranges from my own Bible within the vault, without using any external connection, service or database.

I'm also reading about other religions, and within the same vault I can have multiple sacred books from different religions and I'm able to make connections between common themes throughout religions using links, footnotes and embeds. Pretty cool if you ask me!

My setup is having each bible chapter as its own .md file, but the plugin has a "verse section" feature that could allow you to have a single .md file for an entire book, with their own chapters that span across any verse range you specify (without headings breaking that structure). Although for the Bible I'd recommend the first approach to keep it well organized.

And if you're a linguist, philologist or scholar working on a new translation of any sacred book from any religion, this tool could help you a lot in your process! I hope y'all like this :D

P.s: Blue is the Old Testament, green is the New Testament.

Sidenote: I cannot share my vault, but there's plenty of resources online to build your own!

u/gabrielrenderos — 1 day ago
▲ 8 r/ObsidianMD

Help as a beginner

So i have started setting up a vault and syncing it across all my devices, but i am just stuck.

What do you guys take notes of? Should i delete all my plugins and start on a basic vanilla vault?

*sorry for any writing errors, im not a native english speaker and my autocorrect likes to find different words.

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u/pandapanda008 — 1 day ago