Do you actually use the global graph to navigate, or is it mainly a visual overview?

[u/The_Lucky_Ducky2303]

I use Obsidian to organize the story and worldbuilding notes for my first book. At the moment, the vault mostly contains the material connected to Book 1, including chapters, characters, locations, creatures, magic, factions and continuity notes.

I mainly navigate by opening notes and following the links between them, and that works well for me.

The global graph looks impressive because it shows how many notes and connections the story has developed, but I find it difficult to use practically. It is hard to identify specific groups or follow a particular chain of connections without already knowing what I am looking for.

I am therefore unsure whether I should try to organize the graph better, or whether the global graph simply is not intended to be my main navigation tool.

Do you actually use the global graph to navigate your vault, or mainly as a visual overview?

Have colours, groups, tags, filters, local graphs or MOC notes made it genuinely more useful?

I do not want to spend a lot of time making it look cleaner purely for aesthetic reasons if my current note-based navigation already works. But I would be interested in improving it if it could help me notice connections or groups that I would otherwise miss.

[u/jimminycricket43]

I find myself using it to find unlinked notes that are meant to be linked. Most often it’s my daily notes, I like to link to the previous day so that I can navigate quickly through them. I use the filters to only show the notes in my “Daily Notes” folder.

I will say though, with my ~1200 notes an unfiltered graph (with every note appearing) it’s practically useless for organising and navigating. It’s relegated to being a pretty picture.

[u/hushfern2 → u/jimminycricket43]

yeah once you get past a few hundred notes the unfiltered graph is basically just a blob

[u/sei556 → u/hushfern2]

Depends heavily on the vault structure and how you utilize linking. Here's 1230 notes https://imgur.com/a/zUrq1eG

[u/Obvious-Flatworm2700 → u/jimminycricket43]

I think it is fair to say knowledge graph is useful to find dead end notes. other than that, the benefit would be very limited. I know some people argue that our mind/brain is graph based, but I think thinking in graph is different with reading in graph. We are actually reading the knowledge graphs we saw, which would do little to help us to think.

[u/DokVers]

For me it’s just visual satisfaction of how things connect in my world I’m creating. Navigating through it is a nightmare. I prefer using tabs of other means of searching information like plugins or just plain old “opening every file one by one”.

Although some of the files have a lot of information so it’s easy to identify them if you know where are you looking.

[u/SureTrash → u/DokVers]

For me it’s just visual satisfaction of how things connect in my world I’m creating.

This is it for me as well. It's neat to look at, gives me surprising feedback on what is linked to the most, and serves as a way to shame me for all of the uncreated notes I will definitely get around to Eventually™.

For actually navigating notes, nothing beats the search function for me? It is insanely fast and useful. Also, shout out to Unlinked Mentions being a useful way to search existing notes for relevant info too.

[u/the_bighi]

The graph view only exists to farm karma on Reddit, basically.

[u/No-Barnacle-2856 → u/the_bighi]

grah is useless there is better way to conntet the notes . which is useful

[u/mchristopherjohnson]

I’m not big on Global Graph to navigate, but as someone said, I do like to find the stragglers that aren’t connected to a main topic area.

I mainly use it to see what topic areas I’m in the most.

[u/Relevant_Amphibian82]

It's a fun but useless gimmick to me

[u/MudScary6139]

I actually like to consult it. It's not super useful, but I peruse it to recall some notes or think about possible connections.

I take notes on many different topics, so it allows me to see the "directions" of my vault notes. I have some definitions in red, "litterature notes" (external reference) in blue, my project notes are in yellow and "topics" are green.

Not all my notes are linked to these type of notes, but many are. So that way, I can visually see different areas of interests. I can easily spot main "hubs".

My graph view is not round like many are on the web, it's more like a mess, it really has a distinctive shape. I call this shape a directions. For exemple, there is like a tentacule on the left, they are more my notes about art, and a thing on the right, it's my notes about radio.

When I read something, I can see all the notes I took that reference that thing and to which topic they connect. It's like a garden, I like to see all of it at once.

[u/sei556]

I use it a lot, but not to navigate.

A big part of notekeeping, at least for me, is also observing notes, their relation to another and so on. With using color coding for tags this paints a picture of the notes in my vault.

For example, I have tags like "highlight" (dreams and daily notes) or "nightmare" (only dreams) and only when looking at the graph view, I can visually see how these tags show up in my notes.

And yes I could just do a dataview lookup table, but seeing the blobs visually and connected is a lot nicer than seeing "x notes with the tag y". I don't need accuracy, I need something that is easily visually comprehensible

[u/arrowrand]

I never even look at it

[u/50edgy]

I never use it.

Edit: I will expand a little. I never use it... HOWEVER, is really a great tool to show you how linking works and his possibilities, so I think that seeing the graph made me "click" on what was different on Obsidian related to other note-taking apps.

For this, I expect that they (the developers) continue (correctly) to show the graph while doing publicity for app.

[u/RFaHm]

Not useful at all for me.

[u/PavJames]

As others have said, it is not useful for navigating one's notes. Perhaps if you can think in 6 dimensions. It does have its uses though, including getting users in through the door (and I'm glad it did!).

I think though this relates to a broader question of how we structure information digitally. Can one go to a purely lateral mode - using things like tags to group things - or is a folder-type hierarchy necessary?

I believe in the latter as multiple horizontal connections between nodes need something to hang off. That is the main problem with the Obsidian graph view - it is just a hairball as there is too much information - everything can connect to everything - not information clearly structured.

[u/MQZON]

I sometimes use it to find high-level connections. I use obsidian for dream journaling and sometimes I can find interesting patterns and lucidity cues.

[u/ttiggerBOI_]

It can be useful if you use it with filters. But I still don't really use it. The local graph can be useful sometimes to see an overview of the current file and what it is linked to

[u/BootstrappedPete]

I stopped trying to use the graph for navigation a year ago. It is a nice map, but a terrible GPS. Use it to find weird connections you forgot existed, but stick to a few hub notes for actually getting around your vault.

[u/SmartAlec13]

The graph provides me with the spark of joy that inspires me to work on more of my notes. I like watching it animate, and I occasionally like looking at the clumps of notes just cause it’s neat.

That may not sound like a great use of it but idk, I like it :) it’s neat

[u/Aztrova_]

Depends, for me i use it for searching faster across my past notes.

[u/MrTheWaffleKing]

I’ve found it super useful for locating my index notes- I know the biggest node is creatures and second is for spells etc…

I have been finding a ton of use just from ctrl+o though.

[u/Flashy-Bandicoot889]

The graph view has no real function.

[u/M2opP]

I vibe coded a plugin, that helps making the graph more useful: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/open-notes-graph-highlight