Obsidian is a powerful note-taking tool that allows you to create, organize, and link your notes in a way that makes sense to you. It’s a flexible and customizable tool that can be used for a variety of purposes, from personal journaling to project management.

Getting Started

Obsidian is available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android, and iOS. Download the installer and install it on your system.

Create A Vault

To create a new empty vault from the vault switcher:

  • To the right of Create new vault, click Create.
  • In Vault name, enter the name of your vault.
  • Click Browse to select where your new vault will be created.
  • Click Create.

Create a Note

To create a new note, simply click on the New Note button in the left-hand pane.

Format Your Note

Obsidian also supports Markdown — a markup language for adding formatting to plain text files.

Copy and paste the following text at the top of the Obsidian note:

1

# A second brain, for you, forever.

The hashtag (#) turns a row of text into a heading.

In your note, select the text “knowledge base” and press Ctrl+B (or Cmd+B on macOS) to make it bold.

Check out the markdown section below:

One of the most powerful features of Obsidian is its ability to link your notes together.

This allows you to create a web of interconnected notes that can help you see relationships and patterns between different ideas.

To link your notes together, simply use double square brackets around the title of the note you want to link to.

For example, if you have a note titled Project Planning, and you want to link to it from another note, you would type [[Project Planning]] in the text of the second note.

Obsidian Notes will automatically create a link to the Project Planning note, and you can click on this link to quickly navigate to that note.

You can also see all the notes that link to a particular note by clicking on the Backlinks button in the left-hand pane.

Creating Maps

Once you have linked your notes together, you can start creating maps that show the relationships between different notes.

Obsidian has a built-in graph view that allows you to create visual maps of your notes and their connections.

img

To create a map, simply click on the Graph View button in the left-hand pane.

You can then drag and drop notes to rearrange them and see how they are connected. You can also click on a note to see all the notes that link to it and from it.

It also allows you to customize your maps by changing the color and shape of notes, as well as adding labels and tags to notes.

Markdown

Markdown is a simple and lightweight formatting language that you can use to add formatting and structure to your plain text documents. You can easily create headings, lists, bold and italic text, and links, among other things.

It uses a series of special characters and symbols to indicate formatting.

For example, you can create a heading by starting a line with one or more hash symbols #, or make text bold by surrounding it with double asterisks **.

1
2
3
4
5
6

# This is a heading 1
## This is a heading 2
### This is a heading 3
#### This is a heading 4

**Bold Text**

The great thing about it is that it is very easy to read and write, and it can be used with many different types of software and applications. It is also highly portable, meaning that you can easily move your Markdown-formatted documents between different platforms and devices without losing any of the formatting.

To learn more about how to format your notes using Markdown within Obsidian, refer to Basic formatting syntax.

Conclusion

Obsidian is a powerful and flexible note-taking tool that can help you organize your thoughts and ideas in a way that makes sense to you.

By linking your notes together and creating maps, you can create a web of interconnected ideas that can help you see relationships and patterns that you might otherwise miss.

Learn More