I write a lot, save a lot, but rarely come back to any of it. Jotted notes, diary entries, LLM Wiki pages, you name it. The content is great, but don't feel like going back to it.

My vault became write-only.

Social apps are very good at resurfacing content. My vault wasn't. Doomscroll plugin borrows the science behind the social feed and applies it to Obsidian vault, so you are motivated to engage with your notes.

Doomscroll shows a "feed" of random notes from your vault, and is designed for low-friction content engagement. I keep a pinned tab on desktop and mobile for quick access, especially during commute. Shout-out to fellow Londoners 🇬🇧

Key features:

• Shuffled card feed, to stimulate curiosity
• Manual reshuffle instead of infinite list pattern allows to go back to previous batch of notes
• Random algorithm with 30-minute cooldown before a note can appear again
• Filters for folders, tags, and filename patterns - eg doomscroll only Diary notes
• Cover images
• Works on desktop and mobile

Please try yourself, any feedback is welcome!

https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/doomscroll

Hi all, looking for some feedback on our Markdown editor which we built for Jetbrains products. We support better sync, more dialects, faster editing, and since our release of today, we also support Obsidian.

It's a commercial plugin to sustain our development, but we're super happy to give away licenses to people who want to try it and give some feedback. You can find the plugin https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/33400-markdown-pro

We're just really keen to see how well the plugin performs with a wide range of collections of documents!

Saving information is not the same as learning it. It is easy to confuse the two.

We find an interesting article, a useful quote, or a great paragraph in a book. We clip it, bookmark it, highlight it, or drop it into our notes app. Saving items feel like progress. Collection of information can create the illusion of learning without actually producing knowledge.

At some point, we can end up with a digital landfill. We know we saved something useful somewhere. We just don't remember what it was, where it was, or how it connects to anything else.

This is the collector's trap.

Collecting information is psychologically rewarding while understanding information requires actual cognitive effort. Highlighting a sentence requires not much thinking. Explaining that sentence in our own words requires interpretation. Connecting it to something we already know requires synthesis. Thinking about where we could actually use it requires application. That is actual learning.

Ask yourself: Can I turn this into an idea that will be useful to me later? Instead of Is this information interesting enough to save? This creates a higher bar for what deserves to enter our knowledge base.

A useful rule would be: If something is worth keeping, turn it into a single, standalone thought in our own words. Save understanding instead of information.

For those that are using obsidian program:

I made DnD Character sheet in Obsidian with 2024 rules. Its completely done by Claude AI, i can't code but i understand some basics. Its has many features like:

- showing death saves when character is at 0 Hp, hiding when character is healed at least 1 Hp or done all death saves succesfully

- conditions changes character sheet data depending on condition, example when you reach exhaustion level 6, its drop you dead and changes speed to 0. (Updated, in video is showing bug that on exhaustion lvl 6, character is dead but has 5 ft. speed still)

- you can update the whole character sheet with **update character sheet** button, you can also copy blank template if you want fresh new character

- it calculates ability score bonuses and skills based with **recalculate from ability scores** button inside update character sheet box

- you can setup multiclasses (video has older version where it wasnt done properly), setup which class is which level and if one of those classes is spellcaster (even subclasses with spells like Eldritch knigh) than the character sheet updates the spell slots based on the classes you are using

- spells could be inserter if you have setup spell notes with #Spell tag, there are examples in my github how so it knows which spells have **Using higher level spell slot** option and update the spell tab based on that, like in DnDBeyond where you have for example Fireball in each level from level 3 but with different damage amout, this character sheet does this also

- there is also template and modal form data that could made a character creation using button that opens a templater and made a new character this way

https://github.com/Majsnic/Obsidian-DnD-Character-sheet-

For those who use Obsidian as a “second brain,” how often do you actually revisit your notes after writing them?

Do you regularly review them, or do you mostly rediscover them when searching for something related?

More importantly, does keeping a second brain actually help you? If so, how? Does it help you remember, connect ideas, create, or solve problems?

I’m curious how people actually get value from their notes after they write them down.

So, all my templates for notes come with a tag called #unprocessed. It means exactly what it looks like it means. No note is processed until I remove that tag, and I only remove it when I know the work for that note has been done; momentarily, sometimes. Helps me from piling up notes after notes with no end result. Also helps me track my old notes that I need to tend to.

