Category Archives: 000OBS

000OBS, 03 - Plugins

Community Plugins

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Community Plugins.

If you’ve been using Obsidian for a while, you’ve probably noticed that the core app is intentionally minimal. That’s by design. The real power comes from community plugins, and that’s exactly what we’re covering today.

Community plugins extend Obsidian beyond its built-in functionality. You install them directly from inside the app, through Settings, then Community plugins, then Browse. Before you can do that though, you need to turn off something called Restricted mode. Once that’s off, you can search for any plugin, hit Install, and then Enable. That’s the standard flow and it takes about thirty seconds.

If you ever need to install a plugin manually — maybe you’re working offline or testing a custom build — you can do it by copying the plugin folder directly into the dot-obsidian plugins directory inside your vault. The folder needs to contain at least two files: one called main dot js, which is the actual plugin code, and one called manifest dot json, which tells Obsidian what the plugin is. There’s also an optional styles dot css file if the plugin has its own visual styling.

One thing worth flagging before we go further: community plugins run real code on your machine. That’s what makes them powerful, but it also means you should only install plugins from sources you trust. It’s good practice to glance at the plugin’s GitHub repository before installing — just to get a sense of who made it and how actively it’s maintained.

Now let’s talk about the plugins themselves. The wiki lists nine plugins considered essential for a well-run vault.

First is Dataview. This one lets you treat your vault like a database. You can write queries that pull information from your notes and display it as dynamic tables, lists, or calendars, all driven by the frontmatter fields in your notes. The key thing about Dataview results is that they’re live — they update automatically as your vault content changes.

Next is Templater. Think of this as a much more powerful version of Obsidian’s built-in templates. It supports JavaScript scripting, date functions, and the ability to pull in file metadata. So you can do things like automatically stamp a note with today’s date or insert the folder name as a tag when you create a new file.

Then there’s Calendar, which adds a monthly calendar widget to your sidebar so you can navigate your daily notes visually by clicking on dates.

Obsidian Git is a huge one for anyone who wants version control. It automatically commits and pushes your vault to a Git repository on a schedule you define. Great for backup and for teams.

Excalidraw brings full drawing and diagramming capabilities right inside Obsidian — no need to switch to a separate tool.

Kanban lets you create kanban boards inside ordinary markdown files, which is a neat trick if you’re managing projects in your vault.

Tasks is your task management layer — it adds support for due dates, recurring tasks, and queries that let you pull task lists from across your entire vault into one view.

QuickAdd is designed for speed. It lets you capture quick entries, run macros, or append content to specific notes without breaking your flow.

And finally there’s Linter, which auto-formats your notes every time you save. It keeps your frontmatter consistent, cleans up spacing, and enforces a consistent markdown style across the vault.

Let’s talk about those code examples in the wiki. The first one is a Dataview query. In plain terms, it’s asking Obsidian to build a table showing two pieces of information — a status field and a date — for every note inside the Wiki folder that has been tagged as a reference type. The results come back sorted from newest to oldest. You’d drop this query into any note and Dataview renders the table for you automatically.

The second Dataview example is simpler. It produces a list of all notes tagged with the word project where the status is currently set to active. Again, this updates live as things change.

The Templater example shows what a template file might look like when you create a new note. It automatically fills in the creation date in a year-month-day format, tags the note with the name of the folder it lives in, and uses the file’s title as the main heading. All of that happens the moment you apply the template — no manual typing required.

When it comes to keeping your plugins up to date, you go back to Settings, then Community plugins, and your installed plugins are listed there with Update and Uninstall options. If you want Obsidian to check for updates automatically every time it starts, there’s a toggle for that called Check for updates on startup.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000OBS, 03 - Plugins

Core Plugins

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Core Plugins.

If you use Obsidian as part of your workflow at NZRT, you’ve probably noticed that it comes with a set of built-in plugins right out of the box. These are called core plugins, and they’re maintained by the Obsidian team themselves. You can turn any of them on or off for your vault by going into Settings and then selecting Core plugins. So let’s walk through what’s available and what each one does.

