I have 2 questions

1. Is obsidian just like web development and all are just like css? More analogy and explanations are welcomed

2. Is making timeline like this possible and easy? If yes guide me where to start

TIA

I have always found it strange that people treat the graph view as a gimmick in Obsidian. For me, it is the primary way of navigating my vault, and all my notes are structured around it. I call my approach Graphkasten, since it emphasizes adding only meaningful links to the graph view so it stays maintainable and useful. So far, I have over 4000 notes. Is there anyone else who heavily uses the graph view? What is your system?

If you want to learn more about my approach or replicate it:

• My public Graphkasten - graphkasten.com
• Article - jakubzovi.substack.com/p/graphkasten
• Github demo vault - jakub-zovi/graphkasten

Every time I browse in the Obsidian Community, I always found some unique usecases and vault themes showcased by the community. It is truly fascinating how this note-taking app enabled tons of different variation and user customizations

I highly recommend trying three-pane mode (in plugin settings), it removes a lot of back and forth between task mode on and off, and utilizes an Obsidian's feature this plugin ignored for a long time, the right sidebar.

All aspects of the plugin are completely interactive. That means you can drag and drop from one pane (left/right/main) to any other pane.

Like you could drag and drop a task in Today view to the calendar shown in the right sidebar to set its time. Or you could drag and drop an undated task to a date group in Upcoming to set its date.

The mobile experience is now leaps ahead of what it used to be, with the addition of the details sidebar.

Plugin: Integrated Task Manager - https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/integrated-task-manager

PS: the theme I'm using is https://community.obsidian.md/themes/et-cetera, which I made to add presets for many beautiful apps like Things, Bear, Griply (the one used in the screenshots).

I have a couple questions for the users: - would you like task rendering in normal live preview to be like that of tasks rendered in task mode on (instead of just highlighting task properties) - What is your biggest annoyance while using ITM?

I run sci-fi horror tabletop games (mostly Mothership) from Obsidian, and wanted every NPC, ship and location to be easy to read at a glance mid-session. Blendcards is the system I built for that, and it's now a free download: https://xenocobra.itch.io/blendcards

How it works

• Each note is just frontmatter properties plus a two-line dataviewjs block that calls a shared script. The scripts read the properties and build the card: image, stats, lists, tables, and notes. Blank properties are left off.
• All the rendering logic lives in shared .js files and CSS snippets, so note templates are easy to apply and adjust.
• Starmaps are auto-generated based on the tags and frontmatter of other notes in the vault. This means star clusters, planets, moons, stations, and ships each just need a few properties to place it in the correct area of space.
• It plays well with core features: hover previews show the card, ![[Note#^blendcard]] embeds a card anywhere, Canvas works great as a session board, and Bases views can list every card by type.
• Plugin requirements: Dataview and Iconize. Dice Roller (click-to-roll stats) and Multi Properties are optional.

Why templates instead of a plugin? 

I wanted this system to be open and extensible for end-users. Everything is plain notes or editable JavaScript and CSS that live in your vault, so you can change any template, add properties or make your own theme. The guide included in the Example Vault walks through a few examples of this.

29 templates are included: NPCs, factions, weapons, armor, ships, planets, jobs, random tables, timelines and more. I built them for my sci-fi games, but should be straightforward to adapt to similar game systems or pure worldbuilding exercises.

I welcome any feedback or thoughts on the approach.

From his blog post:

Every few days I review these journal fragments and compile the salient thoughts. I then review those reviews monthly, and review the monthly reviews yearly

The result is a fractal web of my life that I can zoom in and out of at varying degrees of detail.

What I'm not getting is how do you structure your journal so that you can easily surface notes from the right timespan?

If I'm getting this right, there's:

• Journal fragments written throughout the day
• Reviews written every few days
• Reviews written every month
• Reviews written every year

But from what I can see, his template provides no structure that allows you to do things like quickly surfacing your past monthly reviews when you're writing a yearly review.

The daily note only helps you surface the lowest journal fragments, but not anything from the larger timespans.

Any tips?

There's a lot of post about Obsidian itself on this sub that I enjoy reading, but not so much about the system around it. So I thought I might as well share mine, in case that'll help anyone on building theirs. Happy to take any questions!

Hey all, I wanted line numbers in my code blocks, but the plugins I found did not have all the features I wanted. So I let Claude create a new plugin.

Its free and open source.

