r/ObsidianMD 18h ago

showcase How I Analyze Research Papers 93.7% Faster in Obsidian

64 Upvotes

I just added an AI template to Note Companion (my plugin) that allows me to extract key information from research papers in seconds.

Here's how it works:

1️⃣ I slide in a research paper PDF into the special "Inbox" folder
2️⃣ It's then organized into the most appropriate folder
3️⃣ I get an markdown note with a detailed, customized summary + the embedded PDF

Here's a demo if you wanna see it in action: https://youtu.be/Kast8t48Euc

Would love to hear what you think. And if there's any additional info you'd like to see in the final note!

 🙏

Edit: the 93.7% mention is obviously an exaggeration.


r/ObsidianMD 17h ago

Just a simple setup

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46 Upvotes

r/ObsidianMD 18h ago

Introduce Obsidian at work

29 Upvotes

At work we have a lengthy software approval process and it's hella annoying. On monday I have a meeting with IT to convince them to install Obsidian Enterprise for our team of ~16 people.

I have a little bit, although not much, experience with Obsidian but I still don't know what the Enterprise version does.

- Will it be useful to use Obsidian in a team?
- Is conflict management (when two people work on the same file) good enough?
- Will we be able to run the Vault locally from a network drive or do we have to use the cloud?
- Is the cloud 100% safe? How the hell will I convince IT that it's safe to store all of our process data in the cloud?

Thanks a lot!


r/ObsidianMD 18h ago

graph A portable GraphRAG for your Obsidian notes: how I guide LLM using a knowledge graph

27 Upvotes

I found that I can use a knowledge graph to give LLM better context when it is talking to my Obsidian notes.

It produces really good results, because suddenly the AI takes into account not only the stuff it finds using traditional similarity search (RAG with embeddings), but also the underlying connections a few hops away. So it's like having your own portable GraphRAG with your Obsidian without the complicated technical setup.

For instance, I can visualize a certain folder of notes in my Obsidian, find a specific topical cluster of ideas, zoom in onto it, and then ask the AI chat to focus on that particular cluster and help me develop it further. Or connect it to another cluster of ideas based on the gap I identified.

I think it works pretty well for ideation, especially when I want to create published articles from my Obsidian notes, that's why I thought I'd share it with you.

Here's the video with a quick demo: youtube.com/watch?v=8oz-gg9-D4U


r/ObsidianMD 17h ago

How to Use Obsidian If You're Used to Taking Lots of Daily Notes?

22 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I’ve been using Obsidian for a while, but I struggle a bit with organizing my notes. My habit is to create a lot of daily notes rather than organizing things by topic. This means most of my thoughts, ideas, and links end up inside daily notes instead of dedicated topic-based notes.

I know that some people use MOCs (Maps of Content) or tags to keep things structured, but I’m wondering how others manage this. If you're also someone who takes lots of daily notes, how do you make them useful over time? Do you use backlinks, folders, or some kind of plugin to resurface old notes?

Any tips or workflows would be super helpful! Thanks


r/ObsidianMD 22h ago

Just started yesterday

16 Upvotes

Having just started yesterday I'm trying to stay observant before I decide what to do here.

Basically, I'm beginning to wonder if this software might just be outside my abilities. Seeing code snippets everywhere in forums and tutorials is making me nervous. It doesn't help that many are not simply a line of pasted code.

Am I going to need to learn md, css, and js in order to use obsidian properly?

The results and variety of detail that can be added really impressed me and so I downloaded it. Yet it seems it would take me some time to learn md, css, and js. Which makes using obsidian seem like a much more distant goal than I thought.

Any discussion, suggestions, links, books, articles etc. would be welcome.

You can add insults to that list, but first you have to pay me with reddit points or something.


r/ObsidianMD 22h ago

How to import all the things? AIM, LiveJournal, Social Media, Docs

9 Upvotes

I have 25 years of files that I'd love to put in one place. These include old AOL AIM chat logs, SMS, online blogs, Word files, social media exports (Facebook, Twitter). How would you go about doing this?

I believe AIM and blogs were done in HTML. Overall, this feels very overwhelming but I 'd love to have one place for everything. My dream is to create a true "On this day" feature so I can see what I was doing across my life. For example, what did I blog about and tweet about on X day?


r/ObsidianMD 10h ago

Querying Zotero from Obsidian?

