an obsidian update
I discussed in a previous post that I would be trying to stick with obsidian for a whole year. I will admit that there has been some swapping between obsidian and apple notes, but I seem to be finally happy with the way obsidian is working.
This appears to be down to a new theme that I love and sorting out zotero as my read-it-later tool of choice. Paired with going back to hugo obsidian has become my central hub, I can write blog posts and publish them directly from obsidian using hugo mounts .
So what have I changed and what seems to have stayed the course since December 2023?
theme
I am now using the border theme using the card layout. I really like the feel of it, you can utilise things like the style settings plugin to tweak, and the author has produced a number of 'preset' layouts that make it much easier to get a good starting look, I am using the Github light preset as shown in the screenshot above.
plugins
Many have stayed from the original setup, a few additions recently - trash explorer when I accidentally deleted a whole folder for example 🤦.
- Advanced URI I use this as part of an apple shortcut to add text quickly to my daily note, details can be found here.
- Auto link title This grabs the title for any web link and adds it to the title, rather than just showing the URL, makes things a bit neater.
- Custom sort One thing that really bugs me about obsidian is the inability to sort my folders how I would like. This plugin address's this and also allows me to sort files inside folders how I like - for example blog posts in reverse chronological order so the newest is at the top.
- Kindle plugin Imports kindle highlights, tend to have this one installed but off until I need to use it, no point in loading it every single time
- Omnisearch A fab plugin that gives a much better way of searching across my obsidian vault.
- Recent files Gives me a box with my recent files, I like this as I tend to have qute a structured set of folders and this gets me quickly to the files I tend to use most often.
- Style settings Lets me tune the theme, especially useful for hiding bits of user interface I don't need often to create a minimal look.
- Obsidian tasks I sue this to scrape all the checklists into a single file.
- Trash explorer When you do something really stupid this can help you restore the files.
- Zotero plugin For bringing in annotations and notes from the zotero tool. I am using this as my main read-it-later system as it works for everything - books, videos, articles etc.
snippets
Snippets are little bits of css that can be used to fine tune the obsidian experience, I only use one:
- Custom separators This works well with the custom sort plugin and allows me to create dividers in the folder bar. I have used this to separate different areas of my notes, for example the PARA section.
what next?
I'm fairy happy with the setup and I am using obsidian daily. I haven't really investigated the graph or some of the more complex tools like dataview, these might be nice winter projects.