Obsidian Setup

Intro

Obsidian very usable in its stock form.

1. **Download it**. Install it. Set up your vault.
2. I think it will prompt you about syncing using iCloud.
3. Learn the basics of Markdown .
4. Start taking notes with it. You'll find plugins and ways to customize it as you go.
5. Add a tag or two in a note's frontmatter (aka metadata).
6. Core Plugins: Go to Settings > Core plugins and turn on whichever sounds useful to you.
7. Don’t import your entire note collection from your previous app. Better to start fresh as much as possible.
8. Community plugins: Don’t overdo it with community plugins. Just figure out what you need as you go.

Some helpful setup tips

• Create an asset folder. In mine, that is /bin
  • /bin/templater is where I put template files.
  • /bin/images is where any images I paste into Obsidian go (Set this in Settings > Files and Links > Attachment Folder path).

Tutorial Videos

Check out the video tutorials below. I intentionally chose the simplest tutorials because it should not be overcomplicated.

• Obsidian Learning Part 1: Capture (No Boilerplate)
• Hack your brain with Obsidian.md (Part 1) (No Boilerplate)
• Obsidian.md: the Good Parts (Part 2) (No Boilerplate)

Reference

• Obsidian Markdown guide
• My Obsidian Markdown Reference
• Obsidian Community Plugins: the ones I use
• Query: simple way to query your notes to view lists of things
• Dataview: a flexible query language data from within your notes. Also includes ability to write JavaScript code to query things as well
• Obsidian Developer Reference - more for developing your own plugin or theme

Theme

Select a theme in Settings > Appearance. Then you can use the Style Settings plugin to customize the theme.

• Minimal - my favorite
• Catppuccin

See also

• Obsidian Sync Methods
• Obsidian Publishing: Methods for publishing notes to the web
• Obsidian and AI
• Task Queries
• CSS Snippets
• See Note taking methods if you want to find a methodology that works for you.