I made a previous post on how internal links are broken by renaming on iOS. Thread was closed because I was using “external links”. This isn’t exactly true. I’m simply not using the [[ ]] version of links but instead the [link text](note .md) version. As it turns out, this latter format also does not support backlinks to show up. If I understand what backlinks are, I mean when you have a note open and want to see what other notes link to it you look at the backlinks section. Using this link format does not create any backlink entries.
What I’m trying to do
I’m trying to use a more widely-supported link format while also benefitting from Obsidians link renaming and backlink functions.
Things I have tried
There’s really nothing to try. If this link format doesn’t work then I request that it’s implemented. A number of threads exist which express users’ pain points about the discrepancy in functionality between these two formats. Since I’m fairly new to Obsidian and a basic user at that, I won’t link to them here. Suffice it to say, the official Help doesn’t seem to say that one is more robust than the other.
I appreciate your attention but I can’t get it to work. My obsidian version is 1.6.7, Windows 11. In fact, it doesn’t work on iOS either.
Maybe I don’t understand backlinks. What I’m doing is putting a link in Note A to Note B then expecting Note B to have an entry under Linked mention, as you seem to show in your screen shot. As @CawlinTeffid asked, yes I have Use Wikilinks disabled.
With the Use Wikilinks setting off, Obsidian will take care of this for you if your note has spaces. You can still use [[ and the suggestions for creating links; when you are finished and hit enter/return a Markdown link will be created.
Thanks for your reply. I tried using a sandboxed vault and the problem remains. Here’s a
of what I’m seeing.
I rarely use spaces in file names for the reason you’re mentioning. Generally, I use dashes.
I can confirm that using [[ will create backlinks. In contrast, creating text then bracketing and parenthesizing the link will not create backlinks. This seems to mean I would have to recreate all links to get backlinks to work.
It looks like you are using an Obsidian URI/URL in your above clip. Those aren’t considered internal links so won’t show up as Linked mentions as far as I know.
You are right, I have used this in the past for links that I didn’t want to show up in the graph view.
But stopped doing this because renaming a note led to a broken link.
@Hexspa, if for some reason Obsidian will no longer be maintained there will be another app/tool/editor that works with the same kind of wikilinks, or there will be a way to convert all your wikilinks to markdown links.
I guess one fact we’ve revealed is that, when using the Copy Obsidian URL function in a note’s 3-dot menu, that is indeed the format that is applied to the clipboard.
As @JayKim notes, this can be useful for when you don’t want an internal, updating link.
All that’s left for me to request is that the Obsidian Help be updated to reflect that they (Obsidian URLs) will not be treated as internal links, despite them linking to another note. This should aid new users, and is info I wish I’d seen when I started building in my vault. Or maybe it’s there but I haven’t seen it.