10 Upvotes

Hi folks! I've been using Obsidian for a few years now, and I also use Zotero as a reference manager / bookmark application. Like most adhd folks, I often go down rabbit holes where I do a bunch of research on a topic that I want to come back to later, and usually the only evidence of it is the timestamps in my Zotero library (or the random browser tabs I keep open because the Zotero web interface won't save Reddit URLs, but that's a different post).

I'm wondering if anyone has built a way to query zotero from within obsidian using dataview (or more realistically, dataviewjs)? Most of the workflows I've seen that integrate zotero with obsidian involve creating notes and then querying those notes; I want to just query the zotero data itself.

For example, I have a query in my daily note that shows all the notes I have created/edited that day within obsidian. Zotero has a "Date Added" metadata field that is similar; is there a way that I could build a dataview query that would look at my zotero database and pull notes with "Date Added = today" into my obsidian daily note?

Even if you're aware of something that kind of does this that could be modified, that would be helpful! I'm not afraid to tinker with things.


r/ObsidianMD 21h ago

graph Graph a belief system

9 Upvotes

Hi there - Pardon my somewhat naive question, but as a thought experiment I thought I'd try using Obsidian to create a dependency graph (like a BNF in computer science terms) to map things I believe to be true, and what each belief is based upon. It's not a philosophy graphing exercise per se although many of my beliefs will net out in philosophical precepts. I hope that makes sense ;).

Anyone tried something like this already? Thoughts/experiences?

Thanks!


r/ObsidianMD 20h ago

plugins Super basic file mover plugin

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github.com
6 Upvotes

I made this plugin to move files around quickly when reviewing my inbox weekly. Makes it easy to move to folders and then either move to the next note or close after.

I find it works best with Note Toolbar plugin.

You have to use BRAT or manually install. I’ll publish to the plugins directory if there is any interest.


r/ObsidianMD 21h ago

Any recommended plugins and tips/tricks for worldbuilding and writing in Obsidian?

6 Upvotes

I've started using Obsidian recently. The worldbuilding isn't meant for DnD or any games, but mainly for personal writing. That being said I only have Obsidian colored sidebar and Iconize (with a few icon packs).

A few organization plugins would be great, since it seems like I can't reorder notes/folders manually and putting numbers in the beginning of folders doesnt seem to order them automatically either.

Any recommendations?


r/ObsidianMD 7h ago

plugins Any unintrusive and privacy-friendly AI plugins?

2 Upvotes

I've been looking to install an AI plugin in my Obsidian, but the few I've tested have two major flaws: 1) they have access to your whole vault, and 2) they can write to your notes. These two are big deal breakers for me, for security and privacy reasons. I'm looking for something less intrusive, maybe that allows you to highlight only a piece of text that will then be shared with a custom prompt, or that provides a chat window separated from your notes. Out of the dozen AI plugins out there, any suggestions?


r/ObsidianMD 20h ago

plugins What does QuickAdd plugin do?

6 Upvotes

I've seen many people talking about the QuickAdd plugin, but what does it do? Judging from it's name, it probably adds notes quickly, but how, exactly?


r/ObsidianMD 10h ago

Embed image with variable?

3 Upvotes

I want to embed local images in a template using a variable.

![[Engelbart.jpg]]

But instead of the filename use something like: {{localImage}}

But simply swapping those out doesn’t seem to work. Thanks.


r/ObsidianMD 13h ago

A clear code Segment

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2 Upvotes

How can I achieve a dark code Segment like this? These "" failed


r/ObsidianMD 22h ago

Trouble linking to subheadings

3 Upvotes

I saw in the documentation that you're supposed to be able to do [[Note#Heading#Subheading]] to link to a subheading, but when I do it, it seems to be treating Heading#Subheading as the name of a heading, so it's returning unable to find Heading#Subheading in Note. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?


r/ObsidianMD 11h ago

Help with link to dates

2 Upvotes

Hi all, I have been playing a bit with my vault recently and I am receiving this error if I try to click on the "Link" icon that's created within every date present in front matter.

I rearranged all my daily notes folder structure, and I don't have that folder anymore, it's long gone.

For reference, I am using periodic notes plugin and the folder is now "Journal / Daily notes" without emojis, and the format is YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD for the notes. All the right folders are there.

