03 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

▲ No preview pane needed — it renders beautifully right where you write.

Building the skeleton of your writing: Headings

• # Heading 1, ## Heading 2 … ###### Heading 6 (the more #s, the smaller the level!)
• Just a hash (#) and one space, and you're done! It becomes the sturdy skeleton of your document, and it's automatically added to the table of contents panel in 09 Backlinks & Outline.

Dressing up your text 🎨

• Extra bold!: **bold** (or the shortcut ⌘B!)
• Give it some mood, italic: *italic* (or the shortcut ⌘I!)
• ~~I'll cross this out~~: ~~strikethrough~~
• ==Make it pop with a highlight!==: ==highlight==
• Click highlighted text and a small color dot appears next to it; press the dot to open the color picker. Choose from Default (theme) + 7 colors, or hit the ✕ (no color) at the end to remove the highlight entirely, leaving just the text. (One undo brings it back!)
• Like computer code: `code`

Lists that keep things neatly organized 📝

• Bulleted list: - item or * item
• Numbered list: 1. item
• Hit Enter and the next number or bullet pops out automatically! Press Tab to indent, and hit Enter once more on an empty line to escape and stop the list!
• Automatic renumbering: Insert a new item in the middle of a numbered list with Enter, and the items that follow — 3, 4, 5 — automatically shift up to 4, 5, 6. No need to struggle renumbering by hand! (One Undo brings it all back.)

Never forget a task! Checkboxes ✅

• - [ ] To-do, - [x] Done!
• Click the rendered checkbox with your mouse to toggle it between done and not done. Fun, right?
• Attach a due date, time, priority, and alarm to one of these and it becomes a full-fledged schedule (to-do), which 13 Calendar automatically handles as a timetable! (You can easily create one right in the editor with right-click → ＋ Insert ▸ Add Schedule — the Insert group only shows up when you have no text selected.)

Quoting something wonderful 💬

• > A wonderful quote — just put a single chevron (>) at the start of the line!

Links and images that lead elsewhere 🔗🖼️

• A link out to the world: [Display name](https://example.com)
• Linking your own notes together (wiki links): [[Other Note Name]] (so convenient! → 08 Wiki Links & Tags)
• Adding an image: `` — no need to type anything complicated, just copy-paste or drag a photo in! It'll automatically be saved to your folder and dropped into the document. An inserted image shows up as an actual picture while you edit (move the cursor to that line and it turns back into a path you can edit). (This is Smart Paste in action! → 07 Search & Navigation)
• Drag the corner handle of a rendered image to resize it (the width gets recorded like ``), and use the description (alt) button to fix the alt text right away too. 🖼️
• Draw right where you are ✏️: rather sketch it yourself than paste a photo? Inline drawing puts a pad right at your cursor (Apple Pencil & S Pen supported!). → 04 Advanced Markdown
• Voice memos, spoken not typed 🎙️: right-click (long-press) in the editor → 'Record voice memo' and recording starts right away (it sits right at the top level of the menu). When you're done, the audio is saved to assets/ with a playback link at your cursor! With an AI key (OpenAI/Gemini) it'll even offer to transcribe it to text — great for meetings and lectures. → 16-9 AI Billing Guide (Subscriptions vs Credits)
• Free image search 🖼️: Don't have the right photo? Open the Image Search panel on the right (works right away, no separate key needed!). Choose from Openverse, Pixabay, Pexels, Wikimedia, or Giphy and a stream of freely usable images shows up — just click one, or drag it into the editor or mind map, and you're done! Scroll down and more load automatically, hover for a large preview, use the HD button to save full resolution, and hit the cell's ↗ button to check the original page and license. Select a word in the body text before opening the panel and it'll search for that word right away, and clicking the search box shows your recent searches too. (Imported images are saved to your vault, with the source noted alongside.)

A clean divider ➖

• Three hyphens --- gives you a nice divider line across the screen. Just like this!

Formatting fairies that do it all for you 🧚

• Slash menu /: Just type / on an empty line! Pick headings, lists, checkboxes, quotes, callouts, dividers, code, tables, math, a table of contents, or a calendar right from a menu. No need to memorize Markdown symbols! (↑↓ to choose, then Enter!)
• Drawing is there too — pick /drawing (or /sketch) and a sketch pad opens right at that spot.

▲ 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 - 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. → 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) - 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. 🎨 - Templates & auto-fill: Right-click → ＋ Insert ▸ Insert Template in the editor to pull in a form you use often (just create it as a .md file in the vault's Template folder). This ＋ Insert group also holds Add Schedule, Insert Frontmatter, and your cheat sheet favorites — and it only appears when you right-click with no text selected. Placeholders in the template like {{date}}, {{time}}, {{title}}, {{cursor}}, and {{weather}} (weather for the place you picked in settings — complete with an icon that matches the weather, like ☀️🌧️❄️) get filled in automatically the moment they're inserted.

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