Starting with the ones that are switched on by default. Backlinks gives you a panel showing every note in your vault that links to the note you’re currently reading, including any mentions that aren’t formally linked yet. Bookmarks lets you star notes, folders, searches, and even specific headings so you can get back to them quickly. Canvas is Obsidian’s infinite whiteboard — you can arrange notes, cards, and images spatially, which is great for visualising how ideas connect. Command palette, which you open with Control and P, lets you run any Obsidian command just by typing part of its name. File recovery runs automatic snapshots of your vault every five minutes, so if you accidentally delete something, you can get it back. Files gives you the standard file explorer sidebar. Graph view lets you see a visual map of how all your notes connect to each other. Outgoing links shows you all the wikilinks inside your current note, including ones that don’t resolve to an existing file yet. Outline gives you a heading navigator for whatever note you have open. Page preview lets you hover over a wikilink while holding Control to peek at the target note without actually navigating away. Properties view is a global panel that lets you browse all the frontmatter keys used across your entire vault. Quick switcher, opened with Control and O, lets you jump to any note by typing part of its name. Search, which you open with Control, Shift, and F, gives you full-text search across your vault with operator support. Tags view shows you all your tags with note counts beside them, and you can click a tag to search by it. And finally, Word count displays word and character counts in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

Now for the plugins that are off by default but available to enable. Audio recorder lets you record audio directly into a note. Daily notes automatically creates a dated note for each day and gives you a quick shortcut to open today’s. Format converter helps you migrate Markdown-style links over to Obsidian’s wikilink format. Note composer lets you merge notes together or extract a selection into a brand new note. Random note opens a random note from your vault, which is handy if you use spaced repetition for review. Slash commands let you type a forward slash inside the editor to trigger commands inline without leaving your keyboard. Slides turns a note into a slideshow presentation. Templates lets you insert template files into your current note. Unique note creator generates notes with unique ID-based filenames rather than regular titles. And Workspaces lets you save and restore your entire pane and tab layout as named configurations, so you can switch between different working setups easily.

A few of these plugins have settings worth knowing about. For Daily notes, you’ll want to set a folder, a template file, and your preferred date format — the standard here is four-digit year, two-digit month, two-digit day. For File recovery, you can adjust how often snapshots are taken and how long they’re kept. To actually access your snapshots, go to Settings, then File recovery, then View snapshots. For Templates, you set the folder path where your template files live, and you can insert a template using Control and T, or through the Command palette.

For Search, there’s a set of operators that make your queries much more powerful. You can search for notes that carry a specific tag by typing the tag name with a hash symbol. You can narrow results to a specific folder by typing the folder path. You can search by filename. You can match a specific frontmatter field by putting the field name and value inside square brackets. And you can even run a regular expression search by wrapping your pattern in forward slashes.

That covers everything in the Core plugins reference for Obsidian. Whether you’re just getting started with your vault or looking to tighten up your workflow, knowing which of these tools are available — and which ones you need to switch on — is a solid place to start.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000OBS, 02 - Interface

Editor Modes

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Editor Modes.

If you use Obsidian to manage your notes and documentation, you’ve probably noticed there are a few different ways to view and edit a note. Obsidian gives you three distinct modes, and knowing when to use each one can make a real difference to how smoothly you work.

Let’s start with the big picture. The three modes are Live Preview, Source Mode, and Reading View. You can switch between them on a per-note basis, or you can set a default in your Settings so every new note opens the way you prefer.

The first mode is Live Preview, and this is the default. Think of it as the best of both worlds. You’re writing in markdown, but Obsidian renders your formatting as you go. So if you bold some text, the asterisks disappear and you instantly see bold text right there in the editor. Links look like clickable links rather than showing the raw bracket syntax. Headers jump up in size as soon as you finish typing them. It gives you a clean, almost word-processor feel while still working in plain markdown underneath.

The second mode is Source Mode. This is where you see everything — all the raw markdown syntax exactly as written. Bold text shows the asterisks on both sides. Links show their full bracket and parenthesis structure. Headers show the hash symbols out front. Nothing is hidden or rendered. This mode is especially useful when you need to do precise editing — for example, if you’re troubleshooting why some formatting isn’t working, or you need to copy raw syntax without Obsidian processing it.

