Obsidian
Obsidian is great, but learning is inherently hard
If you are looking into switching to Obsidian, maybe my journey can help you.
The very first video about Obsidian was published on my YouTube channel on March 14, 2023. What some of you may not know is that I had been using it for longer than that to help clients here and there.
However, that amount of time is nothing when compared to the muscle memory I have developed from using Evernote for every little thing in my life for 16 years. The problem with the new is that it is always unwelcoming. It’s not only the different way of doing things; it’s also the constant uncertainty about doing anything. And at that point, Obsidian was not only new to me, but there’s also the sheer number of settings and plugins making it feel so overwhelming.
To make matters worse, I decided to bring my YouTube audience along with me on that new journey. For a long time, I have had the idea of creating a vlog-style productivity series on my channel that would show how I organize life and work. I thought that learning Obsidian would be a great opportunity to try that, but it ended up creating unnecessary confusion, as it is challenging to film myself figuring out things happening in real time.
Back to my point. After so many trials and errors, I’m now much more comfortable with how Obsidian works. Some of the setups I came up with, like the homepage demonstrated in the video below, are now running for a considerable amount of time and working so well. Furthermore, my Timeline System has matured to the point where it allows me to seamlessly navigate my daily activities.
Don’t tell anyone, but because of all of that, I feel like recording many of my past videos again. Anyway, you are not here for this. Let’s go through my tips for switching to a new app.
Before that, a disclaimer is needed, right? The following is how I did things. It’s also based on the strategy I use to help my clients, but it may not be suitable for you. So think of the suggestions below as just that, suggestions.
From Evernote to Obsidian
First, I didn’t abandon Evernote. I knew how things worked there, which mad it my safe haven during the transition period.
With that in mind, the first actual homework was to learn the basics about the mysterious Obsidian. Because of my clients, I had already done part of that before. But now I needed to move a step further and see how things would work in real life. To accomplish that, I created the first of many local vaults on my Mac to work as a sandbox.
Once that was done, I copied, I repeat, copied, not moved, parts of my notes. In some ways, Obsidian is so similar to Evernote, but in others, like how files are stored, it’s an entirely different approach. However, it works in such a way that you can have as many vaults as you wish and easily delete the ones that didn’t work. As long as you are coping your files, you can consider the multiple vaults to be a process of prototyping and iterating.
Like I mentioned at the beginning of the article, there’s a universe of settings and plugins. I suggest avowing all plugins as you are getting to know your way around. As for the settings, try to look for the answers as you need them. For example, when you feel like you have to learn how to format text, go look for tutorials on how to do that.
As you get used to it, move some more parts of your system, but I would still think of what you are doing on the new app as in experimental mode. It will take a while for you to get used to the numerous new things that are still making you uneasy.
If you followed my progress on YouTube, you know that I was constantly changing my setup and being frustrated by all the new ways of doing things. And let’s not forget that I was doing all the above while still using Evernote. So much so that at a certain point, I had a good portion of my activities being managed with the help of both apps, and that was driving me crazy.
To make things even more miserable, Evernote decided to redesign its mobile app. Now, on top of learning a new system, I had to adapt to a new way of doing things on the app I was so familiar with.
It was a lot, but it was worth it. It felt like a final partnership with my old friend, Evernote. The new design and new ways to do things helped me eventually find a way to implement the Timeline System that had been brewing in my head for so many years. Yes, the Timeline System I use in Obsidian and in the Supernote came to be because of my struggles with Evernote.
With that settled, the next step was to replicate the system in Obsidian and start moving all my files. But I did it one notebook at a time. I would export an Evernote notebook, import it to Obsidian, organize all the mess, and, just as a last resort, keep the exported notebook as a backup. In case you are wondering, yes, I still have them in a backup drive.
Plugins
But we are not done just yet. As I have already mentioned several times, Obsidian is full of settings and plugins. My strategy here is the same as at the beginning of this process. Whenever I need something that Obsidian cannot do, I start looking for a plugin.
