Obsidian is a powerful, local-first note-taking application that excels for users prioritizing frictionless idea capture, robust interlinking of thoughts, and enhanced thinking/learning through an offline, future-proof format.
Mind Map
Click to expand
Click to explore the full interactive mind map • Zoom, pan, and navigate
There are three main things that if you
care about them make picking Obsidian
over other note-taking apps a great
idea. First, if you want near zero
friction to capture your own ideas.
Second, if you value connecting those
ideas using links and back links. And
third, if you want to improve your
thinking, learning, and writing while
using an offline local first format you
can take with you anywhere instead of
being stuck in one app or format. If
that's you, I'm about to share the
essential 80% of all those features in
Obsidian and how you can use them to get
the most out of Obsidian in the shortest
time. Let's start with what Obsidian
actually is, which is just a vault, a
folder of notes on your computer. Here
it is right here on my desktop. It's
that simple. Inside this folder, your
notes are just individual text files.
These files are in a futurep proof
format called Markdown. Open those files
in Obsidian and they look like this. But
you can also open them in any other app
that reads markdown. Here's the same
note in text edit in VS Code, Ulyses,
IIA Rider. So even if Obsidian
disappears, as long as there are
computers, you'll have a way to open
your notes because at the end of the
day, Obsidian is just looking at a
folder with notes on your computer. You
own your data. But if you want to sync
Obsidian across devices, there are ways
to sync your vaults. You just connect
Obsidian with any cloud storage service
like Dropbox or Obsidian Sync, which is
one of Obsidian's few paid official
services, allowing you endtoend
encryption and version history of all
your vaults. Obsidian is so secure that
no one on their sevenperson team even
knows how many people have installed the
app. Though their CEO estimates that
it's between 5 to 10 million.
So, how does Obsidian work? Once you
open Obsidian and create your first
vault, you'll be here. Now, over on the
left, here's a list of all the notes in
your vault. Create a new note here. It's
called Untitled. Let's go ahead and
throw it in the folder. We can go ahead
and create a new folder here. If we want
to sort, we can click this and sort by
file name or modified time or many
others. If you lose where the current
open note is in the sidebar, go ahead
and click this and it will autoreveal
the current file. And this button
expands and collapses your folders. You
go a little bit higher. Here's the
search button where you can search
across your entire vault of notes. If
you click over here, there are bookmarks
where we can bookmark different files
that are important to us. or click back
here and we're back to the file folder
structure. And then click on a note to
see it in the right. You can
commandclick or control-click on Mac or
Windows to open notes in new tabs. Once
open, you can click and drag a tab and
move it anywhere into different panels
for your unique type of multitasking.
Obsidian has a crazy amount of plugins
and themes, folders, and metadata that
you can add to your notes. It can be as
simple as a note like this with a couple
sentences and a couple links or
something as complex as this with tons
of property, images, embeds, and
personal details. There's a steep
learning curve if you try to do
everything at once. So, let's start by
making the simplest possible collection
of notes. So, let's go ahead and create
a new note and let's say do things the
right way. Then I can tab and start
typing. Now already you can see a new
dot, a new node in our idea verse in the
graph view on the right. Now let's add
some content. Now the beauty of Obsidian
is you can create and connect notes at
the same time. We'll think of something
this reminds us of. So do things the
right way. This reminds me of
believe things better than you found
them. Nice. And how we link in the first
place is we hit the left bracket twice
and then we start typing. How about a
new one? Family phrases to live by. And
for me, I'll now hit the right bracket
twice and then period. And over on the
right, we can see in the graph view, do
things the right way, connecting to the
two new placeholder notes. But what's
wild is these notes, even though they're
not created, will still show up in any
type of search that you do. But if you
do want to make it a new note, let's go
ahead and commandclick on it on Mac.
That would be a controlclick on Windows.
