Obsidian Roundup – New UI New Journey (on the occasion of v0.16 release)

I plan to open a new series “Obsidian Review”. Different from the “Fun Obsidian” series, “Review” focuses more on Obsidian’s functions and the use of plug-ins, while the “Fun” series is more systematic. Their differences:

  • The review series focuses on “Introduction”, and experiences the recent new features, new plugins, and new themes of Obsidian. And after using it for a period of time, make a brief introduction and induction.
  • The fun series focuses on “methodology”, which is to summarize and refine based on your own experience after thoroughly understanding the content of the “review”.

v0.16 major update

Recently, Obsidian released v0.16 . Of course, it is still an “internal preview” version. Only users who pay for it can experience it, but you don’t have to worry. Usually, the “public version” will not wait too long.

The biggest upgrade is the “redesigned interface of Obsidian”, which brings heavy functions such as “tab group”. Officially, this new UI is called Dragonglass (Dragonglass), which completely subverts my previous experience with Obsidian. For the perception of interface and ease of use, please post a few pictures for personal use:

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This UI upgrade is the highlight. This article will not introduce all the upgrade points in detail. I will select a few points that I am most satisfied with to introduce to you. If you want to know all the upgrade functions this time, you can refer to the official documentation:

Workspace supports “Tag Groups”

This upgrade introduces the concept of “tab group”, “tab group” is easy to understand, just like we use “tab group” on “browser”, in Obsidian, there are multiple “tab groups” in each group. Tab page”, the reading method of “tile hash” can be realized to the greatest extent, as shown in the figure:

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The advantage of “tab group” is that on the one hand, we can quickly switch between different “tab pages” in “tab group” to improve the “information intake speed”; on the other hand, “tab group” also greatly expands our ability to open “Notes” “quantity. These two advantages are very useful in “organizing knowledge” and “creative output”.

Before the upgrade, we could only open multiple “notes” in the way shown in the “picture below”. The biggest problem with this method is that “up to 2 notes can be seen at the same time.” If you want to see more, you need to add the notes Just drag and drop to the “middle area”, as shown in the figure:

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Window color management for multiple warehouses

Strictly speaking, this is not the native function of Obsidian, because I am using the Minimal theme. The author of Minimal specially made Minimal 6.0 for the Obsidian v0.16 version to adapt. In this version, you can open the “active window status” through Minimal Theme Settings . Switch, after the switch is turned on, you can customize the “window color”. If you are dealing with multiple “warehouses” at the same time like me, it is easy to distinguish each warehouse through the “window color”:

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Set “Window Color”

Due to major changes in Obsidian V0.16, a version adaptation function similar to the “extension plug-in” is also adopted for the “theme”. Different versions of the theme adapt to different versions of Obsidian, so when your Obsidian is not updated, but the theme is updated The latest version will not worry about being affected.

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The first step is to update the Minimal theme to the latest version. When the “version description” as shown above appears, it means that the theme has been adapted.

Just installing and using the Minimal theme cannot achieve “window color adaptation”. Minimal can achieve more customization functions through two plug-ins:

The implementation of “Window Color” needs to be enabled through the ” Minimal Theme Settings ” plugin. After installation, go to the “Plugin Settings Page” and enable the “Colorful window frame” option:

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Then set your favorite “Window Color” through the “Accent color” option in “Appearance”:

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The above are the two important UI updates of Obsidian in the V0.16 version, and then introduce some other functions (not V0.16).

Other features recommended

Admonition Callout Block

In the process of using the MiniMal theme this time, I also found the Admonitions function introduced by Obsidian in the V0.14 version, which is translated as ” marking block ” in Chinese. The function is inspired by the plugin Admonition , which was officially built in the V0.14 version.

The most commonly used function of “marking block” is to “mark” “key content” or “key content” in the notes, as shown in the figure:

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There are many ways to use “markup block”. I have summarized them as follows:

Abstract class annotation

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Annotation class annotation

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task callout

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Prompt class annotation

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Complete class annotation

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problem class labeling

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Reminder class annotation

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Error class annotation

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Warning class label

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Bug class annotation

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Example class annotation

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Reference class annotation

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With retractable effect

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When using, you can write these examples into the “marking example.md” note in advance, and you can “check it as you use it” when you use it, as shown in the figure:

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highlight current line

If you are careful enough, you can see that part of my screenshot has a function “highlighting the line currently being edited”, as shown in the figure:

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This function is also provided by the third-party plug-in Style Settings mentioned above. I like this function very much, especially when we edit back and forth in multiple notes, through the “highlight current line” function, it is easy to locate ” Which line is being processed by the “mouse”, the effect is as shown in the figure:

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The setting method of “Highlight Row” is as follows:

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custom font

Custom fonts are also a new feature introduced in the latest version ( v0.15.6 ). We can set the fonts for “interface, text, and code” respectively. Personally recommend three fonts as follows:

  • Interface font: Pingfang-Jian
  • Text font: Chinese boldface
  • Code font: JetBrains Mono

These three fonts are all common fonts. Among them, “Code Font” recommends JetBrains Mono produced by JetBrains because he is a fan of JetBrains. Please search and download these fonts by yourself.

