Should you use multiple vaults in Obsidian?
Vložit
- čas přidán 26. 07. 2024
- The more notes you have, the more you might wonder if you should have multiple vaults in Obsidian. There is no definitive answer, but in this video, I talk about reasons you should have only one vault as well as good reasons to have several vaults, based on my own experience. Like with anything I say, take what's useful and do what makes sense!
// TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
00:39 Why keep just one vault
01:23 1. Linking across vaults
03:06 2. Searching across vaults
03:25 3. Serendipity from one vault
04:22 Why have multiple vaults
04:54 1. Distinguishing between private and public
06:06 2. Security and plugins
07:02 3. Development and testing
07:36 4. Keeping assets minimal
08:14 5. Reference vaults
09:17 How to create multiple vaults
If you want to learn more about Obsidian, check out my course for beginners, Obsidian for Everyone: courses.nicolevanderhoeven.co...
---
// ABOUT ME
Site: nicolevanderhoeven.com
Mastodon: pkm.social/@nicole
My work at Grafana Labs: • My work at Grafana Labs
// APPS I USE
- Obsidian: obsidian.md
- Readwise: readwise.io/nicole
- Shortform: shortform.com/nicole
- Reclaim: go.reclaim.ai/eg0tgbamp7cb
- Snipd: link.snipd.com/Cx7S/nicole
Napkin: napkin.one/?via=nicole
// GEAR
nicolevanderhoeven.com/gear/
// WANT TO SUPPORT ME?
❤️ Join my Patreon and get my sample vault with templates: / nicolevdh
☕ Buy me a coffee: ko-fi.com/nicolevdh
⭐ Buy Obsidian for Everyone, my beginner course on Obsidian: courses.nicolevanderhoeven.co...
Note: Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means I may get a small percentage when you sign up using those links. To see how I decide what to promote in this way, check out my Ethics Statement: nicolevanderhoeven.com/ethics/ - Věda a technologie
THEMES: At 2:58, the one on the left is Things (light) and the one on the right is Obsidian Nord (Legacy, dark).
PLUGINS mentioned: Dataview (community), Publish (core)
Could you also tell us which plugin shows the total # of notes and the size?
I basically use two vaults for security, like you said. I have a personal vault and a work vault. I'm a lot more picky about which plugins I use for my work Vault. I only have my work Vault on my work machine and my personal vault on my personal machine. There are times when I learn something for work that I want to copy to my personal vault, so I have it there too. When that happens, I copy the .md files manually and so far, it hasn't been a considerable burden.
Makes a lot of sense! I only use the one machine (I use a personal machine for work as well), but I also have several other work-related vaults. I've also copied things back and forth a few times, but not enough for me to by annoyed by doing it.
This is what I’m currently doing! I’m glad it’s kinda easy, because migrating notes from one vault to the other by manually copy/pasting would be a pain.
I'm literally just starting to use Obsidian and this thought just popped in my mind and this VERY NEW video just been released? I love the universe
Haha! Glad I could read your mind! :) It's been asked a few times so it was high on my list of FAQs. Happy it was useful for you!
Serendipity
Another good reason for multiple vaults is focus
For example I have a folder in my main vault called work, which contains all of my work related notes and that folder itself is a vault that focuses only on work related topics. But I can in the main vault reference my work and integrate it into my Zettelkasten
I never consideree making a nested vault, this is such a great idea
I literally searched 'Nicole van der Hoeven multiple vaults' 3 days back when I installed and started using Obsidian for the first time after watching your videos and was facing the choice of what to name my vault. Thank you for creating this video.
Combining opinionated advice with tutorials is a badass approach I'm not used to seeing.
Way to keep me on my toes, ensuring I confirm I actually have a good reason for what I'm doing.
That's pretty revolutionary for me. I'm subscribing.
Wow! That was a really informative explanation. I was debating whether to have one or multiple vaults and you settled the matter for me when you cited serendipity which I really believe in. Thanks a bunch!
Thank you, Nicole! This helped answer a question as I was getting itchy organizing folders and thinking of separate vaults. Appreciate what you give. ✌🏼
Thank you Nicole! Useful as always, now I understand reasons to use multiple vaults a little bit clearer :)
This was an excellent video. Love the presentation and the format and length. Just enough explanation and ideas without being overly wordy. Subscribed and going to peruse your other videos on notes/obsidian! good find of the day!