I try to stick with the ones that do one of a few things, but every so often that’s not possible. For example, the Tasks plugin is too much for my needs, but I couldn’t find a lighter alternative that would work for me. Templater and all its features is one that I’m avoiding, as the Auto Template Trigger does almost everything I require. But when it comes to having fun, it looks like that rule doesn’t apply. I love using and tweaking every detail possible on the Map plugin.
Which brings us to one of the reasons I switched to Obsidian. Evernote has been on a downward trend of removing features since version 10 was released. I thought for a moment that Bending Spoons was going to bring old features back, but they kept removing them.
Guess what, many of the removed features I used to love in Evernote exist on Obsidian as a setting or are available as a plugin. And in most cases, these are better variations of what existed on Evernote. And that makes me so full of joy! It’s like being in a parallel universe, where Evernote evolved to what Obsidian is today. Back to reality, I’m definitely happy. So happy!
In summary, what I’m trying to say is first, have a safe haven. Second, take your time. Really, take your time. This will be a long project. Third, you already have a lot on your plate, don’t create more problems for yourself. Go look for settings and plugins only when you genuinely need to fulfill a specific requirement.
Evernote's new PDF viewer is beautiful, but it's like a new skin over old problems
Perhaps it is time to remove Evernote from the toolbox of options I suggest to my clients.
Let’s start with the toolbar, which was beautifully redone, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing new there. Actually, I’m missing an important detail — that, to be honest, I’m not sure if existed before or not.
Where is the undo button?
Using cmd+z (Mac) works fine, so the function exists. If they forgot about it, I hope they bring it back as soon as possible. If it wasn’t there, it seems to me that this was a missed opportunity to add it.
Meanwhile, the options Select all annotations and Clear annotations in the dropdown menu help circumvent that. But keep in mind that all means only those on the page being displayed.
By the way, I think the dropdown menu is a pleasing addition. The quick access to the Fit to page width option is a great start to making this a viable PDF reader. Which brings us to a problem so many of you have been complaining about to me over so many years.
It’s a view, not a reader
If the tool doesn’t remember the page we were on when we closed the PDF, it’s just a viewer, not a reader. And that is only one of the details that has been preventing me from using Evernote to read long documents. When reading and taking notes, I was used to relying on a PDF reader instead, but that came with an inconvenience. Evernote couldn’t be the place to store the PDFs.
It’s true that one can use the ‘open with’ option to open the PDF using another reader. But as far as I know, this is only available when using the desktop client, and we’ve been living in a mobile-first world for a long time now.
When the Files feature was added, I presumed that the final goal was to give us direct access to the files we keep in Evernote, but that never happened. Actually, even after all the time that has passed since it was released, it is still a half-backed feature causing more confusion than anything else.
Another step towards Obsidian
A long time ago, I moved all my PDFs to Google-Drive , but that ended up creating all sorts of inconveniences. Ironically, the idea was inspired by how Obsidian stores our files. Fast-forward to today, I gave up on the workarounds. I’m now reading my PDFs using whatever app I feel like, and, at the same time, the files are kept organized in Obsidian. Having the PDFs visible in the computer file structure creates a lot of freedom to do many things.
Bugs, bugs, and more bugs
Back to Evernote. Another nice touch in the dropdown menu is the Include annotation summary option, which in the past used to be a buried checkbook that many people didn’t even know was there.
This is a nice feature, which adds new pages to the beginning of the PDF, including all the annotations. Unfortunately, something is now broken. As illustrated by the video below, many of the PDFs I tried, created a messed up page. Furthermore, the summary now seams to only be visible in the note view. In the past, these notes were also visible in the PDF view mode.