The setting of the “custom font” function is not very friendly to the “Chinese font” support, and the process is a little more troublesome.

Chinese font support is not friendly

When setting the font, the “Chinese font name” cannot be retrieved, and we need to manually enter the “Chinese font full name” before it can be used.

Step 1: Take the Mac system as an example, open the “Font Book” and check which fonts you have installed (if the font you want does not exist, you can download (or purchase) and install it yourself):

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Step 2: Set the “Font” in the “Appearance” of Obsidian. Due to the problem of “Chinese support”, you cannot see the desired “Chinese font name” in the drop-down box. You need to manually enter the “Chinese font full name” yourself. , as shown in the figure:

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Step 3: Manually enter the “full name of Chinese font”, such as “Chinese Black Body”, “Holly Black Body Simplified Chinese”, as shown in the figure:

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Recommended plugin

Personally, I am more cautious in using plug-ins. Sometimes I will install some plug-ins for experience in order to try new functions. Usually, they will be deleted after the experience. Today, I recommend a new plug-in: janitor .

janitor : clean up pictures & files

The function of the plugin is very simple, clean up unused pictures, empty notes and large files (large files need manual confirmation, and can set the size range value). The plugin is officially tested and approved, so you can use it with confidence, and there is a “secondary confirmation” process before cleaning.

In the process of using Obsidian, I will generate a lot of “waste pictures”. These abandoned pictures are often unsatisfactory or unusable in the article, but it is difficult to find and delete these pictures manually. The janitor plugin is just right Solved this problem, I have used it for a while, and I recommend it to everyone.

After installation, a “trash can button” will be added to the sidebar, and you can also execute the command to delete:

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After the command is executed, it will take a while (depending on the size of your warehouse), and then a dialog box will pop up, asking to select the file to be deleted, and perform the corresponding delete operation, as shown in the figure:

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Just follow the prompts, it is basically safer, if you are not at ease when using it for the first time, please back up your warehouse (make a compressed package) before using it.

Obsidian Statistics

I saw a data analysis about Obsidian today and shared it with you ( original link ). The author ran the public data provided by Github and Obsidian API through a Python script , and came to the following conclusions (data as of 2022.09.11) ):

Market share of desktop platforms (excluding mobile)

Starting from version 0.15.9, the shares between platforms are divided as follows:

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  • Windows — 53.1%
    • 64-bit: 98.01%
    • arm: 1.19%
    • 32-bit: 0.79
  • MacOS — 34.4%
  • Linux — 12.1%

Number of plugin downloads

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Y-axis: Shows the downloads of community plugins.
X-axis: Shows the relative age of plugins (from oldest to newest).

  • 21 plugins have more than 100,000 downloads (3.24%).
  • 155 plugins were downloaded more than 10,000 times (23.92%).
  • 449 plugins have more than 1,000 downloads (69.29%).

Number of theme downloads

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Y-axis: Shows downloads of community topics.
X-axis: Shows the relative age of the subjects (from oldest to newest).

  • 3 themes have more than 100,000 downloads (2.13%).
  • 42 themes were downloaded more than 10,000 times (29.79%).
  • 135 themes were downloaded more than 1,000 times (95.74%).

The above data can be easily seen:

  1. Obsidian has a very active community.
  2. Among those who like to play Obsidian, playing themes is an order of magnitude worse than playing plugins.

Beauty is justice

There is also a saying in the software industry that “beauty is justice”. Under the premise that the same type of software has similar functions, the one with higher appearance will usually win. Obsidian will be used from 2020, also because Obsidian is used as a “note-taking software” in The “methodology” provides different concepts, and at the same time has excellent “community support” and “function iteration” speed.

In this V0.16 version update, the convenience brought by the “tab group” UI is not as great as the impact brought by the overall UI reconstruction. This time, putting Obsidian in a variety of Mac software is no longer so “split”. “. Therefore, this time, I can finally “abandon the function” and only recommend this excellent “note-taking software” to everyone from the point of “appearance”.

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I hope that after this introduction, you will be interested in Obsidian, a note-taking software, or look forward to V0.16. Since you are still waiting for the adaptation of “major themes & plugins”, the “official version” will take some time. , please look forward to…

This article is the first in the series “Obsidian Review”, which will be continuously updated in the future. At the same time, I have also been maintaining the “Fun Obsidian” series of articles. If you are interested in this series, you can find related articles in the following channels:

The Obsidian Review series currently includes articles:

  • “Obsidian Review – New UI New Journey (on the occasion of the release of v0.16)”

The Fun Obsidian series currently includes articles:

You can follow me on Twitter , Telegram , instagram and other channels for more interesting information.

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