How to Use Obsidian: A Practical Guide for New Users

Obsidian has a reputation for being powerful and confusing at the same time. The app itself is simple — the confusion comes from opening it for the first time, seeing an empty screen, and not knowing what a vault, a backlink or a community plugin has to do with taking notes. This guide covers the parts that matter in the first weeks, in the order you will actually meet them, and skips the parts you can safely ignore.

What is the Obsidian note taking app?

Obsidian is a note taking app built around plain text. Every note you write is a Markdown file stored in a folder on your own computer, not in a company database. The app is made by Dynalist Inc., is free to download and use, and runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. Paid add-ons exist (Sync for end-to-end encrypted syncing, Publish for putting notes online), but nothing in this guide needs them.

Two things separate it from apps like Apple Notes or Notion. First, the files are yours: if Obsidian disappeared tomorrow, your notes would still open in any text editor. Second, notes link to each other. Typing [[ creates a connection to another note, and Obsidian tracks those connections both ways. Over months, that turns a pile of notes into a network you can navigate — which is why so many second brain and zettelkasten setups land on this app.

Install Obsidian and set up your first vault

A vault is nothing exotic: it is a folder on your disk where Obsidian keeps your notes, plus a hidden .obsidian subfolder for settings. You can have several vaults, but they do not see each other — start with one.

Download the installer from obsidian.md and open the app.
Choose Create new vault, give it a name, and pick where it lives. If you want your notes on your phone later without paying for Sync, put the vault inside a folder that iCloud or another file-sync service already covers.
Press Ctrl/Cmd + N and write your first note. That is the whole onboarding.
Leave the default theme and settings alone for now. Tweaking appearance is the classic way to spend a week not taking notes.

Resist the urge to design a folder system before you have notes. Twenty notes will teach you more about the structure you need than any diagram drawn in advance.

Obsidian note taking basics: notes, links and tags

Notes are Markdown, so formatting is a handful of characters you type instead of buttons you hunt for: # for a heading, - for a list item, - [ ] for a checkbox, **bold**, > for a quote. Obsidian renders it as you write. That covers most of what most people format, and you can learn the rest when a note demands it.

Links are the habit worth building from day one. Type [[ and the name of another note — if it does not exist yet, the link creates it the moment you click. The right sidebar shows backlinks: every note that points at the one you are reading. This is how related notes find each other without you filing anything.

Tags (#book, #meeting) work better as states or types than as topics. A tag like #toread you can clear out is useful; a tag like #interesting on ninety notes is decoration. When you are tempted to tag by topic, a link to a topic note usually does the same job and leaves a trail.

A simple way to use Obsidian every day

The setup that survives contact with real life is usually the smallest one: a daily note as home base. Enable the core Daily notes plugin and one keyboard shortcut gives you today's page — meetings, stray ideas, tasks, links to whatever you touched. Capture lands there first, with no filing decision required.

When something in a daily note grows beyond a few lines — a project, a person, a topic that keeps coming back — select it and turn it into its own note, then link it. Once a week, skim the last seven days and pull out what still matters. Our daily note template ships that exact structure with a week of filled example days, and the daily notes and weekly notes sections cover the variations.

Which plugins do you actually need at first?

None. Core Obsidian — links, search, daily notes, templates — is enough for the first month, and every plugin you add before feeling a concrete limitation is configuration debt. The plugin directory has thousands of entries; treat it as a place you go with a problem, not a catalog to browse.

When the limitations do show up, they tend to map to a short list. Templater upgrades note templates with dynamic dates and logic — the core Templates vs Templater guide explains when the upgrade pays off. Tasks turns checkboxes scattered across notes into queryable to-do lists (see the tasks & GTD section). Kanban adds drag-and-drop project boards (kanban & projects). Dataview builds live tables out of your notes' metadata, and several of our larger vaults use it. Every template on this site declares which plugins it requires and which are optional, so you never find out after importing.

Skip the blank vault: start from a working template

The hardest part of Obsidian is not the software, it is the empty screen plus the vague sense that everyone else has a system. A practical shortcut is to open a vault someone already structured, use it for a week, and keep what fits. That is the entire premise of this site: each template is a complete vault with folders, note templates and realistic example notes, downloadable as a zip — unzip it, choose Open folder as vault in Obsidian, read the Start Here note.

PARA starter vault — projects, areas, resources and archive with two example projects already running. No plugins needed.
Zettelkasten starter vault — fourteen linked notes that walk the fleeting–literature–permanent chain.
GTD task vault — inbox, next actions and contexts built on the Tasks plugin.
Student vault — semesters, subjects and a deadline dashboard for coursework.
D&D campaign vault — sessions, NPCs and locations for game masters, with a worked mini-campaign.

All of them are free, MIT-licensed and listed with real screenshots. The install guide covers both paths: opening a template as its own vault, or folding it into the vault you already have.

PARA, zettelkasten or plain folders: organizing without overthinking it

Sooner or later you will meet the method debates. The short version: PARA organizes notes by how actionable they are — projects first, reference last — and suits people whose notes serve work and commitments. The zettelkasten method optimizes for thinking and writing: small, linked, permanent notes that compound over years. A second brain setup usually borrows from both. Plain folders with good links are also a legitimate answer, and plenty of long-time users never move past them.

Whichever way you lean, the order of operations stays the same: write notes for two weeks, notice where they pile up, then adopt the smallest structure that fixes it. Obsidian rewards systems that grow out of use — and punishes the ones designed in a single ambitious afternoon.