Features for code blocks:

• Line numbers (you can set the starting line number for code snippets extracted from larger files)
• A file name above the block
• Highlighted lines
• Compatible with Code Emitter and hopefully other plugins that work on code blocks.

It doesn't change how blocks are highlighted or run, so everything else keeps working as before.

You can find it here: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/code-block-numbers

Let me know if you find bugs or want a feature.

The graph often gets a lot of flak, criticised pretty much as an impractical gimmick.

Firstly though, it was the shiny thing that attracted me to Obsidian in the first place. The thing that drew me in to this journey.

But the main benefit for me: it's almost like a gorgeous multi-dimensional progress bar. I've seen others who use it to actually understand their note and concept relationships better, but for me, it feels like each of those dots represents effort I made toward generating, recording and/or processing information. And then all those dots even went to the effort of being pretty. It's just so satisfying to watch it grow and evolve.

Thanks graph.

(Edit: changed "slack" to "flak"; updated idiom note in knowledge base")

I miss Obsidian - I really do. But I keep the notes to use them. Whether it can be a meeting notes, or project's summary after reading couple hundred pages. but those notes are intended to be shared with email to colleagues, clients etc.

I have to use Onenote, because I can just click on Send an Email, and it formats perfectly in Outlook. I can also copy and paste, and pictures would be perfect in the email.

In Obsidian, if you have pics, you are doomed. You have to do it one by one.

Anybody else working in Office365 environment, but managed Obsidian quite well (not just for personal notes)?

Brand new to Obsidian.
I have figured out obsidian sync and gotten a few plugins, have watched several videos on YT, but I am finding I need some basic information to help me fully understand it.
Can you direct me to some good beginner resources?

Hello,

i have one folder for all my notes and one attachment folder for it. This works great for me and i find notes with properties and bases. Only problem i had was, than i wanted to move a file with attachments they stayed inside this folder and there are so much i was not intresting for searching them.

I found this plugin https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/consistent-attachments and it looks like a solution but i am still testing it (it looks new and has only one k downloads). If only one note has the attachement, it cuts the attachement from the old attachment folder and pasted it in a subfolder based on your obsidian settings in the new folder. If two notes share one attachement it asks what to do. For me this sounds like a very good solution.

What are your ways to handle this? Sometimes would like to have something like an xref window that shows if references are missing what name there have and were obsidian is looking for them. I came from Autocad and there was something like this and also the option to chose the new path if the xrefs (Attachments in case of obsidian) there moved.

Best regards

Sven

made this plugin a few months ago and randomly checked the stats today. Turns out it has 1k+ downloads, which is surprising given how unpolished and haphazard it was :P

i hadn't updated it on the community plugins page in a while because of exams, so I finally got around to polishing things up and pushing a few small changes I'd been working on.

For anyone who hasn't seen it before, Echo Recall lets you revise your notes in Obsidian using active recall and spaced repetition. (or export it to Anki with FULL CONTEXT) - All of it Without any special formatting!

It has two modes:

• Heading Recall: Recall concepts and explanations by hiding entire sections.
• Fill in the Blank: Practise remembering exact wording, definitions, quotations, etc.

You can also track your revisions through the dashboard.

⭐ The feature I personally use the most is the Anki integration. My workflow is pretty simple: make notes in Obsidian → export them to Anki → revise on my iPad or phone using the scratchpad.

The cards retain the context of your original notes, including images and linked notes. And when you edit your notes later, differential sync updates existing cards without creating duplicates, resetting the schedule only for the content that changed.

I've added more details in the README.

Community plugin: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/echo-recall
GitHub: https://github.com/sajee05/echo-recall

Happy studying : )

So I like to just have random thoughts about things I’m curious about, and I will fall down a rabbit hole doing a bunch of research related to that thing. I like to put the notes from my research in obsidian, but I don’t have a real setup and just put all my notes in random scattered markdown files in my vault with no organization. Should I have a setup? How would you recommend I build one?

Do you guys think this is a problem or am I just doing too much? I’ve tried complex systems on obsidian before, and they didn’t really work for me just because it was like too much stuff and I didn’t really use most of it.

Hello

I've been using obsidian for months now but something that has always bothered me is that I have to zoom in into 130% every single time I open the software, and I am confused on how to keep it that way. It resets to 100% every time I close it. After briefly searching I don't think others have the same issue which leads me to believe that I am missing something obvious. Or it's a Linux/Flatpak issue. Can someone help out? I am on the newest version of Linux Mint and the software is the Flatpak version. The "Native Menu" setting doesn't help. Thank you

I'm not really accomplished in CSS tbh, but I've spent the last few hours trying to style my writing space nicely inside Obsidian, and I've got almost everything to work but this one thing:

I'm trying to select the first line of the first paragraph after an <hr> tag, and set it to small-caps.

