My personal use of Obsidian
Posted on - November 7, 2025 by Andy Cinquin
ObsidianPluginsProductivity
Hello!
Today in this article, I'm going to give a little overview of how I personally use Obsidian,
First off, we have several options available in Obsidian,
"Core plugins" and "Community plugins". Roughly speaking, these are the plugins built natively into the app and those developed by people who use the software and have contributed to the tool's open-source ecosystem.
For Core plugins, I have pretty much all of them activated. They're all good, it just depends on your workflow, and honestly, I'm not going to get into the details!
For Core plugins, I have pretty much all of them activated. They're all good, it just depends on your workflow, and honestly, I'm not going to get into the details!
However, what we're interested in here are the community plugins.
So, we're going to introduce each plugin one by one here!
Making daily notes and automated todo lists
Dataview
This is the plugin that lets me make a daily list of things to do and things I've left aside. I check back on it from time to time, if I'm not sure where I'm at or if I have too many things going on in parallel. It lets me connect all my todo lists!
Here's an example of what it looks like:
## Á faire aujourd'hui !
\`\`\`dataview
TASK WHERE !completed AND due <= date("2024-02-23") AND due != null
\`\`\`
and this, this kind of thing, lets me directly get this kind of summary in a daily note:
In addition to Dataview and the little script I have above, I use a few other plugins to get this exact result:
Templater
I have a folder where I put all my templates:
for example, my exact template is the following:
Basically, we define the date each day, the title of the item, automatic links, and automatic todo lists, and this allows me, with Dataview, to have the todolists from the screenshot just above, in daily mode!
And to get this kind of result, with a sort of history of what I've modified, saved, and generally done every day!
#{{date:YYYY}}/{{date:YYYY-MM}}/{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}
# {{date:YYYY-MM-DD dddd}}
## Journal
Lien todo daily : [[T.Perso]]
---
## Á faire aujourd'hui !
\`\`\`dataview
TASK WHERE !completed AND due <= date("{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}") AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
## à faire (général)
\`\`\`dataview
TASK WHERE !completed AND due - date(today) >= dur(0 days) SORT due ASC
\`\`\`
---
## ForHives
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE contains(file.tags,"#forhives")
AND !completed
AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
## My Makeup
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE contains(file.tags,"#makeup")
AND !completed
AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
## ForMenu
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE contains(file.tags,"#formenu")
AND !completed
AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
## Pro (Principal)
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE contains(file.tags,"#pro_principal")
AND !completed
AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
## Obsidian Todos
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE contains(file.tags,"#obsidian-todo")
AND !completed
AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
## Pro (Secondaire)
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE contains(file.tags,"#pro_secondaire")
AND !completed
AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
## Cours
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE contains(file.tags,"#cours")
AND !completed
AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
## Alternance
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE contains(file.tags,"#alternance")
AND !completed
AND due != null
```
---
## à faire Sur 2 mois
\`\`\`dataview
TASK
FROM "Y. Todo's & Listes"
WHERE (
contains(file.tags,"#alternance")
OR contains(file.tags,"#formenu")
OR contains(file.tags,"#forhives")
OR contains(file.tags,"#makeup")
OR contains(file.tags,"#cours")
OR contains(file.tags,"#pro_principal")
OR contains(file.tags,"#pro_secondaire")
OR contains(file.tags,"#obsidian-todo")
)
AND !completed
AND due - date(today) <= dur(60 days)
AND due != null
\`\`\`
---
---
---
## Created Today
\`\`\`dataview
TABLE string(split(string(file.ctime), " - ")[0]) as "Created", file.mtime as "Last Modified"
WHERE contains(file.path, "{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}")
OR (file.cday = date("{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}") AND !regexmatch("^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}", file.name))
SORT file.name ASC
\`\`\`
---
## Last Modified Today
\`\`\`dataview
TABLE string(split(string(file.mtime), " - ")[0]) as "Last Modified"
WHERE !contains(file.path, "{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}")
AND !contains(file.path, "{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} Daily Note")
AND file.mday = date("{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}")
SORT file.mtime DESC
\`\`\`
---
## Other Tasks Completed Today
\`\`\`dataview
TASK WHERE completion = date("{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}")
AND due != date("{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}")
\`\`\`
In my keyboard shortcut settings, I have
This allows me to type the "alt+E" shortcut, and thus be able to directly paste a template that I've prepared in my template files in the templates folder. this is where the daily note example template is automatically inserted.
when I type alt + e, I get access to a note template, which saves me from copy-pasting note templates that I use all the time. for example, with a single key press, it prepares this kind of thing for me:
which is simply the way I take notes on the global, solidified skills I've added, everything that is consolidated in my Obsidian.
[!abstract]+ Definition
[!tip]+ Additional Info
[!example]+ Related links and resources
and for my daily notes, here is the configuration I have:
in core plugins, daily notes, I have the date format in question, the target folder, and the template file used.
Excalidraw
There you have it, Excalidraw, a whiteboard that lets you note down a bunch of things, make diagrams, explanations, etc. In short, it just lets you have a sort of draw.io but local, open-source, on your machine, and it also lets us integrate it into little summary notes of our knowledge, or meeting recaps, etc.
A must-have. You click the button on the left in the sidebar and that's it, you're ready to play with it!
Omnisearch
A plugin that lets you search everywhere in your Obsidian—in images, PDFs, your notes, etc.—with a single button,
In short, a banger, super powerful for finding info in your second brain!
The rest
So, here are all the plugins I use, mainly small quality-of-life improvements, stats on the vault.
Ways to copy images, have improvements for PDFs, kanbans, calendars, checklists, annotations, etc. etc... in short, just overall quality-of-life stuff.
It's up to you to search and adapt based on what you like!
Ways to copy images, have improvements for PDFs, kanbans, calendars, checklists, annotations, etc. etc... in short, just overall quality-of-life stuff.
It's up to you to search and adapt based on what you like!
🚀 Thanks for reading!
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