As we head into 2026 here is a full look at my Obsidian setup. From folders to a few special notes and all the plugins I use, we’ll cover it all.

Folder Setup

When I looked at my folders preparing for this I had accumulated a bunch of clutter. I had residual folders and files from when I used the Kanban plugin to organize things that I hadn’t touched in at least a year, probably longer. So I took about 15 minutes to clean up my folders and you should take that opportunity too.

Deal with any folders you don’t use now and reduce your complexity. For many people they add plugins or folders because they saw some content creator used them, so they must be good. Only add the folders/plugins you need and skip all the ones you don’t.

I think you only need a few folders.

• Inbox (to catch things that come in)
• Notes (for your notes)
• Sources (for outside sources)
• Templates (for your templates)
• zz – Assets (for any images you bring in)

Now if you take a look at my folders I have bunch of extra folders not described here. The Daily Note plugin gives me a Daily folder, I only use it in a very specific circumstance we’ll talk about later.

I also have a clients folder that was useful when I had many different clients in my work. I only work for a single company though and have for the last 5 years so this folder is really just left-over and I’m not sure how to deal with it. I could use the PARA and simply archive the whole Clients folder, but I’m just not sure about that at the moment.

Long Form goes with the Long Form plugin, so we’ll talk about that later.

Notes is where all my notes/thoughts on topics go. They’re the pieces of my research that may have a spot, or may not have a spot. They’re my thoughts on random topics, or in response to other people’s writing.

Research Dashboards was an idea to have main notes to track larger projects. In practice it’s a dead folder that I don’t touch at all. So I need to dig into it and deal with any content there, placing some in with Long Form content and deleting some of it.

Snippets are for my code snippets for work. I’ve tried many snippet managers, but always ended up loosing my snippets and instead of searching for yet another way to store my code snippets Obsidian is here and I use it so that’s where they go. I know it’s not the most “efficient” way to do it, but it works and now I don’t have to worry about the problem anymore.

The Sources folder is for all external sources I deal with. Inside I have folders for Books, Clippings, Omnivore and Readwise. The Books folder contains all my book notes, from the one I own to ones that have been talked about in the other books I’ve read. Clippings goes with the ReadItLater plugin for the few things I do capture for reading later, which isn’t much anymore because read later is mostly garbage. Omnivore is a left over set of notes highlighted when I was testing Omnivore as a read later service. The Readwise folder contains two sub-folders. One is the articles that were highlighted in Readwise an the other is for the books that were highlighted in Kindle or Kobo.

My Tags folder goes with my idea for Tag Notes. I haven’t ever found the actual tags functionality in Obsidian that useful for me. I may tag something if I want to summarize it later, but in reality I never get back to it so I don’t bother. I much prefer using a Tag Note that lets me summarize the tag in question and link multiple notes to it. Now that I’m so deeply involved with my Tag Notes, it doesn’t make sense to change how I’m using this to any other option because it would take to long for so little benefit. Plus, I don’t encounter any issues with what I’m doing so why bother to even look for other options.

Templates is for holding any Templates I have, like the basic skeleton for my Book notes or a snippet that has all the embed code I’d need for a YouTube video iframe.

The folder I spend most time in is my Writing folder. Here I have a few sub-folders. First is the 010 - Ready folder which is for writing that is ready to get published or use in a video. Second I have 020 - Working for ideas that have a bit in them and I’m working on fleshing out. Big Ideas contains any notes that I think could turn into some big writing, but not a book. Courses holds some of the courses I’ve built over the years and Ideas is for the random notes that I often had in the 020 - Working folder, then didn’t touch for long enough so I archived them and can pull them back out if I ever want to look for writing ideas.

Finally I have two folders with zz in the front. Archive is for a bunch of stuff I don’t think I’ll ever write about again so I just archived it out of the Ideas folder so I have less to wade through. Published is for any writing I have published already.

You’ll note that I have some folders with numbers in my Writing folder, this is only so they sort to the top of the folder. zz at the beginning of my Archive and Published folder is used for the same reason, so they sort to the bottom.