Thank you so much! I don't always succeed in keeping the length down, but I'm glad you liked this one anyway. :)
Man this is so helpful. Thanks for putting all of this out there!
You are my source of obsidian knowledge :D
I really love use obsidian, but have not so much time to do my research and read the documentation. So I reaaally appreciate your content :D
Happy to share the research I've already done! :) I would do this stuff for myself anyway!
Thank you for the video. I am starting to use obsidian and it's good to know the use cases for multiple vaults. I had no idea the plugins apply to vaults and not the tool itself
Thanks for delving into this topic, Nicole! It's one that I struggled with in the last month or so after starting to use Obsidian. I tried a few things and really wish I could use a single vault for exactly the reasons you list here, but I decided to keep my work and personal vaults separate. Mostly because I don't want my personal files to be on a work laptop that I don't own. I even tried using a subvault at some point, but I feel like it's not worth the trouble. I've started rsyncing the folders that hold my technical PKM data though. I figure if I change jobs, I can dedicate a new vault to my new job and move my old job's vault into my main one. It's working okay so far.
That totally makes sense and mirrors how I made the decision for myself too! I WISH I could keep things to one vault - it would be simpler that way - but I think it's just cleaner to have some things separated out. Glad to hear you stumbled upon the same solution, and that it's been working well for you so far!
Good job! Thank you for your content.
Thank you for making this video! One of my scenarios for a separated vault (folder) is archiving unnecessary / outdated notes lol
Hi Nicole (et al) - thank you so much for all of the videos, they have transformed a recovering Evernote user. I use 3 vaults. 1 is published and has ~8 notes and is just for posting my non-profit website. Has nothing to do with anything else and is basically idle. I have another 2 - 1 for work stuff and another for personal like many other people. The biggest reason for me to keep them separate is tags. I don't want an overlapping tag tree as I like to keep my tags tidy. I like the fact that I can autocomplete tags and if I kept the vaults together as a single vault, I would have to sort more through the tags. I am doing my best to keep a data model note up-to-date. The work and personal stuff have really nothing to do with each other so it wouldn't be helpful to keep them together, and (I use dropbox) I can have my wife use Obsidian - not there yet, but I'm sanguine - to just see our personal stuff without having to sort through work stuff. Thanks again!
I like your videos and always thank you for your obsidian tips! 😊
Glad to hear it! :)
That "La Revedere" from the end, really touched my heart ❤️ as I am a Romanian and I didn't see it coming 😂
Awwww. I'm glad to have surprised you. Romanian is a beautiful language from the little that I've studied of it. It's also the Romance language I know the least. I plan to learn it more at some point! <3
Top tier content. Thanks!
I went back to good, old folders and sub-folders. I use three: Business, Personal and Miscellaneous. Only one Vault. Thought about using multiple vaults and I decided I do not need more vaults. Great video, by the way.
Great video 👍🏼
Thanks! I see your videos from Iran.
This channel is best on obsidian
If you use multiple vaults be careful not to put information in the wrong vault. I had related notes in 3 vaults with a total of 6 vaults (some for testing) it took a bit to find them and get them in the correct vault.
Limit what vaults are open at once or use different themes for different vaults to tell them apart.
nice video. I was actually wondering whether to have a separate vault to store only my highlights (again, thousands) to have them searchable in a single place. but I thought it added too much noise, impeding rather facilitating my own notes writing. Your concept of "reference valut" pretty much fits what I had in mind, thanks!
This helps a lot, thanks!
I have 3 vaults. 1 for my main school degree notes that's a catch all to anything computer science related (since that's my major), 1 for anything that's school related but not computer science related (required core classes like history, math, political science, etc.), and 1 for my personal, which has things like notes on books I've read, personal research that has nothing to do with any of the topics I've learned in school.
And I keep a "archive folder" on the second vault so that when my non-essential class is over, it doesn't clutter up my synced vault with pdfs that I won't need for the upcoming semesters. I keep these items "backed up" onto my home computer (rather than on the sync) so that I always have them when I do need them, but I never have to worry about how much space left I have on my obsidian sync.