There’s another inconvenience that makes Evernote challenging to use as a PDF reader. If you watched the video above, there’s an annoying flicker happening every time a page is turned. And I’m pretty sure this was not there before. On that same note, if we use the thumbnail to jump to a specific point in the document, that page opens in the middle of the text. And that’s precisely where starting at the top of the page would be a much better option.
I would like to end this post with a more optimistic view for the future of this feature and Evernote in general, but I’m not entirely convinced that that’s possible. The new Files feature is not the only one half-backed. Many of the new features are simply not useful as they are, and more often than not, they arrive with new bugs.
Frankly, I’m tired of trying to tell Evernote’s team that the ‘moving fast and breaking things’ strategy should not apply to something so important as our personal notes. This will deeply sadden me, but maybe it is also time to take Evernote out of the toolbox of options I recommend to my clients.
Three everyday situations where the Timeline System in Obsidian can help you
What I love about the Timeline System is how simple it is to change the status of an activity by simply moving a note from one place to another.
A friend recently came up with a challenge. He told me he would like to know how I would use the Timeline System to organize and keep track of two everyday situations.
Bring it on, I said.
The first one was about a concert. He would like to know what I would do with the PDF tickets, that were incompatible with his phone wallet. Since this is still in progress, it should be in the Action Container.
I’m pretty sure there are other approaches, but this is how I would do it. In fact, I’ve done it before a few times, and it worked pretty well. I think of events like this as trip activities, even though it is happening in the city where I live. So, the Action Container would have a format similar to the one below.
Where the folder ‘2025–04–25 Porto’ is the fake trip storing the concert tickets.
The other situation was an Amazon QR code he needed to show when returning a product. Since this one has no specific date, I’d simply keep it loose inside the Action Containers folder. Without a specific subfolder, it will be easier to find, and it will be an inconvenience working as a natural reminder every time I go to Obsidian to check my activities inside my Action Containers.
It’s a scenario very similar to what I’m currently doing (see video below) with the #Nadsat Glossary that I have to keep around to be able to read A Clockwork Orange.
What I love about the Timeline System is that all the above situations are notes that will eventually be moved to the Timeline container (folder). This will remove them from the list of activities in progress and, at the same time, keep them naturally organized in a place that I can go to retrieve information.
Another step towards repurposing my Obsidian vault
I have been testing the idea below for the past two months, and so far, everything is working wonderfully well.
I had to check the information before writing this post, but it’s been 16 years since I started using password managers. If you are not already using one, please share your secret with me. Given the huge number of passwords we have to deal with these days, they have become indispensable software. However, like many other apps, what was once a one-time fee became a subscription.
I don’t have any problem with paying, especially considering how they make our online presence safer while keeping passwords easy to manage. My issue is with losing control. Compared to a paper notebook kept in a drawer, it’s a much better solution, but our passwords are now sitting on a mysterious server somewhere in the world.
So, after testing the concept of a “digital cave” with many other items, I decided it was time to do the same with my passwords. But to accomplish that, I would need to find an app that keeps all the passwords in a single file, which I could then move to my vault in Obsidian. It would also need to have clients for all the existing platforms. And finally, it would be preferable if it were Open Source.
KeePass checks all the boxes above, and as you can see in the video below, I created the database inside in my Timeline and copied about 20 passwords to test the idea.
I’ve been playing with this configuration for a couple of months and since I’ve encountered no problems, I’m now looking for a way to import the remaining passwords.
If you’d like to try it too, watch the video. And if you know any other software that would also check all the boxes, please let me know.
A Clockwork Orange
I see A Clockwork Orange as part of a group where I also put Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 1984, and others that depict this dystopian future that, for some reason, attracts me.
<img src=“https://eu.uploads.micro.blog/217685/2025/cover-a-clockwork-orange.png" alt=“Cover of the book A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, featuring a bold use of black, orange, and white with geometric shapes.” style=“width:150px; hight:auto; >
Even though I’m sure it would not be a good experience at all, for some unknown reason, part of me has a secret desire to experience this alternative reality in person. It’s not just the dystopian future that attracts me. I also love the future from the perspective of the 60s.
