There are dozens of note-taking applications, and you are probably using one of them.

So, why should you invest the time to migrate to Obsidian?

Isn’t it “just another note-taking app”?

Obsidian featured

How is it better?

How can it help you, and why should you care?

Unlike its peers, Obsidian presents itself as “your second brain”.

The first step to using Obsidian is creating a Vault.

You see, unlike its peers, Obsidian also offers multiple ways to link your notes.

Precisely because of those links, Obsidian can help you see patterns emerge from your notes.

And before you know it, you’ve created a “second brain” for yourself.

Obsidian can work with multiple vaults, but treats them as individual workspaces.

So, let’s dive into Obsidian and how it works.

Obsidian keeps all its notes within a particular folder to which it refers as a “vault”.

However, you’ve got the option to create multiple vaults and store them wherever you wish.

You can click on a button to create a new note, but pressing CTRL+N is easier.

One restriction with this approach is that you cannot link notes between different vaults.

If you’re not familiar with these files, see to it to checkour beginners guide on markdown.

However, for this tutorial, we are going for a new vault from scratch.

Although Obsidian works like any other note-taking app, it supports linking your notes with the equivalent of wikilinks, by enclosing them in double square brackets.

you’ve got the option to blame Obsidian’s versatility for its admittedly convoluted interface.

You will eventually get familiar with it.

However, for now, it’s easier to use theCTRL + Nkeyboard shortcut to create your first note.

By pressing CTRL+E at anytime you can preview how a note looks in markdown “output” mode (or imported in apps like Microsoft Word).

However, one of Obsidian’s superpowers is that you could also create links to non-existing notes.

To “style” your notes, Obsidian fully supports markdown syntax for adding headings, quotes, etc.

you could press the default CTRL + E key combination anytime to switch between editing and preview mode.

Obsidian supports tags, and you can place them wherever you want in a note.

How to Set Tags in Obsidian

you could also use tags to organize your notes.

Others find including them in the text “more organic”.

For online content, you will have to use what web developers refer to as “iframes”.

Drag and drop PDFs, image files, or other markdown notes, and Obsidian will embed them in the active note.

Helpfully, Obsidian offers multiple ways to make sense out of potential chaos.

it’s possible for you to freely create folders and subfolders and move notes between them.

Obsidian uses plain folders and markdown files and doesn’t mind if you change their paths.

Online content can also be embedded in Obsidian using iFrames, but that’s more complicated than dragging and dropping a file into a note.

It will re-locate them and update its internal links.

At least, as long all your notes and related folders remain within the same vault.

However, we’ve only scratched the surface.

Obsidian’s Graph displays visually the relations between notes.