Give Me 14 Minutes, I'll Teach You 97% of Obsidian

0:00Obsidian is the most powerful way to organize your notes, but learning how to use it from absolute nothing takes ages. That's why in this video, I'm going to walk you through the only features you need to [music] get started, one click at a time. And at the end, I'll show you how to supercharge the whole thing with AI, so it sorts out all your messy notes [music] for you. And the first thing you need to understand is what Obsidian actually is. It's basically a glorified text editor, [music] and that's because every note is just a plain text file inside Obsidian. But it lets you link your notes together and view them in a

0:32few different ways. All of these files live in one folder on your computer, which Obsidian calls a vault. The app itself is free, and Sync and Publish are the only things you'd pay for. The first one syncs your notes between your computer and your phone, starting at $4 a month. And the second one turns your notes into a website for $80 a month, but you don't need either of them for anything in this video. After downloading Obsidian from their [music] website, you come to this screen where you can create a new vault, open an existing folder as a vault, or open one from Obsidian Sync. [music] To make a

1:02brand new vault from scratch, I'll click create, give it a name, click browse to pick where the folder gets saved, and hit create again. Here, you're greeted with a simple interface with a welcome note already open by default, and [music] I'll delete it since we're starting from nothing. To make a note, I'll click the new note button at the top of the left sidebar, or you can right-click the empty [music] space in the list and pick new note. It shows up as Untitled, so I'll type over the title and call it Consistent AI Characters,

1:27which is a video idea I want to make. Next, [music] I'll hit the new folder button right next to it and call the folder Video Ideas. Then, I'll drag the note onto the folder to move it inside, or you can [music] right-click it and choose Move File to. And since the vault is just a folder, Video Ideas now show up on your computer, too, with the note inside it as a file. Also, since we're bringing AI into this later, if you want [music] to get good at AI beyond just notes, my skill community, AI Fluency, takes you from casually using ChatGPT to building a real product with AI in 12

1:57weeks. You get a new video every day, over a thousand done for you resources, and me and my team answering your questions. So, join us through the link in the description. So, now you know how to make notes and folders inside Obsidian, but the one we created is still blank. And the moment we start writing is when Obsidian gets much more confusing because apart from a few basics like command or control B for bold, there's no quick way to add headings and [music] other stuff like that. Instead, you type little symbols called markdown like hashtags in front of a line to turn it into heading. And

2:28changing the color of your text or centering it takes small bits of HTML code. Learning markdown itself isn't hard and you'll pick it up as you go, but you can skip that step completely by installing a plugin. A plugin is an add-on that gives Obsidian a feature it doesn't have on its own. They're mainly made by other users and there are over 8,000 of them. Since they can run code on your computer, they stay off until you open settings, go to community

2:51plugins, and click exit restricted mode. Next, I'll click the browse and search for editing toolbar, which has almost 2 million downloads. Then, I'll hit install and enable. If it asks about turning on its AI editor, you can just pick not now. Now, we have a toolbar at the top of our note to format our

3:06writing. [music] For example, if I click the H3 button, three hashtags show up. So, I'll type hook and it's already a heading. The toolbar just [music] types the markdown for you, so the note is still a plain text file underneath. If I want to change the color [music] of the heading, I'll select it, open font colors, and choose any one I like. And to move it to the middle, I'll open the alignment menu while it's still selected and pick [music] center. For those last two, the toolbar writes the HTML and inside Obsidian, you'll only ever see the result. So, now you can format your notes the same way you would in any

3:35other word processor, but just writing stuff inside Obsidian isn't really the strongest feature it has because what it's really built for is connecting your notes to each other. A lot of the ideas and topics you write about relate to each other. So, while you're writing a note, you can link it to another note and that creates a connection between the two. In our consistent AI characters note, I'll write that I'm making it Cidans. Cidans is a tool I use in almost every video, so it's a perfect example of something that should get its own note. To link it, I'll press the opening square brackets key twice. Obsidian adds

4:08the closing ones for me, and I'll [music] type seedance in between. There's no seedance note yet, so the link shows up a bit faded, and clicking it creates a brand new one for me. Inside it, I'll write a few lines about what I use seedance for, then make a tools folder and I drag the note in there. Now, if I open the right sidebar and go to backlinks, I can see the consistent AI characters [music] links to this note, and it even shows the exact line where I mentioned it. Every link also shows up in the graph view, which I'll open with this button on the

