Tech Tips

Obsidian Daily Note Implementation v2

Here’s what my current Obsidian Daily Note looks like:

Example of an Obsidian daily note

I’m pleased with this, having come from a pretty bland Daily Note setup prior to this. I’ll explain the setup:

Requirements

As of July 15, 2022 this only works as expected if you edit in regular source mode, not live preview mode (the live preview won’t show the styling; see https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/vz2mw5/comment/ig9g0k9)

Template File

I set up the “Daily notes” plugin as follows:

  • Date format: YYYY-MM-DD[ Daily Note]
    • The square brackets let you use arbitrary text that won’t be treated as a date
  • New file location: Daily
  • Template file location:  System/Templates/Daily Note (shown below)

Quick Add for Journal Entries

I use a Quick Add “Journal Entry” capture that is set up like this:

  • Capture to filename: Daily/{{DATE:YYYY-MM-DD}} Daily Note.md
  • Insert after: # Journal (Enabled)
  • Insert at end of section: Enabled
  • Capture format: (Enabled; note the blank first line)

Supporting CSS

Using the Settings > Appearance > CSS snippets feature, I implemented these CSS rules:

Tasks Settings

I enabled the Set done date on every completed task option.

Dataview Settings

I use the stock settings with one exception: I enable the Automatic Task Completion Tracking option so I can use the task checkboxes within the dataview output.

Usage Tips

  • I like to keep the calendar plugin showing in my bottom left sidebar. I can click any date to open or create a daily note. All of the values are set according to the daily note settings defined above.
  • Sometimes I manually edit the daily note to add journal items.
  • Sometimes I use Quick Add (globally on my computer via Keyboard Maestro) to be able to add Journal entries from anywhere at any time.
  • I set my Daily notes: Open today’s daily note hotkey to ⌘⇧D so it’s always quick to get to
  • Thanks to a fellow redditor I’d like to point out that currently the “Created Today” dataview relies on my files having a date prefix; this dataview does not look at the actual creation date. I am thinking about ways to do that. See https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/vz2mw5/comment/ig68xo4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
  • With tasks you can use [due::2022-07-14]  to set the due date (same with completion date and other attributes). So - [ ] Go grocery shopping #task [due::2022-07-14] would be a valid task with a due date. Also it’s worth noting the natural date parser plugin makes it so you can, instead of typing the date, use @ and start typing “today” or “tomorrow” or “in 2 weeks” or whatever… and it’ll convert that to the actual date. Just disable the “Linking” feature in the settings.

2 Comments

  • Shoe

    Thanks for sharing your daily page. do you have any examples where you filter which tasks show up based on tags. I’d like to tag some tasks showing I have to take action vs others showing that I’m waiting on someone else to take action. #task doesn’t seem to allow for that.

    Thanks in advance!

  • Jill

    This is wonderful! finally got it to work.

    It would be amazing if the css worked in Live Preview. I know it takes more coding and more time…

    thanks for sharing this.

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