Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian

Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/m2maDNtho7Y/maxresdefault.jpg) 🔗 **Source:** [Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2maDNtho7Y) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [obsidian, notebook-navigator, note-taking-workflows, plugin-tutorial, productivity-tools, knowledge-management] > author: Johan Sanneblad > source: [MISSING] > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2maDNtho7Y > date created: {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} {{time:HH:mm}} > > # 🏷️ Title: Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian >  ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ## 📝 Summary - Johan Sanneblad, author of the Obsidian community plugin Notebook Navigator, walks through the full feature set of version 3 in a chaptered tutorial covering navigation, search, sorting, calendars, folder notes, theming, and multi-vault workflows. - It matters because Notebook Navigator replaces Obsidian's default file explorer with a dual-pane, keyboard-driven browser that adds capabilities (manual sort for long documents, folder-note scratch pads, vault profiles, calendar-based journal navigation) not available in stock Obsidian. - Key stakeholders: Obsidian users migrating from Evernote, Bear, Apple Notes, or Day One; long-form writers who currently rely on Scrivener or Ulysses; and anyone managing multiple Obsidian vaults for separate life contexts (work, personal, writing). - Risks and tradeoffs: heavy customization surface area means a steep initial settings pass (hidden folders, default sort, hotkey rebinding) is required before the plugin feels ergonomic; manual sort writes a `sort_index` property into every note, which is an invasive metadata change worth knowing about before enabling it on an existing vault. - Bottom line: the video is a comprehensive onboarding tour more than a persuasive pitch — the author assumes the viewer already installed the plugin and is motivated to configure it deeply. ## 📖 Main Content Notebook Navigator replaces Obsidian's built-in file browser with two coordinated panes: a navigation pane (folders, tags, properties, shortcuts, recent files) and a list pane (files in the current context). The core argument threaded through the video is that most of Obsidian's built-in file browsing is either missing (keyboard navigation between folders, calendar views, manual sort) or requires separate plugins/tools to approximate — and Notebook Navigator consolidates those into one settings surface. Several terms worth defining for readers new to Obsidian: a **vault** is Obsidian's term for a local folder of markdown files that acts as a self-contained workspace; **frontmatter properties** are the YAML key-value block at the top of a note (title, status, tags) that Obsidian and plugins can read and filter on; a **folder note** is a note that represents a folder itself, commonly used as a folder's landing page or, as demonstrated here, a scratch pad. The video establishes early that several behaviors are off by default and need explicit configuration: sidebar resize behavior (single pane vs. vertical split), hidden folders (glob patterns like `/_*`), and default sort order (date created vs. date edited). It also flags two Obsidian hotkey rebindings as prerequisites — unbinding Obsidian's native "Create new note" in favor of Notebook Navigator's folder-aware version, and binding "Notebook Navigator: Open" to move keyboard focus into the sidebar — without which several later workflows (folder-aware note creation, full keyboard navigation) don't work as shown. Contested or uncertain claims: the presenter's framing that folder notes "were always supposed to work" as sidebar scratch pads is a personal design opinion, not a documented Obsidian convention — other users may prefer the default in-pane folder note behavior he says he "didn't understand the use for." Similarly, the claim that manual sort is the only way to organize long multi-file documents like books is presented without acknowledging existing alternatives (e.g., numeric filename prefixes), which is a simpler but less flexible approach many Obsidian users already use. ## 🗒️ Notes #### Installation and layout - Enable Community Plugins (exit Restricted Mode) → Browse → install "Notebook Navigator" → Enable. - Two-pane layout (navigation + list) appears once the sidebar is widened; narrow widths collapse to single pane by default. - Keyboard folder navigation (left/right arrows, tab/shift-tab) is called out as something the built-in Obsidian file browser cannot do. #### Show files from subfolders - Toggle at the top of the list pane; off shows only the current folder's direct contents, on shows all descendant files recursively. - A "Reveal file" command jumps from a subfolder-aggregated view back to a file's actual containing folder. #### First three settings changes recommended - **Sidebar resize behavior** (Settings → search "sidebar"): default collapses to single pane; can be changed to vertical split (stacked panes) or "do nothing." - **Hide folders** (Settings → search "Hide folders"): glob syntax like `/_*` hides root-level folders prefixed with underscore; "Show hidden folders, tags and notes" toggle temporarily reveals them. Same settings area also supports hiding specific files, excluding folders from descendant aggregation, hiding tags, and hiding notes by property rules. - **Default sort** (Settings → search "Default sort"): default is date edited, newest first; presenter switches to date created, newest first, with grouped headers (Today, Yesterday, Previous 30 Days, etc.). #### Two hotkey rebindings treated as prerequisites - Rebind **Create new note** away from Obsidian's built-in command to "Notebook Navigator: Create new note" — otherwise new notes don't land in the folder currently selected in the sidebar. - Bind **Notebook Navigator: Open** (presenter uses Cmd+Shift+E) to move keyboard focus from the editor into the sidebar and back. #### Working with files - Rename via keyboard: focus sidebar → Enter (or F2 on Windows). - Drag files between folders in the list pane; still visible under "Show files from subfolders." - Add frontmatter properties via Obsidian's command palette ("Add file property"). - Pin notes to keep them visible at every folder level up the tree, not just their own folder. - Auto Reveal (Settings → "Auto reveal active note") syncs the sidebar's selected folder/file to whatever note is currently open; can be disabled if unwanted. #### Shortcuts panel - Drag folders, notes, or tags into the Shortcuts section at the top of the navigation pane to pin them as a dashboard. - Right-click → "Rename shortcut" relabels the shortcut without renaming the underlying note. - Shortcuts 1–9 get numbered automatically; bind "Open shortcut" hotkeys (e.g., Ctrl+1–9) in Settings → Hotkeys for one-keystroke jumps. - "Recent files" section below Shortcuts shows the most recently opened files; count is configurable. #### Inbox triage workflow - Drag notes onto a tag in the sidebar to tag them, then drag the note into a destination folder to file it — tag-then-move as a two-step triage pattern. - Delete confirmation, attachment-deletion prompts, and move-conflict handling are all configurable under Notebook Navigator → File operations. #### Search and filtering - Search icon opens Notebook Navigator's built-in filter search (folders/tags/properties/files) — it does **not** search note contents. - Full-text content search requires installing the separate Omnisearch community plugin; the search field's left icon toggles between Notebook Navigator search and Omnisearch. - To filter by a property (e.g., `status`), it must first be enabled for display in the navigation pane's "Configure property keys" section. - Search syntax: `.status writing` filters by property value; combine with year terms (`2026`) to further narrow by creation date; saved searches become shortcuts (e.g., "Current drafts") with their own bindable hotkey. - Command-click (Ctrl-click) a tag to filter by it; shift adds an OR condition with a second tag; a leading minus excludes a tag (e.g., Sony notes that are *not* tagged 50mm). - "Toggle descendants" and "Search whole vault" are called out as high-frequency actions worth dedicated hotkeys (presenter uses Cmd+Shift+D and Cmd+Shift+S). - Dragging a note onto a property value (e.g., "published") changes that property directly; right-click → "Set property" offers the same action from a menu if enabled. #### Migrating from other apps - Evernote-style users: existing shortcuts/recent-files/folders/tags layout maps closely to Evernote's structure with no changes needed. - Bear-style (tag-first) users: Settings → "Reorder navigation" moves tags above folders; individual root folders can also be manually reordered or given a reversed (Z–A) sort order per-folder. - Day One-style (calendar-first) users are pointed to the calendar chapter. #### Manual sort for long documents (book/manual use case, demoed on the Rust programming manual) - Sort by title, ascending, is presented as a partial fix but still puts appendixes and front matter in the wrong place. - Manual sort is enabled per-folder via the sort button; it seeds the initial order from whatever sort was active, and it **adds a `sort_index` property to every note** in that folder as a warning-gated action. - Reordering: multi-select with shift-click and drag, or select a note and press Cmd/Ctrl+Up/Down to nudge its `sort_index` value. - Group headers (right-click → "Set group header") create collapsible section labels (e.g., "Part 1: Getting Started") that are stored as a note property. - Word/character counts can be enabled per group header, including a settable target word count with a progress bar; a group header's count field can also be left empty to defer to a global target-property setting, or a note can carry its own `target` property for an individual goal. - "Merge notes" combines a multi-selected group into a single note (with a chosen separator: blank line, horizontal rule, etc.) and can optionally trash the originals — framed as a "ready to ship" action for a finished section. #### Calendar and journal integration - Calendar toggle button opens a calendar pane, placeable in either sidebar and remembered across restarts. - Settings cover locale (affects week start day and date formatting), week numbers, quarter display, weekend visibility, and month-label length. - Daily notes are recognized by configuring a Journal root folder and a year/month/day naming pattern in Settings. - Right-click a note → "Set as highlight" changes which thumbnail image represents a given day/month in the calendar. - Hollow-circle date markers indicate unfinished tasks for that day; task integration can be disabled via "Show tasks." - Cmd/Ctrl-click a day, week, month, quarter, or year in the calendar to select all notes from that period; results can be saved as a shortcut (e.g., "Week 29") with its own hotkey. - "Exclude folders from descendants" (Settings → display filter) can hide a Journal folder from aggregated "Show files from subfolders" views while still keeping it directly accessible. #### Folder notes - Disabled by default; enabled under Settings → navigation pane → folders → folder notes. - Default behavior: a folder note appears when you click into that folder and replaces the file list in-place — the presenter says he found this cumbersome. - Preferred alternative: open folder notes in the right sidebar instead, which turns them into a persistent scratch pad that automatically switches content based on which folder (or subfolder of a folder-note-bearing folder) is currently selected. - Folder notes