The third mode is Reading View. This is fully rendered and read-only. You can’t edit in this mode — it’s purely for reading your finished note as it would look when published or shared. Everything is formatted, links are clickable, and no markdown syntax is visible at all.

So how do you switch between them? The keyboard shortcut Control and E toggles you between your current editing mode and Reading View. To switch specifically between Live Preview and Source Mode while you’re already in the editor, you go to the three-dot menu in the top right corner of the note and choose Toggle Source Mode.

If you want to set a default so all your notes open in a particular mode, go to Settings, then Editor, and look for Default Editing Mode. You can pick either Live Preview or Source Mode there, and that preference applies across your entire vault.

There are also a couple of other editor settings worth knowing about. If you’re a Vim user — that’s a keyboard-driven editing style where you switch between different modes like insert and normal — Obsidian has you covered. Go to Settings, then Editor, and you’ll find a Vim Key Bindings toggle. Switch that on and you get the classic Vim experience: press i to enter insert mode and start typing, press Escape to return to normal mode, and all the standard Vim navigation shortcuts work exactly as you’d expect. There’s also a community plugin called Vimrc Support, which lets you load a custom configuration file to tailor your Vim setup even further.

Finally, spellcheck. You’ll find it under Settings, then Editor — it’s a simple on and off toggle. When it’s on, Obsidian underlines words it thinks are misspelled, and right-clicking on an underlined word gives you suggestions. The language is set per vault, so if you’re running multiple vaults in different languages, each one can have its own setting.

So to recap: Live Preview is your everyday writing mode where formatting renders as you type. Source Mode is for when you need to see and edit the raw markdown directly. And Reading View is for when you just want to read without making any changes. Use Control E to flip between editing and reading, and head into Settings then Editor to lock in your defaults and any extras like Vim or spellcheck.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000OBS, 01 - Core Concepts

Frontmatter Properties

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Frontmatter & Properties.

So, what is frontmatter? At its core, frontmatter is a block of structured metadata that sits at the very top of an Obsidian note. It’s written in a format called YAML, and it’s wrapped between two sets of triple dashes — one at the very start, one at the end of the block. Think of it as a label on a folder: it tells you and your tools what’s inside, without being part of the actual content.

That block of metadata is queryable by a plugin called Dataview, and it’s also filterable in Obsidian’s search. So it’s not just decoration — it’s functional.

Let’s talk about what that looks like in practice. The code example in the wiki shows a frontmatter block containing five fields. You’ve got a tags field holding two tag values. An aliases field with two alternative names for the note. A created date set to the twenty-fifth of May 2026. A status field set to active. And a type field set to reference. The key rule here: this block must appear at the absolute top of your file. There can’t be a blank line before that opening set of triple dashes — it has to be the very first thing in the document.

Now, if you’d rather not hand-edit that raw YAML, Obsidian version 1.4 and above gives you a much friendlier way to work with it. It’s called the Properties panel. You can open it by pressing Control and the semicolon key together, or by going to View and selecting Toggle Properties. What you’ll see is a clean graphical interface where all your frontmatter fields appear as typed input boxes — no angle brackets, no colons, no syntax to worry about. You just click and type.

That brings us to data types, and there are seven of them to be aware of. First is plain text — something like a title field containing a note name. Second is a number, useful for things like a priority field where you’d enter a digit. Third is a checkbox, which maps to a true or false value — handy for a done field. Fourth is a date, displayed as a date picker in the Properties panel. Fifth is date and time combined, which lets you capture both the day and a specific time, like ten thirty in the morning. Sixth is a list, where you can store multiple values in a single field — tags being the most common example. And seventh is a wikilink, which lets you link directly to another note from within your frontmatter.

There are also three built-in fields that Obsidian itself understands and acts on. The first is tags, which tags your note the same way an inline hashtag would in the body of the document. The second is aliases — this lets you give a note alternative names, and those names show up in link autocomplete and search results, so other notes can reference it by a different label. The third is cssclasses, which lets you apply custom CSS styling to a specific note. Everything beyond those three is user-defined, and only carries meaning if a plugin like Dataview or Templater knows to look for it — or if you’re using it for your own personal organisation system.