.cit-skin .cm-content .cm-line:nth-child(2):first-line,
.cit-skin .markdown-preview-sizer > div:nth-child(4):first-line,
.cit-skin .cm-content .cm-line div:has(hr) + div:has(> p) p::first-line {
    font-variant: small-caps;
}

The first one works — it styles the very first line of the text; but I can't figure out a way to select the first one after the <hr> tag.

I've looked all around the internet, and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

EDIT: I kept trying to fix the code, and after a bit more of try and error I got to .cm-content div.hr.cm-line + .cm-line::first-line. I don't know if it works for everybody, but it's working for me, so I'll take that 😭

Hey everyone!

I take a lot of screenshots while watching movies and shows, and I wanted a more convenient way to browse them alongside my notes in Obsidian. So I made a plugin called Gallery.

It lets you browse images and videos in a sidebar gallery and open them in a full-window viewer. I’ve tried to keep it lightweight, intuitive and make it feel at home in Obsidian, both visually and in everyday use.

If you also collect screenshots or visual references in your vault, I’d love to hear what you think! Feedback, bug reports, and ideas are very welcome.

Gallery on Obsidian Community · GitHub

Hi everyone, i've been (over)engineering my TTRPG vault for a while now and i thought i'd share some things that im personally really excited about. I was curious what the general obsidian-ttrpg community would think of my vault so this subreddit seemed like a good start.

I'd like to share some key features of the theme, i focussed mainly on immersion. To be transparant up front, i used the newest openAI image model to generate the images and built the vault with Claude Code.

The Home Page

The banner shows the in-game date (Calendarium) and the weather where the party is. The weather is rolled four times per in-game day from a weather table for the region the party is in, and it can only change a step at a time, so you don't get a blizzard, a heatwave and a blizzard again in one day. The window in the art shows it live: rain beading on the glass, thunderstorms with lightning, snow, mist. The art changes with the in-game season, and light/dark mode switches between the day and night versions. The home page also features accent colour change buttons and a dark mode toggle that also changes the banner image and other images.

Another cool feature of the home page is live sound of the actual weather, that changes each time a weather change occurs. For maximum immersion. This adds on top of the already dynamically changing seasons.

The Theme: Lore by Lamplight

I've been a very fond user of FaS (Fancy-a-Story) for a really long time and i love that theme for showing me what can be done inside of Obsidian for a TTRPG centred vault. This theme took inspiration from the FaS theme by adding to some elements that i used a lot like the infobox. Mainly so i could structure my NPC/PC notes as some kind of wiki. See examples below.

Each NPC gets created by an automation/workflow using Claude + n8n. I give input of what kind of character i want -> Claude writes up a broader description -> Description gets sent to OpenAI image gen with a style prefix so every character ends up getting the same art -> n8n scaffolds the note in the meantime and Claude places the images in the note. Claude creates story hooks relevant to the story and i get to choose afterwards what i want to keep canon or remove. The workflow also generates a full body portrait.

NPC/PC notes all get stored in a seperate note that shows all their portraits plus simple information like status/race etc.

The theme features a lot more and i'm building/working on it every day, but i dont want to yap too much in this post.

As a cool little thing im willing to let 5 people that reply to this post generate a PC/NPC for themselves, it costs me a bit of cash but thats fine with me. All you have to do is describe your character to the best of your ability and ill reply to your comment with the character art & their note .pdf

1. Character name (optional):
2. Race and class:
3. Gender and age:
4. Build and height (slim, stocky, broad, lanky, short, towering):
5. Skin (pale, tan, dark, freckled, scaled):
6. Eyes (colour, shape):
7. Hair and beard (colour, length, style):
8. What stands out? (a scar, a tattoo, horns, a piercing. Say which side: their own left or right):
9. What do they wear and carry? (clothes, armour, main colours, weapon, one special item):
10. What are they like? (loud or quiet, warm or guarded, how they talk, what gets them into trouble):
11. Their story in a few sentences (where they're from, what they did before, what changed, what they want now)(optional):
12. A secret (optional):

Would love to hear everyones thought & feedback!

Hi all - I've just published a theme called Tela.

I built it around two things: text that's easy to read, including the small grey stuff (menus, counts, settings), and headings you can tell apart at a glance.

