Why Obsidian Canvas is THE BEST Mind Mapping Tool

obsidian canvas brings the flexibility of Mind mapping tools to your obsidian Vault but it is so much more than just a simple mind mapping tool in this video

we'll be taking a look at the amazing outof the-box features that canvas provides and then we'll look at some fun ways to use this tool for mind mapping

and Beyond a canvas is a special type of note inside your obsidian Vault so we can't create it the way that we do normal notes we have to go over to this ribbon on the side and we have this

little button that has a bunch of boxes on it and that's the create new canvas button so go ahead and click that and we get a brand new canvas inside of our

vault this is a infinite uh canvas that allows us to be able to put as many ideas thoughts and notes in any configuration that we want there are a

few different types of cards that we can add to a canvas the first is just a normal card you just drag that up from the bottom and this gives you a card to

start with so we're going to have a central idea inside of our canvas these cards are local to this

canvas they are not notes within your Vault they live on this canvas only and you can resize them and drag them around

as much as you want and what's great about these is that they even though they are not separate notes of Their Own you can use all the different markdown

that you can uh in normal notes so if I wanted to make this central idea larger make it a header I can add this hashtag in a space and now I have an H1 header

so as I was mentioning these cards are local to this canvas what if you wanted to include some notes from your Vault so I'm just going to zoom out a little bit

here you can hold down the command button and scroll on Mac to zoom out I think it's control on Windows and then if I wanted to have a note from my Vault

I drag this middle icon up and then it gives me the option to add in any note from my Vault so let's do my first note

so this is now a link to my actual note that exists if I go up to the title and double click on it it actually goes to that note I'm going to go back to the

canvas so this third type is a media card so I'm going to drag that up and right now I've only got one image inside of this Vault so we're going to add that so I click on it and then I have that

image in my canvas to be able to use so these are the three different types of cards that you're going to be using inside of a canvas hey guys future Brennan here I completely forgot to tell

you about a fourth kind of card that you can use inside of canvas you can embed web pages directly inside your canvas perhaps there's an article that you want to reference inside of your mind map

just copy the URL right click anywhere in the canvas and hit insert web page you can also just select a URL and drag and drop all right let's get back to the

video now what can you do with these cards right now they're just kind of floating around on this canvas you can grab this little dot on the side of a

card and you can drag it over to another one and that now makes a connection between these two cards and I can move this card around and that connection

will be maintained so let's go ahead and grab that now I want this central idea to be in the center so let's go ahead and move these things around I can click

on this connection delete it click on this one delete it I want this Central IDE to be in the center so we're going to move that into the center and then

I'm going to drag these connections over and now this is the central idea and it branches out into these other two cards you can do a different a couple different things with these connections

so let's go ahead and click on one again you can obviously I can delete the connections and I can change the color of what they look like so let's say I want this connection to be orange I can

do that you can either use their presets or you can choose any color from this color spectrum you can zoom into that selection so you can actually do this with not only connections but with cards

so if I click on this and I click on that Zoom I can zoom in and focus on that particular item so let's Zoom back out here let's go back to this connection here if you click on this

Arrow you can change what the direction of this line is so if I don't want an arrow I click on the non-directional that just creates a a line between them uh if I go back in here I can say

unidirectional so just going One Direction and that will be the direction from the one that you dragged it from and then I can have a bir directional connection that will have an arrow on

both end you then also can click this button and add a label to this connection we'll just say first connection is a label for now and then

that label will stay with that connector so let's say I have a bunch of cards let's go ahead and throw a bunch of cards on here so here's one here's a

card and then we'll grab another one we'll say here's another card and third card very deep thoughts on think

thinking here right now so I've got these notes here and let's say that they relate to each other and I kind of want them to stay together you can group

different cards together just by clicking outside of a card clicking and dragging them and then you've got a few options here you can change the colors of them you can delete them zoom in on

them but then you can also create a group so I'm going to click on this and now these are grouped together uh C card group and so I can click this title and

I can drag around and then all of these cards come with it and I can create connections between cards and groups or I can use this connection to go in and

connect to any of these individually inside what's also cool about groups is you can resize them you can basically remove things from a group by resizing

this and these are now outside of that group and then I can resize it again and include that maybe I wanted this one up here to be part of the group as well so

I can take this group and drag it in and now this is part of the group as well another cool thing that you can do with groups when I click on this you can align things inside of them so let's say

I want everything aligned in the center of those groups now the other thing I wanted to talk about with groups well first you can change the label you can zoom in all those things but you can

also set a background image for a group so if I hit set background we're going to use that same background now this background is on this group I'll show you a cool way that we can use this

background image feature a little later in the video so I keep talking about how amazing this tool is and so far all I've shown you is you know the basics of a mind mapping tool that pretty much any

any mind mapping tool can do this so what is it that makes obsidian so special well one thing that I've already mentioned is the fact that I can connect notes from My Vault notes that I've

already made so maybe I have Atomic notes which is a concept of having a single idea inside of a note uh maybe I have a bunch of those and I want to be

able to use them in here now it it's different than backlinking which makes a direct link between those notes and I can click on those links these connections are local to this canvas and