The only reason I use Obsidian sync instead of some other 3rd party is because a) I can afford it, b) the first time I tried using something else (mainly onedrive cloud) most of my notes were either duplicated 3 or 4 times (usually ending in a number (note.md note 1.md note 2.md)) or some completely vanished off the face of the earth, and c) when I used others like Google Drive (which I use to store textbook pdfs as I found its easier to link the web page rather than have the whole textbook pdf in my vault (taking up quite a bit of space after all the books are in there).
I do imagine, however, that after I graduate, I may have just 1 vault, or I may decide to keep computer science related topics separate from all my other notes and have 2 vaults. I do think if I were to create any more vaults in my daily system, it would have to be for very specific purposes, like if I were to start taking notes in my new D&D campaign, I would want to keep that separate from everything else since it's something I want to keep track of but separate from my daily life notes (keeping reality separate from fantasy).
Thank you for your help! Much appreciated :)
Thanks for watching! Glad to help! :)
💡 A BETTER IDEA is to use a free folder sync utility (there are many e.g. SyncFolders, unison etc. nice, robust and free) and make a sync of the selected files from another vault to the new current vault. This way all the relevant files are at hand and we can use them without the clutter of the old settings. The new vault can have new rules, new plugins, and new structure. I create a folder (with the necessary files synced in it) in the new vault. If you want the whole vault files to be available, just exclude the following folders
\.obsidian
\.stfolder
\.trash
I've always stuck to one vault. It's simple and means I can easily link notes and search all my notes.
For me, the case for separate vaults comes down to privacy/security (don't want everything on my work device) and sync speed (primarily for mobile as it does not sync in the background). While folders can be excluded from sync, it's a client side setting which can be modified.
Thanks. I create a branch with Git, make changes and then merge the required changes. I like low-risk. Have a great weekend, love and light. 🌹
I do that for the work stuff! :) But not for the personal stuff, since I also version them on Dropbox automatically. You have a great weekend too!!
I would love a detailed, explain like I'm 5, kind of video on this!
One way to sort of have both worlds if you maintain multiple vaults is to create a "super vault" that consists of subdirectories that are symbolic links to the vaults you wish to combine into the super vault. This does not overcome many of the drawbacks of multiple vaults but it does give you a view of all the vaults in a single vault. Cross linking between vaults will work in the super vault but then when you open any of the individual vaults that type of link will be broken. So it's still problematic but it does work to a degree. A symbolic link, or symlink, is just a file that points to another file or directory. They are supported on Linux and Mac OS but I don't know about Windows.
Interesting. I'm a complete beginner to Obsidian but encountered this problem as soon as Iopened Obsidian and was asked for a folder.
Note that if you do combine vaults in the way I describe with symbolic links or just a directory above your vault directories, the tricky part is crafting an appropriate ".obsidian" subdirectory for your "Super Vault" of vaults. If the sub-vaults have plugins and settings these will need to be configured in the super vault as well. It usually will suffice to simply copy the largest most complex vault's .obsidian folder up to the super vault. But care must be taken to get all the plugins installed and, more difficult, configured in the same manner they were in the original vaults. YMMV. Buyer beware. Use Caution. Slippery Road Ahead.
@@doctorfree thanks for the heads-up!
I think, I will still be using multiple vaults. But I will try to merge some of them, if it's possible. Thanks for sharing your way of thinking.
Pretty new to obsidian myself, but as a TTRPG player myself I decided to have one vault for every system I play (it's not all DnD), so notes can have the same name but since they exist within a context of a completely diffferent system, they are not related at all.
I personally have 3 vaults
One for my business stuff, One for my dnd campaigns and one for general life/organization
Works for me.
Hey Nicole, great video !
Don't you have a separate (or any) vault also for mundane things like cook recipes or home projects ?
I think that completely unrelated topics would also deserve a separate vault, right ?
Mulțumesc foarte mult!
Thanks!
Thank you so much! I appreciate you!
I use separate vaults for the following reason. Some of my vaults are actually synced (if you want to call it that) with Github. I do not want all my notes in the github but perhaps just a certain topic. This way the vault (or folder on the hard drive) is synced and pushed to the github repo as and when required; updating the repo online for others and for the benefit of using the other tools in the repo (wiki, version and revision control, tracking issues, etc etc.)
