Ability to use aliases as working links

[I-d-as]

Use case or problem

I would like to have various links to the same note so that I can distinguish the context in which an identical link as a heading is situated within heading structure. See separate request for a semi understandable description here: Additional context for Subheading auto suggestion

Proposed solution

If aliases worked as actual links as opposed to just enabling autocomplete connections.

[Torch]

Possible workaround

I have wanted this feature as well. This updated version of this auto-linking tool seems like a good workaround, based on the description.

It will take your aliases in frontmatter, and make them working links. For example, if phone is an alias in smartphone.md, phone will become [[smartphone|phone]]

Thus, it makes your aliases “working links”.

(At least based on my understanding of this tool. I haven’t tried it out yet.)

Seems like it modifies using your clipboard, though, so you may need this.

Auto-Linking Tool

With the introduction of aliases into Obsidian 0.9.16, it was time to rework the auto-linking tool. Here is an overview of what the tool does and what has changed. The auto-linking tool is a Python script that scans your vault for Markdown files, collecting a list of all the note titles and any aliases that are defined in YAML frontmatter. Aliases were introduced in Obsidian v0.9.16 - https://publish.obsidian.md/help/How+to/Add+aliases+to+note. To cut down on file access and increase speed, th…

[Elric]

Use case or problem

When I’m writing a note, I will frequently add internal links to notes that don’t exist yet. Often I end up creating a lot of similar but slightly different links, e.g. to Fubar, Foobar, Foobars. Once I do create the note, I will assign all of those aliases to the new note.

Unfortunately, internal links to aliases don’t work. If the note is called Foobar, with an alias of Fubar, [[Fubar]] is a broken link. Manually changing it to [[Foobar|Fubar]] fixes it, but is incredibly annoying.

Proposed solution

Links to aliases should simply work. There might be some edge cases related to duplicates, but these edge cases already exist when using the same note name in multiple folders.

Related feature requests

This one seems the most similar:

Link to Alias of a note directly and showing in backlinks and graph view

Use case or problem When I set the alias of a note, and create a link to the alias, I expect the link to be unbreakable when I change the name of the note title, but currently, Obsidian using a “note title transfer method” that a link to the alias of a note must have the original title in it. Proposed solution Allowing obsidian to render the alias of a note in paragraph and graph view without the note title in the link Current workaround (optional) currently I use the auto linker plugin…

[CawlinTeffid]

The way aliases work is deliberate.

Rather than just using the alias as the link destination ([[AI]] ), Obsidian uses the [[Artificial Intelligence|AI]] link format to ensure interoperability with other applications using the Wikilink format. (Aliases - Obsidian Help)

But a tool to find links that match an alias and convert them (for example from [[Alias]] to [[Note|Alias]]) would be handy. (Altho currently it’s not too hard to do manually: make a note with the alias name and go thru the backlinks doing search-replace. This can be done pretty quickly because the search-replace dialog stays open when you switch notes.)

I also imagine some people would like a setting to make aliases behave as described in the request.

[fumin]

I have the same problem.

[Throckmorpheus]

A semi-workaround for this (depending on your use case) that I’ve since found is the Virtual Linker plugin, which detects names or aliases of notes (with settings for case sensitivity etc) and makes them function like links even without you manually linking them. It also has settings for stuff like only linking the first mention, wikipedia style.

[Gasm]

Same problem here