Journals

A journal writes one note per period, and every period is the same length: a day, a week, a month, a quarter, a year, or a custom interval such as a two-week sprint. Want daily, weekly and monthly notes? Make three journals, one per length. Shelves are how you keep a set of them together, and Periods explains how each length is counted.

A journal decides where its notes go, what they are called, what goes into a new one, which dates it writes for, and which properties it records on each note.

You want to…	Go to
Choose where notes go and what they are called	Note creation
Start notes from a template, or a different one on some days	Templates
Limit the dates a journal writes notes for	Timeline
Number notes — Day 1, Sprint 4	Sequential numbers
Rename the properties written into notes	Frontmatter
Rename, copy or delete a journal	Renaming, cloning and deleting

Creating a journal

The + button (Create new journal) in the Journals section of the main settings page opens Add journal, which asks for:

• Journal name — must be unique. Journal names appear in the command palette, in note properties and in code blocks.
• I'll be writing — daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, or Custom intervals. For custom intervals, Every sets the length — a number and a unit — and Start date is what intervals are counted from; it cannot be changed after creating the journal.

Create opens the new journal's settings page. The period length cannot be changed later; the settings page shows it next to the journal's name.

A new journal names its notes {{date}} — {{journal_name}} {{index}} for custom intervals — keeps them at the root of the vault, and formats dates to suit its period.

Note creation

Resolved note path: shows where the note for today's period goes, so you can see the effect of each change as you make it.

Note name template — any template variable can go in it: {{date}}, {{date:dddd}}, {{index}}, a question's answer. Make it name every period differently: when a second period resolves to a name the first already took, opening it is refused and that period gets no note at all — see Opening a period says its note belongs to another period. A name the plugin cannot read a date back out of works, but notes you create yourself will not auto-attach.

Folder — where new notes go. It takes variables too, so notes can be filed by date: Journal/{{date:YYYY}}/{{date:MM}} puts each note under its year and month. Changing Folder later affects only new notes: the notes a journal already has stay where they are, and stay connected. Move them yourself if you want them in the new layout — a note keeps its connection wherever it goes.

Default date format — used for a date variable that doesn't specify its own format, written with moment.js format tokens. A variable with its own format, like {{date:DD.MM.YYYY}}, ignores it.

On a weekly journal, {{date}} is not always the week's first day, and week numbers need w rather than W — see Week numbers in names.

Confirm creating new notes and Auto-create today's note are covered in Notes.

Examples: Filing notes by year, Filing notes by decade.

Templates

Each is a path to a note used as a template when creating new notes; when multiple are configured, the first that exists wins. Add template adds a path; each path shows its Resolved template path:.

• A template that exists but is empty is skipped, and the next one is tried.
• Paths take variables, so a journal can use a different template on some days — a weekday, a month.
• Variables in the template's text are filled in for the note being created. With Templater installed, its commands run afterwards — see Compatibility.
• Variables in a template's properties are written so the properties stay readable: a value that would break them — one containing : , # or a line break — is quoted. A value with line breaks is written over several lines when it is the whole of a property's value or of a list item, and as a single quoted string otherwise. Numbers, true/false values and lists keep their type.
• A template only ever fills a new note, or an empty note being connected. A note with content is never overwritten.

Examples: Recording when a note was created, A different template on some days.

Timeline

A journal's timeline is the range of dates it writes notes for.

• Start writing on — notes before this date are never created. Custom intervals show their start date here and cannot change it.
• End writing — Never, After date, or After repeating a number of times: after that date, or after that many notes, the journal creates no new ones. Ending after a number of repeats needs a start date to count from; without one the journal is not bounded and the settings page says so.

A period that straddles the start date is inside the timeline — a week whose first day falls before a mid-week start still gets its note.

Outside the timeline, calendar cells cannot be clicked, auto-create, auto-attach and bulk add skip the date, and Connect note to a journal refuses it. Notes that already exist for those dates stay where they are, and still open and link.

Example: A journal with a start and an end.

Sequential numbers

For numbered entries (like Sprint 1), and for chained ones (like Release4711Sprint1).

• Enable sequential numbers — assigns numbers to notes, e.g. Day 1, Day 2…
• A journal's numbering is an ordered list of digits, slowest first. The last (fastest) digit advances once per note; when it wraps around, it carries into the digit above it, the way a car odometer's ones wheel turns the tens wheel. Add digit and Edit digit open the same dialog:
  • Variable name — used in a note name or folder as a template variable, written as {{name}}.
  • Start number — the number assigned at the anchor date.
  • Reset — only the first (slowest) digit has it: Continuous never resets, and Resets after a number of repeats starts over. Every digit below the first resets after a fixed count instead, set as How many per the digit above it: after that many, this digit restarts and the one above it goes up by one.
  • Property name — the property the digit's number is stored in.
• Anchor date — numbering starts from this date: the note for this date gets the start number, and later notes count up from it. A journal with a start date uses it as the anchor date.
• Digits can only be added at the bottom (Add digit), as a new fastest digit — there is no way to insert a slower one above the current top. To turn a single-counter journal into a chained one (say, adding Release above an existing Sprint), rename the existing digit to release, give it its new start number, and add a finer sprint digit beneath it.
• The last remaining digit cannot be deleted; deleting the slowest one promotes the next digit to take its place.
• Allow before anchor — allows indexing before the period holding the anchor date, which may produce negative numbers. That period itself is numbered either way, even when the anchor date falls part-way through it. Offered only when the journal has no start date and the slowest digit is Continuous.
• Preview shows the full paths of the next five notes, so a digit used only in the folder is visible too.
• A note named only by its digits (no date anywhere in the name or folder) can still be matched back to its journal, but only when the slowest digit is Continuous and every digit appears in the name or folder template.