Back to the A Clockwork Orange book, if you need a tip to use the Nadsat Glossary, I suggest watching this video to learn how I set it up in Obsidian.
The vision I have for my Obsidian Vault needs a carefully planned explanation
I am delighted to see that the pieces of my Obsidian setup are starting to come together in this organic way. It seems like as I make small changes here and there, my progress gets stronger. In other words, the more I move forward, the less friction there is.
I’m doing my best to document this journey on YouTube and on my site, but the more it evolves, the more this idea that it needs a carefully planned explanation grows on me. I’m still halfway through writing my current book, but I’m already feeling the desire to write another one about how I’m materializing this vision I have for my Obsidian Vault.
And, speaking of the current book, it is taking its toll on me because I chose to write in English. I don’t regret my decision, but it is exhausting to think and formulate ideas in a foreign language.
Similar to my progress with Obsidian, my writing is getting more and more steam as I move forward, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is taking me much longer than usual to finish it. If I were writing it in Portuguese, it would likely already be published.
Well, I will get there eventually.
Have a lovely week, Vlad.
Obsidian as a writing hub
Scrivener and LanguageTool are remarkable tools that I use all the time, but they don’t have an Android App. Luckily, Obsidian works as an elegant bridge that has clients for multiple platforms.
Please allow me to begin by explaining the situation. I’m a Mac user who switched from the iPhone to Android many years ago and have no intention or desire to go back.
That said, I sometimes come across great writing tools like Scrivener and LanguageTool that don’t have an Android App. Thankfully, Obsidian is an important part of my writing kit and has clients for multiple platform. This is the story of how I use it as my writing hub.
Scrivener is where I’ve been writing my books since 2012. I don’t know how others create, but in my case, I usually start by writing down ideas as they come to mind. When there’s enough content and a lot of mess, it’s time to organize the text, and that’s probably my favorite thing about Scrivener. Coping and pasting is harmless, since the draft file has no formatted text, and it is also extremely easy to rearrange chapters by simply dragging them around.
Another crucial aspect of writing is grammar. For a non-native speaker like myself, a little help with synonyms and sentence construction is very welcome. That’s where LanguageTool shines. It feels as if I have an English teacher constantly suggesting changes to improve the text.
Don’t ask me why, but Scrivener never added support to LanguageTool, despite the existence of an API. So, even when using my Mac to write, I can’t benefit from both of them working together. And when I’m away from my computer, things become even harder because none of them have an Android App. That even affects the Supernote, as it is also an Android under the hood.
Thankfully, there is a way to connect all of these seemingly incompatible pieces. Several months ago, I shared a workaround for using Scrivener’s sync feature to have access to your book’s draft as Markdown files in Obsidian. You can learn ho to do it, by watching the video below.
Yesterday, you learned about another part of the puzzle. There is a LanguageTool plugin for Obsidian that uses the same API Scrivener could be using to make writers' lives more comfortable.
By combining both methods — synchronizing the book with Obsidian and using the LanguageTool plugin — we can create the perfect solution to use the spell checker when writing on a Mac or using an Android phone. Which also includes the Supernote. Isn’t that cool?
However, that is not all the writing I do in Obsidian. This article, for example, started as an idea in my Creator Action Container. The note was born there when I was riding the subway and wanted to write some ideas and drafts of a few paragraphs.
I kept working on it the next day, but this time I used Obsidian on my computer. In both cases, LanguageTool was there helping me. When it was finished, I moved it from the Action Container to the website folder to then make it available online, where you are reading it now.
If you’d like to learn more about all of these interconnected folders, please watch the video below.
These represent all the page connections through links or tags within my new website thus far.
Create using Obsidian Graph View
I have something new and exciting to show you!
Well, I’m not sure if you’ll find it exciting, but I’m thrilled about it.