Speaking of Dataview — let’s talk about how you actually use frontmatter fields in a query. The example in the wiki shows a table query that pulls two fields, status and created, from notes inside a folder called Projects. It then filters to only show notes where the status field equals active, and sorts the results by the created date in descending order, so the most recent ones appear first. In plain terms: you’re asking Dataview to build a live table of your active project notes, newest at the top. Any frontmatter field you’ve defined can be used the same way — filtered, sorted, or displayed as a column.

Finally, there’s Obsidian’s built-in search. You can target frontmatter fields directly by wrapping them in square brackets with a colon between the field name and the value. For example, searching for status colon active inside square brackets finds every note where the status field is set to active. Searching for tags colon the code 000OBS inside square brackets finds every note tagged with that identifier. It’s a precise way to filter your vault without needing to run a full Dataview query.

So to recap: frontmatter sits at the top of your note, stores structured metadata in YAML format, supports seven data types, has three built-in fields Obsidian acts on natively, and can be edited either as raw text or through the Properties panel GUI. Plugins like Dataview can query it, and Obsidian’s search can filter by it directly.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000OBS, 02 - Interface

Graph View

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Graph View.

If you’ve ever wanted to see your entire Obsidian vault laid out as a visual map, Graph View is the feature for you. It takes every note you’ve written and displays it as a network — each note becomes a dot, called a node, and every link between notes becomes a line connecting those dots. Notes that are heavily linked to other notes cluster together near the centre, while notes that don’t connect to anything float out on the edges on their own.

There are two ways to open Graph View, and they serve different purposes. The first is the Global Graph, which shows your entire vault all at once. You can open it by pressing Control and G together, or by clicking the graph icon in the ribbon on the left side of the screen. The second is the Local Graph, which is much more focused — it shows just the note you’re currently looking at, plus all of its direct connections. To open that one, click the three-dot menu on any note and choose Open Local Graph. You can also configure how deep the local graph goes, so it shows not just direct connections but connections of connections as well.

Once you’ve got a graph open, navigating it is pretty intuitive. You scroll to zoom in and out, or hold Control while scrolling if you prefer that. To move around the graph, click and drag to pan across it. And if you want to jump straight into a note, just click on its node and it’ll open right up.

Now let’s talk about filtering what you see, because a full vault can get quite busy. You access the Filters panel by right-clicking the graph or using the settings cog. There are a handful of useful options here. First, there’s a Search filter — you type in a query and the graph narrows down to only show matching notes. This supports special prefixes too, like typing “tag” followed by a colon and a tag name, or “path” followed by a colon to target a specific folder. Next, you can toggle Tag nodes on or off — these are the tag bubbles that appear alongside your notes in the graph. There’s also an option to show or hide Attachments, which covers things like images and other files you’ve linked in. If you’re seeing ghost links — those are links pointing to notes that don’t actually exist yet — you can hide those using the Existing Files Only option. And finally, there’s an Orphans toggle, which lets you show or hide notes that have no links at all. Hiding orphans is a great way to focus on the connected core of your vault.

Beyond filtering, you can also change how the graph looks through the Display Settings. Node size can be scaled based on how many connections a note has, so the more linked-up a note is, the bigger its dot appears. Similarly, link thickness can be scaled by link count. There’s a Text Fade Threshold setting, which controls the zoom level at which note names actually appear — useful if you don’t want labels cluttering the view when you’re zoomed way out. And then there are Groups, which let you colour-code nodes based on a search query. So for example, you could set all notes tagged with “project” to appear in blue, making them easy to spot at a glance.

Finally, there’s the Forces section, which controls the physics of how the graph arranges itself. Think of it like gravity settings for your nodes. The Center Force pulls all nodes toward the middle of the screen. The Repel Force pushes nodes apart from each other, which helps prevent everything from clumping into one big mess. The Link Force pulls connected nodes closer together, reinforcing those relationships visually. And the Link Distance setting lets you control the target spacing between connected nodes. If you have a really dense cluster that’s hard to read, you can adjust these forces to spread things out. Or if you want related notes to sit tightly together, you can increase the link force to pull them in closer.