can be created as markdown, canvas, or base files, and their default filename pattern is configurable; by default they're hidden from the main file list. #### Visual customization - Icons: right-click → "Change icon"; built-in Lucide icons plus any vault SVGs are searchable; additional icon packs (Bootstrap, Font Awesome, Material Icons, Phosphor, etc.) are downloadable from Settings → Icon packs, fetched from a GitHub repo and cached per-device, including on mobile after sync. - Colors: right-click → "Change color" sets background/text color per folder or tag, with transparency control; child folders and tags inherit parent color by default; "Copy style" / paste style copies a folder's icon+color combo onto a tag or another folder. - Spacing/layout: Settings → navigation pane → "Root item spacing" adds visual separation between root-level folders; item height, tree indentation, "leaders" (dotted table-of-contents style), and indent guides are all independently configurable. - Rainbow colors: Settings → navigation pane → "Rainbow colors" applies a color cycle (hue or RGB interpolation) to text or background color across folders, shortcuts, and recent items, with a "full scope" option to repeat the cycle at every nesting level. #### Vault profiles - Solves the problem that separate Obsidian vaults (e.g., personal, work, writing) don't share theme or plugin-setting changes with each other. - Created under Settings → Notebook Navigator → Vault profile → add a new named profile; switching profiles changes which folders/tags are hidden, without needing separate vaults. - Most Notebook Navigator settings carry a "vault profile" suffix, meaning they're saved per-profile rather than globally — demonstrated with folder visibility and with the navigation banner image setting. - A "disable sync" toggle per setting controls whether that setting is stored in the vault's shared `data.json` (synced across all devices) or kept local to a single device — useful for e.g. a mobile-only profile difference. #### Frontmatter-driven list display - List pane, frontmatter fields settings allow using a note's own `title` property (or similar) instead of the filename when rendering the file list — mentioned as the final feature, cut off mid-explanation in the provided transcript. ## 📚 References - Obsidian — the note-taking application Notebook Navigator is built for. - Notebook Navigator — the community plugin discussed throughout, installed via Obsidian's in-app Community Plugins browser. - Omnisearch — separate community plugin required for full-text content search, referenced as a complement to Notebook Navigator's metadata-only search. - Evernote, Bear, Apple Notes, Day One — comparison apps used to frame different navigation habits (folder-first, tag-first, calendar-first). - Scrivener, Ulysses — long-form writing tools referenced as the traditional alternative to editing book-length markdown projects inside Obsidian. - Rust programming manual (markdown edition) — the example document set used to demonstrate manual sort, group headers, word counts, and merge notes. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase Sanneblad frames Notebook Navigator as a full replacement for Obsidian's stock file browser rather than a minor enhancement: it adds a second pane, real keyboard navigation between folders, tag- and property-based filtering, and a settings surface deep enough to hide folders, reorder root items, and restyle icons and colors per folder or tag. Before any of that becomes usable day-to-day, though, he insists on three setup steps — choosing sidebar resize behavior, hiding noise folders, and switching default sort to date-created — plus two Obsidian hotkey rebindings that unlock folder-aware note creation and sidebar keyboard focus. The back half of the video pushes into more specialized workflows: manual per-folder sorting with `sort_index` properties and collapsible, word-counted group headers turns a folder of markdown files into something closer to Scrivener's binder view, aimed at people writing book-length content in Obsidian. Calendar integration ties a Journal folder's daily notes to month/quarter/year views with click-to-select ranges, folder notes become a context-aware scratch pad when moved to the sidebar, and vault profiles solve the specific pain of keeping themes and plugin settings in sync across separate work/personal/writing vaults without merging them into one. ## 📰 Newsletter If your Obsidian sidebar still looks like the one you got on day one, this week's watch is Johan Sanneblad's deep dive into Notebook Navigator 3 — his own plugin, and arguably the most thorough file-browser replacement in the ecosystem. It's a genuinely useful watch for anyone drowning in folders: two-pane keyboard navigation, tag/property filtering that doesn't require a separate query language, a calendar view that doubles as a journal browser, and — for the book-writers in the crowd — manual chapter sorting with word-count progress bars that make Obsidian feel a lot more like Scrivener. The sleeper feature is vault profiles, which finally solves the "I have three vaults and three sets of theme settings" problem without merging your work and personal notes into one pile. Worth the full runtime if you're the kind of person who reorganizes their note-taking system as a hobby. ## ✅ Action Items #### Documentation - If your team keeps an internal knowledge base in Obsidian, evaluate Notebook Navigator's folder-note-as-sidebar-scratch-pad pattern as a lightweight "how to use this space" doc per section, rather than a separate onboarding wiki page. #### DevRel / OSPO / Community / WordPress / WPCC / FAIR - Not applicable — this source is a single-author plugin tutorial for Obsidian with no WordPress, open-source-program-office, or community-governance content to extract action items from. No entries forced to avoid padding. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - H1: Requiring two upfront hotkey rebindings (create-note, sidebar-focus) causes a measurable share of new users to abandon key workflows (folder-aware note creation, keyboard navigation) because they skip the setup step shown early in the video. - H2: Enabling manual sort (which writes a `sort_index` property to every note) creates more frontmatter clutter and cross-plugin friction than presenting sort order as a separate, non-note-embedded index would. - H3: Vault profiles reduce the number of separate vaults a typical multi-context user (work/personal/writing) maintains, compared to their pre-Notebook-Navigator setup. - H4: Folder notes opened in the sidebar (vs. in-pane) are used more frequently as ongoing scratch pads than as one-time folder landing pages. - H5: Users coming from tag-first apps (Bear) adopt the "tags above folders" reorder setting at a higher rate than users coming from folder-first apps (Evernote). ### 📊 Methodology - H1/H4: Instrument the plugin (with opt-in telemetry or a user survey) to compare feature usage between users who completed the two recommended hotkey rebindings and those who didn't. - H2: A/B or opt-in comparison of manual-sort-enabled vaults vs. vaults using an alternative (e.g., numeric filename prefixing) on metrics like note-file diff noise and sync-conflict frequency. - H3: Survey users before/after adopting vault profiles on vault count and perceived setup friction. - H5: Cross-tabulate the "reorder navigation" setting value against a self-reported "previous app" survey field. ### ❓ Questions - How many users actually complete both prerequisite hotkey rebindings before their first real session with the plugin? - Does writing a `sort_index` property into every note in a manually-sorted folder cause conflicts with other plugins or with git-based vault syncing? - Do vault profiles get adopted mainly for the theme/plugin-sync problem stated in the video, or for the folder/tag-visibility filtering shown as the demo? - Is the "always supposed to work this way" framing of sidebar folder notes shared by users who already had an established folder-note workflow before Notebook Navigator 3? ### 🔮 Future Research - A structured usability study comparing new-user onboarding completion rates with vs. without the welcome-screen video surfaced by the plugin on first install. - Longitudinal tracking of vault-profile adoption after the calendar and manual-sort features (both released as part of this same "v3" milestone, per the video's framing) to see which feature actually drives profile creation. ### 💡 Implications - **Practice**: teams standardizing on Obsidian for internal docs could adopt manual sort + group headers as a lightweight alternative to a dedicated docs tool for versioned, chapterized content. - **Security**: vault profiles storing some settings device-locally (sync toggle) versus in the shared, synced `data.json` has data-hygiene implications worth documenting for users syncing vaults via third-party services. - **Education**: the video's own chapter/subtitle structure (21 languages) is itself a model worth citing in the Accessibility section below. - **Funding models**: no monetization or pricing is discussed in this transcript; Notebook Navigator is presented purely as a free community plugin. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level estimate: this is a transcribed spoken tutorial, not written prose, so a formal Flesch-Kincaid score would misrepresent it (spoken filler words and run-on sentences deflate readability formulas without reflecting actual difficulty). Qualitatively, vocabulary is plain and conversational (roughly Flesch Reading Ease 70–80, "fairly easy"), estimated from short average sentence length and everyday word choice. #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: the video itself is inherently screen-recorded and demonstrative, though that visual layer is absent from this text transcript. - Improve: this note would benefit from screenshots of the Settings panels referenced by name (e.g., "Hide folders," "Reorder navigation") and a labeled diagram of the two-pane layout. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: the source itself is a spoken, narrated tutorial with 21-language subtitle support. - Improve: a short audio-only recap of the setup checklist (three settings + two hotkeys) would serve aural learners who don't need the full visual demo repeated. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: the presenter consistently defines features by comparison to familiar apps (Evernote, Bear, Day One, Scrivener). - Improve: a small glossary block (vault, frontmatter property, folder note) would help verbal learners unfamiliar with Obsidian-specific terms. #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: the video is structured as a hands-on walkthrough with concrete, repeatable steps (right-click, drag, hotkey). - Improve: a standalone numbered checklist ("first five settings to change") extracted from the Notes section above would make this note more of a followable lab exercise. #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: settings are grouped by function (navigation, search, calendar, theming, vault profiles), which maps cleanly to a decision-tree mental model. - Improve: a table cross-referencing each feature to its Settings menu path would help logical learners navigate without rewatching. #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: none — this is a solo tutorial with no community discussion prompts. - Improve: linking to the plugin's GitHub Discussions or issue tracker (if the reader has that URL) would give social learners a place to compare configurations. #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: the video is explicitly designed for self-paced, chapter-jump viewing. - Improve: a self-check ("did I complete the three settings and two hotkeys?") would suit solitary learners working through this alone. #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: none — no sustainability, environmental, or ecosystem framing appears in this content. - Improve: not a natural fit for this material; no meaningful improvement to suggest without forcing an unrelated angle. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: not assessable from a transcript alone; the video's own on-screen UI semantics aren't captured here. - Improve: if republishing this as a written guide, use real heading hierarchy (as done in this note) rather than bolded paragraph labels, so screen readers can navigate by section. #### Keyboard navigation - Present: the source content itself is *about* keyboard navigation (folder navigation via arrow keys, sidebar focus via hotkey) — a notable strength of the plugin being documented. - Improve: n/a to this note directly; worth stating explicitly in any rewritten guide that all demonstrated actions have keyboard equivalents, which the video does show but doesn't summarize in one place. #### Contrast and readability - Present: not assessable — no visual asset accompanies this transcript. - Improve: any companion screenshots should be checked for the 4.5:1 text contrast minimum, particularly given the video's rainbow-color and custom-theming demos, which could produce low-contrast combinations if replicated carelessly. #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: not applicable to a text transcript. - Improve: n/a. #### Media and captions - Present: the source explicitly states subtitles are available in 21 languages, which is a strong existing accessibility feature. - Improve: no audio-description track is mentioned for viewers who can't see the on-screen UI actions being narrated; that's a meaningful gap for a screen-recording-heavy tutorial. #### Forms and interactions - Present: not applicable — no interactive form exists in this content. - Improve: n/a. #### Standards reference - Gaps mapped loosely to WCAG 2.2 AA: 1.2.3 (Audio Description, Prerecorded) is the clearest gap given the heavily visual, action-narrated nature of the source; 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships) is well-served if this note's heading structure is preserved when republished. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: 21-language subtitle availability is a concrete, above-average accessibility/breadth signal for a single-creator tutorial. - Improve: no multi-region use-case examples are shown (e.g., non-Latin locale calendar formatting is mentioned as configurable but not demonstrated). #### Inclusive language - Present: language throughout is plain, direct, and free of idiom-heavy or exclusionary phrasing. - Improve: a few Obsidian-specific terms (vault, frontmatter, folder note) go undefined; a short glossary would lower the barrier for newcomers. #### Neurodiversity support - Present: content is explicitly chaptered, and the presenter states this upfront as a navigation aid. - Improve: as a raw transcript, this note lacks the chapter markers referenced in the source; restoring timestamped chapter breaks (not available in the transcript provided) would preserve that structure for neurodivergent viewers who rely on it. #### Representation - Present: not a meaningful axis for this content — it's a single presenter demonstrating software, with no represented identities, case studies, or quoted individuals beyond the author himself. - Improve: n/a; forcing a representation critique onto a solo software tutorial would be an artificial fit. #### Psychological safety - Present: tone throughout is friendly, encouraging, and low-stakes ("give folder notes a try," "just play around with the settings"). - Improve: none needed — no content warnings or moderated Q&A are relevant to this material. ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - The presenter builds his case for vault profiles inductively from a concrete, relatable pain point (themes/plugins not syncing across separate vaults) before introducing the feature — this is a clear, well-sequenced problem→solution structure that makes the feature's value legible without marketing language. - The migration-path section (Evernote/Bear/Day One comparisons) uses analogical reasoning effectively: mapping a new tool's structure onto a viewer's existing mental model is a strong instructional technique. #### Fallacies - "This is how folder notes was always supposed to work from the beginning" (sidebar-scratch-pad framing) is an appeal-to-obviousness / hasty generalization — it presents one personal design preference as a universal, self-evident truth rather than one valid option among several folder-note workflows. Fix: frame it as "this is the workflow I find most useful" rather than an implied objective correction of the default. - The claim that Notebook Navigator lets users do book-length editing "so much more than" folder notes ever offered elsewhere is a comparison without a stated baseline — no competing plugin or built-in feature is named, so the superiority claim can't be evaluated. Fix: name the specific alternative being compared against (e.g., the default Obsidian file explorer, or a named competing plugin). #### Tone of voice - Enthusiastic, informal, and demonstrative throughout ("Boom," "I'm already having fun here"), consistent with a creator narrating their own tool rather than a neutral third-party reviewer — readers should weight feature claims accordingly, as no independent perspective is represented. ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Not applicable. DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is a framework for analyzing responses to accusations of wrongdoing. This transcript contains no accusation, conflict, or defensive posture to analyze — it is a straightforward, promotional feature walkthrough by the plugin's own author. No denial, attack, or victim/offender reversal rhetoric is present. ## 🎯 Conclusion Notebook Navigator 3 is positioned as a deep, highly configurable replacement for Obsidian's default file browser, with its most distinctive contributions being manual per-folder sorting for long-form writing, a calendar view tied to journal notes, sidebar-based folder-note scratch pads, and vault profiles that solve theme/plugin-setting duplication across multiple vaults. The practical next step for a viewer is not to adopt every feature at once, but to complete the three baseline settings changes and two hotkey rebindings shown early in the video first — most of the later, more specialized workflows (manual sort, calendar selection, vault profiles) assume that foundation is already in place. ## 🔄 Refactor Appendix — Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian ### 📚 Literature Atoms (H3) #### Manual sort turns Obsidian into a book editor > [!quote] > With Notebook Navigator, you can do all this and much more right within the Obsidian environment. **Context & use**: - Rust programming manual demo, "manual sort" chapter. - Directly addresses why writers have historically left Obsidian for Scrivener/Ulysses on long multi-file projects; this is the plugin's clearest differentiator claim in the video. **Tags**: #xref **Highlight**: not applicable — sourced from a pasted video transcript, no Readwise highlight link available.  #### Vault profiles fix cross-vault theme duplication > [!quote] > each individual vault has their own settings for themes and plugins and you can't sync those between the vaults **Context & use**: - Vault profiles chapter, stated as the motivating problem before the feature is introduced. - Names the specific pain (no settings sync between separate Obsidian vaults) that vault profiles are built to solve — useful as the canonical "why this feature exists" reference. **Tags**: #xref **Highlight**: not applicable — sourced from a pasted video transcript, no Readwise highlight link available.  #### Sidebar folder notes work as context scratch pads > [!quote] > This makes folder notes so much more useful because it becomes this kind of scratch pad. **Context & use**: - Folder notes chapter, describing the right-sidebar placement setting. - Captures the specific configuration change (moving folder notes out of the main pane) that turns a rarely-used feature into a per-project running notes area. **Tags**: #xref **Highlight**: not applicable — sourced from a pasted video transcript, no Readwise highlight link available.  ### 🧠 Permanent Candidates (H4) #### Context-switching tools need synced state, not just separate spaces **Claim** (one sentence, Courtney's voice): A tool that lets you switch between work contexts only reduces friction if the switch also carries your configuration with it — otherwise you've just relocated the setup cost instead of removing it. **Evidence pointer**: [[Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian#Vault profiles fix cross-vault theme duplication]] > [!quote] > This is the beauty of switching between different work contexts or private contexts. **Scope & conditions**: - Holds when: the underlying tool supports partitioned-but-linked configuration (profiles within one instance) rather than fully separate instances. - Breaks when: the contexts genuinely need hard isolation (e.g., security boundaries between clients) — in that case synced settings become a liability, not a convenience. **Links** (≥1 with annotation): - [[Multi-context tooling]] — because extends to any app with a "workspace" or "profile" concept beyond Obsidian.  ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue - [F1] Check whether manual sort's `sort_index` property causes conflicts with git-based vault sync setups — no answer given in source. #xref ### → Things 3 (max 2 actions) - [ ] Complete the three baseline Notebook Navigator settings (sidebar resize behavior, hide folders, default sort) and the two hotkey rebindings before evaluating any advanced feature from this video #things ``` Processed: Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian - Literature atoms: 3 / 5 cap - Permanent candidates: 1 / 3 cap - Fleeting items: 1 - Things 3 actions: 1 / 2 cap - Konik tags used: [#xref] - Triage callouts populated: not applicable (single combined note, no spun-out Literature note generated) - Quality gates: quote verbatim match ✓ | atomicity markers ✓ | link annotation ✓ | no [MISSING] in Refactor Appendix ✓ | Readwise ID / highlight-link check: n/a (source is a pasted transcript, not a Readwise import) - Override conditions triggered: none ``` --- ## Full Transcript [00:00] Hi, I'm Johan Sanneblad and I'm the author of the plug-in Notebook Navigator for Obsidian. In this [00:07] video, I'll walk you through everything you need to know to get started and mastering Notebook [00:12] Navigator in every different way to make it feel like you have designed your own notebook editing [00:18] environment that is specifically adapted for your needs. By the end of the video, you will have [00:25] set up this vault with shortcuts, you have folders, you have tags, you have properties, [00:33] manual sorting, chapter organizations, word counts, calendars, journal entries and much, much [00:41] more. The entire video is sorted into chapters and if you want to read more about a specific topic, [00:50] you can jump specifically to that chapter. This video has also been translated into 21 [00:56] different languages. So enable subtitles and you can read the subtitles in your [01:01] own native language to make it easier to follow along. Thank you for using Notebook Navigator. [01:09] If you have already installed Notebook Navigator, jump ahead one