Over the past few weeks, I have invested a lot of time into revamping my website so that I can share with you all my Blog posts and Knowledge Base in one place. Perhaps we can call it a Knowledge Base Blog. Hum, it looks like KBB would be a good acronym. Anyway, here’s what I’ve done so far.
Oh, by the way, you may be asking yourself why I’m also using Substack to share this post. This may or may not be temporary; however, due to the migration of my website to a different platform, I have lost the newsletter feature that I previously had. Anyway, back to my KBB
Let’s start with the left-side menu. Except for Books, the first group of items—from About me to Ethics Statement—are the same topics (pages) I already had on the other site.
Toolbox and Maker are where I’m exploring ways to share my Knowledge Base with you. As you can see in the image below, there are many topics, and each one of them contains explanations, how-tos, and other types of resources and information to help you learn more about those areas of interest.
However, the cool part, at least for me, is how I’m connecting all that with the blog posts. Think of all the information as widgets I can add to any post. As a matter of fact, embedding them is part of what I’ve been doing for the last few weeks.
Let’s look at the Books section. For now, there are only three books there, but the idea is to keep adding them. The book Algorithms to Live By, for example, is a page with some of my thoughts about it. Anyone who wants to know what I think about the book can go to that page. But there’s another path to that same information. In fact, many paths.
You may be reading a post, like this one, with that same information embedded. In other words, every time I mention that book in a post, I can include that “widget”. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are several integrations like this all over the new website.
But there’s more. If you take a look at the bottom of the book’s page, you’ll see the Links to this page list. That’s an automatic compilation of all the pages mentioning that book. And if we go back to the Toolbox, each topic also has (will have) a page like that. For example, vladcampos.com/evernote, vladcampos.com/supernote, and vladcampos.com/voicenotes are automatic compilations of posts about those topics.
Don’t leave yet. There’s more. In many pages on the website, you’ll find words that start with hashtags. Those are tags, and clicking on them will open a list of other pages with that tag.
I am still working on many things, and the structure may change in the coming days or weeks, but the main goal is to keep connecting new content to this web of knowledge.
Back to Substack…
As you can imagine, this intricate structure is only possible on my website, and that’s why I have no idea how to “translate” it to a newsletter. But that is a problem I am leaving to my future self to deal with. For now, I invite you to explore my KBB.
I wish you a wonderful 2025 🎉
I still have a lot of work to do, but this first version represents the initial stages of my vision for a website that is both a learning center and a blog.
Obsidian Publish is far from perfect, and many of the issues I’ve complained about in the past, are still present. However, things changed on my side. I have gained experience, acquired new technical skills, and developed a deeper understanding of topics related to online presence.
Maybe all that helped me understand what my vision was. That’s probably why I now see Obsidian Publish as an appealing option.
A few thoughts on using the Obsidian app on the Supernote.
After a few days with the new Obsidian vault I set up for the Supernote, it’s time to discuss some other little tweaks I made and issues I experienced.
I still haven’t found a solution for the context menus that pop up when I hover the pen over clickable items. In the video below, you can see it happening on Obsidian, but it’s also affecting Syncthing.
At first, I thought it was linked to sideloaded apps, but it’s not happening to all the apps I installed, and I can see it happening when I’m using Obsidian on my computer. In other words, it appears to be a normal behavior found in certain apps, and I’ll have to investigate further to resolve this issue.
Battery
The battery is also draining faster than usual. It’s not something crazy fast, but it was bothering me, so I decided to try a different configuration. Syncthing-Fork has a setting to change the the number of synchronizations per day.
I hope it will improve the battery situation. The drawback is that I’ll have to pay more attention to the synchronization status, but I am fine with that.
Supernote Cloud & Tasks
Since we’re talking about sync, I went back to the Supernote cloud. In my opinion, it’s a better option, since I can see and manipulate files seamlessly on the phone and computer companion apps, where, by the way, I can also manage tasks.