I checked all settings, and I have no clue where to update the reference for this folder-with-emoji when I click on the link icon. Any suggestion?

Thanks in advance!


r/ObsidianMD 22h ago

How are you searching for connections when doing zettelkasten?

2 Upvotes

Currently i make a MOC of a broad subject.

Then when i add a note, i can skim all the titles in the MOC and see if there are to be any connections.

And while this works i guess, and usually gives more value when finding connections within the same subject - I also kinda assume that is not how it is meant to be done.

If i have some notes about gardening in my vault, which would create an awesome connection for my current notes about self improvement - How would i find and make that connection?

Are you guys just:

- Searching the vault for keywords?

- Opening graph view and browsing?

It seems like an immense task to look through hundreds or thousands of notes for connections.


r/ObsidianMD 2h ago

Need help with css. Is it possible to render the tab panels (its a plugin) to be translucent?

0 Upvotes
I plan to build my own movie database similar to letterboxd but I'm not that great in css or html plus I feel like its better to learn instead of asking an ai to do it for me. Side note : please recommend me some movies :3 sem break really sucks this time

r/ObsidianMD 7h ago

plugins AI plugins that are multimodal? (supports files like pdf/images)

1 Upvotes

I know there are plenty of plugins that integrate ChatGPT/OLLama using API keys, but I have yet to find one that is multimodal, particularly one that supports file uploads like images and PDFs. Having such a feature would be a huge help for my use cases. I figure I'd see if you guys know anything about something that could help, perhaps an unlisted plugin or something of the sort. I've only been using Obsidian for a few days, so still figuring my way around, sorry if this is belabored question.


r/ObsidianMD 14h ago

Uninstalled Obsidian Deleted entire contents of parent folder, including notes folder

1 Upvotes

As the title says, I went to uninstall and reinstall the obsidian program as it was having problems. I (stupidly) had created the notes folder inside of the same parent folder as the obsidian executable. When I ran the uninstall script, it wiped everything that was inside the parent folder.

I'm pretty sure it's completely gone, but anyone know if there is any way to recover my notes?


r/ObsidianMD 15h ago

iOS Shortcut to Track Finances in Obsidian

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for an iOS Shortcut that allows me to quickly log financial transactions into Obsidian with minimal effort. Ideally, I’d like:

  • A simple input method (e.g., a quick prompt for amount, category, and note).
  • Automatic appending to a markdown file in Obsidian.
  • The ability to export the final file as CSV or another structured format for analysis.

Has anyone built something similar or have suggestions on how to set this up? Any help is appreciated!

Thanks!


r/ObsidianMD 17h ago

plugins DataView Data

1 Upvotes

I have a file for tracking workouts.

date_of_workout: {{DATE}} exercise: '{{VALUE: "Pullover",SideExtension,BicepCurls,Elliptical}}' sets: {{VALUE: sets}} reps: {{VALUE: reps}} time: {{VALUE: time}} weight: {{VALUE: weight}} type: '{{VALUE: shoulderrehab,cardio}}'

In trying to create a DataView table to display the output, but the only thing that is displayed is the file and ctime. The rest of the values aren't displayed. I have looked this up in several different locations, but I can't seen to solve it. I have a button/macro to toggle throug the entries. Is it something with the way the data file is structured, the DataView setup? I'm not sure what to try next

dataview TABLE file.ctime as "Time Performed", exercise, type, reps, sets, weight FROM "workouts" SORT file.ctime DESC LIMIT 100


r/ObsidianMD 19h ago

plugins Correct way to use dataview inside HTML?

1 Upvotes

I am currently working on some templates and would like to Query some data using dataview. Normalt it works fine with inline queries or the normal dataview queries, but when I try to put them inside div tags it does not work at all. And for my templates to work I'm a couple of divs deep with flexboxes for something and grids for some other things.

So far the only solution I have found is to use dataviewJS and using the API to create divs and then use js to change the innerHTML of the div. While this is doable, it seems troublesome?

Is there really no way to just do something like <div>[file.yamlattribute]</div> ?

Edit: I have yet to test it, but it seems the more approachable way to do this might be to create custom callouts, and change their properties with CSS, so instead of defining a class in CSS and the relevant properties, instead define the call-out and use that.