chapter. Otherwise, [01:13] I'll show you how to get started. Click on Settings and click on Community plugins. To [01:20] install Notebook Navigator, you need to first exit Restricted mode. This enables community plugins. [01:27] Then you click on Browse and you search for notebook. Click on Notebook Navigator. Click [01:34] on Install and then click on Enable. Now you will see the welcome screen [01:40] with the Mastering Notebook Navigator video which is probably the main reason why you're [01:44] here watching this video. I'll watch the movie later and I close the community plug-in browser [01:50] and I will also close the settings window. [01:55] Okay. Notebook Navigator is installed and to [01:58] the left here in the sidebar you will see all the files you have in the root folder of your vault. [02:04] Typically most users want to expand this sidebar a bit when using Notebook Navigator. So you just [02:10] drag it like this and you will now see two panes of Notebook Navigator. To the left you have the [02:15] navigation pane that shows you folders, tags and properties and shortcuts and recent files. [02:23] And to the right you see the files of that specific folder you're located in. If you [02:29] have limited screen space of course you can use it with just one pane at a time. So just resize [02:36] like that and you can go back to the root folder like this and click on it to get to your files. You [02:43] can also use the keyboard to navigate. So click on left or right or shift tab and tab. So this [02:50] keyboard navigation is really simple if you want to just move around with [02:54] your keyboard to navigate your folders. This is something that is not possible with the built-in [03:00] Obsidian file browser. This is only available with Notebook Navigator. So typically I like to work [03:08] with two panes at the time. So this is something I typically like to work with. To [03:15] the left here as I said you have the folders and tags and properties. So if I click on a tag here, [03:21] for example, 50 mm, I will see all my files that are tagged with a 50 mm tag. So all this is in the [03:28] same place. And you can do so many cool things. You can drag, for example, notes if you want to drag [03:32] them to add tags or remove tags immediately like that. But we'll get more into that later. [03:40] There's one button I just want to show you right now. And if I go to the root vault like this, [03:45] you have this really important button at the top. It's called Show files from subfolders. And [03:52] with this button off, we only show in the right pane the number of files that are in [03:57] this specific folder. But if I enable Show files from subfolders, boom, you now see all [04:05] files in all subfolders of the current vault. So if I scroll back to the top here like this, [04:11] you will see that there are so many more files in some of the subfolders. And in each file here, [04:19] you see that it says 2026 here. This means that this file is located in the folder called 2026. [04:28] There's even a command. I can call a command called Reveal file, and that will just [04:38] open the file in the folder it was located in. And this is very handy. For example, in this case, [04:44] I have notes from three different years. So, if I go to the top folder like this and disable it, [04:50] I only see the files in that specific folder. But if I enable it, I see all the files in all [04:57] the subfolders like that. So if you sometimes get lost, if you see too many files in the navigation, [05:06] maybe you have Show files from subfolders clicked on, then just disable it to view files [05:12] that are only in the folder you are viewing. [05:17] Okay, let me show you three things I think most [05:20] of you want to change before we continue. And the first one is what happens when you resize [05:25] the left sidebar like this. By default, as you can see, it changes into a single pane like this. [05:32] So you can click back and forth. But you can actually change that behavior. So what you do is [05:38] that you go into Settings like this. And if you use Obsidian 1.13, you can have settings open [05:45] while you actually see what's happening in them. And with Obsidian 1.13, of course, you can search [05:52] settings. So in this case, we search for sidebar. And you can see there's a setting here that says [05:58] When sidebar is too narrow. Click on that one. And now we can change what happens when it becomes too [06:05] narrow. And in this case, we can change it to a vertical split instead. So if I now resize [06:11] the left sidebar like this and you can see now you have the panes above each other like this instead. [06:17] So you have the navigation on top and the files on bottom instead. If you have a tall screen, [06:23] I think this might be what you prefer instead. You can also change it to do nothing. So, [06:32] if you really want to squeeze things like this or you just want to keep it, you can do that as well, [06:37] of course. But let's go back and let's keep it to single pane like this. But many of you, [06:45] of course, if you have a tall screen, you want to use vertical split instead. [06:49] The other setting we want to do is that, remember when we toggled on Show files from subfolders, you [06:55] see all these images and those images are located in my resources folder and I really want to [07:01] hide that. So go into Settings and again we search for Hide folders and in this case [07:10] I have the resources folder in my root. So I will just tap /_* like this. And this will [07:19] hide all folders in the root that are prefixed with an underscore. And in this case it will [07:25] hide the resources folder. So what do you do if you want to see then temporarily this folder [07:33] and the contents? You have a setting in the top of the navigation pane called Show hidden folders, [07:38] tags and notes. So if I click on that one, you will see the folder. You can click on it and you [07:43] will see all the contents within that folder. You can select the files if you want like this. [07:50] Then just click the button again to only show the files that are not in that folder. In [08:00] this setting you have the Hide folders. You can also hide so many other things. You can [08:04] hide specific files. You can also exclude specific folders from descendants. So if you [08:11] Show files from subfolders, maybe you want to exclude some folders, like for example your Journal. [08:17] Maybe you don't want to see your journal when you view the entire vault like this. You can hide [08:22] specific tags, you can hide notes with specific tags or you can hide notes with property rules. [08:29] So for example if you have a specific property set to a specific value you can choose to hide it [08:33] in Notebook Navigator as well. The third thing I want to change is the [08:40] sorting. So search for Default sort. And this is the default sort order in Notebook Navigator. [08:46] The default sort order is date edited with the newest files on top. Typically I like to use date [08:53] created with the newest created files on top. So if I then Show files from subfolders again, [08:59] go back to top and you will see I have them sorted by that. And by default you also [09:06] have sorting by group. So you have the Today group first, you have Yesterday, the previous [09:10] days and Previous 30 days and so on. So if you scroll down like this you can see notes [09:18] by each specific group. And this can of course also be changed how you want to [09:22] group things by these menus but we'll go into that later as well. Okay. I think this is kind [09:29] of the basic setup. You can configure what happens when you resize the left sidebar. You [09:35] can choose to hide specific folders or files. And you know how to use the Show [09:41] files from subfolders. And you have changed the default sort setting if you want that as well. [09:51] Okay, let me show you how I typically work with Notebook Navigator and Obsidian. But before that, [09:56] we need to change two very important keyboard bindings in Obsidian. So go into settings, [10:02] click on Hotkeys and search for Create new note. When you create a new note in Obsidian by [10:12] pressing command N. What it does is that it creates a new note either in the root folder, [10:18] in the same folder as the current file, or in a specific folder and you can change that in the [10:24] Obsidian settings. However, when you're using Notebook Navigator, you always want to create [10:29] a new file in the folder you have selected in the sidebar. And that does not happen when you create [10:35] a new note with the built-in Obsidian file creation. So, you need to unbind this and [10:41] instead bind it to Notebook Navigator: Create new note, like that. Now when you press command N, it [10:49] will send the command to Notebook Navigator that knows which folder it has selected and create the [10:54] note in that specific folder. The other thing I want to change is a command Notebook Navigator: [11:03] Open and I typically bind this to command shift E and this is to move keyboard focus [11:09] from the editor into the sidebar. Let me show you. So, let's say I'm in the editor and [11:15] I'm writing text like this. And I want to move keyboard focus back to the sidebar. Then [11:23] I press command shift E and I'm now working in the sidebar. So, I can now navigate around like that. And [11:30] if I just press right one more time, I'm back in the editor and can continue working. So this is [11:36] super smooth to give you full keyboard access to navigating around in your vault including properties, [11:42] tags and folders. Let's say I want to create a new file then. So let's enable Show files from [11:50] subfolders, going to Tech Insights, and we can see that yeah the last newsletter was Week 29. So [11:56] let's create Week 30. So click here and we press command N. And as you can see, it created it now [12:04] in the right folder and we call it Tech Insights 2026 Week 30. Now I see I misspelled the name. [12:18] So what I can do is I press command shift E. I press enter. And if you're using a Windows PC, [12:25] you can press F2 and then go in to change it like that and press enter, and you have renamed [12:30] the file. I also see I put it in the wrong folder because I wanted to put it in the 2026 [12:36] folder. And here you can just move it around by dragging it to the folder 2026 like that. [12:43] And as you can see it's still visible here since you have Show files from subfolders enabled. Now [12:52] what I want to do here as well is I want to add a property to it. I can use that in the Obsidian [12:59] command palette using Add file property and we add status and we call it writing. [13:09] I will show you later how we will use these properties within Notebook Navigator. And [13:14] finally since this is a note I will be using quite a lot I like to pin it. So you can [13:19] click the pin icon like that and the note will now stay pinned both in this folder, and if you [13:25] go up one folder, it will say pinned as well. This is really handy. For example, [13:30] say we're in a folder like 2024 here and I pin this note. If I go up to the root, those [13:37] two notes are still pinned. Of course, you can change this if you only want to see them pinned [13:42] in their specific folders. But if you quickly want to find things that you're working with, [13:47] here's a super nice way to find that. Let's unpin it. Now the last thing I wanted to [13:55] show you is something called Auto reveal. And let's say I open another note here, for [14:02] example 2025 week 24. As you can see now in the left side pane it changed both the current [14:10] folder and it changed the current file to match what you opened. And if you don't want that, [14:16] you can go into Settings as well and you search for Auto reveal. And there's a setting called [14:21] Auto reveal active note. So if you disable that one and we go back and I open another note, [14:28] you can see that the sidebar didn't change. For many people, you maybe want this, but for me, [14:35] I like to have it enabled. So when I open notes like that, it just moves the focus straight away. [14:47] Okay, let's go into the shortcut section. Let's turn it into a dashboard of what we're working [14:52] with right now. So, if you look at the top left, you have Shortcuts, and it's empty right now. So, [14:59] let's drag up a few things from what I'm working on right now. So, first of all, let's drag the [15:04] folder 2026 up there. Let's drag the new Tech Insights weekly newsletter I'm working [15:12] with. And let's also drag the photo tag 50 mm up there as well. Now the shortcut section here [15:20] the first thing you can do is that if the list becomes big like this you see it's pinned. [15:27] If you have limited screen space on mobile and so on, you can unpin them and they will scroll [15:32] with the list like that. You can also rename shortcuts. So if I right click on this long name [15:38] here and you can just Rename shortcut, not Rename note, Rename shortcut. You can just [15:45] call it Active draft like that. This is handy if you just want a different shortcut pointing to [15:53] files with a different description of them. Now the second thing here is that you see there's a [15:58] number to the right of each shortcut: one, two and three. And this is so you can open them [16:04] very quickly using keyboard shortcuts. So go into Settings, click on Hotkeys and search for Open [16:11] shortcut. And here you will see Open shortcuts 1 to 9. And in this case I can bind it Ctrl 1, Ctrl 2, [16:21] Ctrl 3. And now if I go back into Obsidian and I press Ctrl 1, I will go to the selected folder. [16:30] if I press Ctrl 2, I will move to my file Active draft. And if I press Ctrl 3, I will move into [16:38] the 50 mm tag. So, this is, if you're using different contexts or different projects, [16:46] this is something that becomes second nature as you navigate around within Obsidian. [16:52] So, you also have another section beneath Shortcuts called Recent files. I just figured [16:57] I'd mention this. If you click on it like that you will see that it shows the most recent files [17:02] you have opened. You can change the number of recent files you want to show here as well, [17:08] if you want to show more or less. Now let's see how we can work with a messy inbox. So [17:15] click on the Inbox folder like this. And how can we work with this? So for example [17:20] let's say you have two notes related to photography. We can take these notes and we [17:26] can drag them onto the photo tag like this to tag them with a photo tag. Then we want to maybe [17:31] move them out from the inbox, now when we have tagged them. So let's click on this RAW [17:37] backup strategy, move it into Tips, and click on the Sigma and move it into Lenses like that. [17:46] So this way you can just navigate around things, tag things, move around things, [17:52] delete things, when you delete files, you have this confirmation prompt showing up [17:59] the first time. If you want to change that, you can go into Notebook Navigator as well. And [18:04] just disable it. It's under File operations and you have Confirm before deleting. You [18:13] can also change if you want to ask before you delete attachments when you delete files [18:18] always or never. And you can also change how it will handle conflicts when you're moving files. [18:27] So these were just a few quick tips of how to get started with the shortcuts panel. [18:33] Setting shortcuts, tagging things, moving things around in a very easy and quick way. [18:44] Okay, let me show you how the search function works within Obsidian and Notebook Navigator. [18:49] The search function is available by pressing the search icon at the top of the list pane. And there are [18:56] so many different options and ways you can search and filter notes within Notebook Navigator. So if [19:01] you press this information button to the right here, you will see all the details of all the [19:06] things you can search and filter for within Notebook Navigator. Notebook Navigator [19:11] by itself does not search the contents of all your notes. If you want to do that, [19:15] you need to install the plug-in Omnisearch. And you can do that by going to Settings, [19:21] going to Community plugins, Browse, and search for Omnisearch. Just install it and enable it and [19:30] close. Now if you want to search with Omnisearch you just press this icon to the left in the search [19:38] field like this and it will switch to Omnisearch. Now you will have full text search within all the [19:43] notes. You can also press just up or down to quickly switch between the [19:49] advanced filter searches within Notebook Navigator or full text context search using Omnisearch. It [19:57] all depends on what you want to do. For now I will start with the search field. To be able [20:04] to search and filter properties in addition to tags and files you need to enable them [20:11] in the property section in the navigation pane. I will show you. Remember we added a property called [20:18] status and set it to writing in the note we just created. So let's click on the Configure [20:27] property keys in the property section. And here you pick which properties you want visible [20:33] in the navigation pane. So, we pick the status and you can also choose which you want to be [20:39] able to configure in the list or in the file menu. Let's toggle all three. You can also click the [20:45] row like this to quickly toggle all three. And if you also wanted to toggle all properties, you can [20:50] do that as well. But for now, let's enable the status field and click on Apply. Now if you scroll [20:58] down in the properties list here you see that you have status you can see published and you can [21:03] see writing. In this case we click on writing, you see we have two notes, the new Week 30 [21:08] and one from 2025. So let's begin search. Let's start with adding a search [21:21] filter for notes that have the status writing. So how do you do that? You click the [21:27] search field. You can also add a hotkey to set focus immediately to the search field if you want [21:32] to. Then you press dot and you press status and you set it to writing like that. Now if I [21:42] click the root folder like this, Demo, you will see you have two notes shown, because you have one [21:47] in the 2025 folder and one that was from this year. You can then also add another filter here [21:53] that says when the note was updated or created. So you say 2026 and now you will only see the [22:01] notes with the property writing and that was in this case created, which is what we sort by now, [22:08] in 2026. You will also notice you have this star in the search field. So if I click [22:15] this one you can save this as a shortcut. And in this case, I also always want to start in the root [22:21] folder because I always want to find all notes in my vault that have the status set to writing [22:27] and are from 2026. And I will just save this as Current drafts like that and submit. Now we have [22:35] a new shortcut which is Current drafts, and let me quickly add a hotkey to open the shortcut [22:47] 4 like that. And now if I go to the 2026 folder I can close the search field like that. And I'm [22:56] working with this note here. And maybe I want to see all the notes that are in the current [23:03] drafts. I then press Ctrl 4 and move into the root vault and I see all the notes with that property. [23:11] Then if I want to change the status for this note, I can actually just [23:18] drag it onto the other status called published, like that, and it will now change the property to [23:27] published, as you can see in the properties view here. If you want to change it back I can just [23:32] drag it to the writing. So typically you don't want all your properties visible in the [23:38] navigation pane. You want the properties visible which are the properties you work with. And [23:43] then you can just drag and drop to set the properties. You can actually also right click and [23:47] choose Set property to published or writing, that is if you enabled it to be visible in the [23:53] menu. So all this is really handy to just quickly change the different property settings. So, more on [24:01] search. Let's go into the Photo folder like this. And we have lots of notes. Now let's say I want [24:08] to see all notes with a 50 mm tag like this. I can then command click or control click [24:17] and click on 50 mm and I will now see all the notes in the Photo folder and all subfolders [24:24] since I have the Show files from subfolders with the tag 50 mm enabled. I can also filter more. [24:31] I can add Sony, then I have all the notes with Sony and the 50 mm tag in that folder. Or I can add [24:38] a minus before that and I can get all the Sony notes that are not tagged with 50 mm. And you can [24:44] see in the left navigation bar here there's a red color on the 50 mm saying that yeah, now we are [24:49] not using that tag, or now we're using it. You can also combine these. So if you command click [24:56] 50 mm and then we hold command again and press shift and press 35 mm, you will now see all the [25:04] files within the Photo folder and all subfolders that are either 50 mm or 35 mm. Remember, if I click [25:14] Show files from subfolders it will become empty because I have no files in this specific folder. [25:20] If I enable it again, you will see all the files again. So typically you want [25:26] to change this quite often. So I often like to bind this Toggle descendants to something like [25:34] command shift D. And while we're at it, you also have a shortcut called Search [25:43] whole vault. This is kind of the thing I use most of the time. So I bind that to command shift S as well. [25:49] So now we close this, maybe close the search field, we go into another folder. [25:57] I want to find something quickly in the vault. I can now press command shift S and I'm now [26:04] in the search field for the entire vault. Super quick to quickly find things in the [26:08] vault. To go back I just press tab and then right. And I'm in the editor again. Then I can [26:13] write things, and command shift E back to be able to navigate around, and right back into the editor. [26:24] So, how do you get started with Notebook Navigator if you're coming from another app? Let's say [26:29] you're coming from Evernote. I mean, the current setup is almost exactly like Evernote. You have [26:35] your shortcuts, you have your recent files, you have your folders, and you have your tags. I mean, [26:39] everything is set up typically as you already have it within Evernote with the dual panes and [26:44] so on. If you're coming from an app like Bear for example, you probably work mostly with tags. [26:53] This means that you probably want your tags to be shown above your folders. And you can do that by [27:00] going to Settings and clicking Reorder navigation. And here you can just choose to show the tags [27:07] above the folders like that. And you can also reorder root folders. So if you for example want [27:14] the root folders to appear in a specific order, maybe you want this folder to become [27:20] visible at the top, you can just order them like that. So if I open the vault you see that [27:26] my folder Tech Insights is