Obsidian Users Fighting Vault Complexity
Users are frustrated by the increasing complexity and maintenance burden of their Obsidian vaults. They face issues like slow performance, plugin management headaches, outdated documentation, and difficulty integrating desired functionality, hindering their ability to effectively organize and utilize their knowledge. This leads to wasted time and a feeling of being overwhelmed.
SOURCES (60)
“Reading the write up from Evolver it sounds like they're 'Big Mad' cause some of Hermes ideas/terminology loosely overlaps with theirs... but also (and I give the Evolver team credit for listing this in their fairness disclosure), they say the underlying engine of the Hermes…”
“Is there an automatic synchronization tool for Notion for Obsidian? So I could produce on Notion and use Obsidian only for Orrery. Would you have any other ideas?”
“honestly, syncing your teaching calendar week after week could be easier outside notion. i use akiflow for this; it simplifies recurring events. plus, obsidian's really not a calendar app.”
“Thanks u/aribuga yes it should be good at first ^^. Happy to hear that from you. BTW I know its not a big deal but when some tasks are top priority (1 as red) It should be good to notice those tasks much more than other tasks. In fact the red circle is not noticeable enough compare what It should be. What do you think?”
can u elaborate more eon this, im familiar with n8n but not on the others
“I would wager almost all of them are going to require API keys or local llms on a localhost server. You’re not going to accidentally upload your vault to an AI if that’s the case because it’s hard to connect that by accident.”
“Thanks for sharing! I've just switched over to Retroma. I'm choosing a different accent color but I love the way the buttons are delineated. very cool”
“The folder structure, since I offered it in the post: Three folders do all the work. An inbox folder, where everything unprocessed lands: web clippings, notes from earnings calls, extracts from annual reports. Nothing lives there permanently. A knowledge folder, which is the real library: one subfolder per topic, so a company I follow gets its own folder, a sector gets one, a concept like buybacks gets one, and each folder has a short index note saying what's inside. And an output folder for”
“Thank you, I'll have to play around with these plugins. Goofing off tonight with Templater tonight I figured out that I could bind simple, one line templates of <i>Text</i> to an Insert Template hoykey, bound to alt+i so I can still use ctrl+i for asterisks. It kind of works, although more complicated format patterns I want are a little more troublesome to get to come out right but still saves me a lot of tripping around. - <i><font color="#8db3e2">SpeakerA&”
“I do equity research and my whole workflow now lives inside Obsidian. The piece that finally made it click was embarrassingly small: the terminal community plugin, so a CLI agent (Claude Code in my case) runs in a pane right next to my notes. What makes it work is markdown. My clippings, filing extracts and notes are all plain md, so the agent reads the same files I read and writes its outputs back as notes with wiki links. Nothing scatters across browser tabs and chat histories anymore, and the”
“You could export your custom settings as a pink retroma (or a name of your choosing) and put it int github. Congrats!”
“At the bare minimum use git and commit regularly, & review the commands it executes on potentially risky requests before they run”
“You could 1) make the ai work only on a copy of your vault, 2) then you review the changes 3) then synchronize manually. Or you can keep living on the edge”
“I thought this Obsidian x Claude thing was the meta , but it constantly ignores its instructions and now has just deleted a bunch of files without asking me first.. Anyone know a full proof way around this or any sources i can view to tighten up this stuff ? submitted by /u/Character-Hearing-91 [link] [comments]”
“Currently am working on a coding project designed to replace Rosetta 2 once Apple gets rid of it 2028. I really wish I knew about Obsidian when starting the project because it feels difficult to get everything down to the standards I want it (which means detailed explanations on every file/component except the ones that are far from being complete). Theme is Retroma in which I went out with all pink for the most part by using Style Setting plug-in to tweak all the colors to custom pink. The plug”
Hi Kepano, I would like to know when Kanban feature is coming and the calendar feature is coming for bases please? These are what I'm looking forward to most. I know I…
“Crazy to think that Obsidian databases could beat Notion databases. Not even a comparison”
“First as a disclaimer, I have never used Anytype or Notion before, though I have a passing knowledge of what they may be like. As for Obsidian, I've been using it heavily for at least the last 2 years. To address each point of what you're planning to replicate: Types/Properties This is certainly doable. The most basic way is you create a template markdown file, like template-book.md where you define the properties a note of Book type should have as a start, and perhaps their default valu”
“Bro!! Just setup the TaskNotes Plugin. Once again thank you for the tip✅ I migrated all of my old tasks out of Notion into Task folder within Obsidian. Synced those tasks with the TaskNotes plugin. Added my Google Calendar to TaskNotes and now I have a 1:1 sync with my Obsidian tasks and Google Calendar 🔥”
“I use both , and honestly you're probably going to hate the transition. AnyType works out of the box. Obsidian has a steep learning curve + requires good plugin knowledge + long term experimentation. You're a visual user , its not going to end well. The 2nd Brain sounds nice until you have to start managing those files by yourself - its not exciting at all, setting up sync can be seamless (obsidian sync) or a chore (sync thing) My suggestion : Use both , don't move anything from AnyT”
“I just purged all my image and pdf files (because I wanted my vault to be purely text and OCRed most of the important stuff): 27Mb. Love it.”