That covers everything you need to get started with Graph View — from opening it and navigating around, to filtering your vault, tweaking the display, and adjusting the forces that shape the layout. It’s a powerful way to understand the structure of your notes and spot gaps or unexpected connections you might never have noticed otherwise.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

00 - Overview, 000OBS

Obsidian Overview

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Obsidian Overview.

So, what is Obsidian? At its core, Obsidian is a local-first markdown knowledge base. What that means in plain terms is that your notes live as plain text files right on your own disk. No cloud account required, no proprietary format, and no lock-in. If you ever decide to stop using Obsidian, your files are still there, readable by any text editor on any computer. That’s a pretty important distinction from a lot of the popular note-taking tools out there today.

Let’s talk about the philosophy behind Obsidian, because it shapes everything about how it works. There are five core principles worth knowing. First, it’s local-first — your files sit on your disk as plain markdown files, always accessible. Second, it uses plain text. There’s no database running in the background, no binary format that locks your data away. Your notes are designed to survive any app changes, now or in the future. Third, Obsidian is built around the idea of interconnected notes. You create links between your notes using what are called wikilinks, and over time that builds a web of knowledge. There’s even a graph view that visually shows you how all your notes connect to each other, which is genuinely useful once your vault grows. Fourth, Obsidian is highly extensible. There’s a rich plugin ecosystem that lets you add functionality without bloating the core application. And fifth, it works fully offline. Syncing across devices is optional and completely separate from the core app.

Now, it’s just as useful to know what Obsidian is not, so you can set expectations correctly. It’s not a cloud note app like Notion or Evernote — there’s no built-in sync required. It’s not a task manager, though plugins can add that capability if you want it. It’s not a word processor — you’re working in markdown throughout. And it’s not a database, although there’s a popular plugin called Dataview that adds query capabilities if you need them.

Let’s cover editions and pricing, because this is something people often ask about. There are five tiers to be aware of. The Personal edition is completely free and gives you the full app, unlimited notes, and all core features. If you want early access to what they call Insider builds — basically beta versions of the app — there’s a one-time payment of around twenty-five dollars for what’s called the Catalyst tier, which also comes with a supporter badge. Beyond that, there are two optional paid services. Obsidian Sync costs ten dollars a month and gives you end-to-end encrypted sync across your devices using Obsidian’s own servers. Obsidian Publish costs twenty dollars a month and lets you publish your vault as a public website. And finally, there’s a Commercial licence at fifty dollars per user per year, which is required if you’re using Obsidian for business purposes — specifically, if your organisation has more than two employees or brings in more than one million dollars in revenue.

One thing worth highlighting about those paid services: Sync and Publish are entirely optional. If you don’t want to pay for Obsidian Sync, you can absolutely replace it with tools you might already have — Nextcloud, iCloud, Dropbox, or even Git. The app doesn’t care how you sync your files, because they’re just plain files on your disk.

In terms of platform support, Obsidian runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. So you’re covered across all major platforms. One practical tip here: if you’re syncing across devices, make sure you include the dot-obsidian folder in your sync. That folder holds your settings, plugins, and themes, so including it means your setup travels with you across devices without having to reconfigure everything.

Finally, on versioning — Obsidian uses a rolling release model, meaning it updates continuously rather than in big numbered versions. If you ever need to check what version you’re on, you can find it under Settings and then About. And if you’re a Catalyst supporter, you can opt into Insider builds from that same settings area to get early access to new features.

So to wrap it all up — Obsidian is a powerful, privacy-respecting, offline-first tool for building a personal knowledge base. Its strength is in its simplicity and longevity: plain text files, no lock-in, and a plugin ecosystem that lets it grow with your needs. Whether you use the free Personal edition forever or layer on Sync and Publish later, the foundation stays the same — your notes, your files, your control.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000OBS, 04 - Settings & Themes

Settings Overview

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Settings Overview.

If you’re using Obsidian, one of the first things worth knowing is where everything lives. All your settings are stored per-vault, meaning each vault you create has its own independent configuration. That configuration lives in a hidden folder called dot-obsidian, sitting right inside your vault directory. You can get to your settings at any time by pressing Control and comma together, or by clicking the gear icon in the bottom left of the interface.