I love how the Tasks app works seamlessly with notes, but there’s one thing that’s still driving me crazy. As you already know, I see Inboxes as a huge waste of time, so when a system has a folder like that the user cannot remove, I just ignore it. However, the Supernote forces me to use it.
On the Mac or Android companion apps, I can open a specific list and create takes there, but that’s still not possible to do that when creating tasks on notes.
Syncthing
Back to the sync topic, the one thing the Supernote cloud was not as efficient as Google Drive, was giving me quick access to my sketches exported to JPG or PNG. But, as I show in the video below, I’m now doing this using Syncthing.
I am still working on improving my workflow to efficiently combine what the Supernote and Obsidian do best, but I am already thrilled with what I have accomplished so far.
After installing Obsidian on my Supernote I can clearly see that the battery it is draining faster. It’s not substantial, like going down in a few hours or days, but it’s definitely draining a little faster. It could also be because I’ve been trying and testing so many new things lately.
There are some settings that I can change on Syncthing to improve the situation, but before I go that route, I’ll give it a few weeks under normal use conditions to see how it performs.
Stay tuned. I will keep you updated.
I ended yesterday’s video telling you I had an idea that got me really excited. Actually, it’s a plan that combines two visions into one. First of all, I realized that instead of doing all the complicated maneuvers to synchronize only my Action Containers, I could create and synchronize a new vault just for my Action Containers and keep everything else, including the Timeline, in the current vault.
When it comes time to move a file to the Timeline, I can do so using the computer file system. This will have no impact on the way the Timeline System works, and I may be able to come up with an automation in the future to move completed actions to the Timeline on the other vault.
The second part of the plan is to put this new vault in the Supernote SD card. This not only keeps me from using all the Supernote internal storage space with my vault, but also opens up countless possibilities. I’ll show some of them in more detail in an upcoming video, but here’s an example.
Imagine that I sketched a project on Supernote and wanted to add that to a note on Obsidian. In the past, I would have to synchronize the image using Google Drive, for example, then, on my computer, drag it to Obsidian. I can now do it right there on the Supernote.
It’s just a matter of exporting it as a PNG and saving it to the folder where my Obsidian vault is. This will make it instantly available to use on Obsidian, which, in turn, will also synchronize with my computer and phone. Mind-blowing!
Installing Android apps on a Supernote using a Mac
If you are a Mac user, it is not exactly a simple process to install Android apps on your Supernote, but it is totally feasible.
Before we start, I have some disclaimers.
I am not a developer, and I have only a rough understanding of what is actually happening when following the steps below. I’m simply sharing what I learned researching online. It worked for me, but you should always do your research.
As for the Android apps, please be careful with what you are installing. Apps downloaded from the Internet, known as APKs, are not being checked by the Google Play Store.
So, if you decide to follow the steps below, know that you are doing it at your own risk. And make sure you have a backup of your Supernote before starting.
If you are curious to see how Obsidian performs on the Supernote, I invite you to watch the video below. And if at some point you decide to purchase a Supernote, please consider using my affiliate link (clicking here). Thank you!
Sometimes doing things on a Mac is much harder than it is on a PC/Win. Today, I was finally able to sideload Obsidian onto my Supernote. Meaning that we’ll soon have some fun installing and testing the Minimal theme on it as well.
The Obsidian Minimal theme looks great on the Penstar. But that’s not all I’m showing in today’s video. Did you know that each device you sync with the same vault can have different settings?
The Penstar eNote is extremely thin, the screen resolution is impressive, and it feels as if I’m writing on paper. I’d say it might even be too realistic. But there’s more. It blew my mind when I could install Android apps by just clicking on the APK.
I installed both Syncthing and Obsidian on the Penstar eNote and my notes are now synchronizing 🤯 (for now, only on my tests account). You’ll see it in the second part of today’s video. The first part is a quick demonstration of some of the device’s features.
