Probably the best way to manage the folders of your attachments in Obsidian

I use Obsidian to manage my projects, and there are most of the times some attachments in the form of images or other files related to the projects that I’m working on. So then I was thinking what would be the best way to manage attachments with Obsidian. I developed a really nice workflow and I will share it with you here in this article.

Here in this article, I talk about:

• Two types of attachments
• How to specify where to store your attachments in Obsidian
• The way I manage my attachments in Obsidian
• Why I think this is the best way to manage your attachments

Two types of attachments

In general, there are two types of attachments that it’s important for me to make a distinction:

The first category of attachments is one off images for example that I don’t care where in the `attachments` folder they end up being stored. In other words, I don’t need to have access to them and other related files at the same time.

The second category however is the attachments that I need to be able to access them in one place. For example, let’s say I’m working on a design project. I need to have a folder to store my resources, my design files such as .ai or .psd, and my exported files.

Now that we know the category of attachments, let’s look at the best way we can create folders for those attachments inside obsidian.

How to specify where to store your attachments in Obsidian

In obsidian, you have the option of specifying where you want your attachments to end up. You can change this in the settings of your vault. Here’s a screenshot:

`Settings > Files & Links > Default location for new attachments`

You have three options of choosing where you want to store your attachments:
- Vault folder
- In the folder specified below
- same folder as current file
- In subfolder under current file

The way I manage my attachments in my vault

In my experience, I think that the “In the folder specified below” is the best option. Select this and select a folder called Media or Attachments from your vault.

From now on, whatever attachment that you add to your notes will be stored in this specific folder. It’s where you go to see all your attachments, and it does a good job of dealing with the first category of your attachments.

Now, for the second category of your attachments where you need to have them all in a folder, I use this method:

I have a template with the following content inside my Templates folder:

> Folder:
> file:D:\zachshirow\Media\{{time}}

Whenever I use this template, it gives me a unique link to a folder. I’ve used the default {{time}} tag that we can add to our templates in Obsidian. Here’s the momentjs equivalent of this, which you can add to your templates plugin in the {{time}} field.

`YYYYMMDDHHmm`

Then, I copy the name of the folder that was generated using the current date time. 202301080343 for example. Then I create a folder in the Media folder with this name.

Now, whenever I click on the following link in Obsidian, I will open the related folder:

> Folder:
> file:D:\zachshirow\Media\202301080343

Here’s a GIF of my folder making process:

My Folder Creation Process in Obsidian

Why I think this is the best way to manage your attachments

By using this way of managing your attachments, there are some benefits that I really enjoy:

1. I don’t have to worry about naming the folders (as the naming will be automatic)
2. The folders are ordered from oldest to newest, so it’s easy to find the folder that I’m looking for.
3. The folders are all under the “Media” folder and I don’t have to think about a hierarchy of folders for each case. The hierarchy and links are handled by the notes inside my Obsidian. The folders only job is to handle the grouping of relevant files to the project.

Let me know what you think about this method of organizing folders related to notes (especially projects).

Also tell me, how do you organize your `attachments` folders in Obsidian?

My name is Zachary Shirmohammadli (Zachshirow) and I’m an expert in using Obsidian and I make relevant content. You can follow me if you’re interested into this kind of thing.

Happy writing.