Let’s walk through the main sections you’ll find in there.

The first section is Editor. This is where you control things like your default editing mode, how wide your lines are, what font size you prefer, whether you want vim keybindings, spellcheck, and whether brackets automatically pair up when you type them.

Next is Files and Links — and this one is particularly important, so we’ll come back to it in a moment.

Then there’s Appearance, which is where you pick your theme, set your font, switch between light and dark colour schemes, and even load custom CSS if you want to go further with visual customisation.

Hotkeys lets you remap any command in Obsidian to a keyboard shortcut of your choosing — again, we’ll cover the key defaults shortly.

After that you’ve got Core Plugins, where you can enable or disable Obsidian’s built-in functionality, and Community Plugins, which is where you’ll find the restricted mode toggle, the plugin browser, and any plugins you’ve already installed from the community library.

So let’s zoom in on Files and Links, because the choices you make here have a big impact on how your vault behaves day to day.

The first setting is where new notes get created. You have three options: the vault root, the same folder as the note you’re currently in, or a specific folder you define yourself. The recommendation here is to go with a specified folder, so new notes don’t just scatter randomly across your vault.

Next is wikilink format, which controls how Obsidian writes links when you reference other notes. Your options are shortest path, relative path, or absolute path from the vault root. Absolute from the vault root is the recommended choice — it keeps links consistent and less likely to break when you move files around.

There’s also a toggle for whether to use wikilinks at all, and the recommendation is to keep that switched on. Auto update internal links is another one worth keeping enabled — when you rename a note, Obsidian will automatically update every link pointing to it across your whole vault, which saves a lot of manual fixing later. And if you’re storing non-Markdown files in your vault, turning on Detect all file extensions means Obsidian will recognise and work with those as well.

Now let’s talk hotkeys. You can remap any command through Settings and then Hotkeys — just search for the command by name and click to assign your shortcut.

Out of the box, here are the defaults you’ll use most often. The Command Palette opens with Control and P. The Quick Switcher, which lets you jump to any note fast, is Control and O. Search across the whole vault is Control, Shift and F. New Note is Control and N. Toggling between edit and read mode is Control and E. Opening the graph view is Control and G. Getting back into Settings is Control and comma. Closing a pane is Control and W. One worth noting — splitting a pane to the right has no default shortcut assigned, so if you use that feature regularly, you’ll want to set one yourself through the Hotkeys section.

Finally, let’s cover where the config actually lives on disk, in case you need to back it up or sync it across devices. On Windows, macOS, and Linux, the answer is the same — it’s a folder called dot-obsidian sitting inside your vault directory. The platform path looks slightly different on each system, but the location relative to your vault is identical.

If you’re syncing your vault using something like Nextcloud or Git, you can include that dot-obsidian folder in your sync to carry all your settings across to other devices. One tip though — there’s a file in there called workspace dot json that stores your current pane layout. If you work across multiple machines with different screen sizes or setups, you’ll want to exclude that file from sync, otherwise your layout may get overwritten every time you switch devices.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000OBS, 01 - Core Concepts

Tags

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Tags.

So what are tags in Obsidian? Simply put, tags are a way to categorise your notes so you can filter and search across them easily. And the good news is that Obsidian gives you two ways to add them, and both work exactly the same under the hood.

The first way is inline tagging, meaning you drop a tag right into the body of your note. You just type a hash symbol followed by a word, like hash-project or hash-status-active. The second way is through frontmatter, which is the block of metadata at the very top of your note. There you’d write something like tags, colon, and then list your tags in square brackets separated by commas. Both approaches are indexed identically by Obsidian, so it doesn’t matter which you use from a search perspective. That said, frontmatter tags are the preferred approach for structured notes because it keeps your note body clean and uncluttered.

Now let’s talk about nested tags, which are really useful once your vault starts to grow. You create a nested tag by putting a forward slash between levels. So for example you might have a tag for area-work, another for area-personal, and then status-active and status-archived. What this does is create a hierarchy. In the Tags panel on the left sidebar, those nested tags fold neatly under their parent. And here’s the handy part when it comes to searching: if you search for area, Obsidian will match everything under that parent, so all of your area-work and area-personal notes come back in one go. You don’t have to search each sub-tag individually.