Is it possible to turn the symbol icons into text? I dont know what all the icons are for on mobile devices. And i tend to forget them later.

I know text will be longer, but it will take away the guess work. When i click an icon now, at times it creates something that i have to delete after if i dont need it, because i am looking for something else

As the titles says, I use sum for the property in the bases but when I limit how much item it needs to show for that bases it only calculates what it shows, how can I make it calculate total while also limiting what it shows?

I've got a personal archive of ~10k documents — about a year and a half of conversation logs and notes — and I'm trying to build something that can answer specific questions against it, not just keyword search.

Vector / embedding retrieval works fine when I already know roughly what I'm looking for and can phrase the query in language close to the source. It fails badly on a few harder cases:

Origin vs later retelling. The same claim appears as a live event, then as a recap, a formalization, a paste ritual, or a podcast title weeks later. Similarity treats those as the same hit. I need provenance: which passage is the first occurrence vs which is a later description of it.

Significance that only exists across passages. The thing that matters isn't stated in any single chunk; it's a connection I'd have to make myself across multiple separate files. Single-passage similarity never surfaces that.

Compile once vs re-reason every query. Running small local chat models as "judges" over candidate files at query time has been a dead end for me (overfire or mute). Embeddings are great for "same claim, different words." What's worked better so far is paying once for a capable model to compile structured notes (entities, claims, timelines) and then querying that cheap forever — but even that still needs a human timeline anchor when formalizations bury the real origin.

Anyone working on retrieval (or personal-knowledge) systems that handle provenance of a claim vs a report of a claim, or that synthesize significance across scattered passages rather than similarity-matching one passage? Especially curious about compile-time knowledge bases vs multi-hop RAG at query time.

Would love to hear what's out there or what you've tried.

Hi, after moving to Obsidian I really missed the Google Keep widget. I tried a couple of the ones that exist but none of them clicked for me.

I wrote my own. It reads a folder I point it at and lists the notes. Tapping one opens it in Obsidian. It also shows when the vault last synced, which is the reason I built it really — I kept not noticing when sync had quietly stopped.

Right now tapping a note only opens Obsidian. If there's interest I'd do it for other markdown apps too.

https://github.com/marfolog/notes-widget-for-markdown

If any of you solved this in a better way, tell me — happy to hear I wasted my time.

Hello

I see the many advantages of Obsidian over other notes apps But I'm wondering whether it's a good choice for me given that I'm looking for a true digital cabinet - one where my few 100 notes (so not thousands) can co-exist alongside some audio recordings, lots of PDFs, images and so on. Thoughts welcome?

Cloud storage is great for files but I cannot write notes around the file so...

Let me add that work will pay for this so the price itself is not so important.

Thank you

When I want to publish something I've written in my zettelkasten, I have to export it, add it to wherever, reformat it, then do the publishing.
I hate the Obsidian publish option because I want to use the output from my notes for something else, not just a webpage.
Anyone else feeling trapped in their vault?
Do I just suck it up?

Full release notes can be found here:

Obsidian 1.14.0 Desktop (early access)
Obsidian 1.14.0 Mobile (early access)

You can get early access versions if you have a Catalyst license, which helps support development of Obsidian.

Be aware that community plugin and theme developers receive early access versions at the same time as everyone else. Be patient with developers who need to make updates to support new features.

I started using obsidian at the start of last month and I swear that I could drag headings and rearrange sections from the Outline core plugin, now I can't do it anymore and I'm wondering if it was a fever dream or I turned on/off something that ruined it? I've tried everything and there's no reason it shouldn't work.

When I long press on the heading in the Outline sidebar, it just gets highlighted in a different colour but it doesn't move.

Is anyone familiar with this issue?

1.13.7 and 1.13.8

It essentially works as a vertically placed bookmarks tab but it scratches a specific itch that I have aesthetically. that said, make.md itself really lags for me so I'd love to know if there was a way to use this specific element without the rest of the bells and whistles that come with make.md. I have fairly little experience with coding, I have also tinkered with claude to see if there could be something similar I could code that's more light on my system. However, that did not work out for me (obviously because my coding skills are essentially nil).

If there is any application or anyone who has insight on this, I'd genuinely appreciate it!

