Add a (auto-updating) list of linked mentions in a given note

Hi there,

For any given note (say, note_x), one can browse linked notes (backlinks?) either by More options > Open backlinks or expanding the right sidebar.

However, it would be very nice if one can add a section to the note_x that includes all its mentions in other notes. It would be even more awesome that this section was updated automatically

Is this currently possible (by some :mage:‍♂) or it’s a feature to be added later? (Posting to Feature request for the time being, as I couldn’t find any thread about it.)

Thanks in advance!

7 Likes

Something to remedy this definitely needs to happen to Obsidian.

I’m having a reverse issue: I want to have certain metadata on all of my notes and for now I have to place them in the text of the note. We need choice to show or hide those “meta” information about the note inside of the note’s content.

Backlinks are also metadata and effectively we’re loosing it if we pass our .md file to another person, move it to another vault etc.

2 Likes

Yes. The other person will not be able to follow the links. But that doesn’t make the file being transferred any less understandable. Using automatically updated lists is convenient for the author and provides more information for the reader.

1 Like

I’m definitely hoping for something like this. TiddlyWiki has syntax for it which allows you to create automatic lists using tags, filtered and sorted as you like.

This could be incredibly useful for keeping master lists, TOCs or MOCs, etc. and otherwise bringing notes together that could be missed if we rely solely on backlinks panel.

2 Likes

Isn’t this metadata issue solved by the recent YAML frontmatter option? You can put a block surrounded by --- at the start of a note, and choose whether or not it should be shown in the rendered view. Or are you looking for something beyond that?

1 Like

I’m not sure about the developers’ intentions regarding the YAML block, so I personally don’t use it for now. Let’s consider I can safely store metadata there. I still have no option to show / hide this metadata for individual files.

How do I show / hide backlinks for individual file? How do I pass my backlinks to another person without manually copying them to file? Backlinks are also metadata, I disagree with the following from @zavall

that doesn’t make the file being transferred any less understandable

It only doesn’t, if the author created the file self-explaining which is often not the case.

1 Like