Top 10 Core Plugins for Obsidian in 2023

[@nicolevdh]

The course: courses.nicolevanderhoeven.com/o4e Themes used: Minimal, Default Core Plugins mentioned: Daily Notes, Canvas, Note Composer, Workspaces, Slides, Outline, Command Palette, Quick Switcher, Backlinks, Templates

[@pbpk23]

200 euros for the material that is free on youtube?

[@skirwan78]

If there's anything that's under appreciated it's how great of a job you do at explaining parts of obsidian! thanks again, saving me hours of searching for answers

[@nicolevdh]

Thank you, Vahlir! I appreciate the support. <3

[@jimalix6270]

I watched this video for the first time about a year ago, Nicole. It was great as I was getting started with Obsidian, but as I watched it again today, it served as a good reminder of all of the core plugins, some of which I'd ignored thus far. You're a great teacher!

[@jaanan5]

i just wanted to say that; you are one of the cutest youtubers out there (respectfully) and you gave incredible ''humble and kind person'' energy to me! , i wish there were more people like you around us. Thanks for your contents, they are very helpful🍃🌺✨

[@chrismonsen]

I just started using obsidian a couple of weeks ago. This video is like Christmas!❤

[@utac]

I think this channel is just great. Really, really, really, really, great. 💪

[@Jod4light]

I'm in love with your channel, your videos are really amazing, well explained and super simple to every kind of Obsidian user (my friends approve 😝) I really appreciate your contents, keep up with your awesome works and thank you for everything! 💪🔥🎉

[@ProductivePM]

Nicole, you are awesome . . . Thank you so much!

[@nicolevdh]

Appreciate the encouragement, Greg. :) Thanks for watching!

[@ChristophZwerschke]

Thanks for these videos, Nicole!

[@findingirgendwo]

I deeply appreciate your reminders that less is more, especially with such a versatile program as obsidian where I can easily get lost in the possibilities! The Outline feature was what I was looking for since I like to keep a lot in one place but need to be able to see the scope of it all too. - thank you!

[@nicolevdh]

Hey Rachael! I didn't get to reply to this until now, sorry, but I'm very appreciative that you took the time to let me know you resonated with not needing everything and the kitchen sink to use Obsidian. Outline is essential! I use it all the time.

[@christerjohanzzon]

The outline, daily and templates have an absolute must for me in my daily work as a dev. I also use the frontmatter a lot, to index everything I write about. I've also discovered various ways of visualizing things in Obsidian, such as putting a live code editor inside a note, paste a video and then even have graphs generated based on data in other notes. It's pretty amazing what one can do with this nifty little software. I've also discovered that one can sync notes to a private Github repo, which gave me the idea about connecting blogs. One would then set up a sync between a blog folder insider Obsidian and a public repo, then connect the blog/website (can be Github pages) to that repo and voila...your blogging is now done in Obsidian. I have used many tools earlier, OneNote to very fancy physichal handmade leather notebooks, but Obsidian has been really useful with all its customization options and plugins. Thanks for a great channel, and interesting content! Keep'em coming!

[@nicolevdh]

Hi Christer! I actually keep my Obsidian vaults as GitHub repos too (some are public). Since Obsidian notes are Markdown files, most static site generators can use them. I use Obsidian with Gatsby for blogging and documentation at work.

[@toranshaw4029]

@@nicolevdh how are you finding Gatsby? I'm looking at alternative CMSs, so I didn't have to use WordPress.

[@nicolevdh]

I don't like it! I prefer Hugo, but work uses Gatsby.

[@toranshaw4029]

@@nicolevdh Hugo is certainly one that I'm interested in, along with Jakyll.

[@jimalix6270]

Thanks for this video, Nicole! I agree that it's easy to go down the rabbit-hole of community plug-ins, but the real goal is to be productive. Thanks for highlighting the core plug-ins; it's easy to forget them!

[@ryanbartlett672]

Keyboard all the time...yes! Thanks for the review. Community has been over shadowing core.

