Using Obsidian as a (sort of) launcher

[whoszatarash]

Hello, new folk around. I use Obsidian mostly as a database, mainly for music which is what I work with, but eventually it got extended to games, books, recipes; a bit of everything.

For my games collection I use a launcher called Playnite. It gives me complete freedom when it comes to everything game related, from metadata and achievements tracking to time played and completion statuses. One of its features is that it lets me create shortcuts of games, it doesn’t matter if they come from places like Steam or if its an emulated/executable game.

What I’m trying to do

My Obsidian Notepad already has a completely interlinked network of files, URLs, and such, but now I want to take it to the next level. I want to know if it’s possible to link external files; specifically, I want to know if it would be possible for me to launch programs and shortcuts to files directly from Obsidian.

To clarify things even more: there’s an .iso file that I want to open directly from the note I’ve created to this game, so whenever I’m reading its datasheet I can have multiple access to links such as the developers website (URLs), related games (backlinks) and to launch the game (what I’m trying to do).

Things I have tried

I’ve already copied the path and pasted it into Obsidian, expecting to have something similar to backlinks (spoiler: didn’t work). Tried adding the shortcut to Obsidian, link it to my note and for it to (somehow) work as it should, but it didn’t even let me link it. Tried converting the shortcut into an URL and although Obsidian seemed to recognize it in some way, it only launched a pop up to ask me if I trusted the owner/creator of this file, when accepting it just closed itself and did nothing.

End Note

I hope this makes sense and to find some workaround to it. Thanks to everyone in advance. Cheers :]

[New]

I tried it with a google chrome and paint:

1. Open your vaults folder
2. Create a shortcut of the thing you want to open
3. Pull the shortcut into your folder. This will create a new “note” with the file type “LNK”, which will appear in Obsidian.
4. You can now put these files into a folder (alternatively you can just pull the shortcuts into the folder directly)
5. You can now open the apps, either by clicking on “the note” or linking to them via backlinks and then clicking on them.

Hope that helps didn’t try it with games though.

[whoszatarash]

@New Yes! This is exactly what I tried to do before:

Tried converting the shortcut into an URL and although Obsidian seemed to recognize it in some way, it only launched a pop up to ask me if I trusted the owner/creator of this file, when accepting it just closed itself and did nothing.

But your comment made me think that if it worked for you, then it should have worked for me too. Decided to check a few settings and found out I didn’t had the “Detect all file extensions” option enabled, so I did and voilá! It worked.

Thank you so much my friend, really helped me out a lot and pretty sure it will help others too. Cheers!

[New]

Ah, yeah, I should have included that in my response, sorry for that!

Also thanks for sharing your idea of opening apps dirctly through Obsidian. I never thought of that but I think I’ll implement it as well
Cheers!