And boom, now it's its new note. If we
look at the graph view now, we can see
it's a darker dot. it's been created as
opposed to the family phrases idea which
has not been created into a note yet. By
the way, if you close this graph view,
which is a tab over here, rightclick,
hit close, you can always reopen it with
a little ribbon button here. So, we can
reopen the graph view and now we see it
in all its glory. You can adjust all
sorts of graph variables, especially as
your graph grows to this. This is idea
verse pro. There are links below if you
want to learn more about it cuz here you
can see all sorts of surprising
connections. Not all those who wander
are lost. We can learn from nerdy
discussions on maps of content,
evergreen notes or things or statements
about things. And we're off to the
races. Who knows where this will lead?
You can jump into any note and simply
highlight some text and then hit the
left bracket twice. When you do that,
you'll notice the new dot has appeared
on the graph view. to see all mentions
of a linked note. In the bottom right,
there are back links to the active note.
You can go ahead and collapse linked
mentions. So, you can see all those. You
can expand to see exactly what it says
as it links to the active note. Speaking
of links, before we go further, there's
a few crucial settings that will save
you massive headaches down the road.
Open settings. Go to files and links and
turn on automatically update internal
links. Now, here's why this is
important. If you rename a note to a new
note name and then click away, do see
that notification updated links in two
files. With this setting, the links
updated automatically to point to the
renamed note. Without this setting,
renames will break links and you might
end up with a bunch of broken
connections. Let's change some other
quick settings. So, if you click over
here, we can now change the default
folder for attachments to a new folder
for attachments. This is really
important to avoid cluttering up the
sidebar whenever you want to add a new
image or other documents to a note.
While we're fiddling with settings, I
want to recommend changing your theme to
know how to do it. So, just click
appearances, then manage under themes,
and select Anapuchin. A nu. There it is.
Install. Now, this is a very popular
theme that acts as a base for the soft
paper theme that I recommend for
Obsidian. Check out this video next for
all those details, which I'll speed
through right now to get us all the soft
papery goodness.
Next, some quick gotchas and mistakes
that trip people up with Obsidian. The
first gotcha, don't import everything
from your old notes app. I see people do
this all the time. They dump thousands
of other old notes into Obsidian and
then they wonder why they can't find
anything. Start fresh. Link your own
thoughts. Don't drown in old clutter.
Second, keep it simple with plugins.
Avoid starting with things like advanced
tables, canban boards, data view
dashboards, and a lot more. I know it's
incredibly tempting, but don't chase
plugins on day one. I'll link a video on
essential plugins below if you want to
peak, but focus on linking first. Third,
don't overfolder your ideas or knowledge
notes. Structure must be earned. We'll
get into all that in a second and the
level of structure that I do recommend,
but when you're dealing with ideas and
knowledge, categories get so fuzzy and
ambiguous that standard hierarchies
become brittle. Keep things in big
buckets until patterns naturally show
up. Finally, don't put off learning
hotkeys. The faster you can do work in
Obsidian, the more you'll enjoy it.
Speaking of, let's talk about how to
make our notemaking faster. First, you
can do everything with your mouse if you
want by right-clicking and selecting
formatting. But trust me, you want to
learn to use hotkeys. Here are a few
essentials. Now, I'm going to be saying
command and option for Mac. So, think
control and alt if you're on Windows.
CommandB to bold. Command I to it
atalicize. Add the pound symbols at the
beginning of a line to create headings
of different sizes. Surround text with
two tildas to strike through and two
equal signs to highlight. A greater than
sign will create a quote block. A dash
will create a bullet list. Numbers
create numbered lists. Dashes plus
brackets start a checklist and three
lines on an empty line will create a
divider. One back tick for inline code
and three ticks for a code block. Again,
link to notes with double brackets or
you can link to an external site. To do
that, put the link text here and the
link in parenthesis. Command option left
or right keys will navigate back or
forward instead of clicking the icons here.
here.
Command F to find text on the page.
Command T will open a new tab. Command W
closes it. And if you add an exclamation
point before a link to another note, you
can embed that entire note inside
another. And adding an exclamation point
before an external link will display an
image if it is one. Finally, command P
will open the command pallet where
you'll find reminders of these shortcuts
as well as many more advanced shortcuts.