[@GaelyneGasson]

I have to say, since starting using Obsidian, there are aspects of my life that are falling into place so much easier. I'm not sure if it's because of using Daily notes every single day, or if it's made it so much easier to have one single place to pop some text I know I'm going to need in shortly into a place I know it can be found again - and found easily. I have not explored all the core plugins fully nor have I spent a great deal of time fully learning all the capabilities of each community plugin I've installed (mostly after watching a video on their use and trying it out). I've now started using a separate vault for learning / experimenting and if I really like something will then install and use it in my main vault. I always thought Workspaces involved using different vaults so have never tried it. Will have to have a look now!

[@nicolevdh]

Yeah, there's definitely a magic to just having a single source of truth. I'm happy it worked for you! I think just knowing WHERE to look for a bit of information, even if you don't know it right off the top of your head. That's exactly what I mean when I say that you don't actually need community plugins to get like 90% of the gains. I DO love Workspaces. I use it heavily (every day) and it's awesome to be able to "switch modes" between work and play so easily.

[@christerjohanzzon]

I had that setup too...but then I thought, why should it be different vaults? One can just index all work related stuff into relevant meta data and separate projects into folders etc. But yes, there caveats to both approaches, having a single vault could proove difficult when sharing notes. And having two vaults could possibly exclude content from one to the other, let say you need info from a personal note, while in a work dedicated vault. What I am trying to say is that having a single vault with links, tags and good meta data section in all notes would be sufficient for both personal and worklife. But at the same time, everyone has to build their own ways of working and taking notes. :)

[@nicolevdh]

That could totally work too! For me personally, I find it hard to figure out what is "work" and what is "personal" (for example). Where does all this KZbin stuff fit in? Personal? But I do KZbin for work too. Where does code fit in? Work? But I write code in my personal life too. And so on! Lots of stuff I do is interconnected. I also think workspaces are a different layer on top of vaults. For example, even if I had a work vault, I might have one workspace for meetings. I'd have the daily note, meeting note, maybe the agenda, the notes from previous meetings, a project note. Then I could have another workspace for writing code that includes a project note, a Python note, a troubleshooting note, and a note with the requirements for what I'm doing. A vault could have the same contents, but having different views of it can be useful.

[@alrdye]

I really appreciate you the content you continue to release! I didn't realize you worked for Grafana. My company uses it and I came across your picture on a video for Grafana 10 and was pretty tickled. "Hey, I know who that is!" lol. Anyhow, keep up the wonderful work.

[@nicolevdh]

Thank you! Yeah! I'm just starting to get into the Grafana KZbin channel as well, and did a few livestreams on G10. Small world! Glad you like the videos. :)

[@ankteckningar]

When I downloaded Obsidian I promised myself I wouldn't use community plugins because, just like you said, I would just tinker with the plugins instead of actually using the software. Now I have like... five? community plugins, which I find myself tinkering with all the time... I do *try* to not add plugins that would break my notes if they went away. But I'm trying to scale down, because some plugins take too much time.

[@nicolevdh]

I think that's a very reasonable position to take! It definitely does take time to get up to speed with plugins. Sometimes new ones come with a whole new workflow, a whole new syntax for frontmatter, or a required restructuring of your vault! If I did that constantly, I'd never actually work on anything.

[@dvansoye]

Hi Nicole. Great video and perfect for anyone interested in obsidian. The quality of your work product is amazing. I truly look forward to your videos. Question: how do you see things changing with the addition of AI? I'm currently using Text Generator to access GPT-3.5 from within Obsidian. But now with the introduction of obsidian-smart-connections, I'm seeing the ability to "Chat" with my vault as a real possibility. Any chance we'll see a video on this in the near future?

[@nicolevdh]

Hi Darren! I really appreciate your comments, thank you. As for AI, I did do an initial video on the topic here: pulse.ly/1rrp0grqq8 I am also very interested in the possibility of chatting with my notes. I don't think we're quite there yet, but I'm definitely coming along for the ride!