Speaking of the Tags panel, you can find it in the left sidebar by clicking the Tags icon. It gives you a full list of every tag used across your entire vault, along with a count of how many notes carry each one. Click any tag in that panel and Obsidian immediately opens a search showing all the notes that use it.

Now let’s cover searching with tags directly, because there are a few different ways to do it. If you just type a hash followed by your tag word in the search bar, you’ll get notes that contain that tag inline in the body. If you want to catch tags whether they’re in the frontmatter or inline, you prefix your query with tag-colon and then your hash and tag name. And if you want to search across an entire nested tag family, you can type tag-colon, hash, your parent tag name, and then a forward slash, and Obsidian will return every note tagged with anything under that parent.

Finally, it’s worth understanding the difference between tags and folders, because you’ll be using both in a well-organised vault. There are a few key differences to keep in mind. With folders, a note lives in exactly one place on your filesystem. With tags, a single note can carry as many tags as you like. Folders give you a hierarchical, physical organisation structure. Tags give you cross-cutting categorisation that cuts across those folder boundaries. Both are queryable through Dataview, although the syntax differs slightly: for folders you use a FROM clause pointing to the folder path, while tags just filter by tag name. The practical takeaway is to use folders as your primary organisation method and tags for attributes that span multiple folders, things like status, note type, or service codes.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000OBS, 01 - Core Concepts

Vaults

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Vaults.

So, what exactly is a vault? Put simply, a vault is a folder on your disk. When you point Obsidian at that folder, it reads every markdown file inside it and builds a knowledge graph from the links between those files. That’s really the core idea — a vault is just a folder, and Obsidian does the rest.

Let’s talk about what you’ll find inside a typical vault. If you were to open one up in your file explorer, you’d see a top-level folder — let’s call it MyVault. Inside that, there’s a hidden folder called dot-obsidian, and that’s where Obsidian stores all its settings for that vault: things like your plugins, your themes, and your keyboard shortcuts. Everything else in the vault is your actual content — plain markdown files and any attachments you’ve added. So you might have a Notes folder, a Projects folder, a Templates folder — whatever structure works for you. Your content and your Obsidian settings live side by side, but they’re cleanly separated.

Now, one thing that trips people up at first is the idea of multiple vaults. Obsidian fully supports having more than one vault, and each one is completely independent. That means each vault has its own set of settings — its own plugins, its own theme, its own keyboard shortcuts. Each vault also has its own graph, which is important: links between notes only resolve within the same vault. If you’ve got a note in one vault that you try to link to from another vault, Obsidian won’t connect them. Each vault also maintains its own recent files list, its own search index, and its own plugin state. So if you’ve got a plugin configured a certain way in one vault, that configuration doesn’t carry across to another. To switch between vaults, you can go to File, then Open Another Vault, or use the vault switcher shortcut.

Speaking of opening vaults, there are three main ways to do it. First, you can open an existing folder — just go to File, Open Vault, then choose Open Folder as Vault, and point it at any folder on your machine. Second, you can create a brand new vault from scratch using the Create New Vault option in that same menu. And third, the vault switcher shows you all the vaults you’ve previously opened, so you can jump back to any of them quickly.

Now let’s dig into that dot-obsidian folder a bit more, because it’s worth understanding what lives in there. There are several key files and subfolders to know about. First is a file called app dot json — that holds your core settings, like editor preferences, appearance options, and how Obsidian handles files and links. Then there’s a plugins subfolder, which is where your installed community plugins live. There’s a themes subfolder for your installed themes. There’s a file called hotkeys dot json, which stores any custom keyboard shortcuts you’ve set up. If you’re using the Templates core plugin, you’ll also see a templates subfolder in there. And finally there’s workspace dot json, which saves your current layout — which panes are open, which tabs you have active, and the state of your sidebars.