For example, a name template of Release{{release}}Sprint{{sprint}} with release starting at 4711 (Continuous) and sprint starting at 1 (6 per release) produces Release4711Sprint1 … Release4711Sprint6, then Release4712Sprint1. The whole configuration is under Release and sprint numbering.

Frontmatter

Every journal note carries a journal property naming its journal. That name is fixed. The others are yours to rename:

• Date property name — the period's date. journal-date unless you change it.
• Add start date property — for weekly journals that span two years, the start date can differ from the date property; turn it on to record the period's first day under Start date property name (journal-start-date).
• Add end date property — records the period's last day under End date property name (journal-end-date). A custom interval whose end you moved by hand keeps its end date whether or not this is on.
• Notelet type property — records which notelet type a note is. See Notelets.

Renaming a property moves the value to the new name on every note the journal already has, notelets included, so no note loses its connection.

The rest of a journal's settings

• Questions — asked when a note is created. See Questions.
• Notelet types — extra notes a period can hold. See Notelets.
• Commands — commands targeting this journal. See Commands.
• Navigation block and, for custom intervals, Calendar interval lines — see Navigation blocks.
• Decorations — see Decorations.

Renaming, cloning and deleting

Rename journal, next to the journal's name, changes the journal property on every note the journal already has, notelets included. Shelves and commands follow the new name.

Clone makes a copy under a New journal name: settings and commands are copied, but notes are not. Copy notelet types adds a command for each type; turn it off to clone without them. The copy joins the same shelf. It starts with the source's folder and name template, so the two usually resolve to the same note paths until you change one — Colliding journal settings on the main settings page says so until you do. The exception is a name or folder using {{journal_name}}, which is part of the path: give the copy a name that renders differently and the two write their own notes from the start. A custom interval journal's default name does this.

Delete says how many notes are connected and asks What to do with connected notes:

• Keep notes — notes stay in your vault, unchanged. They keep their journal property, so no other journal adopts them, and a journal you create later with the same name picks them up again.
• Clear journal data — notes stay in your vault, but the journal properties are removed from their frontmatter.
• Delete notes — every note connected to this journal is deleted from your vault.

Commands that target the journal are deleted with it, and it is taken off its shelf.

Examples

Filing notes by year

A daily journal with Folder Journal/{{date:YYYY}} and Note name template {{date}}. Before its folder was set, it wrote its note for 31 December 2025 at the root of the vault, as 2025-12-31.md.

• Opening its note for 14 September 2026 creates Journal/2026/2026-09-14.md.
• Opening 31 December 2025 opens 2025-12-31.md where it is; nothing is created under Journal/2025.
• A note you make yourself at Journal/2027/2027-01-05.md is auto-attached for 5 January 2027.

Filing notes by decade

A daily journal with Folder Calendar/{{date<startOf=decade>:YYYY}}s/{{date:YYYY}}/{{date:MM}} and Note name template {{date}}. Opening its note for 14 February 1959 creates Calendar/1950s/1959/02/1959-02-14.md.

Recording when a note was created

The journal's template note starts with:

---
created: {{current_date:YYYY-MM-DD}} {{time:HH:mm:ss}}
---

A note created at 20:27:19 on 13 September 2026 gets created: 2026-09-13 20:27:19.

Take the time from {{time}}: {{current_date}} holds no time of day — see Variables.

A different template on some days

A daily journal with two Templates, in this order:

1. Templates/Daily-{{date:dddd}}.md
2. Templates/Daily.md

The vault has Templates/Daily-Friday.md and no template for any other weekday. Opening Friday 18 September 2026 fills the note from Daily-Friday.md; opening Monday 21 September fills it from Daily.md, because Templates/Daily-Monday.md does not exist.

dddd writes the weekday in Obsidian's language, so with Obsidian in German the Friday template has to be Daily-Freitag.md, and after switching languages new Friday notes fall back to Daily.md. {{date:E}} numbers the weekdays instead — 1 for Monday to 7 for Sunday — in any language: with Templates/Daily-{{date:E}}.md first, the same Friday uses Templates/Daily-5.md.

The same works for anything a variable expresses — {{date:MM}} for a template per month, {{week_of_month}} for the first week of each month. One template is picked, not several combined; to share a common body, embed it, or include it with Templater's tp.file.include.

A journal with a start and an end

A daily journal named daily-window with Folder window, Start writing on 1 June 2030 and End writing After date 30 June 2030. Links for the day before and the day after — obsidian://journals?journal=daily-window&date=2030-05-31 and …&date=2030-07-01 — create no note and show "No journal covers that date."