I have recently transferred my notes from Notion to Obsidian for various reasons:

  1. Obsidian supports local files, which can be synchronised in many ways.
  2. Full data ownership leads to better privacy.
  3. Notion is slow on very lage pages, easically with a lot of \(\LaTeX\) equations.
  4. Most of the Notion functionalities are supported in Obsidian with plugins.

How do you use Obsidian to manage research articles and references?

Refer to my next post: Use Obsidian to manage your research

Refer to my next post: Automatic notes list for each folder

Notion has database. What does Obsidian have?

Use markdown tables with Advanced Tables plugin, or use dataview plugin to query the notes in any folder. For example, I query all my journal article notes as a table in the Folder Note page:

With code:


```dataview
table tags as Tags, year as Year from "Journal Articles/" sort file.name asc
```

To filter or sort, just add where and sort clause in the query. See more examples in Use Obsidian to manage your research.

How do you install plugins?

Browse core and community plugins in settings, or visit their github repositories.

Is there a easier way to use Latex?

Create your own shortcut. For example, replace \boldsymbol with \b


```
$$\newcommand{\b}[1]{\boldsymbol{#1}}$$
```

Put this into any page and visit it once when launching Obsidian, the command will work in all notes until Obsidian is closed.

Use Quick Latex plugin for autocomplete.

Can I modify the theme/fonts/colours?

Open the css snippets folder from settings - appearance, create a css to set variables or override the theme. For example, I want a minimum width for tables so that short words are not wrapped:

th {
  white-space: nowrap !important; 
}
td {
  min-width: 5em !important;
}
  • type [[ and the note title, followed by a # to select the heading.
  • Put tags around locations that you want to link, so you can click the tag and get a list of locations in the search panel.
  • Use Copy Block Link.

Install Rich Link plugin. Select a link you want to convert to a book mark, then cmd/ctrl + P will open the command palette, and type rich link.

Install Paste URL to Selection so you can select a word and paste url to make a named link.

Can I create a dynamic/interactive note?

Checkout the plugins like Templater Custom JS Buttons and React Components. For example, I use Templater with JavaScript so I can create a Journal Article note with automatic yaml attributes extracted from BibTex. These attributes can be used in query.

Why does my light theme look so grey and unclear?

You might have turned on translucent window. Turn it off in settings - appearance.

How are files and attachments managed?

If you copy or drag images/files into the eidtor, it will place the file into a default folder for attachment, which is configurable in the settings. Do not use Wikilinks in case you want to migrate notes to other software.

How do you sync across devices?

Save the vault in OneDrive/Google Drive/iCloud/Dropbox or use the paid add-on service from Obsidian.