This is a stupid newbie question, but I’m trying to figure out how best to link my thinking in Obsidian.
My default process is to type something, realize (before or after I type it) that I want to link it to somewhere else, select it, and hit the “internal link (‘[]’)” button (I’m on iPad if that matters). But…that doesn’t do what I expect. It doesn’t pop up a dialog allowing me to choose what I want to link to; it just puts brackets around it so that if I select it it will create a new note with that title. So I have to move the insertion point to the beginning of the now-bracketed text, hit the Pipe (‘|’) key, move the insertion point before that, and start typing the title of what I want to link. Then the dialog I wanted pops up. It’s even worse if I want to link to a paragraph within the linked document, as I now have to move the insertion point back to the end of the linked document title and hit “^”.
This is…cumbersome to say the least. So I presume I’m doing it wrong and others have a better way. What’s your workflow for linking your thinking in Obsidian?
Mostly I avoid using the pipe, sometimes even at the expense of a slightly more awkward sentence. When I want to use the pipe I run into the problem you describe, except that it hadn’t occurred to me to put the pipe in first (I’d just move the cursor and start typing, and then if I use autocomplete it destroys the existing text).
The only thing I can think of to speed the process is to use Opt left arrow, which only works if you’re using an external keyboard.
So I think you’re doing it about as well as can be (but I’d love to be wrong).
I mean, the other way is to put the link in first; that still involves some moving around of the insertion point, but much less far, to put in the carat, the pipe, and then the text. But I’m afraid if I do that, I’ll forget just what I was going to write.
There’s gotta be a better way. Sounds like a feature request.
Yeah, I sometimes input the whole link before the text, with a pipe at the end, and then move the text into the link. I’d definitely like a smoother process.