Obsidian is all about making your notes work for you by keeping them neatly organized. Groups are one of the features that allow this. By grouping related pieces of information, you can more easily retrieve key details and increase your productivity.
But how exactly do you add groups? You will discover it in this Obsidian tutorial.
How to add groups in obsidian
Whether you’re a first-time Obsidian user or an experienced user, you should have no problem accessing the groups feature. Follow the steps below to enable it:
- Go to your tape. If you are using the PC version, you will find it on the left side of your interface. You should be able to see the p, even if you have disabled the sidebar. If you are running the smartphone version, simply tap the “Menu” key represented by the three vertical lines at the bottom right of the screen.
- Press the message that allows you to open the graph view. This menu allows you to determine how your notes will look.
- Press the “New Group” button.
- Enter the notes to be included in your group.
- Tap the circle to choose a color for your category and you’re done. The app will now display the information in the desired shade, allowing you to distinguish it from the rest of your vault.
Once you’ve grouped your items, don’t put your feet up. There may be a way to further optimize the view of your notes and Obsidian has the right feature for you.
Enter “Display”. This nifty set of tools located right next to the groups in your chart view tells you what your information will look like in your vault. This is what you can do:
- Incorporate an animation with the “Animate” button.
- Make your links thicker or narrower with the “Link Thickness” option.
- Decide whether or not you want to show where each link goes with the “Arrows” button.
- Enlarge or shrink the circles that represent your notes with the “Node Size” menu.
- Determine the translucency of note names with the “Text Fade Threshold” key.
How do you add tab groups in Obsidian?
One of the most impressive features of Obsidian is its versatility. It’s evident in many ways, including the ability to group multiple items, not just notes. For example, the program also allows you to group tabs.
Although grouping tabs serves a similar purpose as grouping notes (showing related items close together), you’ll need to take a slightly different route to enable this feature:
- Open Obsidian and go to your vault.
- Navigate to the top of your workspace.
- Open multiple tabs by pressing the plus symbol next to the original tab.
- Press and hold any tab.
- Drag and drop the tab anywhere else in your spreadsheet, such as the left or right sidebar.
- Choose the right location and let Obsidian work its magic. The app will now highlight his tab, indicating the starting position of your new group.
In addition to grouping tabs, it can also be convenient to stack tabs. It’s basically a different view of tabs in a single tab group. This is how you can stack tabs in Obsidian:
- Create a new vault or upload an existing file.
- Set up multiple tabs if you haven’t already.
- Group some tabs using the steps above.
- Open two or three notes within your tab group.
- Hit the down arrow in the top right p of the screen.
- Choose the “Stack Tabs” option and that’s it. The app will now distribute your notes into different tabs, allowing you to better understand each one. If you want to emphasize a particular note, you only need to click on it or scroll with the mouse wheel to move from one file to another.
- If the stacked view doesn’t reach the mark, press the down arrow again and select the “Unstack Tabs” function.
How do you use the search function in Obsidian?
We mentioned the search feature when we discussed the first method for adding groups to your Obsidian vault. You need it to determine which notes will go to your group.
However, Obsidian doesn’t limit you to basic search functionality. You can do a lot of awesome things with this tool to speed up your search, filter results, and drill down into your database.
The most important fact you should know about the search feature is that there are several ways to access it. Apart from enabling it from the graphics view, you can also try some alternatives.
- Click: Go to the left side of your workspace and click on the search symbol represented by a magnifying glass.
- Shortcut: Use the key combination “Ctrl + Shift + F” if you are a Windows user or “Cmd + Shift + F” if you are a macOS user.
From there, you’ll be able to search for virtually anything in your Obsidian database. For example, you can highlight certain text in your word editor, copy it, and paste it into Obsidian’s search box. The platform will instantly show if there are matching words or phrases.
Alternatively, the feature can display your search history. Let’s say you run an empty search. In other words, you press the search button without searching for anything. Instead of reporting a similar error or issue commonly found on other systems, Obsidian will provide you with a list of the latest terms. You can click on them to continue browsing or use them as prompts to search for related items.
Here are a few more tips to help you up your search game:
- Use the “file” or “path” option to search for files or paths in your Obsidian vault.
- Place search terms in quotes to search for specific items. For example, if you want to find Monday tasks in your group, simply enter “Monday tasks” in the search box. The software will reveal any notes with exactly the same wording.
- Use backslashes to search for cited words or phrases in your vault. For example, if you type “my boss told me to ‘keep up the good work’ today,” the app will search only for the quoted text and not for surrounding words and phrases.
- Rely on the “or” operator to tell Obsidian to retrieve items that contain any word or phrase mentioned in your search term. For example, a search for “socks and shoes” will return items containing both words, while “shoes or socks” will return items containing either of those two words. The app even allows you to combine the two methods.
- Tell the system to ignore a word or phrase by preceding it with a hyphen. For example, typing “brainstorming session today” lists notes that contain “brainstorming today” and “brainstorming” and omits “session” from the search results. If you want to ignore multiple words or phrases, you will need to enter a hyphen before each item.
Harness the grouping power of obsidian
Obsidian supports a host of integrations to enhance the app’s functionality and help you stay on top of your projects. But if you are considering a plugin just for adding groups, there is no need to do so. The group function is available from the graphics view and will be a real ace up your sleeve. Simply choose the appropriate color and you can retrieve critical information in an instant.
