I find it difficult to just see nodes at times, and just text.
Proposed solution
I feel like it would be easier to browse through notes that come out from the “Search” bar if there was a way to view the note previews as is via a grid view, and also showing images when applicable.
Same with graph view. I think local graphs would benefit from having the “nodes” larger, such that they are previews. Sort of like mind maps.
It thus makes things easier to visualize, and makes Obsidian more useful for visual people and for those who deal with graphic design.
Current workaround (optional)
I make liberal use of the search pane and the backlinks panel, and make do with the “expand” view option. Also embedding the note previews link inside notes to visualize them better, or just open everything.
I’ve been meaning to use Obsidian to store useful links I found as well, but I found it difficult to visualize their contents.
And so I use Google Keep instead since visualizing everything in Grid view, and seeing all the tags and labels and images is easier.
Deciding also to go back to using Notion for the DB grid view functionality for some use cases e.g. creating cards to take note of mock-ups/images etc.
I’m not sure I see a point in embedding previews in something as simple as a graph, but I will admit willing to kill for an app that does for images what Obsidian does for text (i.e. a good interface for viewing without adding any proprietary database structure on the top).
A Grid View displaying the first image linked in the note would actually get me really close to solving this problem I’ve been having for years now.
I could then embed an image collected for inspiration into a note and add textual description & keywords for ease of searching. Then navigate between filtered notes visually.
I would also make art and design related notes much easier to spot. For notes on particular artists or styles visuals speak louder than names.
With the graph view, I admit it would really be taxing. But if for local graphs it would be great though for example if comparing different UI designs or mock-ups.
My biggest use case is with cooking recipes! For example a node could be “Chicken”. And then these different other nodes could be “Chicken Carbonara” “Roasted Chicken”, “Chicken Noodle Soup”. Etc. And we could see how they’re also connected to “Pasta” etc. And possibly different recipes of the same variation. Having images for such would really help though especially for discerning which recipe is which!
Or even for the use case of for example seeing these different items and how they relate to each other. For example, let’s say previewing fonts. Or even just comparing different items e.g. music equipment and seeing how things connect.
Or even just with previewing color palettes. A note for each color palette, where each node is a "Theme’ for example “Halloween”. And then seeing these different note with image previews of different “Halloween” colored palettes.
Haha, just just trying to make examples that wouldn’t be specific to my use cases/can be imagined. I imagine though that a Grid view with the search bar would be enough for this use case.
But to be honest would be much better with the Graph view as well!
Could be used as a visual whiteboard-mindmap thing too.
I just thought about this as I realized I miss my Gallery view of Recipes on Notion haha. Along with my different web clippings. Is so nice just seeing the images!
This would be such a great feature! A native note grid view available for any note list (file explorer, search, even mentions) that shows an excerpt of each note’s content and/or the first image in the note.
After spending several days getting used to Obsidian this is one of the main things I’m missing compared to alternative tools such as Notion’s gallery DB visualization, Evernote’s grid view or even macOS native Notes app.
Hi, i have been waiting for such software for years. Being able to see relationship between images as graph definitely useful. Especially for visualizing relationship between mathematical formulas. Currently i am using Mindmanager software for this.
Same! Just got back to the Obsidian forums and seeing what’s up to date with Obsidian, this gallery view feature would really be good tbh! Is the feature I’m missing from Obsidian still.
Currently I’m hacking it up with using the Obsidian-Text-Expand plug-in, but obviously it’s a hackish solution.
I do hope something like this gets implemented soon haha.
I’ve just started with Obsidian and loaded one of my existing markdown folders. The graph view showed a graph of the markdown relationships including the image files referenced. My immediate reaction was the need for the image nodes in the graph to not have the image file name as a label but instead just be a thumbnail of the image as the image node. This requirement isn’t exactly as stated in this feature request but is sufficiently related to be noted here.
I would love that feature, looking for something like that quite a while. My use case are scientific papers and relations between them and I best recognize papers by included images (or design of the first page), so I would love to have a graph of read papers represented by an image per paper.
Have you seen the Core Search Assistant community plug in? It provides nice card previews of notes when searching. If this could be extended to browsing generally and a bit more flexibility on layout it would be very close to Evernote’s view. Not quite the graph view though.
I used Google Keep, Upnote, Simplenote, and Evernote. In all of them, you can see some first lines of all your notes. Suppose I have lots of notes how can I remember what I write in those? With this feature, I do not need to open any notes to see their contents and I can save lots of time. Otherwise, I should press Enter for every single note. In Google Keep you can see all your notes in a gallery view with a title and 15 first lines of each note, something like Pinterest. In Simplenote, Evernote, and Upnote, you can see the first or more lines of your notes in your file browser. I think it will be good if we have both the gallery view and seeing first lines of notes in the file browser.