Obsidian Vault Guide

Overview

All plugins, key bindings, and the theme can be customized to your liking, but this is what’s on by default.

Philosophy

1. Plug-and-play Astro blogging experience.
2. Emphasis on customization and modularity.
3. Visual parity between backend and frontend.

Theme

For out-of-the-box customization, Oxygen theme is used, based on the Minimal theme system. It uses a slick color scheme that’s highly customizable.

The Oxygen Theme Settings plugin is also installed by default, giving you complete control over your experience. You can even define your own color scheme presets. More on that below.

CSS Snippets

astro-modular-styling gives embedded HTML elements a similar look to how the theme handles them on the front end, for example form and button styling.

Important Hotkeys

Here’s a guide for some important hotkeys set especially for this theme:

• Toggle left side panel: CTRL + ALT + Z
• Toggle right side panel: CTRL + ALT + X
• Toggle tab bar: CTRL + ALT + S
• Navigate back: ALT + ←
• Navigate forward: ALT + →
• Open homepage: CTRL + M
• Add a new property: CTRL + ;
• Toggle property visibility for current note: CTRL + ALT + P
• Toggle reading view: CTRL + E
• Toggle Zen mode: CTRL + SHIFT + Z
• Insert image: CTRL + '
• Insert image into property: CTRL + SHIFT + '
• Insert callout: CTRL + SHIFT + C
• Rename current content: CTRL + R
• Open SEO audit: CTRL + SHIFT + A
• Open Terminal: CTRL + SHIFT + D
• Open Astro Modular Settings: CTRL + SHIFT + ,
• Git: Commit and Sync CTRL + SHIFT + S

If you’re on Mac, CTRL = CMD.

Plugins

Disabled default core plugins:

• Canvas
• Daily notes
• Note composer
• Page preview
• Templates
• Sync

Community plugins enabled:

• Alias Filename History
• Astro Composer
• Astro Modular Settings
• Bases CRM
• Default New Tab Page
• Git
• Homepage
• Image Inserter
• Oxygen Theme Settings
• Paste image into property
• Paste image rename
• Property Over Filename
• SEO
• Settings Search
• Simple Banner
• Simple Focus
• Status Bar Organizer
• Tag Wrangler
• Title-Only Tab
• Zen Mode

Astro Modular Settings

The Astro Modular Settings plugin was specifically made for this theme. It has everything you need to easily tweak your blog’s features. It edits the project’s config.ts file, even though it’s outside of the Obsidian vault’s root directory.

A wizard will open at startup which will lead you through some configuration options. You can disable this pop up if you like.

Pretty much anything else you’d possible want to customize is in the settings of the plugin. You can also create your own theme, import and export configs, and a bunch more.

Astro Composer and Alias Filename History

Handy for easily creating new notes as Astro blog posts, pages, projects, or docs. Just create a new note with CTRL + N, type in a title in Title case or with special characters, and the note or folder name generated is a kebab-case version of the title without special characters. This is ideal for automating content page slugs.

You can also define and set default properties that can be generated automatically or manually set for any open note as well. The “Standardize properties” command can help set or reorganize any missing properties or tags, especially if you update your properties template down the road.

Unlike other themes, you can use wikilinks or standard markdown links, without having to convert those to internal links for Astro with the “Convert internal links for Astro” command. This theme supports any internal link that works with Obsidian.

You can also easily grab links to headings by right clicking one and selecting “Copy Heading Link”.

CTRL + R allows you to easily rename blog posts, and note filenames (or parent folders) get updated in kebab-case automatically. When this happens, the old filename will be stored as an alias by default via the Alias Filename History plugin. This means redirects of the old post or page URL will go to the current post’s slug, which is configured in Astro.

You can adjust lots of settings including regex for ignoring names (like Untitled or a _ prefix), timeout in seconds to store the name, or looking for changes in the parent folder name as well if you use the folder-based post option.

Astro Composer also has several useful commands. To open terminal quickly, use the Open terminal command. It’s been modified for Windows, macOS, and Linux to start terminal in the relevant directory so you can easily do standard package manager commands with pnpm or npm. It can be activated with CTRL + SHIFT + D.

You can also launch the Edit Astro config command, which will open your config.ts file. You can access this if you want, but it’s a bit easier to just launch the Open Astro Modular Settings command instead. You can also press CTRL + SHIFT + , to open it, or use the conveniently-placed icon next to the traditional Obsidian settings icon (which can be toggled off in Astro Composer’s plugin settings if you don’t want it there).

Homepage, Default New Tab Page, and Bases CRM

All three of these plugins work together so you’re default screen is a .base file that’s a directory of all of your blog posts, listed in reverse-chronological order. You’re able to configure the CMS view and even add new views to your liking.

I call this “Home Base.”

Bases CRM lets us treat a grid of content like a content management system. You can select multiple items and do bulk edits, rename content right from that view, or toggle the draft status of an item.

Oxygen Theme Settings, Simple Focus, Zen Mode, and Status Bar Organizer

The Oxygen Theme Settings plugin helps you customize your experience if you use the provided Oxygen Obsidian theme and can help you focus on writing.

You’ll notice a wide variety of color scheme options, most of which were included in the Minimal theme upon which Oxygen was based.