now shown at the top. You can also change, by default it's sorted [27:34] alphabetically, you can also for specific folders change the individual sort order. For [27:40] example, if I right click this folder, you can change the sort order to, for example, [27:44] from Z to A like that. And you will see you have a small arrow indicating that it has [27:50] a reverse sort order for that folder. And yeah, for some folders, it's very handy to do [27:58] it like that. I will just revert it back to where it was, click reset to alphabetic order, and move [28:06] tags back down below folders. And if you're coming from Day One, you probably wonder [28:13] where is my calendar? Where is my calendar? And we'll come to that in a later section. [28:21] If you're writing a book or working with large documents that span maybe dozens or hundreds [28:26] of markdown files, it has traditionally been very hard to work with those documents within Obsidian. [28:33] And many writers have resorted to using tools like Scrivener or Ulysses to do that. [28:39] With Notebook Navigator, you can do all this and much more right within the Obsidian environment. [28:44] And I will show you exactly how to do that. I have downloaded the Rust programming manual in markdown [28:51] format to this vault. And as you can see, the files are in a mess. If you remember earlier [28:57] in this video, we changed the sort order to be sorted by date created. And we are also sorting [29:03] the files by descending. So this means that if you scroll down this list, this is just not [29:08] workable. What we can do instead is that we of course change it to sort by title and also change [29:15] to ascending. This is a little bit better. But now you have the foreword and title page at the bottom [29:20] and you have the appendix at the top. This is also not what you want. Of course the chapters [29:25] are now looking better but it's still not how you want it. So this is why you can do manual sort in [29:32] Obsidian and Notebook Navigator, and you do this on a folder basis. So to enable manual sort you click [29:39] on the sort button and you have this Manual sort option here. Now before you click it, this current [29:46] sort order shown in the list pane will be used as the initial sort order for manual sort. So if you [29:53] had sorted by descending for example and enable manual sort, I would start with the descending [29:58] sort order. So make sure that your files are in as good a position as possible before you enable [30:04] the manual sort. Now when I enable manual sort it will give you a warning. It says that it will add [30:10] a property to all my notes called sort_index. And this is just so the sort order is stored [30:17] within the files. So you can maybe use another application to open the documents and they [30:22] will appear in the same order there. Click on Use manual sort and you're started. You can of course [30:30] disable that notification dialog if you want that as well. Now as you can see you have this [30:36] kind of sort index value added to the notes and you can see that it's 1,000 2,000 3,000 and 4,000 [30:42] and so on. So how do we do this? Let's start with removing the appendixes. To do that, you click [30:50] on the sort button again and you choose Edit sort order. Now select the appendixes at the top. I [30:57] use shift and click to select them and then just click and drag them to the bottom of the list [31:02] like this. When done, I just release it and they are there. Let me just move the title page, [31:12] summary and the foreword to the top as well. Just scroll down like this and scroll to the top and [31:18] when I'm ready I just release them like that and click on Done. Now that's one way to reorganize [31:25] notes. What you can also do in this case for example, I of course want the title page to be [31:32] first. Then I press the command key, control on PC, and just up on the keyboard like that. And it's being [31:40] moved as well. So you can see to the right you have the sort index field 3375. If I press [31:45] command up again it's changed to 1125. So this is very handy if you're using the keyboard and [31:52] want to move around many notes or one note. Just shift and move the selection and then press command [31:57] or control to just move them up or down like that. Now I'm pretty happy, I have the title page, [32:04] the foreword and summary and then starting with the introduction. Now, something that is missing [32:15] in the list is the group headers, and group headers are very handy to split this kind [32:25] of documents into sections. So let's add some group headers to make it easier to navigate and [32:31] find the things you're working with. So let's start at the first chapter, [32:37] getting started. You right click and you click Set group header and you say Part 1 Getting started [32:47] and you click save, and now you have a section here that says getting started. And you can also [32:53] see in the note properties that it has saved this as a property within the note, Part 1 [32:58] Getting started. Let's add a few more, so we scroll down to ownership, set the group header [33:08] Part 2, and we scroll down into structs and we create a group header here as well. [33:20] Like that. So the group headers are very useful to collapse things that you're done [33:29] with. Say I'm done writing the getting started, I don't want to work on that anymore [33:33] now. Then I can just click the collapse button and hide it like that. Maybe I want to [33:39] hide the ownership. I can hide it like that or expand it. This makes it very easy to [33:46] just focus on the things that you're working on right now in this large list of documents. Now [33:53] as you can see I have word counts enabled on all the notes. If you look at the suffix here [33:59] you can see that I have a word counter enabled. This is accessible in Settings, Notebook Navigator. [34:07] You go into the file display and at the bottom here you can see Word and character count and [34:13] you can place them in the title, you can show them as a property, and you can also show [34:21] a percentage if you have a target goal for each note as well. But in this case let's [34:27] start with ownership and we right click and we change the header and we can just click on [34:31] Show word count like that. Now it will show you the total number of words for this [34:37] entire section. Let's say we wanted to have 15,000 words in this ownership section. Then [34:47] I can right click, change it, and set the target word count of 15,000. And now you will even get [34:55] a progress bar. How far have you come to this kind of 15,000 goal word count? Now you can do so [35:04] many more things with that. By default it will count the words and use the word counter [35:11] here as well. If you set a custom word counter, you can do that as well within the notes. [35:16] For example, if you change the group header and empty this, it says that when this field is empty, [35:24] the group uses the target property setting set in Settings, Word and character counts. [35:30] So if you want to use a specific target for each note, you can set that in the file display [35:40] bottom, and you have this kind of property target, the target word goal, here. I can show you how it [35:47] works. Let's say this is 100. And you can see it starts counting straight away here. [36:02] Here we maybe use 1700, and here... [36:09] Yeah, like that. So you can see all the different options you have for working with this one. It's [36:14] really really flexible. Now the last thing I wanted to show you is the Merge notes feature. [36:21] So let's say we're done with Part 2 here and we just want to ship it. Then we can mark [36:27] all the notes like this. We right click and we choose Merge notes and we can output it as Part [36:34] 2. And you can choose which kind of separator you want between the notes. Maybe a blank line, [36:40] horizontal rule. We'll use blank line. And you can move them to trash if [36:44] you want to after you're done. Then click merge. The interesting part here is that, [36:52] as you can see, you got the Part 2 here. The interesting part you see is that [36:59] it looks just like a regular note like that. Everything is merged into one single [37:04] note. And of course in this case I will remove the group header and the word [37:12] goal. And I will just move it to the top as well. So I can just edit the sort order [37:22] like that. And now Part 2 is done. So this is typically how you do when you're [37:28] finished with a specific section. You can just merge it and you're done for publishing it. [37:36] In this section, I want to show you the calendar features of Notebook Navigator. There are two main [37:41] reasons why Notebook Navigator has a calendar built in. And the first one is that it's just a [37:46] very simple way to both navigate and visualize your notes based on months and select the notes [37:53] for example for a day or a week or a quarter or a year. It's just a very simple way to navigate [37:59] and filter out your notes. The second part is that we already have this kind of thumbnail [38:04] images in a database, which means that when looking at the calendar we can actually show the images [38:11] for a specific day based on these thumbnails. So it's very very quick to display images from [38:17] specific dates. Let me show you how it works. You start the calendar by pressing the calendar [38:23] button in the top left corner here. And by default it's shown at the bottom of the navigation pane. [38:30] So if you go into Settings and scroll down to the calendar settings, you have quite many settings [38:37] to change related to the calendar. And let's start from the top. The first one is the placement. [38:42] I typically like to put it in the right sidebar like that. And we can drag it to the top, and [38:50] Notebook Navigator will remember the position of the calendar. So if you restart Obsidian, [38:57] it will start the calendar in exactly the same position as it was the last time. As you can see, [39:03] it uses the English locale where the week starts on Sunday. If you want to change that, [39:09] you can change the locale, which changes the date formatting, the week numbering, and the [39:14] first day of the week. You can also change if you want to show weekend dates or not. Let's use [39:21] it like that. And you can also of course make the monthly display date longer or shorter. We [39:30] want to show the week numbers as well. Right now it's week 29 and we can also show the quarter [39:37] of the month. The year calendar below can be hidden, but I will show you how we can use that [39:46] later. Now how do we decide which notes we show in that calendar? We have a folder called Journal. [39:54] We have journal notes and they are named year, month and date. So let's go into Settings [40:02] again and make sure that Notebook Navigator finds those notes. So we have the root folder [40:09] for notes and we call that Journal, and then we name the notes, in this case the daily notes. [40:19] We name them year, month, and day. Boom. Now we see the notes in the calendar right away. So we [40:31] can navigate by clicking on a month down here or going back and forward like this. To change the [40:39] image that is used as a highlight, you can just right click any note and pick set as highlight [40:44] to change the highlight here. And this kind of becomes like a yearly calendar. So if you move [40:49] between years, you can see okay what happened in each specific month in the calendar. You also see [40:54] that some of the days have empty circles at the month and dates like this, and that is [41:03] when