Whenever we find ourselves repeating the same thing when creating a new note, it’s time to find the pattern and figure out a way to automate our Obsidian workflow. This is where the Templates come to play an important role. Templates could dramatically speed up our work by helping us avoid repetitive typing work to make our life much easier and more effective. This article introduces you to Obsidian Core Plugin — Templates.
What Is Obsidian Template?
The template is simply a note with pre-defined variables and plain text that you could apply to your notes when you create them. So basically what a new note looks like is entirely within your discretion as you are the designer of the template. Once you create a template in Obsidian, you could use the template as many times as you want. Create once, and use it all time.
So the biggest benefit the template provides for us is significantly improving the efficiency of our workflow, as well as preventing us from forgetting some important information for the new note like some specific metadata for certain types of notes. As a matter of the fact, you will find templates extremely useful and necessary when you create notes quite often. A good example would be created creating our daily note in Obsidian.
Enable the Core Plugin — Templates
Go to settings -> select “Core plugins” -> search for “Templates” -> toggle on this plugin
You’re ready to create your first template inside Obsidian.
Create a Folder to Contain Our Template(s)
Before creating a template, let’s first create a folder to contain our template(s). Then go to the configuration page of “Templates” to tell Obsidian where to find the template (the folder name).
Create Our Template(s)
The template is simply an Obsidian note. Let’s go ahead to create our first template. Please provide any name you like. We could create multiple templates for different types of notes. Remember, once we’re done with a template, make sure to move it to the template folder.
To sum up, there are three steps to setting up templates:
- step 1: enable the template plugin.
- step 2: create a folder to tell Obsidian where to find your template
- step 3: create template(s) inside the folder
How to Apply the Template to Our Notes
Now Let’s move on to learn how to use the template we just created by following these steps:
- step 1: create a blank new note
- step 2: select “Insert a new template” from the command palette
- step 3: select the template you want to apply to the new note if you have multiple templates
Later on, if you need to create another template for different types of notes, then you just make sure to move the new template into the folder. and create a blank new note, insert a template, choose the template you want to apply to your note, and find time to fill up your note.
When Should We Use Obsidian Templates?
So, if you find yourself creating notes with similar patterns more than once within a short period, you should create a template for it to gain long-term benefits from it.
Wrap Up
Understanding the foundation of Obsidian Templates and knowing how to use them at work is essential to our workflow. I hope you would quickly apply the template to your notes and enjoy working with it.
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