“Hi, I'm getting sick of some of the stuff Notion is doing, so I'm considering switching to Obsidian, I have some questions tho, if anyone else switched how easy was it to transfer files, and databases, but I have two main databases, a journal, and a library database. Main question, how quickly do you see obsidan take space, because I'm planning on creating the vault in Icedrive, with 10gb, and I was wondering if I would need to get more storage quickly, or if I could hold off for a b”
As everyone has said, aliases and [[filename|display name]]. And RTFM!
“.....using a transparent image is such a simple solution for "I like the grid/dots/whatever backgrounds of certain themes but I like my color scheme and xyz parts of this other one" and I cannot *believe* I didn't think of it?? Very cool. Heck, if you're the kind of person that wants to stay lowkey with plugins you could probably do the same thing with css snippets. This is really nice in general, btw.”
You don't have to make everything atomic in order to learn something
“has anyone tried plugin maxxing, just doing the absolute most for no reason, a complete caricature of the obsidian fanbase. i'd love to see it if it's been done. submitted by /u/Realistic-Worker-499 [link] [comments]”
“The Linter plugin might be able to wrangle something. Like “on save, replace “**” with “<b>”” and as I type it I realise that won’t work because you need closing tags too. Could be worth pulling on that thread a bit though”
“Como todo bom usuário de notion, fui apresentada ao obsidian pelo reddit como alternativa para um caderno digital, mas percebi que é BEM MAIS do que isso. E confesso que, por ser bem mais que isso, me senti perdida ao tentar usar o obsidian, tentei procurar em alguns vídeos mas confesso que ainda sim não entendi muita coisa. Se vocês tiverem sugestões de plugins e tutoriais, no youtube ou aqui no reddit mesmo, pra alguém que deseja usar o obsidian para anotar as matérias da faculdade, ter um jar”
“There is the Wrap with shortcuts which lets you add custom html tags and add shortcuts to each one of them. In case of the bold shortcut, you may also need to unassign the Ctrl+B shortcut from the default "Toggle Bold" command, so that your custom command can then use that shortcut. This can be done by going in Obsidian's Settings dialog > "Hotkeys". I'm not sure if this plugin can insert empty tags when no text is selected. In case it can't and you need that,”
“I use a plugin called Substitutions, mostly for inserting standard image sizing text. I type pxx and it replaces that with |100x100 It replaces text as you type so you might be able to use it for a quick workaround.”
“you can use colored fonts, that's definitely possible, but it's not part of the markdown standard. The whole point of markdown is that it's possible to be read without any special software. Those color tags would make it hard to read and there is no other way of doing that”
“Is it safe to assume that core plugins are safe, or at least as safe as the obsidian application itself?”
“So custom themes are safe to install without the concern of security vulnerabilities? (As opposed to community plugins)”
“Does this mean if a plugin passed the original review, you install that version and don't update it, there's still a possibility of a vulnerability risk, due to dependencies it used even when it passed the original Obsidian review?”
“Is there a way to install the version of the plugin that passed review? Then presumably if you don't update it, it's fine (as long as the review was thorough)?”
“Solid advice! I fully intend to make my own experience on Obsidian, but seeing how other people use this tool can also give me a better idea of what it can actually be used for. Thankfully I’m not finding it too overwhelming after learning more of the basics. And I write a lot, so yeah I trust that time and experience will eventually lead me to building my own setup. I’ll try my best to avoid my plugin fever though! You’re the second person I see here basically saying not to go wild, so I’ll tak”
“No no it's ok! The graph thing can be confusing, and it's always good to ask questions if you have them :)”
“I'd recommend building your own setup. It's better to understand your own stuff. I used to fall into the trap of copying others, but when I came to Obsidian, someone gave me this advice: make your own stuff; don't add plugins (just core plugins) and keep it simple. You can always add more features later. I only looked things up as I needed them (Certain things I wanted). I was pretty overwhelmed at first, but figuring out my own configuration really helped me understand the tool.”
For me as an Obsidian beginner your guide helped me a lot
“But extension don't need admin rights for installation and they get access to Google Drive live. Which in limited environment is a great thing.”
“I have added choices as part of my templates and I have created a plugin that enforces everything”
“I found this video demonstrating Steph Ango’s vault and decided to download it myself so I can incorporate his style into my own vault. Problem: when I tried it myself, the properties are different from what I’m seeing in the video… Maybe this is a simple mistake I did when setting it up? But with less than an hour on this app I can’t find any settings to fix this. So I’m just going to take a break from my computer and seek you professionals for any assistance you can give me. Besides this, I’m”
“I didn't realize how beautiful the default Obsidian theme is until recently when I switch back. With a few tweaks in CSS snippets I get what I want and I am staying. 2 things that I change with CSS: invisible scrollbar and the colors of the text, links and tags. Broken links are red, good links are blue. submitted by /u/Unfair-Run-325 [link] [comments]”
Plugin: StoryLine - Obsidian plugin for writers
“Heavy obsidian user here. I make a large portion of the ttrpg and wprld building tutorials ( www.obsidianttrpgtutorials.com ). Obsidian shines with the plugins. That's where it easily becomes the better tool for ttrpgers and world builders imo. With the new core bases functionality, dynamic tables that list your notes are simple giving basic database style functionality. With obsidian though... Pinnable maps Ability to measure distance on those maps using different travel methods, foot, hors”
“As a heavy obsidian user. I shudder at recommendations to use make.md. thats a plugin that does too much and doesn't do it too well. The beauty of obsidian.md is how easy the data format is to use. Every file is just a md note and you can do so much with it. Make.md moves away from that. Tables get stored in json files which breaks your ability to blend your tables with other plugins and thus functionality.”