The final folder is zz - Assets which I set to hold any imported images or other assets that come in to Obsidian. You can find this setting in Files and links which is also where you set your Inbox folder.

Special Notes

I only have one special note that I use regularly. It uses a combination of Dataview and Tracker to track my reading. I have a Dataview table to track the books I’m currently reading and one that tracks all the books I’ve ever read and logged in Obsidian.

Then I have multiple Tracker views that count the number of books I’ve read in a year.

The only other custom note I’ve worked on is one called My Library. In theory Tracker can make a bunch of pretty graphs of my books counting what I own in what format. In practice I’ve spent hours trying to get it to work and it still doesn’t work. Maybe with the help of some LLM I could get it to work now, but it’s also possible that the available examples to train on are few enough that the LLM will have no idea what it’s talking about and I’ll just chase more ghosts around while not ending up with what I want.

Theme

I’m currently using AnuPpuccin as my theme because I generally like the catpuccin colour schemes and this matches close enough for me. I almost always use the light theme, with only the occasional switch to a dark theme for reasons I can’t remember right now. My fonts and spacing are all set to the standard that comes with my theme.

For most people most of the time, messing with your theme is mostly a way to feel like you’re doing work without doing anything of value.

Core Plugins

Backlinks

This is the core of a Zettelkasten style note system, the links between notes. If this isn’t on I’m sure Obsidian is useful, but I don’t see how I’d use it without the backlinks functionality.

Bases

This is a new feature in the last year for Obsidian. I’ve read a bit about it, but never used it. So the Bases plugin is active by default. At some point I need to dig in and see what it’s all about.

Command Palette

I have no idea how someone would really use Obsidian if they disabled the Command Palette. Press CTRL p or CMD p then start typing to find a command you want to run. It will even highlight the shortcut keys enabled for the command you select so you can git the keyboard command instead of searching for it in the future.

Daily Notes

I really don’t use daily notes, except when I go lift weights a few days a week. I open my daily note and then fill in what I did during my workout. Other than that, I haven’t had a use for daily notes in a few years.

Graph View

So many people look at their graph as a way to see if they’re making enough “progress” on their notes. For the most part I think that the graph view is pretty, but also pretty useless. I almost never use it. The only time I’ve found it useful is for a quick glance where I see a node out on it’s own without connections into the rest of my notes. Then I know I need to do some more reading/research on a topic.

Otherwise, I never look at it. I really should just turn off the plugin so I don’t accidentally trigger the Graph view.

Quick Switcher

Like the Command Palette, I have no idea how someone would use Obsidian without this plugin active. I use it every day by pressing CTRL o to open a note I’m looking for.

Search

This is what provides your sidebar search. Most of the time I can find the note I’m looking for with the Quick Switcher, but sometimes I need to do a more complete search and the operators that are allowed in the Search make this possible.

All told I might use search once a week over a month. That usually means I use it a few times in short order, then don’t look at it for a while.

Sync

Yes I did a video on how to sync Obsidian with Github but I just use Obsidian sync for my vault. It’s been flawless and it’s fast. My small yearly fee supports the project so I’m happy to pay to support an app that I use daily.

Templates

Looking at this I use both the built in Templates function and the Templater plugin. I’m no longer sure why I need both of them on, but I don’t feel like spending a bunch of time figuring out how they interact so I’m going to let sleeping dogs lie.

Word Count

It’s useful to see a word count at the bottom of my note so I know about how long any videos I’m doing will be. For my newsletter and other writing, I don’t care about word count. The content is done when it’s done, not when I hit a certain word count.

Workspaces

I have a few workspaces, though most of my time in Obsidian is in a catch all writing workspace. I generally break out a workspace when I have a specific project I’m working on. I’ll open a bunch of files in different tabs and then save the workspace so that I can pick up where I left off.

Community Plugins

Book Search

Book Search is a critical part of how I track my library and take my notes on books. Pretty much every book that’s ever been mentioned when I’m reading gets recorded and then entered via Book Search. In theory I could track down a book that’s been mentioned lots but I haven’t read because I could find the backlinks to it.