4:35ribbon. [music] Each dot is a note, and each line is a link. So, right now, it's just our video idea and seedance, with one line [music] between them. As you make more notes and link them together, the graph keeps growing, and the more notes link to the [music] same thing, the bigger its dot gets. To show you what that looks like with a properly built-out vault, I went ahead and made a complete one for my channel, and I connected [music] them the same way we just did, by adding a link whenever one note mentions another. So, every video idea links to the tools I'm making it

5:02with, like seedance, and to the [music] script I wrote for it. And a book, like Made to Stick, links to my notes on writing hooks, because that's where I actually used what I learned from it. You can also add tags to your notes, and the reason you'd use them is that a note can only be in one folder, but it can have as many tags as you want. To add one, you type a hashtag with no space after it, like #inprogress, and [music] it turns into a tag instead of a heading. I added that tag to everything I'm working on right now, [music] so the videos I'm making, the scripts I'm

5:32drafting, and the books I'm still reading. And when I click the tag, I get all of them in one list, even though [music] they're in three different folders. So, links connect one note to another, and tags pull notes [music] into a group. Now, if I open the graph view again, this is what all of those links look like [music] together. It's grown a lot since those first two dots, with a ton of notes linking to one another. If I hover over this giant dot right here, I can see it's seedance, with lines going out to notes all over the vault. And if I click and drag it,

6:00everything linked to it follows along in this really smooth animation. If I hover over other parts of the graph, I can see how connected everything is. This is really helpful for seeing how one thing in my process affects the rest. For example, [music] Sedans shows up in a huge number of my videos, scripts, and tests. So, if I ever switch to a different tool, I can see every node that would change in one place. But, it's all a bit too gray, so I'd like to add some color. [music] So, I'll open the graph settings, go to groups, and click new group. In the box, I'll type

6:31path colon [music] tools, which means every node in the tools folder, and then pick a color for it. I did the same for every folder, and now I can tell right away which dots are tools, which are video ideas, and which are book [music] notes. And the whole thing is a lot more fun to look at. And if I click any dot, it opens that note. Now, [music] with this many folders, the sidebar on the left starts to feel cluttered and hard to click through. So, to make it easier on the eyes, I let another plugin called notebook navigator. It splits the sidebar into two panels, a lot like

7:00Apple notes, with your folders on one side and the notes inside of them on the other, [music] each with a short preview. I'll go to community plugins, click browse, search for notebook navigator, then install and enable, and pick [music] maybe later on the welcome pop-up. Now, I can click any folder and scan through its notes, which makes getting around [music] the vault a lot quicker. So, now you have a clean folder structure full of linked notes and a graph view that shows how they all connect, so you can jump from any idea to everything related to it without opening a single folder. [music] But, all of that only works if your

7:33ideas actually make it into Obsidian. And stopping to make a brand new note every time you think of something gets old fast. That's what the daily notes are for. It's one note for each day, and everything goes there first. It's on by default, so I'll just click open today's daily notes on the ribbon, and it makes a note named after today's date. But, it's completely blank, so I'd have to type the same section every morning, like my top three for the day, new ideas, and what I got done. Doing that every single day gets repetitive. So, instead, I'll write that layout once and have Obsidian copy it into every new

8:06daily note. To do that, I'll make a template, which is just a normal note you will use as the starting point for new ones. I'll make a new folder called templates, and inside it a new note called daily note. In it, I let the sections I want every day, so the one thing that would make today a win, my top three new ideas, things I saved from the web, and what I got done. I put each part in these colored boxes called callouts, so they're easier to spot. And at the top, I'll type date inside two curly brackets, which Obsidian swaps for the actual date every time a new daily

8:36note is made. Now, I just have to tell Obsidian where my templates are and which one to use for daily notes. So, I'll open settings, go to templates, and set the template folder to templates. Then, under daily notes, I'll change new file location to the daily notes folder, and pick daily note under template file location. Now, when I click open today's daily note, it shows up in the daily notes folder with today's date and the whole layout already filled in. And it's super efficient to just click one button and fill things up as you go, instead of setting the note up by hand every single day. Similarly, I want another template

9:11for my video ideas, since every one of them needs the same parts. So, in the templates folder, I'll make another note called video idea with those sections plus a few properties at the top, like the status and the date. This one isn't tied to daily notes, so I'll give it a shortcut instead. In settings, I'll go to hotkeys, search insert template, click the plus, and press option T. Now, when an idea comes up during the day, I edit under new ideas as a link, like AI pet commercial, and click it to make the note. Inside [music] it, I press option T, pick video idea, and the whole layout

