In this section of the guide, I’ll explain the core concepts of Obsidian. My goal here is NOT to explain everything there is to know about Obsidian or describe all of its features. If you are looking for the nitty-gritty details, please check out the official documentation: https://help.obsidian.md/Start+here

Table of contents

Vault

The first concept to know about in Obsidian is the “Vault”. An Obsidian vault is a collection of notes that you could also call a “database”. Each vault corresponds to a specific folder on your computer. You can store it anywhere you want, it doesn’t matter.

When you start Obsidian for the first time, it helps you create an empty one. The Obsidian Starter Kit is actually a pre-filled Obsidian Vault.

By default, the last opened vault will be opened when Obsidian starts. You can easily open another vault (in addition to the current one):

When you do, you’ll be presented with the following screen, where you can re-open a known vault (left column), go and search for another one using “Open folder as vault” or create a new one:

If you open the folder corresponding to an Obsidian vault, you’ll notice that it contains a “.obsidian” folder. That folder contains the following elements:

• The metadata about your vault (e.g., the last notes you’ve opened, notes that you have starred, etc)
• The configuration of Obsidian for this vault: look and feel, behavior, keyboard shortcuts, etc
• The (community) plugins that have been installed along with their configuration (within the “plugins” sub-folder)

In addition to the “.obsidian” folder, that directory of course also contains all of your notes. You’ll notice that all of those end up with “.md”, which is the extension for Markdown files.

Although you can create and use as many vaults as you please (e.g., a personal one and another one for work), I strongly recommend using a single one “until it hurts”. The reason for this advice is that you’ll get to link everything together, which is not possible (AFAIK) across Obsidian vaults.