Combine these tips and you can create
beautiful notes in Obsidian.
So, can we get around Obsidian and
organize these beautiful notes
effectively? Yes. Command O opens the
quick switcher to find or open a note
fast. But the standard way to navigate
is through your sidebar. As you make
notes, they'll populate here. So, if you
want to organize things more, create
folders in the left sidebar and put your
notes into them. Don't just do this
making folders with random topics
because if you do this long enough,
you'll realize it's pretty hard to find
your notes or remember where they are.
That's because a lot of notes can exist
in five or 10 different folders. So,
there's all sorts of decision fatigue
just to place a single note. So, what I
suggest is building a folder structure
only as it deserves it and making the
biggest picture folder categories
possible. You can then use your quick
switcher links between notes and even
the graph view to get a better sense of
where notes live. Over time, you can
create a more sophisticated structure.
Now, I've built a free template called
Ideverse, which you can get by scanning
here that can get you started building a
solid foundation. But hey, right now,
let's walk through the basics. Ace AC
atlas is for your timeless ideas and
knowledge. Calendar is for your
timebased notes like a journal or a
daily note. Efforts are for timebound
things, things you're working on,
projects, tasks, anything productivity
oriented. This is a great simple way to
organize your vault and then create
subfolders under each as necessary. Some
other ways to organize your notes
include bookmarking by hitting the three
buttons and seeing it in the drop down
or hit command P and pull up the
bookmark command. You can tag notes by
using the pound key to bundle and filter
by types of notes wherever they are in
Obsidian. More often than not, I
recommend instead of tags, creating maps
of content. These are notes that
organize and link other notes together
by topic or theme and create really
strong connective hubs in your graph
view. And if you're capturing quick
thoughts in Obsidian, creating a daily
note structure in the calendar section
of your folders is a great way to
capture daily thoughts on the fly and
then link out to the rest of your idea
verse as needed. Okay, let's talk
Obsidian's different note formats.
Standard notes in Obsidian are textbased
markdown files, but you can add in all
sorts of things. First, you can embed
images directly into your notes. Just
drag and drop an image file right there.
You can attach PDFs, audio recordings,
and a bunch of other documents. You can
turn on the audio recorder core plugin
for quick voice memos or embed YouTube
videos and even tweets. Tables are easy
to build by hitting command P, typing
table, which will give you insert table,
then hit enter. or try the templates
core plug-in which lets you create and
repurpose notes in reusable formats. To
get even more sophisticated organizing
and filtering notes in your idea verse,
you can add properties to notes like
created date, checkboxes, links, text,
numbers, all this to your notes without
cluttering the content. Just hit command
semicolon to add a new property. Then
set up as many as you like. Air
properties with Obsidian's basis feature
to create really cool organizational
formats that can be sorted and updated
by note type or visualize your notes
with Obsidian's canvas, a virtual
whiteboard to drag in notes, images, or
new cards for brainstorming. By the way,
more details on setting up bases or
canvas in the links below. Finally,
let's talk about how Obsidian does AI,
which is easy enough since Obsidian
doesn't have AI. Instead, you get to
decide how much AI and what ways it
integrates. Pick based on how private
you need your data to be and how much
you're willing to do to preserve that
privacy. Right now, I'm using Claude, an
AI that allows me to do things like ask
questions, and talk to my notes, do deep
research, and instantly populate
properties in Obsidian. I always back up
my notes first before trying anything
new with AI. And I create a separation
between my idea verse, my original
thinking and any AI generated notes so
that Obsidian stays a sacred space for
my notemaking. If you want to set up my
note-taking system, try my free idea
verse by scanning here. Once you do, you
can get a step-by-step guide to set up
your own vault in Obsidian in minutes.
And check out this video next for how to
install my favorite Obsidian theme, the
one you've seen throughout most of this
video. Thanks for watching and happy
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
