Obsidian Templates: Make Things Easier and Automatic

Templates are a core feature implemented in Obsidian allowing you to automate your workflow and waste less time doing repetitive things.

Templates are like note blueprints allowing you to consistently and quickly insert content in a structured way, allowing you to keep a homogeneous vault while speeding up your workflow.

Examples of Templates

If you don’t understand how you can use templates, here is a list of things for which I use them:

• Daily notes
• Reference notes
• Zettelkasten notes
• Flashcards
• Projects
• Trade notes
• etc…

Enable the Templates Feature

The first thing to do before using templates is to enable them. Just go to “Settings” > “Core plugins” > “Templates” to enable them.

Then, you can go to the plugins’ settings and select a location for your templates. For example, you can create a folder called “Templates” in your vault, and put all your templates in it.

Your First Template

Once you’ve created your templates folder, you can create templates in it. For example, let’s create a first template called “Daily Note”.

This is a template we’ll use to generate every day a note where we’ll write about what we’ve done this day. Let’s start with writing the content that shouldn’t change from day to day:

Now, a powerful feature of templates is that you can insert variables in them. Variables are dynamic content, whose value changes depending on the conditions of the generation of the template.

Some variables we can use are:

• {{title}} to insert the file’s name.
• {{date}} to insert the current date.
• {{time}} to insert the current time.

Let’s modify our template by adding some variables:

Use a Template

To use a template, first, you can create a new file. You give it the name you want. If it’s a daily note, for example, its name could be “2022–10–07” (by the way, there’s a core plugin for daily notes to avoid creating the files manually).

Once your file is created, you can open the command palette, and search for “Templates”. Then, choose “Insert template”, and choose the template we’ve just created.

You should now have a note looking like this:

As you can see, the content from our template has been inserted and the variables have been replaced.

And Now?

That’s all you can do with the templates core feature, and that’s already something. It will suit many people. But for really complex things, it’s better to use a community plugin called “Templater”. It’s basically an upgrade to the templates core plugin.

So let’s install it, and we’ll see quickly what is different with this plugin. Just go to “Settings” > “Community plugins” > “Browse” > “Templater” > “Install”. Then, click “Enable” to enable it.

By the way, you can disable the templates core plugin if you want to use Templater. Indeed, it’s better to have all your templates in one format, either the templates core plugin format or the Templater format.

Once it’s installed, you can go to its settings, there are some things to configure here. First, you can choose a location for your templates. Then, it’s also good to enable “Trigger Templater on File Creation”. It allows you to make Templater compatible with other plugins.

Templater’s Syntax

Templater is similar to the templates core plugin. The only changes are in the way Templater handles variables. It uses the following syntax: <%command%> .

Commands begin with tp followed by a dot, and a name of a module. Here is the list of the modules:

• file
• date
• config
• frontmatter
• obsidian
• system
• web

After the name of the module, there is a dot, and finally the name of the function with its parameters.

For example, a function to get the actual date in a specific format looks like the following:

<%tp.date.now("YYYY-WW-DD")%>

Another example is a command to get the actual file’s name:

<%tp.file.title%>

There are a lot of Templater functions, you can find all of them here: Templater’s Doc.

Now, let’s try to make our first template usable with Templater. We just have to replace {{date}} with <%tp.date.now()%> and {{title}} with <%tp.file.title%> . We’ll delete the {{time}} field as Templater doesn’t implement such a function.

Now, we can open the command palette and type “Templater”, then “Open the insert template modal”, and choose our template to insert it in a file we’ve created, like we’ve done when we used the core templates plugin.

What’s the Point of Using Templater?

Templater and the templates core plugin may look very similar to you. But in fact, they’re very different.

First, Templater can be used in combination with other plugins, but the templates core plugin can’t (except with the core daily notes plugin).

Then, Templater implements tons of commands, we’ve only seen 2 of them, but there are more complex commands to do things like moving a note into a specified folder. For example, adding this to a note will move it to another folder:

<%await tp.file.move("/AnotherFolder" + tp.file.title)%>

There are tons of things you can do with Templater. We’ve not talked about it yet, but in the settings of Templater, you can bind templates to folders. It means when you will create a new note in a folder you’ve bound, the template’s content will be inserted automatically.

You can also bind templates to hotkeys, meaning when you will hit a hotkey it will insert the template’s content to the current note.

Templater or the Templates Core Plugin

There’s no one better than the other. I would say Templater can be seen as better because you can do much more things, but it’s more difficult to implement.

So, depending on your needs, you can choose either Templater or the templates core plugin. If you’re not sure you will need Templater in the future, choose Templater because else you will have to modify all your templates when you will decide to use Templater.

Lastly, Templater’s syntax is JavaScript. It means if you’re a developer, you will probably prefer Templater, and it will allow you to do very complex things. Even if you’re not a developer, Templater is not so hard to use.

Final Note

Creating templates can be seen as a tedious process, but it’s worth it because it will save you so much time. So, if you spot patterns in your notes, feel free to use templates.

You now know 2 ways to use them, either using Templater or using the templates core plugin.

Find all my Obsidian-related stuff here: Use Obsidian like a Pro

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