This (IMHO) is a great use of both systems. You have the beauty of Vaults on your hard drive that are managed as and when you update them, plus you have full versioning and sharing of the markdown files via Github and GPL licensing.
I originally considered putting my portfolio stuff in my main vault. But after 1 minute of going through my journals to fix some layout stuff, I decided that no matter how low the odds, I could NOT risk sending any of that to my teachers by mistake. I have 3 vaults now, one temporary one that's my old really unorganised stuff from ages of old, my main vault that I'm trying to migrate all my various note scraps from the bajillion other apps I've used into (including the first vault), and then my Perfectly Pristine Portfolio Pages, Prime for Publishing... This is perhaps optimal for me.
The ability to use different plugins between vaults was annoying at first, but over time I find that it's invaluable for stuff like publishing, work/home, or other multiple-identity stuff. No need to hold back on the rainbows in your normal vault if they only apply to that one, or suffer when your universal vault stops opening on mobile because you added some platform-fussy plugin to your PC vault...
I'm not meticulous enough to properly use multiple vaults and remember what exactly I've been putting in it. I mean, just one vault with numerous folders needed some awareness to comply to them. I stick to my main folders: Attachment, Templates, Daily Notes and that special folder "Portals" which is honestly Kanban boards, Dataview Notes per topic listed on the kanban and however else I could create a down-up approach which basically utilize tags and templates per intention. And even then, it took time take a hold of my brain's mess. (Templates save my life because I rarely have an organize mind to prepare for moments that I have no idea what I want to do except take a note of something coz "it might be useful, i just don't know when" moments.)
Hello Nicole I had book highlights in one vault and in another vault I had book highlights too, so I was able to copy and paste it so that both were in the same vault and then I could reference link between the two.
Nice video and thanks for Fixing my problem before it got completely out of control. I was creating a mess.
I do have one question though, as I have now cleaned it up and made only one vault.
Two of the vaults were very important so I copied and pasted and then deleted the extra vaults directly using APPLE FILES instead of doing each one separately in Obsidian.
??Do you have any idea if markups/links etc will stay functional as if I had done it properly from the start ? Or should I expect buggy and maybe just redo it ?
creating back links properly especially if I’m trying to do it to a block or a specific line so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
Hi Nicole - hope all is well.
Could you make a video on how to setup a habit tracker in Obsidian with the tracker plugin? Something similar to the HabitNow android app.
I've tried by myself but I am a complete newbie when it comes to coding.
Thanks! Love your content btw.
I quickly noticed the advantage of a mono-vault, auto-complete for any link or tag in your second brain. The one situation where I did feel the urge to have multiple vaults is as a "sidecar" to a media collection. Music and movies have metadata with lore and other such info, but it doesn't really belong attached to the files. And if you dump metadata files in the folders you don't get the benefit of unshackling from the constraints of folders (with links and tags).
So I'm thinking about making an Obsidian vault from the metadata I've accumulated about music. What do you think @nicolevdh is it a good idea? I'm kinda held back because I want more tooling to make migration less tedious. I'd Obsidian all the things ! but if the work were higher-level, more broad stroke decisions and less tedious text editing.
lady!! you are owesome. thanks for your videos!! you inpire me :)
Thank you! I'm very happy to hear that. Thanks for watching. :)
Would you recommend someone who is writing manuscripts to use the same vault for all their books or create separate vaults for each book/series of books? I am wondering if compartmentalizing is a good idea or if it is just how I've forced my brain to work using other programs that don't have the same flexibility. I'm curious to know your thoughts and opinion on this if you happen to see this.
Wow! This is very important feature according to me (cross-vaults link). Because that feature makes modular to everything. By the way thank you because I was researched that feature much.
The reason I'm making more vaults at the moment is because my main vault ran out of room and I'm making a separate one for all my photos (since I almost never need to link to those from my main vault) and one for all of my music notes, because I have a lot of recordings and notes about songs, etc. so it takes up a LOT of space. So that's another reason to make another vault, is not to compartmentalize, but just to separate out LARGE categories that don't often interact or coincide, so that things don't get too full
How can a vault run out of room? (genuine)
gold🔥🔥🔥
I apologize for asking this but I couldn't find a clear answer but I have a lot notes in my vault and after adding all those files my vault keeps indexing despite saying it should do it once. I have tried turning on restricted mode and still does the same thing. Any ideas why this is happening? and how to possibly fix? Thank you!