I can arrange those notes into different way than maybe the backlinks are giving me and I think that's the thing that really makes this tool better than any other is because it utilizes your

existing Vault of notes and knowledge and you can use them in a bunch of different ways different connections that can be made in a canvas file than

through the backlinks in a lot of Mind mapping tools you have to connect different nodes what's great about obsidian canvas is that you don't have to do that I can have this free floating

card out here and I don't have to make a connection maybe there's something that doesn't quite connect in with things maybe I just want to have this free floating card here I can do that I have

that freedom and flexibility so let's switch over to my personal Vault and I will show you how I am using canvas Beyond just mind mapping what you're

looking at here is a dashboard that I have created for my YouTube channel to be able to track the ideas that I have and how I'm moving them through my production pipeline so I have this

pipeline group up at the top and this is showing me the status of the different videos that I have so let's zoom in here and take a look at what these are I've got a an ideas column these are a bunch

of notes that I have created with ideas for my YouTube channel now if you click on this and we click on it again I can go in here and what I'm using is I'm actually using a community plug-in

called Data view that goes and grabs all of the notes that meet certain criteria I will not be going over the data view plugin in this but the data view plugin

combined with canvas is really powerful for creating kind of these dashboard setups now I've got different stages that my that my ideas for YouTube go through I've got things that are coming

up uh ones that I'm working on this month and then I have a list of all the ones that have been published so I can see them move through the pipeline got another few things that I've got here

I've got some ideas for some Community posts that I've got this is an actual note so if I wanted to drill down into this one I could click it and see just

that note I also have my template for my YouTube videos here so if I am in this dashboard and I have an idea of something that I want to add or take

away from my YouTube template I can just do it right here because it's linked any changes that I make to this note will

happen in the actual template file itself so if I say I want this to be

part of my template so I'm going to zoom sorry I'm a bit zoomed out I want this to be part of my template so I just added that here in this canvas if I go

up and I double click on this and open it up this template now has that in it now I don't want that in there so I'm going to delete it and then I'm going to go back to my canvas as you can see it's

deleted another note that I've connected here I'm keeping track of how many videos I have done another thing that I'm using canvas for is I am keeping

track of all of the notes thoughts ideas documentation around the gamify task manager app that I am building here is kind of more of a free for all as far as

notes go I just have all these different cards here um I've got some images uh things that I'm working with I've got a bunch of links to different resources

that I've got here these research ones a lot of these are notes that I can link and these are just cards that have backlinks in them just like any other

note would and they live inside of this canvas and you can see here I have created a group for this game design doc that I actually sketched out by hand I

created a group and I put that sketch as a background on this group and then I was creating cards that help me to kind of continue to work with with this image

that you know is done it's exported it can't be changed but then I have cards on top of it that allow me to add in additional information so I've got this

note about character customization and so I link it to this note here on pixel art character style ideas here's another canvas that I have it's kind of a mood

board kind of idea and I've got all these different pixel art characters that I'm thinking about how to design design my character so here's a bunch of examples of of different characters and

then I've got some different notes that uh you know expand on these notes that I've written out I didn't have an idea of the story yet when I first wrote this

uh this handwritten note so I've added that in as a card here and because it's a group I can grab this and move it around and all the cards stay in place

going back over to our initial mind map let's actually take a look at one of these items here how is Obsidian canvas worse than other mind mapping tools

while it is amazing and there's so many amazing things about it there are some kind of maybe gotas or you know things nitpicks things to consider here this is

very finicky on mobile I use canvas on my phone on my iPad and it does some kind of weird things on iPad in

particular uh when you're been using it for a while when you've had obsidian open for a while I can no longer longer drag cards around you have to like hold

it down really long and then sometimes that puts it into editing mode and sometimes that doesn't I'd say another thing that makes this not the best mind

mapping tool for me is that there's no way to add handwritten notes natively so we had my my solution for that was you

know taking notes of something and creating it as a background and then adding it in but the problem is is that I can't just create handwritten notes on the Fly inside of obsidian I have to

create this in a different program now this isn't going to be a problem for everybody but for me I do a lot of drawing a lot of handwriting that's how

I like to get ideas out initially so not having a native way to add handwritten notes is something that makes this tool maybe a little bit less than for me so

there are a few things but overall canvas really is this amazing tool there's nothing stopping me from Ming making these cool dashboards and having these projects

where I have all these different notes thoughts and ideas and I can rearrange these however I want it's really just an amazingly powerful tool and I highly recommend giving it a try