# The end of the megavault? I used to be a one-vault only type of Obsidian user, and that vault was full. Not quite as full as SlRvb's [megavault](https://publish.obsidian.md/slrvb/00+Technical/0+Legend/L-FS+-+HQ+MegaVault), but it was creeping there. It helped my academic works and saved schoolwork, my TTRPG campaigns and worldbuilding items, fiction, reference notes, tasks lists, recipes, templates, books, backed-up .json code in codeblocks, my typescript learnings, to name a few. It held _**everything**_. In some ways, it was nice having everything at my fingertips. I may still be using such a scheme, had I not recently started working for [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md). What changed? Well, I started needing to use separate vaults for work. - The Obsidian Team vault, for all the secret items you will never know about until its released - A vault for the fork of the English Obsidian Help docs - A vault for my fork of the Obsidian Developer docs - My personal vault for my daily tracking/jots > [!note] The documentation vaults I do not have open all the time. When I have these other vaults open, which by comparison are small in size, I notice how <u>feature heavy</u> and **slow** my megavault is. It may only be milliseconds at a time, but over the course of the day I find myself enjoying more of the simplicity that I am forced to use in the work vaults. I have long been an advocate for being intentional in the plugins one uses, but I think I can start applying the same to my vault structure as well. ## Enter nesting > [!danger] > If you attempt to do any of this, you will want to keep backups of each vault. > You also do not want to edit any content in the Top-level vault, and bottom level vault, at the same time. What I have done is built the following nested vault structure. The reasoning for this I will get into further down. ```yaml _Shadowfall Trove 1 Inbox 2 Events 3 Zettelkasten 4 Zotero Dragonness # My private writings misc-notes.md ``` These folders above make up my "primary vault". ```yaml Chaos # My TTRPG vault Skeletal # Shared vault for the family computer Tenebrous # My Obsidian Publish vault, this write-up is in here Umbral # My Tales of the Twin cities project ``` These additional 4 folders are actually nested vaults. They contain all of the note contents, but none of the plugins, themes, or settings. They are only accessible in the off-chance I need to link to them, or quickly reference something. > [!danger] Before deciding to use a nested vault structure yourself, please read the following post on the Obsidian forums. It is very thorough. [Nested vaults - usage and risks](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/nested-vaults-usage-and-risks/6360) ## Obsidian settings for all vaults I plan on using Obsidian Sync on all of these vaults. In order to make certain I do not run into corruption issues, I not only ought to follow the rules in the `danger` callout above, but also adjust some settings on parent and nested vaults as well. **Files and Links** Similarly, this helps me recover in the inevitable instance of _something going wrong_. - Confirm file deletion: true - Deleted files: Move to Obsidian trash (`.trash` folder) With nested vaults, I need to be very careful to how links are referenced to one another. The parent vault has more leeway, but for simplicity, I am giving up my normal usage of absolute markdown links for short Wikilinks. > [!tip] I do not see an issue using markdown links, as long as you have unique file-names. > > [!warning] If you have any files named the same and link them, they will convert to absolute markdown links by default. - Automatically update internal links: true - New link format: Shortest - Use `[[Wikilinks]]`: true This helps me keep track of the specific .css and other files that can get put in the root of the nested vaults, for one reason or another (publish.css, .prettierrc) - Detect all files: true Finally, the below settings ensure that no attachments would get stored outside their respected nested vaults. I use the [Attachment Management](https://github.com/trganda/obsidian-attachment-management) plugin by [Trganda](https://github.com/trganda) to help enforce this. - Default location for new attachments: In subfolder under current folder - Subfolder name: `_attachments` ## Obsidian settings for each vault ### Parent In addition to the settings listed in the prior section, I make sure the following is parent vault specific. **Editor** - Default view for new tabs: Reader I choose this to make it _slightly_ more difficult to accidentally edit something in a nested vault. #### Attachment management settings (Parent vault only) ![[IMG-The end of the megavault-45D44EAB693A10D21FB8652525132E23.png|500]] This makes it so that as long as I place my notes correctly, attachments will be named appropriately. The location will still always be in the folder the note is in, per the [[The end of the megavault#Obsidian settings for all vaults|Obsidian settings for all vaults]]. ### Nested For the nested vaults, I usually want to directly edit them and _do the thing_ in them. It is less about viewing, and more about treating those like the in-use vaults they are. **Editor** - Default view for new tabs: Live Preview **About** This is changed because I want to ensure that the config files cannot be crossed at all with any syncing or backup service. The chances of this are low, but it is better to be prepared. Override config folder: `.nested-name` > [!example] > `.chaos` > `.skeletal` > `.tenebrous` > `.umbral` ## Obsidian sync I plan to use Obsidian Sync for all of these vaults. Typically. you would run into some serious race-conditions if you tried to do this. - The parent vault is open, as is a child vault. - Child vault makes a change, which sync picks up. - Parent vaults reads the change, which sync picks up. - Child vault sees parents change as a new change, which sync picks up. And so on. The way around this lays in how I have my vault structure set up, minimally so, in the parent vault. Very few folders, and all of the nested vaults being contained in individual folders, allow me the ability to maximize the power of [the exclude list](https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Select+files+and+settings+to+sync#Exclude+folder+from+being+synced). ![[IMG-The end of the megavault-40B3FE43279AD834E31F5D1EA8E32840.png|400]] Excluding a folder prevents a folder from syncing, and from being synced. This way, my top-level vault - Echo Dragon - only syncs the non-nested vaults to its own remote vault. **Echo Dragon Folder Structure** The following items all Sync to the remote vault, Echo Dragons - _Shadowfall Trove - 1 Inbox - 2 Events - 3 Zettelkasten - 4 Zotero - Dragonness The following items are ignored by Sync in Echo Dragons, and have their own remote vaults when their respective vaults are open - Chaos - Chaos Dragon remote vault - Skeletan - Skeletal Dragon remote vault - Tenebrous (Publish Vault) - Tenebrous Dragon remote vault - Umbral - Umbral Dragon remote vault ## Putting it together It is a normal workday, and an interesting article is posted on the Obsidian Discord in the VIP Lounge. Additionally, a cool prompt in `#TTRPG-Challenges` is released for the week. All of my vaults are open; Echo Dragons, Skeletal, Umbral, Tenebrous, and Chaos. Each doing their own thing. - The article, I save to Zotero as a snapshot, which its data is automatically stored in `4 Zotero` in the Echo Dragons vault. - Echo Dragons remote vault uploads this to the remote vault. - The cool prompt is saved to a folder in `/Chaos`. - Echo Dragons remote vault ignores it, as `/Chaos` is ignored - Later on, when I make the Chaos vault become the active window, Obsidian Sync will upload the the cool prompt. ### How do you handle multiple devices? **Desktop** The Skeletal Dragon vault is a home-computer vault that I keep for finances, recipes, etc. Things I want to see real quick, but am not spending a lot of time editing or tweaking. Most content here remains unchanged, unless we need to tweak a recipe. :) > [!info] Due it the shared setup, my spouse technically has access to it, but maintains their own Obsidian account and Obsidian Sync for 9/10th's of what they do. **Mobile** On my iPhone and my iPad, I use Echo Dragons exclusively. Since I treat Echo Dragons as my deposit/MOC vault, I do not need to worry about endless switching on the more mobile devices. This may change as the Obsidian Team slowly rolls out some of their quality of life mobile updates, but for now, I am not a heavy mobile user so I put less focus here. Can this technically be done on a mobile setup? Yes, but its much harder, and that is due to OS limitations more than anything else.