Hello! I'm a novelist writing a tetralogy and stumbled upon obsidian after trying to find a secure and private note-taking app to collect all the info I've written about my series. But I've also thought I might use obsidian for personal use as well, like school, work, lesson planning, and other things. I haven't started yet, but would it be an alright idea to create two vaults, one for personal use and one for everything in my series? I don't really want to overload the personal vault or really want the two to touch. Thoughts?
Whatever works for you! It sounds like you want them to be separate, so I'd go with that. If you change your mind later, they are just folders on your local machine, so you'll be able to merge them if you have to. :)
Great timing for this video, for me at least. One question, is it possible to have a vault template so that I can create a new vault having a standard set of desired plugins and themes, or is it best just to copy the .obsidian file from a vault with the desired pluging/themes the newly created vault. Thank you for all your great videos!
Hey! I should have mentioned this in the video, now that I think of it! You can do this by creating an empty vault with all the plugins and settings you want, and then duplicating it and renaming it for each new vault. :)
@@nicolevdh Makes perfect sense! Thank you!
Wait, sorry I'm new. So every time you create a new vault you have to re-add the previous plugins? How many vaults does a person usually have?
Hi Nicole. Great video like your other ones. I use a lot of vaults. I copy the .obsidian folder and that works perfect. Only one problem. The security is reset ones for every new vault. Do you know how to set that default to off so that I can use the community plugins without manually changing the setting?
Thanks! :) Hmmm, do you mean that you have to disable Safe Mode? I don't know a way around that, but that should be the only setting you change, no?
@@nicolevdh Yes. That is correct I have to disable "Safe Mode" manually for every vault on each PC or Mac. As I use more than 600 vaults and a PC and a Mac it is frustrating to do this 1200 times ☺. I was hoping that you would know the answer. I learned a lot from your video's. Thanx for that.
@@wardroef3354 Wow, you weren't kidding about a lot of vaults! Maybe the devs would tell you how, or maybe that's a nonnegotiable security measure 🤔
How would we make notes on, let’s say different school textbooks? It seems like it would be impossible without different vaults because the title of the book > the chapter > the difference headings and topics within the chapter. I just feel a folder and a sub folder alone isn’t good enough. Is there any plugin or something that I’m missing that allows us to have a Folder > Sub folder > Folder within the sub folder? That’s exactly what I need.
You can nest folders infinitely (as long as the total adress length is below the charater limit, which was 256 characters in windows if I remember correctly. That is because of the file explorer’s limitations, not related to obsidian)
I just downloaded Obsidian because I’d want to use it for projects which I intend to have on GitHub. But I don’t want all the files in my vault in one GitHub repo. I’d want them in separate repositories. How can I do that?
at 5:10 I see your display noting there are 5,550 notes in the vault - Is this information provided by a community plugin? I'm not seeing an area in the Settings that enables/disables this function. Lesser question - is that total .md files or also including attachments like .png, .pdf
Hi Chuck! Yes, it's called Vault Statistics! The community plugin shows all files including attachments. However, I am using a version I modified to allow for excluding certain folders. I use it to exclude images (I don't really keep PDFs in my vault) so the number only includes Markdown files for me.
windows doesn't use hard link for directories like Linux... you can have multiple vaults in one folder . then (operating system hack) use a hard link between notes ... and this new vault would be in reader mode. so dependending on how links are in the vault settings.they may break. but it supposed to help with the aha moment and you can use advance Uri to make the link
Well with heavy use of dataview, when a vault is getting bigger, using the vault on a mobile phone can become laggy or completely crush.
What if I don't want internal links to be suggested across completely different things. For example if I'm at work, trying to make a note about something I need for my job, I don't WANT similar named notes to be suggested from my personal vault.
hi everyone, is there a way to make obsidian treat shortcut folders as regular folders? on my specific use case, i need to keep the original folders and files on a different drive but open them inside obsidian as a single vault.
i made a regular shortcut file pointing to that folder inside the obisidian vault folder, but it did not work. it did not show inside obsidian at all.
i want to open up those folders using a single obisidian vault to keep them organized without detaching the original files on its original project folder.
also, all files have been converted to .md already
any plausible solution or workaround would be greatly appreciated.. thank you in advance if ever someone could help ^_^
Дякую, дуже інформативно та зрозуміло 💙💛
I just recently started using Obsidian. I am using multiple vault.
