I’ve been using Obsidian nearly for two years now. In these two years, I’ve experimented tremendously to meet my needs and preferences.
In this article, we’ll dive into Obsidian’s capabilities and add some tips and tricks to harness its power more efficiently.
If you are a beginner, these tips can help you streamline your workflow and automate repetitive tasks.
This way you can spend most of your time writing ideas not fidgeting with the app. These tips will help you create a frictionless workflow, and make using Obsidian 10x easier.
So, let’s dive in.
Configure Your Own Hotkeys
Hotkeys are the holy grail for setting up an efficient system in Obsidian. You can assign a hotkey for most actions in Obsidian.
This can save you a lot of time manually navigating and performing certain actions.
Writing markdown syntaxes can cost you time. Navigating files in your vault can take time.
Set a hotkey for tasks you frequently perform in Obsidian. And it will save you a ton of time.
I use hotkeys for the following functions most often:
- Toggle checkbox/bullet
- Hide/show sidebar
- Reveal file in Explorer
- Delete file
- Insert callout
- Toggle reading/editing view
- Quick switcher
There are many. It will be a long list if I start writing every single one here. Check out yourself.
Go to settings> hotkeys. There you can search for different actions to assign hotkeys to.
Add Variables and Functions to Your Templates
The Templater plugin is like templates on steroids. Templater lets you insert different variables and functions into your notes. This can be used to automate a lot of writing.
For example, one templater function I use in my daily notes template is to link between the previous day’s note and tomorrow’s note.
When I create a daily note with this template, it will automatically add today’s date as a header and link to yesterday’s and tomorrow’s note.
You can use the templater plugin instead of templates and use templater functions for advanced templates.
To learn how to use templater, view their documentation section or read my article here and here.
Hide Sidebars on Window Resize
As the name suggests, this plugin automatically hides the sidebar on your window when it is resized.
Specify the plugin the width you want to take into account, and it will work automatically.
Remember Cursor Position
You are writing a long-form note. You are somewhere middle of that note. You close your note. The next time you open the note, you are left at the beginning.
Then you have to scroll to the bottom of the note again. Pretty tedious, right?
I’ve had this problem thousands of times until I discovered this plugin.
This plugin remembers the cursor position and scrolls for each note. It saves you from scrolling when you switch between different notes and go from one link to another.
All the data for cursor position and scrolling is stored in a file in your vault. This means even when you close your vault, all of your data regarding cursor position is intact.
Espanso: The Best Text Expander Tool
Espanso is a powerful text-expander tool. You can use it to automate repetitive writing. And it does not just work in obsidian. It works across your entire device.
You can use it to add emojis, markdown syntaxes, and repetitive phrases and sentences. Other use cases may include automatically adding dates, tags, etc. in your notes.
Pin Notes to The sidebar
This is another important tip. Pin important notes to the sidebar. In my case, my task note is always on the right sidebar.
This gives me a chance to look at my tasks without having to navigate and open it. You can pin other important notes as well.
Use Slash Commands
Slash commands let you perform commands within your editor by typing a forward slash ‘/’. This will save you keystrokes.
Slash commands is a core plugin and it is disabled by default. Go to settings> Core Plugins> Slash to enable it.
Once you enable it, go to editing mode in your note. Add a forward slash(/) at the beginning of the line or after a space, and it will show commands. You can perform search and navigate the commands easily.
To exit the command search, you can press ESC. Pretty easy, right? But I bet this will save you hundreds of keystrokes every day if you use it regularly.
Bookmark Important Notes
Obsidian bookmarks lets you save items that you most frequently use. By doing this you can quickly access those items.
You can not just add files as bookmarks but also folders, blocks, headings, and graphs as well.
I prefer to bookmark files and blocks only for my use case.
Open Files With a Hotkey
I talked about how effective hotkeys can be. Hotkeys don’t let you have the option to open certain files.
This plugin lets you assign hotkeys for files. When you want to open a note, just press a hotkey, and boom, you have that note open.
Install the plugin and click on Create a new text field. This will open a field where you can add the note you want to create a hotkey for.
This will create a new hotkey in Obsidian. Assign a hotkey and you’re good to go.
That’s all. These are some tips that I follow in order to make it easier to use Obsidian. I know, it involves the use of a few plugins. And some people are scared of adding more plugins to their systems.
But these plugins only help to improve your workflow. They don’t do any harm.
Even if some plugins stop working tomorrow, they won’t break your workflow. They will only make your workflow better. So, don’t be afraid to add them.
Thank you for reading.
I’d love to hear from you if you have similar tips for using Obsidian.
In the meantime, you can join Obsidian Ninja