Calendar

I rarely use the Calendar plugin, just like I rarely use Daily Notes. Occasionally I’ll use it to go back and find a weight lifting entry, but even that rarely happens. I just leave it because it’s not in my way.

Copy as HTML

Copy as HTML I use when I write for work. They end up posting in HTML so I’ll write my content in Obsidian, then copy it out to HTML and put it in our content editor before publishing it.

Dataview

Dataview allows complex queries for your data and allows you to format the results of that query in many different ways. While Dataview can do so many things, I found that I messed with it because it was cool and stopped, only using it for the book views in my Dashboard note.

Easy Bake

Easy Bake is used when I’m sharing my book notes on my site. This allows me to pull in all the linked notes and embed them in a single note which I can then copy and paste into my site for members to see.

Footnote Shortcut

Footnote Shortcut lets me create footnotes easily. I press Shift CTRL 6 and get the next footnote number automatically appended to the bottom of the note I’m currently working on.

Graph Analysis

Graph Analysis helps me find related notes that I haven’t directly linked to. I’ll use this when I’m thinking about ideas and am not quite sure where I’m going with it. It requires Natural Language Dates to be installed so that it can use the natural language parser.

Longform

Longform is a book writing plugin that replaced Scrivener for me. I have ambitions to write books, but not the time at this point. I have kids to drive around nightly, and a job, and I like to ride my bike. At this point I tinker with ideas, and sometimes write a bunch, but it’s hard to stay consistent.

Note Refactor

Note Refactor gives you different methods to refactor the current note you’re looking at. It will let you quickly split a note by headings, or extract your current selection to a new note while linking the two notes together and a few other things. I mostly use it to extract a part of a note into it’s own note while preserving the link between the two notes.

Paste URL into Selection

Paste URL into Selection is a quality of life plugin that looks at my clipboard and if I have a URL when I’m pasting it automatically turns the highlighted text into a markdown link. I end up using this many times a day when I’m writing.

ReadItLater

While much of read later is garbage I do end up saving articles to come back if they relate to a specific project. I try to use the ReadItLater plugin for this, though I’m currently having issues with it and the Obsidian Web Clipper Firefox extension not sending content between each other properly. So instead of being able to click and save in Firefox, I have to do a multi-step process to create the note first, then capture the content in Markdown format and paste it into the note in question.

Not ideal, but I’ve spent an hour messing with it and have no solution so I stopped bothering. I only end up saving an article a few times a week on average so it’s a pain, but not a huge pain.

Readwise Official

Readwise Official takes your Readwise read later content or any book integrations you have setup and pushes your highlights to your Obsidian vault. I do some reading on Kobo so I have need of this currently, though I could get by without it by exporting my Kobo highlights to a text file and then manually importing them to Obsidian.

Related Notes

Related Notes uses bloom filter analysis to help find related notes. Do I know what bloom filters are, nope. But it’s a useful tool sometimes when I’m trying to connect ideas and need some inspiration.

Smart Random Note

Smart Random Note is my best tool for making connections. It takes the search parameters and then shows you a random note that matches the parameters. I use a Workspace for this with a search that excludes a bunch of things like my code snippets then hit the random note button.

Every few weeks I’ll use this when I’m writing my newsletter and am not feeling particularly inspired.

Templater

Templater expands the default template functionality of Obsidian providing the ability to script templates, and have more formatting features when you fill a note with your template. You can use the default template features in Obsidian, but Templater will make it all a bit nicer.

Tracker

Tracker should let you have pretty graphs to track your notes or your weight or whatever. I have it count the books I’ve read each year, but have struggled to get it to work for any of the fancy stuff I’d love to use it for.

At some point I’ll get back and build a fancy library graph, maybe.

Typewriter Mode

Typewriter Mode keeps your note vertically centred when you’re writing. That’s it, and it feels like a necessity to me.

WordPress

WordPress allows you to publish directly to your WordPress site from Obsidian. I don’t really use this much anymore as I have less work formatting to do if I copy and paste the content of my note into the WordPress Block Editor.