[@brandonwilson8698]

You’re a rock star! Thank you for helping me so much with my note taking.

[@nicolevdh]

Thanks, Brandon! I'm happy to know I've been able to help with that.

[@Magictrickslol]

I just got into obsidian last week and after syncing it with Icloud for pc and mobile use, it's amazing. It's overwhelming for sure. But I've found my workflow and it's so gooooood

[@robertcastro4326]

Great video! :)

[@nicolevdh]

Thanks, Robert! :) Glad you like it!

[@enkiimuto1041]

Thank you, i didn't know the last trick with the backlinks, this will finally make me use them.more

[@burner918]

Recently discovered your channel and I’m loving the content. Thank you for all the great videos. 👏

[@PierreJohnsonPro]

Thanks for this video. I will review in details the explanation of each core plugins, as after 1 year of use I realize that I don't master them that well. I've installed community plugins also, such as Dataview, Periodic Notes, Excalidraw. Those seem to have good support. Reflecting on time resilience of plugins, I wonder if using Callouts is a good idea. Though they are a core functionality of Obsidian and look good, they do create problems as they don't appear in summaries by headers and there is sometimes difficulty in editing text in them. I wonder if you found a way to go around them and use Headers and perhaps a Theme to produce a similar effect with headers?

[@vulpeeze]

I've spent so long trying to figure out how to best optimise my set up that I never took any notes. So I just created a new vault, no more community plug ins, and just going to stick with the core plug ins. Once I'm more used to the core plug ins, I'll start slowly integrating community plug ins.

[@mageprometheus]

A great look at the core. In the past, a few community plugins would misbehave and hog the JS thread a little too much. Not difficult to identify. There is one I'm yet to find that causes the screen to lag behind my typing but I disabled all the ones not central to my workflow and it's stopped. I now only add plugins for an initial play and then only re-enable the useful ones when they add what I need. Wouldn't it be nice if obsidian had a CPU monitor plugin that showed a % breakdown for each plugin and accumulated time? Also, the option to see the % breakdown for a plugin's usage of each callback type.

[@nicolevdh]

Yeah! I find it useful to turn on the debug settings for the plugins so that I at least see which one took a long time to load (every now and then when I'm trying out plugins, I'll experience REALLY slow startup times). Also, the DevTools console helps pinpoint some issues too.

[@calabi-yau4894]

thanks for a great video as always! It's a timely reminder for me to think about making sure my PKM is firmly rooted in the core plugins and not completely dependent on community plugin functionality. I haven't checked yet, but I was wondering since Canvas is .JSON files, does it show up in other JSON-compatible programs the same way it does in Obsidian?

[@nicolevdh]

It doesn't show up in the SAME way, but JSON at least is a standardized format and there are many libraries that parse it. So while it's not completely standard, it's not completely proprietary either. Personally, I let that knowledge affect my usage of it. For example, I don't create cards on Canvas-- I much prefer to embed existing notes. Cards on Canvas only stay within the Canvas. Notes are embedded into Canvas, but also exist as Markdown notes. I'm not saying this is how others should use it, but that's the convention I've fallen into using.

[@TheNurseArtist]

oh my gosh you are wonderful. Love your content, its my meditation

[@nicolevdh]

Never heard that one before! Haha. Happy you like the videos!

[@tomsop]

I got excited for canvas and then realized that there is functionality missing for the Ipad - as a mainly Ipad user Obsidian’s full capabilities are missing for me - got me thinking about going back to craft.

[@nicolevdh]

Canvas is already available on mobile/tablet for Insiders - I've been using it as well. It shouldn't be too long before it's available for non-paying users too.

[@ryanrobinson9732]

I do worry that at some point Dataview will no longer be supported and I HEAVILY rely on it connecting my front matter:: into other consolidation notes. Do you have any thoughts on the likelihood that Dataview or anything like Dataview would become a core plugin?

