If you’re not a Medium member you can still read this piece for free by clicking my friend link here — 3 Quick, Built-In Obsidian Tweaks That Make the App Better

There are plugins that add every function you can imagine to Obsidian.

However, people often underestimate the features and capabilities built into the app before you install plugins.

I made an article about the core plugin settings and capabilities in Obsidian, but here I wanted to focus on three more settings that I haven’t covered at any point so far.

They’re efficient and functional, making small, repetitive actions easier, which compounds the longer you use the app, saving you a lot of time.

Let’s get started…

Vim key bindings

I’m not a programmer…

I wouldn’t be able to explain the difference between one coding language and the next if you put them both in front of me.

Despite this, over time, I learned of the existence of Vim and its use as a code editor, as well as its unique key bindings for navigating and editing text.

I noticed that Obsidian had a Vim key bindings option, found right at the bottom under the **Editor **heading in the Settings, and knew that if I learned to use it effectively, editing my files would be so much easier. There were cheat sheets online allowing me to learn the basics quickly.

Since incorporating Vim key bindings into my workflow, I’ve never once considered changing back. They make it so much easier to navigate through lines of text, especially outlines. This, as well as deleting words and lines and being able to paste them elsewhere just using the keyboard has increased my efficiency in Obsidian massively.

There’s a slight learning curve to using Vim key bindings, but I promise that they’re worth it if you do the majority of your note-taking and creating within Obsidian.

Keyboard shortcuts

I mentioned these in my articles about core settings and power user modifications for Obsidian, but keyboard shortcuts are the single category of changes that will save you the most time in Obsidian.

You use them to run specific actions and commands that you use often by simply pressing a combination of keys. They’re used for almost everything in my vault. Adding an new article note? There’s a keyboard shortcut for that. Deleting a file? There’s a keyboard shortcut for that. Taking text and turning it into Flashcards-compatible notes for revision at university using the power of AI? There’s a keyboard shortcut for that.

You get the idea.

The trick to using keyboard shortcuts effectively is to first pick the actions that you use most in Obsidian. This might be adding a new note or capturing a new task or idea using QuickAdd. It might be opening up a specific project note that contains links to all the pieces you’re currently working on. Whatever actions you perform most are the first ones you should assign the keyboard shortcuts to first.

When choosing the shortcuts, which can be done under the **Hotkeys **heading of the Obsidian settings, pick something that feels **natural **to press on the keyboard. This is because these shortcuts are the ones that you’re going to be using the most, so you don’t want them to be awkward. Once you’ve nailed using these shortcuts, you can assign more complicated shortcuts to actions that you don’t normally perform, if you so choose.

Building up a library of custom keyboard shortcuts will allow you to fly through your work in your vault using just your keyboard. This may not add up to much in the short term, but as I said at the start of the article, these tweaks compound heavily the more you use the app.

For most Obsidian users I’d recommend building up a few keyboard shortcuts for your most common actions in your vault, but if you use the app very regularly, try and make keyboard shortcuts for as many actions as possible.

Sliding Panes

This last tweak is more down to personal preference.

Sliding Panes wasn’t always built into Obsidian. To get the functionality of being able to slide through your tabs from left to right, you had to install a plugin.

This plugin was one of the most-installed community plugins on the app though, so I know I can’t be alone in preferring this method of viewing my files side-by-side within the editor.

Now that Sliding Panes is built into Obsidian, you can activate it by choosing the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of the interface, next to the minimise button. Select Stack Tabs, and you’ve activated the setting.

Sliding Panes is useful if you have to view multiple files side by side, like if you’re working on a manuscript for one of your projects and you want to reference two notes at once. The advantage of this setting is that the panes slide over the top of each other, so you don’t have to cram many notes into a single view, which would distort the line length and make the note content harder to read.

It’s little tweaks like these in Obsidian that elevate it from other apps — you can change so many settings to make sure that you can navigate your workflow as optimally as possible. If you want to check out my other article about Obsidian’s built in functionalities, read this article.

I hope I’ve given you some actionable advice that you can learn from here. As always, thanks for reading!