# A Complete, Up-To-Date Guide to Obsidian (June 2023) A collection of the very best guides to theory, plugins, features, settings, use cases and workflows... I've been publishing about Obsidian for two months, with one and a half of these months being through the publication **Obsidian Observer**. Yesterday's article was my thirtieth on the subject. This has added up to a lot of my knowledge about Obsidian being spread across different pieces of work. This article's here to change that. I'm going to go through all the work I've published, linking them into one coherent guide that covers all the topics you want to learn about in Obsidian. **You'll want to bookmark this one.** > I intend to update this guide again in a couple of months' time with all the new content that I publish in that time. I'm going to split the article into three different sections: - **Note-taking theory** - **Plugins/settings/features** - **Workflows/use cases** With each section giving the relevant articles, so that if you're interested in learning about just one part of Obsidian, you can scroll through until you find that section. Let's get started... #### Note-taking theory: It would be a good start to explain **why I chose to use Obsidian**. It comes down mainly to the extensibility that the plugins provide, because you can integrate the app with other tools within your system. {{< article-card path="/articles/why-i-chose-obsidian" >}} If you're starting out, my guide on **how to make Obsidian easier to learn** would be a good point to begin from as well. {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-learning-curve" >}} I've used a few different **major resources to learn most of what I know about taking notes**, including Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte and How to Take Smart notes by Sönke Ahrens. {{< article-card path="/articles/pkm-resources" >}} **Inspired by the Zettelkasten method as well as the Building a Second Brain framework, my system fuses elements of both**. It was developed myself, true to how I wanted to use the software, because nobody knows your personal use case, meaning you should **prioritise building your own system rather than copying the system of others**. {{< article-card path="/articles/fusing-the-two-most-powerful" >}} {{< article-card path="/articles/build-your-own-obsidian-system" >}} #### Plugins/settings/features: This has been the focus for most of the information that I've provided in my articles, and why shouldn't it be? After all, I've just said that these things were the main reason for me selecting Obsidian as a note-taking app. You'll want to read my most popular articles about plugins, settings and features first. They cover topics like **folder notes**, **YAML metadata** and **the app's appearance**. {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-folder-notes" >}} {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-yaml-metadata" >}} {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-appearance-tips" >}} Again, if you're starting out, I recommend you read my article on the **plugins that make Obsidian easier to use**. {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-ease-of-use-plugins" >}} They'll help you get off the ground in the app if you've come from another platform, **such as Notion**. As well as this, make sure that you've **optimised your core plugins in the app** before you go into detail with customising your community plugin setup. After all, they're the base of the app, on top of which everything is built, so they're important to nail early on. I have articles that go into more detail about more complex plugins too... There's an article for if you want to learn more about **what the most efficient power users do to manage their system**. I offer this along with an article about some **minor tweaks that help you better navigate your vault** and an article about **cleaning up and keeping your vault neat**. If you want to learn about plugins for specific use cases, you'll most likely find what you're looking for in the next section. However, there are a few articles I've published about plugins in wider general uses that wouldn't have fitted into that category containing more information about specific workflows... They are articles that many are interested in within Obsidian at the moment — **plugins for academic writing** (which is one of the bigger attractions of a 'linking your thinking' tool like Obsidian), **plugins for implementing the power of AI in your vault**, and plugins for online creators looking to elevate their workflows. {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-academic-writing-plugins" >}} {{< article-card path="/articles/ai-for-obsidian-users" >}} Now I've covered the plugins, settings and features at large, you can read about the specific use cases and workflows that these customisations allow you to facilitate... #### Workflows/use cases: These are what everyone's come here to see... 'It's all well and good telling us about these features and plugins, but give us some inspiration as to how to put them to use!' Again, I've written about a lot of different scenarios where you can put the power of Obsidian to use — some of the most popular are my **complete workflow for information and idea capture**, my **workflow for writing academic pieces**, and my guide to **supercharging your tagging across your vault**. {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-information-capture-workflow" >}} {{< article-card path="/articles/academic-writing-in-obsidian-complete-workflow" >}} {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-tagging-basb" >}} Many have also enjoyed my articles where I've made my case for Obsidian over other popular productivity apps. You can read about how I recommend **replacing Notion using Obsidian**, and **the same with Todoist**. {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-replace-todoist" >}} I also spent a lot of time covering use cases of AI within Obsidian. This includes **how plugin dev Christian Houmann uses AI in his vault**, from his talk at the third Linking Your Thinking Conference, as well as **how to generate ideas using the power of AI in Obsidian**. Of course, I exercise caution using AI's skills — you can read my article about **where you shouldn't use AI in content creation and PKM**. {{< article-card path="/articles/obsidian-plugin-dev-ai-tips" >}} {{< article-card path="/articles/ai-obsidian-idea-generation" >}} {{< article-card path="/articles/ai-pkm-mistakes" >}} The last article I want to mention is the one that started this writing about PKM for me. It's a piece that tells you **how to create an AI writing team that generates realistic articles, all within Obsidian**. I know it's not the most useful piece, but it was the start of all this, so I wanted to say thank you to everyone who read it, and everyone who's come along for the ride since then. {{< article-card path="/articles/ai-writing-team-obsidian" >}} I hope to spread more knowledge about Obsidian in the future! > P.S. Don't forget to bookmark. You'll want to reference this later, I promise!