I would love a function that would create a markdown link automatically with the H1 title as the link display text. This would finally low me to start using Zettelkasten IDs.
Hi, I don’t know why you guys need an UID, I think it useless if you only make note within an obsidian vault , but if I want to give my note obsidian url to other app, an UID will be essential to make a unbreakable link.
Here is my solution: have the plugin called “advanced obsidian url”,it can give and generate an link based on UID written in your note’s YAML date.
The plugin can generate an UID for you, or you can generate based on date or sth else.
I’ve been trying to make my mind up about the common question of IDs vs titles as filenames. I currently use the naming convention YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM-hyphenated-title.md and am considering removing the text portion of this to avoid having to change the filename each time I want to change the title of the note. If link auto-complete worked by typing a title as an alternative to filename, this would allow me to connect concepts much more easily.
Having said that, because Obsidian makes it really easy to change links when renaming files, I’ve been trying out using descriptive filenames, which has made the writing experience much smoother because I can just link any [[concept]] as I go, and auto-complete makes this pretty seamless. (This post seems to describe a similar experience.) The problem I keep coming across is that I prefer not to have spaces in filenames (which makes scripting easier) but if I use [[hyphenated-links]], the unlinked mentions feature won’t work I think this is probably a separate issue (any thoughts welcome), but being able to search by H1 or title for link autocomplete would get me close to this kind of workflow.
I currently use my notes across mac, windows, iOS and Android so would rather avoid using Obsidian-specific or less widely accepted formatting like the [[this-is-a-link|pipe]] for link display. I’ve considered moving to standard markdown links but they don’t really serve the same function when it comes to this kind of workflow and they tend to break my train of thought and having to switch to the preview pane to click them is annoying.
(First post, so do let me know if this is a helpful contribution or better taken elsewhere.)
I am new to the Obsidian app, but I agree that showing Markdown headers alongside file names could be genuinely helpful. Especially in the Zettelkasten workflows.
Thanks to the former posts I found file-explorer-markdown-titles quite handy, and I modified it a bit to show both MD header (essentially, the first one in the document) aside with filename in the file explorer. And this is a preview (the detected header on the left, while the file name on the right, dimmed & italic).
The plugin is just a straightforward demo now. Since it is just about rendering the title, it will not affect document contents and could work well with other plugins. Open to any kind of comments & suggestions!
Here is the link to this tiny project obsidian-md-title-sidecar. I have not figured out how to upload it to the marketplace, so it could only be downloaded via Github Release and installed manually. I will do it when I got more time😌
I am curious about your suggestion though. If I have proper Zettelkasten IDs then they are already unique right? Can you elaborate please?
For my use-case, I have an existing Zettelkasten that I want to port to Obsidian. My Zettelkasten IDs are of the form YYYY-MM-DD-hhmmss with file names like YYYY-MM-DD-hhmmss.md.
This allows me to easily refer to notes from outside my Zettelkasten system like my TODO list manager, my Bullet Journal etc.
The most difficult part is autocomplete for wikilinks / internal links. Right now I have a simple python autokey (TextExpander like software) script that takes a title as input and spits out:
Note Title [[Zettelkasten ID]]
as output wherever my cursor is at.
I am not sure how big of a system this script can scale to. It would be nice for Obsidian to offer autocomplete wikilinks by searching H1 titles and not just the file names.
I have debated with myself over this, but in the end my requirements for portability stopped me:
I am not sure if the wikilinks alias syntax is portable. Seems like Zettlr doesn’t support them.
I want the source Markdown “look good” / be readable by itself too, in case the software I am using doesn’t have a nice live preview mode (like Obsidian has).
But I am not fully convinced with my own arguments I am kind of new to the networked note taking space, and have already had to switch 3 tools because of various deal breaking issues I encountered with them - and hence my emphasis on portability.