Ultimate Guide to Obsidian Templates (with Examples)

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If you’ve just downloaded Obsidian or are thinking about it but feeling a little overwhelmed, don’t worry! We’ll dive into Obsidian’s templates in this article. Templates in Obsidian are helpful in many ways but sometimes you need some template ideas. Learn what templates are and how you can use them with lots of great obsidian template examples.

If you haven’t setup Obsidian yet, read this post on setting up a second brain in Obsidian.

What are Templates in Obisidian?

Templates in Obsidian are a way to quickly customize your notes with pre-decided text, formatting, links, tags, and other customizable content.

Why Use Templates at All?

Templates will save you time and reduce errors while maintaining the structure of your notes system, second brain, or personal knowledge management system (PKM).

Imagine if you needed to make lecture notes today. Each note needs the current day, the class, and the subject and some typical headings such as “Sources,” “Books to Read,” or “Things to Memorize.”

You don’t want to rewrite those things repeatedly for every lecture or go through your notes to find an old one so you can copy and paste the structure. So instead, use a template to concentrate on what’s important, not structuring your notes.

How to Set Up Templates

1. Create a Templates Folder

As templates are not notes in themselves but only the skeleton of a note, you don’t want them to clog up your note-taking system. Keeping them in a folder achieves this and is required for Obsidian to be able to find them.

Create a new folder and call it “Templates.”

2. Turn Templates On

Once you have your templates folder ready, you need to enable Obsidian templates in the “Core Plugins” These are a set of plugins already installed and created by the Obsidian team. So there is no need to worry about their security.

Click the Settings cog
Select Core Plugins
Scroll Down or Search for Templates
Enable Templates if not already Enabled

3. Template Options

While you are still within the Core Templates menu, where you enabled Templates, click on the Template Options cog.

Enter your Templates folder
Setup your Date and Time formats

Now you have Templates Setup!

Let’s create a template to test it out.

Create a new note, title it “Test,” and add the following text

Title: {{title}}
Date: {{date}}
Time: {{time}}
Hello World! This is my first template.

Move the note to your templates folder (Ctrl M)
Now create a new note and title it anything you like
With the note open, hit Ctrl T and select your test template

What to Use Templates For?

A template pastes prewritten text into a note. You can also use it to insert the time, date, and note title anywhere. Once set up, you can use a template over and over again. If you’re not sure how you could utilize Obsidian’s templates, take a look at the examples and template ideas below

12 Obsidian Template Ideas with Examples

Here are 12 ideas for everyday use cases for templates in Obsidian. To use any of the templates below, follow these instructions.

Create a new note (Ctrl N) and call it anything you like
Paste the template text as shown below
Customize the template any way you wish
Move it to your template folder (Ctrl M)
Create a note
Hit Ctrl T & Select the template you just made
That’s it!

Blog Post

Here is a blog post template I use when I’m not sure what to write. It gives me ideas for doing research, like finding a related anecdote, quote, or fact. It also helps to structure your blog post. Adapt it to your writing style, and don’t forget to run it through the world’s best grammar checker.

# {{title}}
{{date}}
Status: #Blog 
Category: 
Volume: 
Difficulty: 
KW: 
## Should I Write This?
1. How does {{title}} fit into my deal? What offer or funnel is it promoting?

2. What's the key takeaway, action or CTA?

## Content Plan

### Intro - What Makes It Interesting?
- Data Point or Fact
- Hook
- Anecdote
- Personal Story
- Examples
- Screenshots
- Links
- Quotes/Interview
- Imagery
- Embedded demo
- Real Life application
- Connection to something timely or well known

### Main Content

#### What's my point of view on {{title}}? Do I have a background in {{title}}? Do I want to exapnd on an old idea?

#### What Questions do I get asked about this or would I ask about {{title}}

#### Problems

#### Solutions

#### What do I want them to know, feel or do?
- Core Message
- CTA


## Blog
# {{title}}

Survey or Questionnaire

This template example shows the power of just using the title field to help you create many questionnaires quickly. For example, imagine you had 20 products. By adding each product name to the title of a new note and then using a template like the one below, you could create 20 individual product surveys in a few minutes.

{{title}} Questionnaire


Please answer the following questions about {{title}}

What do you think about {{title}} ?
- 

Would you buy {{title}} if it were availble in stores?
- 
 
How much would you pay for a product like {{title}} ?
-

Bible Notes

Reading the Bible is challenging at times, and no one wants to put the effort in, only to forget what they have read. So decide first what you want to get out of your reading, and then use a template that will encourage that. This template has a section for you to memorize the most critical verses you read in that book.

