Obsidian Daily Notes
Interact with Obsidian Daily Notes through the official obsidian command: create
or open today's note, append entries, read notes, and search vault content.
Setup
Check that the official CLI is available:
obsidian version
If the command is unavailable, ask the user to enable Obsidian's CLI:
- Install or update to Obsidian 1.12 or newer.
- Open Settings > General.
- Enable Command line interface and follow the registration prompt.
Target a vault explicitly when needed by placing vault=<name-or-id> before the
command:
obsidian vault="Work" daily
Obsidian Daily Notes plugin defaults:
- Date format:
YYYY-MM-DD - New file location: Vault root
- Template file location: (none)
Date Handling
Get current date:
date +%Y-%m-%d
Cross-platform relative dates (GNU first, BSD fallback):
| Reference | Command |
|---|---|
| Today | date +%Y-%m-%d |
| Yesterday | date -d yesterday +%Y-%m-%d 2>/dev/null || date -v-1d +%Y-%m-%d |
| Last Friday | date -d "last friday" +%Y-%m-%d 2>/dev/null || date -v-1w -v+fri +%Y-%m-%d |
| 3 days ago | date -d "3 days ago" +%Y-%m-%d 2>/dev/null || date -v-3d +%Y-%m-%d |
| Next Monday | date -d "next monday" +%Y-%m-%d 2>/dev/null || date -v+monday +%Y-%m-%d |
Commands
Open/Create Today's Note
obsidian daily
Opens today's daily note in Obsidian, creating it from template if it doesn't exist.
Append Entry
obsidian daily:append content="ENTRY_TEXT"
Append without adding a newline:
obsidian daily:append content="ENTRY_TEXT" inline
Read Note
Today:
obsidian daily:read
Specific date, using the vault's configured daily-note folder and date format:
obsidian read path="Daily Notes/2025-01-10.md"
Relative date (yesterday):
obsidian read path="Daily Notes/$(date -d yesterday +%Y-%m-%d 2>/dev/null || date -v-1d +%Y-%m-%d).md"
Search Content
obsidian search query="TERM"
Search Notes
Machine-readable search:
obsidian search query="TERM" format=json
Specific Vault
Put vault="NAME" before the command:
obsidian vault="Work" read path="Daily Notes/2025-01-10.md"
Example Output
- Went to the doctor
- [ ] Buy groceries
- https://github.com/anthropics/skills
- 15:45 This is a log line
Use Cases
Journal entry:
obsidian daily:append content="- Went to the doctor"
Task:
obsidian daily:append content="- [ ] Buy groceries"
Link:
obsidian daily:append content="- https://github.com/anthropics/skills"
Timestamped log:
obsidian daily:append content="- $(date +%H:%M) This is a log line"
Read last Friday:
obsidian read path="Daily Notes/$(date -d 'last friday' +%Y-%m-%d 2>/dev/null || date -v-1w -v+fri +%Y-%m-%d).md"
Search for "meeting":
obsidian search query="meeting"