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Markdown Basics

Markdown is never hard! It's a writing syntax that dresses up your text like magic with just a few symbols. ObsiKO applies pretty formatting the very instant you type it! ✨

← Home: ObsiKO 101 · Learn the next bit of magic → 04 Advanced Markdown

Hybrid editing that formats the moment you type
▲ No preview pane needed — it renders beautifully right where you write.

Building the skeleton of your writing: Headings

Dressing up your text 🎨

Lists that keep things neatly organized 📝

Never forget a task! Checkboxes ✅

Quoting something wonderful 💬

Links and images that lead elsewhere 🔗🖼️

A clean divider ➖

Formatting fairies that do it all for you 🧚

Choosing a block from the slash menu
▲ One / and the block menu pops up! Pick one to insert instantly.
- Smart Paste: Copy a web address (URL) and paste it over some text to turn it into a clean link! Paste an image and it's automatically saved to the assets/ folder too!
- Lightning-fast shortcuts: Drag across some text and press ⌘B, ⌘I, ⌘K. Formatting changes without you ever typing the symbols by hand. → See the full list at 24 Keyboard Shortcuts
- Ending a format: Turn on bold or highlight with a format button (or shortcut), write, then press the same button again — the cursor hops out of the format and whatever you type next is plain text. No hunting for the hidden closing marks! While the cursor is inside a format, that button lights up in the format bar (heading, list, and quote lines too), so you can always tell which format you're in. On a keyboard, a single Tab also hops out of the format (nested formats exit one layer at a time, innermost first — inside tables Tab still moves cells, and with an autocomplete list open it picks the item first). Stack formats (underline inside bold) and both buttons light up — both really do apply. Symbols that are just text, like asterisks inside code (`code **x**`), don't count as formatting.
- Wiki link button: The format bar has a [[ button. Press it and [[]] is inserted with the note list opening right away — no typing double brackets on a phone. Select text first and it wraps that text as the link. → Wiki Links & Tags
- Multiple spots at once! Multi-cursor: Mod+click to drop multiple cursors, or Mod+D to select the same word one after another and edit them all together. Alt+drag also lets you make a rectangular (box) selection. ✌️
- Mobile formatting button: On phones and tablets, when the keyboard comes up, a small round button floats in the corner of the screen. Tap it and formatting tools like bold, headings, and lists spread out. The Add tasks by voice · Insert schedule · Insert frontmatter buttons live here too. → 25 Platform Guide
- Smart quotes: Type a quote mark (', ") and, based on position, opening quotes (' ") and closing quotes (' ") go in automatically. It even handles apostrophes inside words like don't perfectly! Select some text and type a quote mark to wrap the whole thing, and inside code blocks or frontmatter, straight quotes are kept exactly as typed. (You can turn this off in Settings → 23 Settings & Themes)
- Getting back out is easy too — press Enter at “line│” and it steps past the closing quote and breaks the line (list continuation still works inside lists). Press Backspace inside an empty auto-inserted pair (“│”) and the whole pair disappears. Writing dialogue line after line never stalls. 💬
- Auto symbol replace: The fiddly ones get typed for you — ... → …, -> → →, <- → ←. Inside code blocks and frontmatter they stay as typed, and -- is deliberately left alone (in Markdown --- is a horizontal rule, so the second - would break the line). Turn it off in Settings ▸ Editor.
- Show formatting marks ¶: The most confusing thing in Markdown is the difference between a blank line splitting paragraphs and two trailing spaces making a line break — and both are invisible characters. Turn on Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Show formatting marks and the blank line that splits paragraphs (¶), the two trailing spaces that make a break (↵) and any leftover trailing whitespace show up faintly. Not a single character changes — it's display only (toggle it instantly from the command palette with formatting marks). The ¶ only appears on blank lines your cursor isn't on — the empty line you're standing on stops being a paragraph break the moment you type. So starting a new paragraph takes two presses of Enter (inside a list, todo or quote it's three: one of them escapes the list).
- Color code preview: Type a color code (HEX, RGB, HSL) like #d9a05b and a color swatch square pops up right beside it so you can see exactly what color it is at a glance. 🎨
- Tidy formatting 🧹: Right-click → Note composer ▸ Tidy formatting… cleans up little things in one go — trailing spaces, runs of blank lines, ##heading spacing, and key:value colons in properties (YAML). It shows how many spots it'll fix before applying, and one ⌘Z brings everything back. To tidy a whole folder, right-click it in the file tree ▸ Notes in this folder ▸ Tidy formatting in folder… (revert per file from Change History). Code blocks and math are never touched, and two trailing spaces (the line-break syntax) are preserved!
- Templates & auto-fill: Pull in a form you use often (just create it as a .md file in the vault's Template folder — subfolders are fine, they all show up). Four ways in, one shared list — type /template in the body, search template in the command palette, right-click → ＋ Insert ▸ Insert Template, or use the sidebar ＋ menu. (That ＋ Insert group also holds Add Schedule, Insert Frontmatter, and your cheat sheet favorites.) Placeholders in the template get filled in automatically the moment they're inserted:
- Dates & times: beyond {{date}}, {{time}}, and {{datetime}}, you can format and shift — {{date:YYYY-MM-DD (ddd)}} picks the shape, {{date:+7}} (7 days ahead) and {{date:YYYY.M.D|+1w}} (1 week ahead) move it, and {{tomorrow}} / {{yesterday}} are there too.
- File info: {{title}}, {{folder}}, {{path}}, {{created}} (creation date), {{modified}} (last saved), and {{tags}} (this note's tags as #a #b).
- Grab things: {{clipboard}} (whatever you copied), {{selection}} (selected text — see below), {{weather}} (weather for the place you picked in settings — complete with a matching icon like ☀️🌧️❄️), and {{cursor}} (where the caret lands after inserting).
- Ask & fill: {{ask:Project name}} pops an input box the moment you insert and drops the answer in place, and {{choose:Status|To do|Doing|Done}} pops a picker. The same question is asked only once even if it appears several times, and canceling inserts nothing at all. When there are two or more questions, you get one "Fill in the values" screen instead of a stack of popups — you can see everything it asks before inserting, and go back to fix an earlier field (Enter moves to the next field; on the last one it confirms).
- Each folder can have its own new-note template — right-click a folder in the file tree ▸ Notes in this folder ▸ Default template for new notes…, and new notes in that folder (subfolders included) start from it. The template for today's note lives in Settings → 13 Calendar.
- Start a new note from a template: sidebar ＋ menu ▸ New note from template (also in the command palette). Pick a form, type a title, done. If the template asks questions it asks them then — and canceling creates no file at all.
- Save this note as a template: right-click ▸ Note tidy ▸ Save as template. Give it a name and a copy lands in your Template folder (created for you if it doesn't exist). The original is untouched. If today's date is spelled out in the note, ObsiKO asks once whether to turn it into an automatic date ({{date}}) — declining is fine.
- Open an empty note and 'Start from' chips appear under the title (most recent first). One tap fills the note; start typing and they quietly disappear. They share that spot with the kind suggestion chips — template chips while the note is empty, kind chips once it has content.
- No templates yet? Not a dead end — if the folder is missing ObsiKO offers to create it, and if it's empty it tells you where to put them.
- Select text and right-click to see Insert Template directly — the template's {{selection}} becomes your selected text and wraps that spot whole (perfect for quote or callout frames). The cheat sheet's Auto-fill section collects all of these tokens too.

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