[@nicolevdh]

I'd have expected the devs to have done that already if they wanted to, so I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. But I don't have any more information than you do. :)

[@becomelimitless8]

love this video!!! subbed. =D im a newbie at obsidian and I feel so lost. lol. oh btw are you a filipina??? (cuz you look like one)

[@nicolevdh]

Hi! It can be daunting at first, but just start simple and add complexity only when you need to. Yes, I am Filipina!

[@gh0stish]

Do you recommend having just one giant vault for personal, work, & play? Or having separate vaults for each one?

[@janosch1097]

I wish there was a plugin to display files like in Scrivener: you can select multiple files and have them displayed as one big document and even rearrange the pages.

[@nicolevdh]

There is! You can do that with Canvas. :) if you want to go through Community Plugins, you can do it through Kanban too.

[@janosch1097]

@@nicolevdh Oh wow, great tip. I should have bothered looking at the available plugins directly, not just run a quick google search. Thanks for letting me know!

[@fernandolisboa]

First, amazing video, congrats, do you have any idea how i can get outlook email and manipulate all contents to put in obsidian ?

[@justnaturalcake1]

I have about 18 community plugins installed.. and I'm kinda scared that in the future the plugins might not work anymore and I'll have to remake Obsidian.. so I'm not sure. I do need community plugins for some things I want to make but I honestly don't know how to feel about it

[@mixrelax3515]

Muy bueno el contenido de tu canal, felicitaciones, saludos!!

[@nicolevdh]

I love comments in languages other than English! (Spanish)

[@AntonKristensen]

Giive uuus top 10 Community plugins :D great video!

[@nicolevdh]

I made that video already. :) Here it is: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jWjOhaekbsqgprc I think I would change some of them now, but all ten are still very much in my daily rotation!

[@AntonKristensen]

are you involved with the obsidian development or do you make plugins yourself? :D

[@nicolevdh]

I'm not at all affiliated with the Obsidian team and I've never received money from them. :) I have made minor contributions to community plugins I like, but nothing big. Someday I'll get into creating a plugin, but so far, everything I really need has already been created!

[@AntonKristensen]

@@nicolevdh enjoy your obsidian videos! keep em coming :D

[@Verrisin]

2:25 to say community plugins are not as good as core plugins if I move away from Obsidian is a bit ... XD - Chances are, parsing/processing something not specific to Obsidian will be "easier" than something core to a huge SW like Obsidian. But I agree, of course: plugin no longer maintained, maybe even incompatible with future versions of base SW is dangerous, and one should not rely on, but if not too complex, it being Open Source partially mitigates the cost.

[@encapsulatio]

Nicole what web clipper do you recommend for Obsidian?

[@nicolevdh]

Readwise is the closest thing to that that I use: pulse.ly/eznr7fxlf9 But it's more like a read-it-later app-- it sends your highlights to Obsidian, not whole webpages.

[@encapsulatio]

@@nicolevdh Would you mind reviewing and installing please Wallabag? It's a self hosted open source read it later app that mimics working on a web server but I can't figure out how to install it on my PC. I'm not a developer and they make it kind of difficult if you don't already know how to make websites yourself and know how to install it locally.

[@roti1873]

Ok I'm sold, but I'm annoyed at a possibly unavoidable problem: Because Obsidian isn't a database and rather is text file based, I've lost the super sleek drag-and-drop of all possible blocks across pages and within pages. I miss that a huge amount from Notion.

[@toranshaw4029]

I certainly do like using the outline plugin, especially for the unit notes of my uni courses. On a different note, I was wondering as to what you thought of the whole mess that Wizards of the Coast if masking of DnD?

[@nicolevdh]

Ugh. I am so disgusted with what they did that I'm no longer going to be supporting them. I moved the 5e game that I run over to Pathfinder 2e; we've had two sessions already. The 5e game that I play in is unfortunately not in a position where we can easily transition to another system, but I've cancelled my D&D Beyond subscription and intend to forego buying any WotC books.