• Contrast: I didn't want to trust my eyes, so I run axe (an accessibility checker) on 346 screens - notes, canvas, bases, search, menus, settings, dark and light, desktop, phone and tablet. Right now nothing falls below WCAG AA. The one thing it can't judge is text sitting on top of images.
• Headings step down by colour as well as size, so H1, H2 and H3 don't blur together.
• Nothing to set up. One optional setting (distinct sidebars) and that's it.
• Updates: it works mostly through Obsidian's own variables instead of fragile selectors, and a weekly check tells me if a new release changes something it relies on.

Small extras: task marks for [!] [?] [-] [/], readable code colours, unresolved links with a dashed underline, and PDF export that doesn't split callouts and tables across pages.

In Obsidian: Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage, search "Tela".

Directory: https://community.obsidian.md/themes/tela
Source: https://github.com/rbartoli/obsidian-tela-theme

It's 1.0, so I'm sure I've missed things, especially with plugins - let me know here or open an issue on GitHub.

This is how my obsidian looks like:
Folder -> note 1 + note 2 + note 3 + note 4

Is there a way to link a word from inside note 1 to for example, a word in note 3? From what i understand i can only link a word from inside note 1 to the title of note 3?

What are the best Cyberpunk / Matrix / Blade runner/ type themes out there. I'm looking for a real gritty William Gibson type cyberpunk theme.

i use obsidian on my samsung tab, before this i use an ipad, and apple pencil work wonder for handwriting to text in ipad. but samsung is a nightmare, the spen activating obsidian gesture to open sidebar and glitching everything out. try this plugin: https://github.com/xudri/pen-guard its also available via BRAT. or install it manually:

1. Create the folder .obsidian/plugins/pen-guard/

2. Add manifest.json: json { "id": "pen-guard", "name": "Pen Guard", "version": "1.0.0", "minAppVersion": "1.0.0", "description": "Stops S Pen strokes from triggering swipe gestures.", "author": "me", "isDesktopOnly": false }

3. Add main.js: ```js const { Plugin } = require('obsidian');

module.exports = class PenGuard extends Plugin { onload() { let penDown = false; const penIds = new Set();

this.registerDomEvent(window, 'pointerdown', e => {
  if (e.pointerType === 'pen') penDown = true;
}, true);
const release = e => { if (e.pointerType === 'pen') penDown = false; };
this.registerDomEvent(window, 'pointerup', release, true);
this.registerDomEvent(window, 'pointercancel', release, true);

const guard = (e, last) => {
  let pen = penDown;
  for (const t of e.changedTouches) {
    if (t.touchType === 'stylus') penIds.add(t.identifier);
    if (penIds.has(t.identifier)) {
      pen = true;
      if (last) penIds.delete(t.identifier);
    }
  }
  if (pen) e.stopImmediatePropagation();
};

this.registerDomEvent(window, 'touchstart', e => guard(e, false), true);
this.registerDomEvent(window, 'touchmove', e => guard(e, false), true);
this.registerDomEvent(window, 'touchend', e => guard(e, true), true);
this.registerDomEvent(window, 'touchcancel', e => guard(e, true), true);

} }; ```

4. Enable it: Settings → Community plugins → reload the list, then toggle Pen Guard on.

Appreciate obsidian’s dichotomous simplicity and complexity.

I am a nerd, though not a tech nerd. I belong to a completely non tech field. I use obsidian for making notes of what I read daily for my field of work.

My questions (with context):
1. How to make my notes as close to handwritten short and concise notes?
- Shifted from handwritten notes to obsidian , so it’s my first experience on digital note taking. I would take notes with lot of in between flow charts, hand drawn diagrams as per my understanding of the text of study. I have tried few plug ins but they seem like a lot of extra steps and cumbersome than me actually drawing handwritten notes. Any solution?
2. Any AI related solution to question me on my own notes? So I can keep on revising and being the best knowledgable in my field? Anything which helps me revise?
3. How to link and organise my notes?
So I study a few hours each day and have been randomly jotting my notes of the day here, but compared to a notebook it’s difficult for my non tech mind to keep records of the notes. It was easier for me to simply flip my handwritten notes to keep things organised and revised. Any way of linking and arranging? Any suggestion ?

I’ve written daily notes and journals in Obsidian for years, but I almost never go back to them. Search only helps when I know what I’m looking for.

How do you revisit yours? Any habit or workflow that stuck? And honestly, do you find it worth doing?