How To Use Obsidian: Footnotes (plus 2 essential plug-ins)

Who knew footnotes could be. . . good?! I'm just as surprised as you are, but here we go!
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⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to Footnotes
00:12 Personal Citation Preferences
00:47 Footnotes in Obsidian
02:25 Creating a Footnote Example
03:31 Footnote Workflow Tips
09:14 Plugins for Enhanced Footnotes
10:25 Footnote Shortcut Plugin
18:34 Linter Plugin for Footnotes
23:25 Conclusion and Additional Resources
THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT
Mastering Footnotes in Obsidian: Top Tips and Plugins for a Seamless Workflow
Ever wondered how to use footnotes effectively within Obsidian? This video is for you! Whether you're a fan of parenthetical citations or a footnotes newbie, I dive into the basics of footnotes and introduce two must-have plugins to boost your productivity in your personal knowledge database. Learn how to create, manage, and reorder footnotes seamlessly, and discover recent updates to Obsidian that could improve your workflow. Plus, get some expert insights from a seasoned creator on how to make your knowledge work for you. Don't forget to share your footnote tips in the comments, and if you have any ideas for future Obsidian videos, let me know!
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[@VaughanVanDyk]

Great video as always, Jonathan! The Markdown syntax for footnotes is as cumbersome as tables can be. Hoping the functionality of these two plugins will eventually be brought into the core application. Then in answer to two points you raised: "lint" in programming is the highlighting of issues and fixing these -- it's named after how washing machines etc have ways of catching lint (fluff and extras from clothing). And Command button in Windows is Control Vs Mac's Option key being Alt in Windows.

[@zavant]

I asked, and you answered! Thank you!

[@SocratesBastardSon]

+1 for making Footnote Shortcut a core plugin.

[@user-oc3lc1sx8m]

Man, thanks for teaching me how to do footnotes!!!

[@zavant]

Hot damn, that's what I like hearing.

[@birupanda9]

@6:15 this is exactly what I was facing! I thought i was doing something wrong 😂😂

[@zavant]

You're not alone! 😆

[@user-oc3lc1sx8m]

Bear Notes has a great footnotes feature. I'm currently using Obsidian and I'm missing that feature, hence why I am watching this video.

[@zavant]

Hope it helps!

[@user-oc3lc1sx8m]

Your backlight colors: Bear notes vs Obsidian

[@Serag4000]

Linter is quite cool. It tries to "correct" multiple issues automatically. And you don’t really need to use a shortcut even; just enable "Lint on file change", and it will automatically lint a file as soon as you move over to the next one.

[@zavant]

I enabled the "file change" way of doing it, but no matter how many other files I visit & no matter how long I wait for it to happen; it is never linted when I come back. It only works for me if/when I use the hotkeys. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@brendanau6893]

@@zavant did Lint on File Change fix it?

[@zavant]

@@brendanau6893 I figured out how to make it work: it triggers when I close the file. Since I rarely close things (just leave a bazillion tabs open), and I want to be in control of when it happens, I'm only doing it with the proactive hotkeys. That way I can avoid an "oops" if I didn't want this file to avoid getting linted.

[@rikardmansson5668]

You guessed it. Do a full linter video :)

[@zavant]

NOOOOOOOO! (Probably will.)

[@Vinniebearz]

It's a shame that there isn't a dedicated footnotes section in the sidebar, because that would be really useful. Surprised no one has made a plug-in for that yet

[@zavant]

That really is one of those "too good to believe nobody's done it yet" kind of things. I did a quick search and didn't come up with anything. Man, what a missed opportunity.

[@Vinniebearz]

@@zavant Yea exactly. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll happen one day. It shouldn’t be too hard to develop

[@martinpusch6249]

I use the syntax ^[Footnote text.]. It's easy, and doesn't interrupt my workflow. If I have a book title coming up several times, I put [[author, booktitle, year]] in double square brackets. So, my footnote will be: ^[[[author, booktitle, year]], page number.] This way, I don't have to retype author and booktitle every time. Obsidian will propose the author if I start typing.

[@zavant]

Had no idea you could do that; very cool!

[@user-hu9eg7ck9b]

I was using that for a while until I tried transcluding some sections of notes which had those footnotes, but they didn't carry over. Now I just do a `^[The text I want]` manually instead of putting it at the bottom. It's ugly, and you can't reuse footnotes, but they move along with you.

[@zavant]

I'll give it a try.

[@user-oc3lc1sx8m]

How do I use footnotes? When I want to make a comment on an article section, I insert a footnote. This doesn't clutter the article with my comments. And if I want to see the comment, I can click the footnote and BAM!

[@zavant]

Makes sense.

[@zavant]

What's your weird way of using footnotes?

[@VaughanVanDyk]

Because I don't need to cite references in my notes, I like to use footnotes where I need to add a comment. Until Obsidian provides some markup commenting functionality, adding these into the body of the note (e.g. with highlighting) weighs down the main content and can be distracting. Moving those kinds of asides or extra thoughts into footnotes makes everything much cleaner I find.

[@MichaelAllanFrancisSheaver]

Lint is an old Unix utility en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lint_(software) and is admittedly not a good name to us for this plugin. Thank you for clue-ing me on to it nonetheless!

[@zavant]

Happy to put it on your radar. 🙏