Here’s a practical tip around syncing. If you sync your vault across devices — say between your desktop and your laptop — you’ll want to include the dot-obsidian folder in your sync setup. That way your settings, plugins, and themes follow you to every device. However, there’s one exception worth knowing: workspace dot json. If you don’t want your pane layout to sync — maybe you prefer a different arrangement on each machine — you can exclude that file from your sync. Small detail, but handy to know.

Finally, let’s talk about performance. The good news is that Obsidian handles large vaults very well — we’re talking tens of thousands of notes without breaking a sweat. But there are a few things that can slow it down. Very large individual files, anything over about one megabyte, can cause performance issues. Having too many community plugins installed is another common culprit. And if you’re using Dataview — a popular plugin for querying your notes like a database — running heavy queries across a massive vault without caching enabled can put a real strain on things. So if you notice Obsidian getting sluggish, those are the three areas to look at first: individual file size, plugin count, and how efficiently your Dataview queries are running.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000OBS, 01 - Core Concepts

Wikilinks Backlinks

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Wikilinks & Backlinks.

If you use Obsidian as your knowledge base, wikilinks are probably the feature you’ll reach for the most. Every link you create is bidirectional — meaning the note you’re linking to automatically knows it’s been referenced. That’s what makes Obsidian’s knowledge graph so powerful, and it all starts with understanding the syntax.

The wiki lays out eight different ways to create a wikilink, so let me walk you through them in plain language.

The simplest form is just wrapping a note’s filename in double square brackets. That creates a direct link to that note by name. If you want the link to display different text to the reader — say you want it to read “our onboarding guide” but it actually points to a note called New Staff Process 2026 — you can add a separator between the note name and the display text you want shown. The link works the same way, it just looks different on screen.

If you want to be more precise about which note you’re pointing to — which is a good idea in larger vaults where notes in different folders might share similar names — you can include the full folder path from the vault root, not just the filename.

You can also link to a specific section inside a note rather than the whole thing. By appending the heading name after the note name, Obsidian will jump straight to that heading when you follow the link. There’s also a block-level version of this — instead of a heading, you link to a specific paragraph or list item using a block identifier that Obsidian generates for you.

Then there are embed links. These are a step beyond regular links — instead of just pointing to a note, they pull that content directly into the current page inline. You can embed a full note, just a specific section of a note, or an image file. All three work the same way, just with a different target.

Now let’s talk about how Obsidian figures out which note you mean when you write a link. It follows a two-step process. First, it looks for an exact path match from the vault root. If it doesn’t find one, it searches for any note with that filename anywhere in the vault, and if there are multiple matches it picks the one with the shortest path. To avoid ambiguity — especially as your vault grows — the recommendation is to always use the full path from the vault root.

Next up is one of the most useful features Obsidian offers: the Backlinks panel. You’ll find this in the right sidebar of any note, and it shows you two things. First, linked mentions — notes that have explicitly created a wikilink pointing to the note you’re currently reading. Second, unlinked mentions — notes that mention your note’s title as plain text, without a formal link. That second category is particularly useful for finding connections you haven’t formalised yet. To enable it, go to Settings, then Core Plugins, and switch on Backlinks.

There’s also the Outgoing Links panel, which works the other way around. While backlinks show you what points to the current note, outgoing links shows you everything the current note points to. It breaks these down into resolved links — where the target note exists — and unresolved links, where the target hasn’t been created yet. Unresolved links appear in a different colour and show up as what the wiki calls a ghost node in the graph view. So even a link to a note that doesn’t exist yet leaves a visible mark, which can be a handy way to spot gaps in your knowledge base.

When you’re writing and want to insert a link, you trigger the autocomplete picker by typing two opening square brackets. This opens a fuzzy search across all your note titles, so you don’t need to type the exact name — just enough of it for Obsidian to recognise it. You can press Tab to accept a suggestion or Enter to open the note directly.

Finally, there’s Page Preview. If you hold the Control key and hover your mouse over any wikilink, a popup appears showing you that linked note’s content — without navigating away from what you’re currently reading. This requires the Page Preview core plugin to be enabled, which you’ll find alongside the others in Settings.

So that’s the full picture of wikilinks and backlinks in Obsidian — from creating links and embedding content, right through to understanding how the graph connects everything together.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.