Should you desire to hide any of the panels, you can use CTRL + ALT Z for the left side panel, CTRL + ALT + X for the right side panel, or CTRL + ALT + S for the tab bar. Pressing it again will reveal it again.

With the Simple Focus plugin, you can can simplify your file explorer view to just the directory that’s immediately relevant to your currently-open file. Just click the toggle focus button or right click a directory in the file explorer pane to pare down on the number of files and folder you’re seeing.

Zen Mode offers another quick option to focus on your writing. Pressing CTRL + SHIFT + Z will enter Zen mode. When activated, all elements removed except for your content. Use the keystroke again to exit.

If you like, you can install the Style Settings plugin for even more control over your experience.

Using a Theme Other Than Oxygen

If you’re just interested in hiding UI elements and wish to use a theme other than Oxygen, you can install the Hider plugin and use the aforementioned Style Settings plugin to hide the Properties heading and the “Add Property” button. For that use case specifically, you can also enable the hide-properties-heading-and-add-properties-button.css CSS snippet which you’ll find under Settings > Appearance without using any plugins at all.

Paste Image Rename and Paste Image Into Property

Quickly drag and drop image files or paste directly from your clipboard and give them kebab-case, SEO-friendly names. Both work directly in note content or within properties.

Image Inserter

Pull in images from Unsplash or other sources easily with just a few keystrokes. Just use CTRL + ' to insert an image - and immediately set a SEO-friendly filename for it via the Paste Image Rename plugin. Insert into the designated property with CTRL + SHIFT + '

Tag Wrangler

Makes managing tabs more useful. Can easily bulk-rename tags or search your content by tags.

Title-Only Tab

Pulls from the title property instead of using the file name for any tab.

Property Over Filename

When linking or searching notes, you can use the title property as its primary identifier, which is more helpful visually and semantically for linking between and searching for content, since note file names are post/page slugs in kebab case instead of titles.

When you link to another note, its title is automatically set as the hyperlinked text, but you can easily change it to something else after it’s been inserted.

Settings Search

Simply provides a global search option for all settings in Obsidian.

SEO

Get a snappy audit of your content for search engine rankings and AI parsing. You can get a quick snapshot of your whole vault or drill down into specific posts. You can configure the settings to turn off checks you don’t care about or tweak the logic in the calculations.

Simple Banner

Adds a nice-looking banner on the top of each compatible content, as long as a valid image property is defined. Matches the cover image used in the Bases CMS view.

BRAT

Used to load Astro Modular Settings, or the currently-pending plugins that haven’t been added to the community plugin directory yet: Alias Filename History, Astro Composer, Disable Tabs, Oxygen Theme Settings, Property Over Filename, and SEO plugins as well as the Oxygen theme. Future versions of this vault will remove BRAT versions in favor of the official releases.

Git, Commander, and Status Bar Organizer

With the Git plugin, you can easily publish to your Astro blog without leaving Obsidian. Simply configure with git to enable it. By default, you’ll see your current git status and count of files changed (if any) in the status bar on the bottom right.

To publish, you can use CTRL + SHIFT + S or click the “commit-and-sync” button on the status bar (added with the Commander plugin). Your changes will be committed and pushed to your remote repository automatically.

Status Bar Organizer ensures the commit-and-sync icon stays on the far right. You can also use it to hide or re-arrange status bar items to your liking.

Disable Tabs

This is off by default, but if enabled, opening any new tab replaces the current one only. Especially nice for when you’re hiding the tab bar and don’t want multiple tabs. If you enable this plugin, you’d probably want to use some of those optional CSS snippets mentioned above to make window management easier.

When combined with the Homepage and New Default Tab plugins, CTRL + T and CTRL + M essentially do the same thing.

Mobile

Disabling the Git Plugin

It’s recommended to disable the Git plugin on mobile and use something like Git Sync for iOS and Android (or MGit just for Android) instead. The Git plugin is notoriously buggy on mobile so it’s better to use something else.

Here’s how to disable it:

1. On your mobile device, open Obsidian, and open your Astro Modular site’s src/content folder as a vault.
2. Open the left sidebar and open Settings.
3. Scroll down to community plugins and tap on Git from the list.
4. Scroll all the way down and select “Disable on this device”.
5. Restart Obsidian.

This method is recommended rather than merely disabling the plugin, since if you sync with your desktop it will also get disabled there, too. This way it’s disabled per-device.

Limitations

The Astro Modular Settings plugin, the Paste Image Into Property plugin, and the Commander plugin UI buttons are all disabled on mobile.

Customization

To tweak the mobile-specific experience, there are two main places to check: Toolbar and Appearance in settings.

Toolbar

Under the Toolbar settings, you can set the mobile quick action which is triggered by pulling down from the top of the screen by tapping the “Configure” option.

Below that you can adjust what options are available to you on the mobile toolbar.

Appearance

Under the Appearance settings, locate “Interface” and the “Ribbon menu configuration” option’s “Manage” button. You can set your preferred quick access item from the list, and customize which items appear on the ribbon menu.

If you keep scrolling down, you can find some optional mobile-specific CSS snippets, some of which were mentioned earlier.

You’re All Set

Assuming you have git working on your phone in another capacity, you now have seamless content sync between your desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile devices.