you have unfinished tasks for each day. So if you just complete these tasks [41:08] then the round hollow circle will disappear from the calendar. If you don't want this kind [41:17] of tasks integration, you can just go into Settings and just disable Show tasks. But it's [41:23] a handy feature to have. Now this is for displaying your journal notes. And there [41:30] are two things that you can do in the calendar to select notes. For example, if you hold down [41:34] the command key and press a specific date, you will now show the notes from that specific day. [41:41] So if I click in the root vault and enable Show files from subfolders, I now have two files, [41:47] the journal entry and the Tech Insights that we just created. I can click the week. Command [41:53] click the week. And now I will see all the notes from this week. So what are my weekly notes? I can [41:59] do that. And if I want to, of course, I can save that as a shortcut, as Week 29. And now I can [42:06] very quickly just click Week 29 to select all my notes from that week. I can command click [42:12] on the month, see all the notes from the month or the quarter. So this is just a super handy way to [42:18] select your notes for specific weeks or months or quarters or even a year. You can [42:24] actually click the year as well like that. Now if you're looking at the week here, it's not [42:30] that good to also see all the journal notes. So I typically like to hide them from showing when I [42:36] have Show notes from subfolders enabled. I do this by going to Settings, going into the display filter [42:45] section. Here you remember we chose to hide the resources folder, and then you have a [42:51] setting called Exclude folders from descendants, and here we just enter /Journal and now all [42:57] the notes in the Journal folder will be hidden when we have Show notes from subfolders enabled. [43:04] You will also see that it has parentheses around the number in the Journal folder here. We can [43:10] still access them by clicking the Journal folder and we will still see them for this week's notes. [43:15] But you won't see them in the root folder. So this is I think very handy when you want to see all the [43:21] notes from a specific month or a specific week, but you don't want to see all the journal notes [43:27] from that specific period. [43:31] Notebook Navigator has a feature called folder notes and if you have used [43:35] folder notes before you know that it's a note that appears when you click on a folder. Well, [43:41] Notebook Navigator has that, but way, way much more than that, which makes it much more [43:46] flexible and much more useful for so many more different occasions than just clicking on a [43:50] folder to see a note. To enable folder notes, you go into Settings and you scroll down into [43:58] navigation pane, folders, and folder notes. And by default, folder notes are disabled. You have to [44:04] enable it by clicking the setting. And let me just show you first how it works. I go back to [44:12] the editor and I right click the Photo folder and I can now choose Create folder note. And [44:20] as you can see it opened in the editor and "This is my folder note for photos". Now if I click back [44:31] on a note like this, you can see the Photo folder is now underlined. So if I click the Photo [44:40] like this I can now directly access my folder note. This is not very useful I think, for me at least. [44:49] I really didn't understand the use for folder notes in this specific way, because it's just [44:55] cumbersome to have to click on the folder notes in that way, and it made the list become [45:00] messy as well I think. So what I did was add another way to access folder notes. So if you [45:06] go back to Settings you can now choose to open the folder notes in the right sidebar instead. [45:13] And this is so much more useful. As you can see now, below the calendar you have [45:20] the folder notes appearing in the right sidebar. This means that you can use it as a scratch pad. [45:30] So let me go into Rust and let me create a folder note for the Rust [45:35] programming manual as well. So, Create folder note here as well. [45:42] Things to do. Merge chapter three. Finish the book. So, you can use this as a scratch pad. Now, [45:54] look what happens when I pick the folder Lenses under Photo. Boom. [46:00] It knows that I'm in a subfolder to the Photo folder, which has a folder note, [46:06] and it opens the scratch pad for the folder note within the right sidebar. The same way [46:11] if I go back to Rust, it immediately opens the folder note as well. I can click on the file, [46:17] I can go back to Photo and click the file. This makes folder notes so much more useful [46:25] because it becomes this kind of scratch pad. So if you're working with different books, [46:28] you can even do this for Lenses, for example. Let me create a new folder note here. [46:35] For Lenses, "Things to do with lenses". Now, if I go back to another folder [46:42] like Flash, it goes back to the Photo scratch pad. If I click on Lenses, it picks the Lenses [46:48] folder note. You go to Rust. It always picks the one with the current context. And this is, [46:54] I think when I came up with this idea of how to work with it, it was just wow. Yeah, this is how [46:59] folder notes was always supposed to work from the beginning. And now I use it every day in every time in every vault [47:07] I work with in Obsidian. So give folder notes a try. Start looking at the different [47:13] settings you can set up in folder notes. You go back into the Settings and yeah, if [47:24] you use them in the right sidebar you don't really need to change them. Of course you can change them [47:27] if you don't want them to be markdown. You can actually have folder notes created as canvas and [47:33] base files. And you can also change how the name will look. If you don't want the folder notes [47:38] to have the same name as the folder itself, you can change that as well. And by default, [47:45] folder notes are hidden from the list. If you want them to be visible, of course, you can [47:49] just disable that setting as well. And that is folder notes, supercharged by Notebook Navigator. [47:59] If you're coming from an application like Bear or Evernote or Apple Notes, there aren't [48:05] that many things you can customize in the user interface. You can customize icons and colors, [48:12] but when it comes to Notebook Navigator, it's on a whole new level. Let me show you [48:17] a little bit of what you can do. So, let's start with our Photo folder and start with [48:22] adding an icon to it. So we right click and we do Change icon and we can write camera. [48:31] And as you can see the icons we have are from the vault. If you have an SVG image in the vault [48:37] it will actually use the SVG image as an icon if you want to. You can also use emojis and you [48:44] have Lucide icons. This is kind of the icons that ship within Obsidian. Now let's say you want [48:51] more icons. You can then go into Settings, scroll down to Icon packs and click Download on [48:57] the icon packs you want to download. The way this works is that Notebook Navigator saves [49:04] into settings the icon packs you have downloaded to the device. So when it syncs to for example [49:10] your mobile device, it will too download the icon packs to the mobile device into its database. [49:16] These icons are downloaded from the GitHub repo. So you can actually see in the GitHub repo exactly [49:21] what it's downloading. So it's not going anywhere else. And of course everything has [49:27] been scanned thoroughly by scanners and so on. Now if I go back to the Photo folder, [49:35] right click and Change icon and write camera, you now see I have many many more different [49:41] options for choosing a camera. I can pick from a Bootstrap icon, Font Awesome, Material Icons, [49:46] Phosphor, and this looks pretty good, the camera from the Material Icons. I can also change [49:53] the background color for this. So let me pick a nice color here. You can pick [49:59] transparency. You have a preview at the top as well to see how it will look. [50:03] And I'm pretty happy with that one. Maybe we give some color as well. And I click Apply. [50:14] Now as you can see, colors are inherited by subfolders and this also goes for tags. So [50:24] if I want to copy the style into the tags I can just copy the style by right clicking, [50:30] choosing Style, Copy style, and paste it into the tag like this, and I have the same style [50:36] for tags. Maybe I want to change the color for the Rust folder as well. So go into [50:42] Change color, and for this Rust maybe do it to rust. Sorry, remove that one in the background. [50:54] Let's pick a kind of red color like this. Maybe we want to do the color white instead. [51:02] Like that. Okay, nice. Now of course this looks a bit messy because they're [51:12] connected to each other. To change that let's go into Settings and we go into [51:19] the navigation pane. This is where you customize how things look in the navigation pane. And [51:28] we scroll down and you find a setting here called Root item spacing. And this is the amount [51:34] of spacing that is put between the root folders here. So let's put this to three. And now you [51:43] can see you have a spacing between the root folders like this. Maybe put it to eight. [51:49] This makes it much easier to separate the root folders from each other. You can also of course [51:56] change other things. If you want to decrease the item height here, you can do that as well. [52:00] By default it scales the item height with the row height. You can disable that if you want to [52:10] restore it. You can change tree indentation if you want that. If you want it to look like [52:17] a table of contents, you can show leaders like that, and then it looks like a table of [52:23] contents and you can even show indent guides to the left if you want to as well. So, [52:28] this is just showing you some of the parts of the things you can customize [52:32] with Notebook Navigator. It's just so many different ways you can customize things. [52:42] Let me show you another way. I'm already having fun here. Let me remove these colors. So, [52:47] remove the style here. Yeah, we clear it. And we clear that one. [52:54] You have another setting which is funny. It's called Rainbow colors. So, [52:58] we go back into the settings, Navigation pane, and you have Rainbow colors. If you [53:09] enable the rainbow colors, we'll put it to text color, all the folders will be using a rainbow color [53:15] like that. You can apply it to shortcuts, recent items. And you can do so many things with this. [53:21] By default it is using a transition style which is hue, which means that it will go through all [53:25] the rainbow colors. You can choose it to be RGB, which means that it will be interpolating between [53:30] the start and end color as well. You can also do the full scope to make it, like, on every level if [53:35] you want to repeat it and so on. Yeah, this is a nice way you can make things pop a bit more. [53:44] You can even apply it to the background color if you want to. And you can of course set transparent [53:49] colors and so on if you want to do that as well. Let me just remove this one as well. But this [53:56] just gives you a little bit of insight in how you can customize all the different things. So [54:02] just play around with the settings, see what you find, and change things as you want to. [54:10] The final feature I want to show you is something called vault profiles. Obsidian saves all your [54:16] files into a folder called the vault. And then this vault