11 Obsidian tips and tricks for boosting productivity

With its innovative note-taking approach, graph views, a rich plugin store, and a passionate community, Obsidian has completely transformed the productivity space. Obsidian is where your notes come alive, interlink, and dance together in a harmonious way on your laptop. Whether you are a power user or just exploring this trendy tool, we have got a treasure trove of tips to elevate your Obsidian setup in no time.

11 Check page outline

Obsidian is quite popular among writers, researchers, and students. When you create a long blog post, research paper, or project overview in Obsidian, navigating it using a keyboard and mouse can be cumbersome at times. Obsidian has a built-in feature to glance over page outlines and jump to relevant headings with a single click.

1. Open a page in Obsidian. Click the sidebar in the top right corner.
2. Select Outline and click on any heading to jump to that section.

   

10 Bookmark important pages

Over time, you may fill up your Obsidian vault with hundreds of pages. Keeping track of your important pages can be challenging. Here’s where the bookmark feature comes in handy. You can right-click on any page and select Bookmark. Obsidian even lets you add a custom title and create different folders to organize your bookmarks.

9 Enable Daily Note at startup

Obsidian can be an excellent digital journal tool. It offers a daily notes plugin where you can jot down memories about a specific day. You even have an option to open daily notes at Obsidian startup.

1. Open Obsidian and head to Settings.
2. Select Daily notes from the sidebar and enable the Open daily note on startup toggle.

   

From now on, whenever you open this vault, Obsidian should open the daily note automatically.

Obsidian uses a slash (/) command and a Markdown-based editor to compose notes. It requires a learning curve, especially when you switch from a traditional tool like OneNote or Evernote. These note-taking apps have a standard toolbar at the top to format your text with familiar options. While Obsidian doesn’t offer the same by default, you can enable it using community plugins.

Editing Toolbar is one such plugin to enable a feature-rich toolbar at the top. Let’s check it out in action.

1. Open Obsidian and head to Settings.
2. Select Community plugins and click Browse.

   

3. Search for Editing Toolbar and install it in your vault.

   

4. Once you enable it, head to any page and glance over the toolbar.
5. You can format text, change color, tweak highlighter shade, and use other options with a familiar interface.

   

It’s one of the must-have plugins for your Obsidian vault.

Related

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7 Use Kanban boards in Obsidian

You can use Obsidian to manage your personal and small projects if you’d like. It doesn’t come with a Kanban board, though. You need to enable the functionality using one of the community plugins. Go through the steps below to make changes.

1. Open Obsidian and head to the Community Plugins store (within Settings).
2. Search for Kanban and install it on your device.

   

3. Select the Kanban board from the sidebar and start adding lists (columns).

   

4. Once you add columns, insert tasks (cards) under each column and manage them with a familiar drag-and-drop interface.

   

5. You can right-click on any task to add additional details. Obsidian opens it on the sidebar.

   

Obsidian doesn’t hold a candle to dedicated project management tools. But the Kanban plugin should be good enough for personal use.

6 Tweak and insert hotkeys

Obsidian comes with several default hotkeys to navigate Obsidian like a pro. If you are a power user, we highly recommend mastering these keyboard shortcuts to navigate Obsidian like a pro.

• Open Command Palette: Ctrl/cmd + P
• Delete a paragraph: Ctrl/cmd + D
• Open Graph view: Ctrl/cmd + G
• Create a new note: Ctrl/cmd + N
• Open new tab: Ctrl/cmd + T

Obsidian even gives you the flexibility to edit existing hotkeys and insert new ones for other commands.

1. Open Obsidian Settings and go to Hotkeys.
2. You can remove existing shortcuts and add new ones for your frequently used actions.

   

5 Customize Obsidian’s appearance

Obsidian is highly customizable. If the default appearance doesn’t do it for you, use the steps below to change the entire app’s look.

1. Head to Obsidian Settings and select Appearance.
2. You can change the base color scheme, adjust the accent color, explore themes from the community, and tweak font style, size, and more.

   

Ultimately, you have ample options to give it a unique touch and personalize Obsidian.

Like Evernote, Obsidian also supports tags to organize and find relevant notes in no time. However, your tags collection doesn’t appear on the sidebar. Here’s what you need to do.

1. Open a page in Obsidian and type #tag to anywhere.
2. Obsidian turns it into a tag. You can add as many tags as you want and check them from the sidebar.
3. From now on, you can simply search for your notes using tags.

   

3 Explore Obsidian Canvas for brainstorming

Obsidian offers an infinite blank canvas to map out your ideas and thoughts. Go through the steps below to create one for your vault.

1. Open Obsidian and create a new canvas from the sidebar.
2. You can add cards, change their shade, insert files and images, and use arrows to create the perfect plan. It’s a must-have tool for critical thinkers.

   

2 Use callouts

If you want to make a specific text or paragraph stand out in a long document, use the callout block in Obsidian.

1. Open a page and use the /Insert callout command.
2. Add Tip, Warning, or Note and insert title and content.
3. Hit Enter and view your highlighted text in the document.

   

1 Add page properties

You can add page properties at the top to insert relevant details. Your Obsidian page is simply incomplete without relevant properties.

1. Open an Obsidian page and click the three-dot menu at the top. Select Add file property.
2. Enter a relevant property name and right-click on it to change the type. Property types include Text, List, Number, Checkbox, Date, and Time.

   

Add relevant page properties and you are good to go.

Turn ideas into everlasting gems

Whether you are a student, critical thinker, or a productivity nerd, master these Obsidian shortcuts, hidden gems, and handy add-ons to turn Obsidian into a personal knowledge management vault. If you are looking for some inspiration to turn Obsidian into a personal digital closet, give our other posts a quick read as well.