[[New Testament]]
Book: [[]]
Date: {{date}}
# {{title}}

- 

## Scripture to Memorize
-

Daily Notes

Daily notes are a core plugin you can enable within Obsidian’s settings. Everyday Obsidian will create a new note with the date as the title (you can change the date format within the plugin’s options.)

Daily notes will take a template if selected in the plugin’s options. The type of template you should use depends on what you will use your daily notes for. If you want to use it like a journal, look at the template below. If you’re going to use it as a to-do list, see the to-do template below.

I will create a daily note in this example template to record my achievements.

## Today I Completed
- 

## Today I Made Progress on
- 

## Today I Started
-

Paste a Section

Sometimes you need to paste the same thing in many notes; for example, you may be making notes that will be shared with colleagues at work. In addition, the company may require you to add a section about the company or some legal jargon. Again, you can do this quickly with a simple template.

Create a note with the content you want to copy and put it in your templates folder. Then, anytime you hit Ctrl T and select that template, it will add the text wherever your cursor is.

Example Incorporated reserves the rights to any information distributed by it's employees. Please see our legal page at example.com/legal for all information regarding this.

Alternatively you can get in touch with our legal team at [email protected]

Map of Content

A map of content or MOP is like the contents of a book; it helps you find what you’re looking for. A map of content is a list of links. It could link to other MOPs or tags, or individual notes. The #MOP tag could make your MOPs easier to find, though unnecessary. You could create a MOP of your entire second brain with the main categories of your notes, such as:

Productivity Tips
Lecture Notes
Code Snippets
Quotes
Notes on Dalmations
Recipes
etc.

The recipe link in the above MOP may link to another map of recipes:

Vegetarian Recipes
Baking Recipes
Sauces
Deserts
Breakfasts
Snacks
etc.

# {{title}}
Status: #MoC
1.

Daily Todo List

A daily to-do list is a simple list you create each morning from a long-running list of all your tasks. However, looking at your master task list can be stressful if you have hundreds of tasks, and trying to use it to decide what to do during the day is impossible.

The solution is to create a short list of tasks every morning you will complete that day. Then throughout the day, you only need to look at your daily to-do list, which is much simpler.

# Daily Todo {{date}}

# Most Important Tast Today

-

## Must Do
- 
- 
- 

## Do If I Have Time
- 
- 
-

Lecture Notes

To use this lecture note template, add the name/number of the lecture as the note title and fill in the subject link. Later by clicking on the subject note (created automatically by the link), you will have backlinks to every lecture within that subject.

Clicking on the Freshman Note, you will find backlinks to every lecture note for the whole year.

Year: [[Freshman]]
Subject: [[]]
Date: {{date}}
Lecture {{title}}

## Main Points
- 

## Related Books
- 

## Things to Memorize
-

Literature Notes

Literature notes are the notes you take while reading. Rather than writing in the margin of the book or just highlighting passages, making literature notes in Obsidian allows you to link them with other ideas. You can turn literature notes into atomic notes or zettels later.

A link to a Bibliography note provides a hub where all your literature notes can be accessed. In the Bibliography note’s backlinks, you will find your notes for every book.

# {{title}}
{{date}}
[[Bibliography]]


## Notes:

## Add Links to Related Books: [[]]

Quick Date

Use this template when you want to insert the current date into a note quickly.
Create a note named date with the content below
Move the note to your Templates folder (Ctrl M)

{{date}}

Place the cursor where you want to insert the date.
Then hit Ctrl T and select the “date” template.

Journal Template

Everyone journals for a different reason and wants their own personalized journal outline. Here is a generic one that should give you some ideas. Add questions or reminders to help you get the most out of your journaling.

{{date}}
## What am I grateful for today?
- 

How did I feel today?
- 

What did I achieve today?
- 

What could I have done better today?
-

Zettelkasten Template

A zettel is a note which expresses a single idea linked to other related concepts. It is the fundamental unit used in the Zettelkasten method created by Niklas Luhmanns.

You could simplify this template further by removing tags, the date, and even the source field.

{{date}}
## Tags: 
# {{title}}
- 

## Related Ideas [[]]
## Source [[]]
-

Reference for Template

You can use any markdown formatting that Obsidian supports in your templates, and they will appear exactly as you expect them to when you use the template. But there are three extra fields that will populate themselves when you use them in your templates:

{{title}}
{{date}}
{{time}}

Adding links and tags to your templates will take the structure of your note-taking system or second brain to the next level. I urge you to explore and test things out. You’ll find out what works best for you.

Tags: #tageexample
Links: [[linkexample]]