I write a lot in markdown (using Obsidian, VS Code) and I’ve noticed I retain much less of what I wrote compared to when I used Word or LaTeX. My guess is that every file looks the same and there is no page layout to anchor things to, so I lose the cue of “where on the page was that.” I am curious whether anyone notices this and what to do about it.

EDIT: Thank you all for sharing your tips and thoughts!

Version: 1.13.7 Installer Version: 1.10.6 (Portable Version)

I've just realized today (and hoping its only recent or else there may be a significant amount of orphaned notes in my vault) that when I remove a property from a note by clicking the X next to it in 'File properties' in the sidebar, it clears the property entirely - meaning its also removing the formatting for the property type. This results for some reason in it not being pulled into ANY base, even if I filter by an entirely different property than the one that was deleted.

For example: When my note gets created, it has the list properties:

type:
  - Note
subtype: []

This shows up in my base that is filtered to display notes where the type property contains 'Note'.

When I add the property "Test" to subtype, it becomes:

type:
  - Note
subtype:
  - Test

Now in my 'Note' base, I can see that its subtype is 'Test'

However, when i delete the 'Test' property by clicking the X, the property in source mode becomes:

type:
  - Note
subtype:

And no longer is pulled into the base that is still just filtering for 'Note'.

However, once I manually change it back to:

type:
  - Note
subtype: []

It is pulled back into the Note base again as expected. Even if i change the base view to not display that subtype field, the affected note doesn't show up unless I put the brackets back in. Has anyone else had this issue? Is it something I'm doing wrong?

Should I just… not sort them?

I’ve been syncing markdown (notes + tickets) with Git, but I don’t want a Git UI. I want something closer to cloud sync: one branch, Sync button, conflict UI only.

Rules I’m using

• Always the same dedicated branch
• Dirty worktree → no auto-pull
• Sync ≈ stage → commit → fetch → rebase onto origin/<branch> → push
• History stays a straight line when it works
• Crash mid-sync → small state machine (staged / committed / rebase) so Recover can reset instead of leaving a half-done publish

Rebase still means conflicts can happen. I’m just hiding branches/merges from the product.

Ask Worth turning into an Obsidian plugin (or a tiny companion app + status plugin)? Or is Obsidian Git / Syncthing / Obsidian Sync already “good enough”?

Curious especially about: rebase vs merge for multi-device vaults, and whether Sync + conflict resolve is enough.

The release notes seem to indicate that you can configure the quick capture. Any idea where those settings are located at on iOS?

Quick Capture: Create Locations to capture to a new note, today's daily note, a bookmarked note, or any note you choose.
Quick Capture: Templates support variables such as {{latitude}} and {{longitude}}for your current position.
Share Sheet now uses the vault accent color.

Since Obsidian has web clipper plug-in, I have been feeling quite motivated to use Obsidian. To be honest, in the beginning it feels quite amazing, especially I started to use it with Claude Code to try to make my clipper saving being more organized. And then, I realized maybe like more than 50% of my saved posts on social media are all food related, like restaurant recommendations or recipes 🤓☝️I feel just a grasp of this made me understand myself better. And this is the part I love this plug in.

But, since I have been using Clipper, I realized I become a knowledge hoarder. First, I had an online course it only can let me access all of content within a year and the expiration date was approaching. Then I started thinking why don’t I just dumb everything into my vault by using clipper? I did it and I made all of the content into this course into a skill so that AI agents can use it in the future. And then I started feeling things are starting out of control.

I also want to say I am a person in spectrum so sometimes my thought process is weird or my feelings can be more intense than my friends.

But well, I just feel I need to clip everything I feel it can be useful in the future. Like I attend a group therapy and therapy shard with us some slides for coping skills. Clipped it. I was browsing social media and found a great job opportunity. Clipped it. A 2-hour-long webinar talking about skills or tricks in Claude Code. Clipped it.

And other these months I realized maybe I made the Claude Code smarter but I am still the same. Like the online course I mentioned earlier, I still only understand these courses I watched by myself. I think maybe I just lost the balance of how to save and learn things I am interested. But I hate to see my vault just being bloated because of this. So I am wondering if anyone has any ideas or suggestions to stop being a knowledge hoarder. Thank you so much for reading my rant!