My Obsidian Setup

Obsidian is great. Besides its’ wonderful Knowledge Management features, it is insanely great for just this one thing: Feature-rich WYSIWYG markdown file editing.

For writing things slightly less trivial than a few words in a file (like images, math, or links), it would be really nice to see what it looks like without having another pane open to preview it. You know, real estate is pretty expensive these days!

Here is a guide to my configuration of my obsidian workspace.

Newb Alert

I am new to obsidian! The purpose of this post is more of an informal show-and-tell rather than an authoritative guide. Feel free to share with me how you use obsidian :)

Copying #

My obsidian configuration is intentionally checked-in to my git repo. Feel free to copy this as a starting point for your own configuration!

• github.com/sean01zhang/naesna
  • .obsidian.vimrc contains some configurations for my obisidian vim config.
  • .obsidian contains the plugins I use and other general settings
  • templates.obsidian contains some templates I use to help bootstrap a new pages on my website.

Settings #

Honestly, I don’t really remember what I set.

Editor #

Here are a few things I probably set if they aren’t already enabled:

• Default Editing Mode: Live Preview
• Show Line Numbers: Yes
• Show Indent Guides: Yes
• Spellcheck: Yes
• Vim motions: Of course

Keybinds #

As a vim motions fan, there were a few obsidian keybinds that interfered with my vim motions. I believe it was either C-d or C-u. If you use Windows or Linux, make sure you check this!

Templates #

For my website, I have a templates folder called templates.obsidian. In my Obsidian settings, I set the templates folder to that.

Plugins #

Obsidian is almost the perfect markdown editor. My extra plug-ins are mainly to plug the feature gaps of vim motions in obsidian.

Relative Line Numbers #

Link to plugin

Relative line numbers is self-explanatory. When using vim, it is very helpful to know how far lines are relative to your current one so that it is easier to jump to them (i.e. 13k goes up 13 lines).

Vimrc Support #

Link to plugin

Vimrc support adds a few extra features that are missing to obsidian’s vim motions. Here is my .vimrc file. And here’s a preview:

" Have j and k navigate visual lines rather than logical ones
nmap j gj
nmap k gk

" Yank to system clipboard
set clipboard=unnamed

" jk/kj sets you back to normal mode
inoremap jk <Esc>
inoremap kj <Esc>

" Chording
unmap <Space>
exmap rclick obcommand editor:context-menu
nnoremap <Space>cm :rclick