These 5 Obsidian shortcuts modified how I arrange my notes

There’s one thing great and interesting about navigating your favourite software program with only a few keystrokes. Sometimes, it may be straightforward to neglect that not everybody feels comfy navigating their software program utilizing shortcuts and instructions. And whereas it is actually spectacular to indicate your co-workers how briskly you’re with a keyboard (hey, the Gen Z children who work for me suppose it is cool), generally it is not at all times intuitive or straightforward to work that manner. Luckily, my favourite Knowledge Base/notes program, Obsidian, is filled with helpful shortcuts. I’ve tried most of them. But just a few modified the best way I take notes.

Don’t overlook the fundamentals

Sometimes, the best shortcuts are the most effective

As we break down the completely different Obsidian shortcuts, I believe it is fairly vital to not overlook the fundamentals. If you have been utilizing Obsidian (or perhaps a net browser) for some time, you are most likely already utilizing most of the typical shortcuts for editing. I’m not going to go over these.

Instead, listed below are a couple of easy ones I exploit each time I open the app. For instance, these appear apparent, however you would be shocked what number of of my college students do not know these exist. I completely use these shortcuts, just about each day.

For tab navigation, I exploit each CTRL + 1 to navigate to completely different tabs (or sub a 2, 3, 4, and many others. for extra tabs). I additionally use CTRL + PGUP and CTRL + PGDN for fast tab navigation.

CTRL + T for a brand new tab is tremendous helpful. Ditto for CTRL + N for a brand new observe. CTRL + W closes the tab you are at the moment engaged on. I additionally like to take a look at my graph on occasion utilizing CTRL + G. It’s getting fairly large.

While I exploit these shortcuts typically, there’s one which I exploit virtually each time I open the software program on any machine. And it helps me discover what I would like quick.

Find and entry notes shortly with this shortcut

The finest solution to discover recordsdata is hidden in plain sight

I have a tendency to avoid wasting a metric ton of notes, photographs, clipped pages, recordings, and, nicely, a number of file sorts in Obsidian. I arrange them by matter, however there are such a lot of that I would like a solution to observe them down shortly.

Once once more, a easy shortcut involves the rescue. CTRL + O is my go-to shortcut for getting round shortly. Simply hit the important thing mixture and a search bar pops up, together with your most up-to-date notes listed beneath it.

You can select one from the listing or sort the primary few letters of the observe you are searching for within the search field. If you are new to Obsidian or building a Knowledge Base normally, this generally is a very useful shortcut for getting round shortly. I’ve additionally discovered it helpful for locating notes that I’ve fully forgotten about when looking via my notes.

Inserting hyperlinks and pictures into Obsidian is fairly straightforward. You simply write one thing like this, wrapped in brackets and parentheses: [link anchor text](your precise URL). But have you ever ever exported your observe and realized your hyperlinks are completely borked? It occurs. Just like in Google Docs and Microsoft Word, you should utilize CTRL + Okay to insert your hyperlinks. It’s a fast and environment friendly manner so as to add hyperlinks to your article with out messing them up or getting the syntax incorrect.

You do not want a mouse for these

Now, we’ll get into some extra complicated territory by assigning some shortcuts particular to a workflow. Hotkeys are shortcuts that you simply assign your self. Some Obsidian instruments, like folding notes, require a mouse. That is, except you assign a hotkey to the operate. Specifically, I set CTRL + R to fold headers.

To entry hotkeys, navigate to the little gear icon close to the underside of your Obsidian sidebar. From there, choose hotkeys. It’ll populate an enormous listing of instructions and the shortcuts assigned to them. Just go down the listing, select the one you need, and add your shortcut. If it turns pink, meaning a special command is at the moment utilizing that exact key mixture.

The primary hotkeys I arrange for my workflow are the folding one from above, export to PDF (CTRL + ALT + E) and inserting a desk (CTRL + [). From there, you can add or adjust shortcuts to your heart’s content and set the layout to whatever works best for your workflow.

The most useful shortcut opens more features

The easy way to access commands

I can’t overstate how much I love having quick access to Obsidian’s command palette. When I work in the app, I use Markdown. But sometimes, you might forget a specific formatting option or need to assign an alias or backlink. The command palette also lets you insert an entire base (or create a new one) into your document and do basically anything you need formatting-wise with just a few keystrokes.

Shortcuts make Obsidian even better

Obsidian is still my preferred knowledge builder and writing app. Shortcuts are a major part of that. I prepared this collection of shortcuts for beginner-to-intermediate Obsidian users, but if you’re an advanced or longtime user, we’d love to hear your favorite shortcuts, too. Until then, I’ll keep building out my Knowledge Base any way I can.