Living next to Obsidian
n0te is built to share a vault with Obsidian, not replace it. Both read and write the same plain markdown files, and n0te takes care not to fight with Obsidian, sync, or anything else that touches them.
What n0te reads from Obsidian
| From | n0te uses it for |
|---|---|
Obsidian’s obsidian.json (native, Flatpak or Snap) | which vault is open, and the list of vaults in Settings |
.obsidian/app.json | where new notes go (Default location for new notes) |
.obsidian/daily-notes.json | the daily note’s folder, date format and template |
.obsidian/templates.json | the templates folder |
n0te never writes to .obsidian/, and keeps no index, cache or database of its own. Folders starting with a dot (.obsidian, .trash, .git) are left out of the switcher.
Clean round trips
An edit in n0te changes only what you changed. Blocks you didn’t touch are written back byte for byte, with the file’s line endings (LF or CRLF), its final newline, its mode, and symlinks kept. A tick changes one character. So a note edited in n0te shows a one-line diff in git, and Obsidian (or Obsidian Sync) sees one small change.
When both have a note open
n0te watches the file it shows. When Obsidian (or Sync, Syncthing, git pull) changes it:
- with nothing unsaved in n0te, the page reloads in place;
- while you’re editing, n0te merges their change with yours, block by block;
- if Obsidian renames the note, n0te follows it to the new name.
See Saving and changes on disk for the details.
Same rules for links
Wikilinks resolve as Obsidian resolves them, [[ completion writes the shortest unique name as Obsidian does, and following a link to a missing note creates it where Obsidian would. Notes created in n0te start from your Obsidian templates.
The updated: date
If your notes carry a date in their frontmatter, like updated: 2026-10-01, switch on Set updated: to today when saving in Settings. Saving a change then sets it to today, the way plugins like Update time on edit do in Obsidian. It’s only touched when something else in the note changed, and never while you’re editing the frontmatter yourself.
Jumping across
Open in Obsidian, in the palette, opens the current note in Obsidian (through an obsidian:// link). Links to obsidian:// in your notes open on a single click.
What n0te doesn’t do
Some Obsidian features have no counterpart in n0te, by design or not yet:
- No graph, backlinks or vault-wide search. n0te finds notes by name.
- Embeds (
![[note]]) show as links, and images as placeholders, for now. - Plugin syntax isn’t run: a Dataview query shows as a code block, and custom task statuses show as text.
- No canvas, PDF or other attachment views; n0te opens text.