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While Obsidian is great for taking individual notes, its real power comes from linking them together. By connecting pieces of information, you improve your ability to remember them and draw deeper insights over time. Obsidian uses wikilink syntax: wrap the name of any note in double square brackets to create an internal link.
1

Create a note to link to

Create a note named Three laws of motion and add some content:
2

Create a second note

Create another note named Law of Inertia with the following text:
3

Type the link

At the end of that sentence, press [ twice on your keyboard. Obsidian opens an autocomplete dropdown.
4

Search and confirm

Type three to filter the list, then press Enter to insert the link. Your note now reads:
5

Follow the link

Click the link while holding Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) to open the linked note.
You can create links to notes that you haven’t written yet. This is useful for capturing topics you plan to explore later.
1

Select the text

In your Three laws of motion note, select the text Isaac Newton.
2

Wrap it in double brackets

Press [ twice. Obsidian wraps the selection in [[Isaac Newton]]. The link appears in a more muted colour to indicate the note doesn’t exist yet.
3

Create the note

Click the link while holding Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) to create and open the new note.
Linking to non-existent notes is a powerful habit. It lets you capture connections as you think of them, without interrupting your current writing flow.
Click any [[wikilink]] while holding Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) to open the target note. In Live Preview mode you can also simply click the rendered link. A backlink is a reverse reference — it shows you every note that links to the current note. Backlinks let you navigate in the opposite direction of a link.
1

Open a note

Open the Isaac Newton note.
2

Open the Backlinks panel

In the right sidebar, click the Backlinks tab.
3

Navigate via a mention

Under Linked mentions, click the reference in Three laws of motion to jump to that note.

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Open a local graph

The local graph shows a visual map of the current note’s connections — useful for understanding how a single note relates to the rest of your vault.
1

Open More options

In the upper-right corner of the note, click More options (the ••• icon).
2

Open the local graph

Select Open linked view, then select Open local graph.
3

Navigate

Click any node in the graph to open that note.

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Understand the graph view

The Graph view is a visual map of your entire vault — each note appears as a node, and every [[link]] between notes becomes an edge connecting them. As your vault grows, the graph reveals clusters of related ideas, orphaned notes with no connections, and the most heavily-linked notes in your knowledge base. You can open the full graph view from the left sidebar (the graph icon) or via the command palette.
The graph view is purely a navigation and exploration tool. It does not change your notes or links — it just visualises the connections that already exist.

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Next steps

Graph view

Learn how to filter, group, and explore the full vault graph.

Backlinks

Understand how backlinks work and how to use the backlinks panel.