Users find Obsidian's graph view confusing
10 posts across 2 communities in the last 30 days; 90% from r/ObsidianMD.
“I have always found it strange that people treat the graph view as a gimmick in note taking softwares. For me, it is the primary way of navigating my vault, and all my notes are structured around it. I call my approach Graphkasten , since it emphasizes adding only meaningful…”
“The usefulness of the graph is in that it allows you to explore the structure of the vault as a whole... Is what I would say if I could make the thing stop moving, and it allowed me to use better filters and highlights. That said, the local graph is genuinely useful, and…”
“Just tried it. The mobile view seems bugged so I can't actually scroll down and see most of the graph”
Some users struggle to understand and utilize the Graph View feature in Obsidian, missing out on potential benefits like understanding vault structure and planning.
SOURCES (24)
“my question is simple, how do you use the graph, is there any real use case for it, or it is only to see how the vault look like or become like I use it sometimes as background, thats it is there a real use…”
“Clearly, this graph view is ludicrous. It is fine to care about ontology and learn some related concepts, but it is very unlikely that as obsidian user you want features like class inheritance, reasoners etc. All you need to mark 'class' of a note is a tag. For visual graph overview of note connections, check out recently released, excellent k-plex plugin. It is based on the legendary The Brain software which carried me through uni a decade ago. For db-style notekeeping, learn features o”
“I have always found it strange that people treat the graph view as a gimmick in note taking softwares. For me, it is the primary way of navigating my vault, and all my notes are structured around it. I call my approach Graphkasten , since it emphasizes adding only meaningful links to the graph view so it stays maintainable and useful. So far, I have over 4000 notes. Is there anyone else who heavily uses the graph view? What is your system? If you want to learn more about my approach or replicate”
“I have always found it strange that people treat the graph view as a gimmick in Obsidian. For me, it is the primary way of navigating my vault, and all my notes are structured around it. I call my approach Graphkasten , since it emphasizes adding only meaningful links to the graph view so it stays maintainable and useful. So far, I have over 4000 notes. Is there anyone else who heavily uses the graph view? What is your system? If you want to learn more about my approach or replicate it: My publi”
“The graph often gets a lot of slack, criticised pretty much as an impractical gimmick. Firstly though, it was the shiny thing that attracted me to Obsidian in the first place. The thing that drew me in to this journey. But the main benefit for me: it's almost like a gorgeous multi-dimensional progress bar. I've seen others who use it to actually understand their note and concept relationships better, but for me, it feels like each of those dots represents effort I made toward generating,”
“The only times I look at my graph is when I hit ctrl+g instead of ctrl+f. 😐 [re: What are some features in Obsidian that everyone seems to like but you just don't get it?]”
“that's either a really cool coincidence or your vault is secretly patriotic mine looks like an exploded spiderweb so you're already winning [re: Is it really weird that my Graph View looks like the Turkish flag]”
“Local graph is pretty useful tho [re: What are some features in Obsidian that everyone seems to like but you just don't get it?]”
“The usefulness of the graph is in that it allows you to explore the structure of the vault as a whole... Is what I would say if I could make the thing stop moving, and it allowed me to use better filters and highlights. That said, the local graph is genuinely useful, and probably the reason we have this functionality in the first place. Grab a note , open the local graph, play with the depth slider. Then compare it with the results of an embedding model.. Are they the same? No ? Why is that?”
“For me it would be the graph. Every time someone posts a big graph with tons of connections, I always see it very well received, and those graphs DO indeed look very cool and impressive, I respect the time and dedication that went into building all those connections. But whenever I look at my own, my feelings about it are either "hehe a graph" or "I already know those things are connected, I have connected them myself, what do I even get out of this". Another thing is probabl”
“Two things: The graph isn’t important. Is the vault usable? Try PARA or Linking Your Thinking. Second, consider connecting your vault to Claude. It can help you find the marbles and stay organized.”
“People bash the graph as unnecessary, but finding those connections you didn’t know existed is a crucial aspect of the feature. Rather than being unnecessary, for me, it’s Obsidian’s raison d'être.”
“Guess what man, the graph is an illusion. Absolutely useless except that it sometimes looks cool. Someone will have an actual answer for you, I’m just a messy guy in general, but I wanna encourage you to worry less. I mean unless space is genuinely at a premium on whatever machine you’re using.”
“Just tried it. The mobile view seems bugged so I can't actually scroll down and see most of the graph”
“I rarely ever use Graph View tbh. With how much data I have stored, it's primary function is to look pretty when I show off my vault to people. Like right now! On reddit.”
“Degrees of separation is one of the more underrated uses for the graph view. Most people just use it to prove their vault is messy. Once you get past a hundred or so nodes, "featured on" and "produced by" edges start looking identical unless you're tagging the relationship type. Worth building that distinction in now, before the graph turns into one blob you can't read anymore.”
“The graph is a stupid distraction. I'm sure it does something for someone, but your reaction tells me it doesn't do anything for you (currently, anyways). Close that tab and ignore it.”
“I've seen several comments on the graph view. Some don't understand how it can be useful and at first I didn't either until I created this vault. I use this "Investigation" vault to follow current events/cases in the news. I quickly understood where the graph view could be useful. Let's say you are a detective trying researching cases and you are linking cases to names and names to locations etc, then it may be hard to see the connections between things. If I begin to s”
“Fair point, the graph is a reflection of the vault not something you design separately”
“IMO the only real use for the global graph view is for posting a pretty graph on Reddit. Or just to look at for fun. I wouldn't make any decisions on how i organize my vault with the intention of making the graph view cleaner etc”
“The benefit is that you understand “what you have in your vault” as a thing of itself — you understand this thing. This enables you to do a whole range of things that you wouldn’t even be aware about otherwise. Planning is an iterative feedback-driven process. Keep dismissing it and it’s you who’ll miss out on it all.”