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.

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.