#1

Hello! I’m trying out Obsidian for the first time and I find it fantastic, although there’s one feature from Trilium notes that I would love to see here from an organizational-perspective: “Cloning” notes. Despite its misleading name, the “Cloned” notes are basically just symlinks to other notes, thus changing their contents changes the contents of the other mirrors of the same note.

I love this system, because in some situations (like making a folder of relevant topics for use in a project) links could be a little cumbersome and not as clear at a glance, where being able to make a symlinked note that mirrors its changes back to the original would be great.

I suspect it wouldn’t even need to create actual symlink files in the folders themselves, it could just make a copy of the note’s shortcut in Obsidian’s file explorer plane placed in the new location (maybe have an Icon or symbol to show it’s a symlinked file)

I hope others like this suggestion! If it was already suggested elsewhere and I missed it when checking, I’m sorry for the unneeded spam.

2 Likes
#2

Have you tried embedded note links? Add a ! Before the link, like this ![[note name]]

2 Likes
#3

I have not! I just tried it now and I think it’s a fantastic feature! However, this doesn’t change my personal need for symlinking within the file-explorer itself, though it does alleviate it.

I see symlinking as a folder-equivalent to backlinking. Where backlinking notes from all across the hierarchy comes about as a natural evolution of the pkm, I prefer symlinking for purposefully collecting notes into one location without disturbing where they’re actually stored when it comes to projects.

Embedding the notes does help a lot because I can make an index file and embed all of the relevant notes into that without having to click on each link, however I still like being able to look at my project folder and see all of my relevant notes right there and easily switch between them.

I hope that made sense!

1 Like
#4

Bump - I know that this is an old topic, but is cloning notes in the file tree still not practical in Obsidian?

It’s an extremely useful feature that I first encountered in the Leo Editor over 20 years ago - with all of Obsidian’s power this seems like a surprising omission. It’s pretty common these these days in other PKB software.

As @wychwitch says, it’s very useful when you want to organise a subset of your notes for a specific project. I really would miss this feature if it can’t be replicated.

Any tips?

#5

Why don’t just use Hard Link?
A little info about it on windows
But you can also use it on bash

Personally, I use seamless embed, so it mimics a clone, but I edit it on the real file.
(A example of Seamless embed CSS can be found here)

The css used in embed-strict class is : (from Minimal) :

.embed-strict .internal-embed .markdown-embed {
    padding: 0;
    border: none
}

.embed-strict .internal-embed .markdown-embed .markdown-embed-title {
    display: none
}

.embed-strict .internal-embed:not([src*="#^"]) .markdown-embed-link {
    width: 30px
}

.contextual-typography .embed-strict .internal-embed .markdown-preview-view .markdown-preview-sizer>div {
    margin: 0;
    width: 100%
}

You can also have fun with Embed Adjustement