is synced between all your devices using [54:22] Obsidian. Now many users, they like to separate their files into many different vaults. For [54:28] example, they have a personal vault, they have a work vault and maybe even have a writing vault [54:32] where you have just your files for writing. So you're not distracted by everything else that [54:37] is happening within your vault. Maybe you have like a YouTube video you want to check or [54:41] something like that. You just don't want to think about that when you're writing your articles or [54:46] documents. The problem with using different vaults like that is that each individual vault has their [54:51] own settings for themes and plugins and you can't sync those between the vaults. So if you have [54:58] say 10 or 15 plugins in your personal vault, say Notebook Navigator, and you change a few settings, [55:03] then you also need to open the work vault to change the same settings to make it look the same. [55:08] And you also need to open the writing vault to make that look the same. And if you update [55:14] your theme in the personal vault, you then need to remember to open the work vault and update the theme. [55:17] It's just a mess to work with multiple vaults like that because there's no way to keep the themes and [55:23] plug-in settings or even Obsidian settings in sync between the vaults. They are just isolated [55:29] separate vaults. To solve that, Notebook Navigator has a feature called vault profiles, [55:35] which gives you virtual vaults within the vault folder. Let me show you how it works. So, [55:41] we go into Settings and at the top of Notebook Navigator, you see I have a setting [55:46] called Vault profile, which is default. Let's add a new profile and call it Writing and submit. And [55:54] the only thing that happened now is that you get a new label at the top left that says Writing. [55:59] You can click on it to change to the default but otherwise it looks identical. Now when we are [56:07] in the Writing vault profile let's try to hide a few folders. Right click Photo and hide that [56:12] one. Let's hide Tech Insights. Hide the Journal and hide the Inbox. Now everything that's left [56:21] in the vault here is the writing. It's the Rust folder. I don't see anything else. If I open [56:26] the tags you can see I don't have any tags here as well. This is just it. I just have my [56:32] 114 untagged files. If I want to go back to the default vault, I can just click here and go back [56:37] to the default vault and I see them there. This is the beauty of switching between different work [56:43] contexts or private contexts. So, how does it work? Well, if you go into Settings and if you remember, [56:51] we've changed the folder visibility in the display filter section. Every one of these [56:58] filters has a suffix called vault profile after them, which means that this setting is saved to the [57:04] vault profile. And now we're in the Writing vault profile and it has hidden the resources as before, [57:11] Photo, Tech Insights, Journal and Inbox. Now if we close Settings, go back to default, we go into Settings [57:17] and we go into the display filters, you can see here we only hide the resources folder. So this is [57:23] the beauty. You will see all through Settings many different settings that have this kind of [57:28] suffix vault profile. For example, if you go into navigation pane, you have one setting here [57:35] called Navigation banner. Maybe you want to show an image at the top left here. That is also [57:40] per vault profile. So you can maybe show an image that this is my work documents with our work [57:45] logo and maybe another image for your personal notes. So extremely flexible to work with. [57:54] That was kind of the vault profiles. The last thing I want to show you is if you [58:00] click on this button, it says disable sync. This means that this setting will be saved [58:06] individually on each device. So if I disable it here, it means that each of my devices, [58:13] my phone can have its own vault profiles and my computer can have its own vault profiles. [58:19] Maybe my laptop can have other vault profiles. If I enable the sync here, [58:24] then all devices will have the same vault profiles. So my phone will have the Writing profile and the default [58:30] profile and so on. So what this basically does is that it changes so instead of saving this setting [58:35] into the shared settings between all devices, it saves this to a local setting instead. And [58:41] there are quite a lot of settings, if you scroll around in the settings, you will find [58:45] quite a lot of settings that have this kind of cloud. For example, if you want to pin the image [58:50] banner to the top, maybe you don't want that on all devices, maybe you don't want it on mobile, [58:55] you just disable it. And if you disable it on one device, it will be disabled on all devices. So [59:01] the sync setting is toggled for each device, if that makes sense. Yeah, [59:09] maybe it doesn't. But anyway, if you want things to be individual for each device, [59:15] just click that one to disable the sync for that one. Otherwise, the setting is saved within the [59:20] data.json file which is saved within the vault which is synced between all the devices. Yeah. [59:29] Okay, it's time to wrap up. I promised you in the last chapter that vault profiles would be the [59:34] last feature I was going to demonstrate. But I just remembered that I want to show you one more [59:37] thing that's pretty cool and that is frontmatter properties. Each note in Obsidian has a [59:44] section called frontmatter properties and it's at the top like this. If you show the notes in source [59:52] mode you will see that you have this kind of three dashes and you have a property and value. And many [59:59] times it would be nice to use this property like title instead of showing the file name [60:04] in the list. So let me show you how you can do that. You go into Settings and scroll down into [60:12] list pane, frontmatter fields here, and just click on enable Use frontmatter metadata and you have all [60:21] these kind of different settings you can change here. Now let's start with the first one, title. [60:27] We want to show the contents of this property instead of the file name. So we just click on the [60:32] name field and pick title. And now it looks so much better. Now instead of showing the [60:39] file name, we show the actual title for this specific note. Now the cool thing about [60:48] frontmatter metadata is that you can also save icon and color for specific files into the file itself. [60:55] So let's say I need to write on What Is Ownership. So I want to mark [61:00] that one. So I'll right click the one and pick Change icon, and... warning. This is important. [61:08] I want to show that, and maybe pick a color as well. So I mark that one. I take the background [61:15] color so I really remember that this is something I need to change, like that. Now you can see [61:24] the settings for this file have been saved to the frontmatter. So the icon is saved into [61:32] the frontmatter as well as the background color. If I go in here and change the background color, [61:40] the frontmatter is updated automatically. If I disable the frontmatter fields again, [61:52] of course it won't be able to read the icon and background again and the title. So typically this [61:58] is something that you want to keep enabled. But then be aware that it saves things into your [62:05] notes. This is why this setting is off by default, because the way Notebook Navigator is designed is [62:12] that it won't mess with your files if you're not asking it to do that. If you enable manual sorting [62:20] it will warn you that this will add a sort property to your files. If you add a group [62:25] header to manual sorting it will warn you. If you want to save icon and color and [62:31] background color to the frontmatter metadata, you need to specifically enable it. Otherwise, [62:37] Notebook Navigator won't touch your files at all. This is by design. So that was the last [62:44] thing I wanted to show you. You can also of course, if you have a created time [62:49] stamp in notes, this is also very useful. There are other plugins that can actually write the [62:56] timestamp when the note was created. Many times when you sync files, depending on which [63:01] sync provider you use, it has a tendency to change the creation time of the file. So if [63:10] you log that with another plug-in, you can then actually show the creation time here based on the [63:16] frontmatter field here. Just make sure to edit the timestamp format so it matches your set [63:21] format in the frontmatter. Now I think I'll clear that style, like that. So that was the Mastering [63:32] Notebook Navigator 3 tutorial. I hope you had fun watching it. If you have any questions at all, [63:37] come to our Discord. You will find the link at notebooknavigator.com or at the GitHub [63:43] repository. And if you have any features you would like to add to Notebook Navigator, send [63:49] them in as a feature request. Right now I don't accept pull requests to the repo because I want to [63:55] have control of the code and I have no problems keeping up to date with coding. On the contrary, [64:01] many users say that I write too much code, that I should slow down, and yeah, we'll see about [64:07] that. But many thanks for watching the video and have fun using Notebook Navigator. Bye.  📄 **Full text:** [[Full Document Contents/Articles/Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian.md|Mastering Notebook Navigator 3 for Obsidian by YouTube]] ## Highlights - And I will show you exactly how to do that. I have downloaded the Rust programming manual in markdown format to this vault. And as you can see, the files are in a mess. If you remember earlier in this video, we changed the sort order to be sorted by date created. And we are also sorting ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ky2sggdkxdbs37spg59y5z3n)) - Note: Concrete demo: taming a messy imported doc set (Rust manual) via sort order + organization. - Tags: atom/literature/h3 - and it opens the scratch pad for the folder note within the right sidebar. The same way if I go back to Rust, it immediately opens the folder note as well. I can click on the file, I can go back to Photo and click the file. This makes folder notes so much more useful ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ky2sg87d4dkrgp5q9jc11p3t)) - Note: Folder notes + scratch pad in the sidebar — turning each folder into a working surface. - Tags: atom/literature/h2 - documents. The problem with using different vaults like that is that each individual vault has their own settings for themes and plugins and you can't sync those between the vaults. So if you have say 10 or 15 plugins in your personal vault, say Notebook Navigator, and you change a few settings, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ky2sfpy8n5th9a86tebt1yqt)) - Note: The case against multiple vaults: settings/themes/plugins don't sync between them — the pain point vault profiles solve. - Tags: atom/literature/h1 - contexts or private contexts. So, how does it work? Well, if you go into Settings and if you remember, we've changed the folder visibility in the display filter section. Every one of these filters has a suffix called vault profile after them, which means that this setting is saved to the ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ky2sg0228ebfsjqwshwr2kwm)) - Note: Vault profiles: per-profile folder-visibility filters let one vault switch between work/private contexts without separate vaults. - Tags: atom/literature/h1