PKM

How to Connect Obsidian and Logseq to Get the Best of Both

2 min read

First off, I’d like to thank Ramses Oudt.

He’s the one who inspired me to do this connection on this Twitter thread.

Why?

Outlining is the way I think. It gives structure to my thoughts and ideas.

I didn’t feel comfortable with Obsidian’s outlining GUI/UX.

Steps

The steps are pretty straightforward:

  1. Install both apps.
  2. Change some settings in each one.

Installing

  • Obsidian. Install Obsidian’s vault in a local folder outside any iCloud folder if you want to use Obsidian’s sync service on Mac devices.
  • Logseq. Open your graph by selecting your Obsidian’s vault folder.

Settings on Logseq

Set “Preferred date format” to yyyy_MM_dd.

Settings on Obsidian

Go to Files and Links inside your settings:

  1. Set “Default location for new notes” to “In the folder specified below”.
  2. Set “Folder to create new notes in” to “pages”.
  3. Set “New Link Format” to “Relative path to file”.
  4. Turn “Use [[Wikilinks]]” to “off”.
  5. Set “Default location for new attachments” to “In the folder specified below”.
  6. Write in “Attachment Folder Path” the value “assets”.

Go to “Daily Notes Core Plugin”:

  1. Set “Date format” to YYYY_MM_DD.
  2. Set the “New file location” to “journals”.

Warnings

  • If you have the Periodic Notes plugin installed, turn the Daily Notes core plugin off.
  • Make all the settings in the Periodic Notes plugin instead of the Daily Notes core one.
  • Refresh Logseq whenever you open it so that your graph will be updated with the content of your local files.
  • I recommend not having both apps opened at the same time, although I’ve opened the same file at the same time, and it’s great seeing how I write in any of them and everything gets updated in both systems in real-time!

My Workflow

Now, I can make all my outlining process in Logseq, an app I love more and more day by day.

Later on, I develop that outline on Obsidian, completing and polishing everything.

Takeaways

  • I get the best out of the two worlds: outlining + developing ideas.
  • I have the best GUI/UX I’ve ever found.
  • Everything’s local-filed in markdown.

I highly recommend giving it a try.

Photo by Wai Siew on Unsplash