[@toranshaw4029]

@@nicolevdh I'm glad that you were able to move to a new home, for your 5e game. I was far more interested in their other big game, Magic the Gathering, and this has put me off going deeper into that world that I already have been!

[@nicolevdh]

I understand that, especially since M:tG has also experienced a bit of an upheaval recently, I know. :( It's sad, but luckily there are other game systems to try out!

[@toranshaw4029]

@@nicolevdh indeed. I will have to explore a few, to see which ones to try out... thinking of starting with Pokemon!

[@Leo-on5yp]

I really like the presentation tool. But when a slide has too much text it just doesn't fit and there is no way to scroll. Is there a way that you don't have to check if the text fits in prentation-mode

[@rfragoso1000]

the slides plugin, at it's current state, it pretty useless ( I think)

[@Jaszunai]

Would it be possible to install a version of Obsidian on a USB drive, with all your plugins, and then never update it, as a sort of legacy version in case Obsidian or any of the plugins went down?

[@nicolevdh]

Not that I know of! But you can always install Obsidian on a spare machine or server and not update it.

[@Frisson391]

Can you draw without a community pluggin. Apple pencil was inept without it or blame the user?

[@hilalm.397]

Hi Nicole. New to Obsidian. Can I create a template for a Canvas?

[@nicolevdh]

Hey! You can't, really, but you can approximate it by duplicating a canvas that you'd like to reuse.

[@thekreport3270]

You said Templates are important but what about templater? My understanding is that if you use Templater you need to shut off templates as the Templater has the same functions as templates but with so much more.

[@nicolevdh]

Hey! Yeah, this video was specifically about core (built-in) plugins. Some people don't like to use community plugins, usually for security or minimalist reasons. Even I disable them on some of my vaults. In those cases, I recommend Templates. I do have another video where I talk about my favourite community plugins, though, and I do mention Templater: pulse.ly/tmgirknis0 In my main personal vault, I do indeed only have Templater installed/enabled.

[@SabotsLibres]

Security and shelf life are always a problem for any IT product. Google is a case in point: all the various Google apps that were supposedly cutting edge - although a good deal only seemed to repackage their siblings - only to be retired a few years later (when nobody appeared to be using them...?); and Google Chrome, currently the most used browser and yet little better on security than Micro$oft's offerings over the years. Whatever you do in IT, you will always be confronted with obsolescence, retirements and security problems. All too often, something popular/better promoted, but infinitely worse, comes along and destroys something good: Microsoft Windows Servers & Novell, Word and WordPerfect, Excel and Lotus 123, Access and Paradox. Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator... Very little survives in the long term (Pegasus mail excepted! - Well done David Harris)

[@nicolevdh]

Yup, it's definitely always an issue-- but some are in a walled garden from the second you use them, and some are in open, standardized formats that have a better chance of being converted. I know which one I'd prefer! :)

[@SabotsLibres]

@@nicolevdh I agree and as you say, you are going to continue with the Community plugins but obviously with the realization that they could suddenly become unsupported. Personally, I would tend to opt more for the heavily downloaded and regularly updated as being more likely to last the winds of change whereas the low volume and/or irregularly updated risk falling off the edge through boredom. However, if nobody tries a "bottom-end" plugin. it will never have the chance of being a good doer! And we have already seen a couple of good doers adopted into the core...

[@jiangweidong977]

good instrction for me a bgineer

[@thekreport3270]

So. What's your top community plugs you use?

[@nicolevdh]

I made a video about that recently: pulse.ly/gpp2zq2kq5

[@JessicaFEREM]

When it comes to this sorta thing, I say "some people can get away with using the iOS notes app, what's your excuse?"

[@aonjmj]

Puppy!

[@nicolevdh]

Haha! Glad you liked that! :D

[@aonjmj]

@@nicolevdh Numa-Numa!

[@nicolevdh]

Yay! Numa-Numa!! <3