9:43is there with today's date already in the [music] properties. After a week of this, the daily notes folder has one note per day, and each one links out to whatever I worked on. And while making notes like this every day, you'll notice you keep running into articles and videos in your browser that you want to write notes on. To make that task easier, there's Obsidian [music] Web Clipper, a free browser extension you can add to Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge. Once it's installed, I'll click its icon on any page, and it grabs the title, the link, today's date, and the

10:12page content, and tags it as a clipping. If I only want certain parts, I can use the highlighter button to mark them first. Then, I'll hit add to Obsidian, and the page is saved as a note in a clippings folder in my vault, so I can link it from my daily note under saved from the web. So, now you know how to skip the repetitive setup with templates and get any idea or web page into

10:33Obsidian in just a couple of clicks. But, when I actually sit down to plan a video, I want [music] the idea, the script, videos in front of me at once, not spread across five different tabs. And to solve that problem, Obsidian has a feature called canvas, which is basically a big empty board where you can lay out your notes, [music] images, and ideas side by side. To make one, I'll click create new canvas on the [music] ribbon and call it AI music video board, since that's the video I'm

10:58working on right now. [music] Adding a note, you just a drag from the sidebar. So, here's the idea note, and right next to it, the script. Each card shows the actual note, so I can scroll through it or double click to edit it right on the board. [music] Images work the same way, so I'll drag my mood board and my storyboard sketch in from the attachments folder. For quick thoughts that don't need a whole note, I can double click anywhere on the board and add a card. To keep things tidy, I can select a few cards, right click, and choose create [music] group. Then, the palette icons give each group its own

11:28color. And to connect two cards, I drag the dot on the edge of one onto the other, then double click the arrow to give it a label. From here, I'll speed through the rest, adding a card for each shot, grouping everything, and connecting it all up. And now, I have a whole visual board for my upcoming

11:43video. [music] Everything is in one place, and it's much easier to start making it from here. So, before you start your next project, put everything it needs on one canvas first, because seeing the idea, the script, [music] and the shots side by side shows you what's missing before you make anything. And if you want to take all of this even further, you can let Claude work inside

12:02your vault and just talk to your notes. [music] Since your whole vault is just a folder of text files, Claude can read every note in it the same way Obsidian does. For that, I'll use Claude's co-work, [music] which can work directly in a folder on your computer. In the Cloth desktop app, I'll pick Co-work in the message box and choose my vault folder. It comes with any paid Cloth plan, and [music] the desktop app has to

12:24stay open while it works on your files. The simplest thing is to ask it questions, like what I still haven't finished this week. It goes through my daily notes and lists [music] every task I haven't checked off. It can also compare notes, so I'll ask it to read one of my video ideas next to its script

12:39and tell me if any thing doesn't match. And it points out the spots where the two disagree, like which tool the shots are supposed to come from. But it doesn't just answer questions, it can write and edit notes for me, too. So, I'll ask for a weekly review, and it saves a new note with what I got done, what's still open, and ideas I had linked back [music] to each day. When I come up with a new idea, it can turn it into a full note with my video idea template and link the [music] tools I already use. It can also build a canvas, so I'll ask for a board for another

13:09video laid out like we made earlier. Once it's done, the board shows up in Obsidian with the idea, the script, [music] the tools, and a short list grouped the same way. The biggest time-saver is changing the whole vault at once, like adding a link whenever a note mentions one of my tools without linking to it, or giving every video idea a status [music] based on how I sorted them in my overview note. It updates all those notes, and I never open a single one. It will ask for permission before deleting anything, but I'd still copy your [music] vault folder somewhere safe before letting it make changes. This also helps a lot if you're

13:42just moving to Obsidian with years of notes scattered everywhere. [music] So, I dumped a big pile of messy files into one folder, from text files and PDFs to screenshots and voice memos. [music] I wrote a prompt that turns a pile like this into a clean vault, and you can grab it from the link in the description. It reads everything first, asks you a few questions about how you work, and shows you the folders it wants to make [music] before it moves anything. Once I approve, it sorts every file, gives the messy ones proper names, links the related notes, and writes the short guides on how to use the vault. It

14:12takes a while, so I'll speed through it and show you the before and after. Now, everything is sorted into a few clear folders with the related notes linked together. So, once Cloud [music] Co-work is working in your vault, you can find, write, fix, and organize anything in it just by asking instead of going through it note by note. And Co-work is just one of the AI tools I use every day to run my channel. Inside [music] my school community, AI Fluency, I show you how to build real products with all of them over 12 weeks with me and my team there to help. So, join through my link in the

14:43description to get it at $96 a month before the price goes up.