Can't create notes with colon in the title

Help
1

I have my own naming convention where, sometimes, I use colons in the note title (like “Book: Atomic Habits”). Trying to do so in Obsidian leads to an error. I believe that this is the case because (strictly speaking) the colon is a reserved character in the file system (as in https://).

Expected behavior

Colons are not, per se, characters that you can’t use in naming a file. I believe Obsidian should allow users to create notes with them.

Current workaround

I managed to temporarily fix the problem in two ways:

  • by creating a new note from the terminal (touch "Book: Atomic Habits.md", or vim "Book: Atomic Habits.md" are valid and lead to both the expected result, as well as Obsidian perfectly managing them)
  • by creating the note from the OS file explorer, but with the following notation: Book/ Atomic Habits.md — trying to do so in Obsidian treads / as a folder delimiter

Potential related problems

I’m not a Obsidian Publish user and therefore I don’t know for sure, but I have the feeling that this kind of notation could break the existing URL naming system unless treated accordingly.

1 Like
2

Obsidian has a URI scheme as well, it can hamper that as well.
I usually stick with Book - Atomic Habits, rather I have a naming system where any source starts with a $ followed by its type B for books, YT for YouTube, A For articles etc which is then followed by the author or the YouTube channel or the article authors and then the name of the source.

$B James Clear - Atomic Habits.md

I do think, this system will possible create problems in Linux. If it is so, maybe someone can point me out.

I use symbols like + for MOCs, @ for people as well.

1 Like
3

Tags might be useful here as well.

1 Like
4

Colon is illegal character for filenames in Windows. Allowing colon in filenames on Linux would go against Obsidian’s aims/benefits “unparalleled interoperability” and no “lock-in” claimed on Obsidian main page.
Colon is just one of many characters desired in titles. Ability to decouple title from filename would solve all of them and would allow use of permanent identifiers while still allowing to rename titles. Necessary functionality is requested in:

and

1 Like