Because I have many interests and also, I can separate my Studies to my interests.
How do you sync your vaults via GitHub? I haven't really figured out how to do that yet!
I currently have just the 1 vault but am thinking of creating two for my uni studies (different subjects) and one for the world that most of my fiction writing will be set!
Hi Toran! GitHub is a whole other kettle of fish, and I only really recommend it for developers or technical writers. There's a lot to teach, unfortunately! But you can get started here, if you'd like: pulse.ly/m5gzft2v7g
@@nicolevdh no worries.
I'll need to learn Git eventually, so ta for the link. 🙂
Is there a recommended plugin for copying over the images when we move the .md file? That's the biggest challenge for me. I use a lot of images for engineering diagrams.
Hey! I don't use a plugin for this; instead, I make it a point to put my images in a separate folder (in my case, I call it "assets"). I also set this as the default image folder in Settings > Files & Links. That way, all images are automatically saved here. When I move over a file, I also move the image folder.
If you need to tie images more closely to the Markdown file, I would consider creating a folder for both and putting the images in there instead. That way they're easier to move around.
I am new to Obsidian but def not feeling the need for more than one vault, I do use a folder for work and that's it.
Go with the gods! :) Whatever works for you is great!
I would definitely rather have just a massive monovault but for performance reasons I’ve had to split into six.
IMO, yes, of course. There will be things that you never want to touch each other, hence the ability to have multiple vaults, but the level of separation between them currently is like having a work phone and a personal phone - you have to make a significant step to switch from one to another. Not being able to link from one to another seems like an arbitrary, pointless limitation - basically the only thing about Obsidian that I genuinely dislike. If you could move or link from one to another, I don't think anybody would ever question this. That we have numerous luminaries in the community (like yourself) asking this, is confirmation to me that it's an issue.
Is that the White Hack in the background to your left?
Yes! Good job spotting it! :) I often leave books I'm reading in the background that nobody notices, hehe.
@@nicolevdh I've been studying White Hack as well, and recognized the cover.
I'm torn between organizational methods by using Tagging, then coloring those tags, but then do I display the tags in the graph view, or just leave it floating?
I saw Excalibrain, but I haven't got to using that yet.
I highly recommend ExcaliBrain! I think it's much more useful as a visual overview than the native graph view is. I don't use tags much myself, so I filter them out-- but whatever works for you is totally valid!
I use two vaults, one for personal and one for work.
Sounds like a valid reason to make a separation! For me, it's not so easy to define what's work-related and what's not, so I just put most things in the same vault. 😅
I need to transfer my notes to a new vault since all my community plugins are disabled every-time I open the vault.
Hmmm, sounds like something else is going on in there. Safe mode should stay disabled if you've disabled it. Might be worth going onto the Obsidian community forum or Discord server: pulse.ly/c4608r5nny
@@nicolevdh Thank you. Removing app.json seemed to work.
I don't even use folders 😅
Aren't you an adventurous fella... I'm the same way except I'm just putting everything in daily notes and hope that future me categorizes them as needed 🤣
I put my vault on a USB so I can move it from laptop to PC whenever I want.
1 life 1 vault
Stop reading my MIND to answer my questions IT'S REALLY CREEPY
One for physical, exercise, diet, wieght, eating habits. One for everthing else
Interesting division, but it does make a lot of sense! Tracking information probably doesn't really need to be linked to your "main" vault too much.
Thanks for your vids, i’m discovering Obsidian that is fantastic and so flexible and powerful. Btw about this vid and Vault, don’t understand why, but i have separate vaults in iPad app, and on mac, vaults are presented as folders as in one single default Vault (with respective inner-folders and files) 🤯🫠 If someone read this and have an idea, please tell me 🙏🏻
Glad you like the videos! It sounds like it's possible you're not looking at the same folder structure, but this probably needs more troubleshooting. I suggest you check out pulse.ly/0t88mflu7s and pick one of the options there to get help. Good luck!
@@nicolevdh Thanks for reply. Nope, same root & folder structure in Cloud (Obsidian/FoldersABC), mystery 🤯 Btw i’ll look on your link, thank you.