Markdown cheatsheet

Below, you find an overview of basic and advanced Markdown formatting styles you can use in Obsidian.

You don’t need to know all of this. Use this page as a reference and come back to it when needed.

Basics

Headers

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3
#### Heading 4
##### Heading 5

Emphasis

**Bold text**

*Italic text*

***Bold and italic text***

==Highlighted text==

Hotkeys: Ctrl/Cmd + B for bold and Ctrl/Cmd + I for italic.

Lists

- this is
- an unordered
- list

1. this is
2. an ordered
3. list

Task lists (checkboxes)

- [ ] An open task
- [x] A completed task

Hotkey: Ctrl/Cmd + L turns a line into a task.

External links

[A link to Google](https://google.com)

Hotkey: Ctrl/Cmd + K.

You can embed links by putting an ! before the link. This works for some web content but is especially helpful for videos, e.g.

![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6ySG7xYgjY)

Internal links

Internal links are links that link to other files in your Obsidian vault. As soon as you start typing [[]], Obsidian will suggest files you can link to.

[[Markdown cheatsheet]]
[[Markdown cheatsheet|A different display name for the link]]

Also here, you can add ! to embed the content. This is useful to embed PDFs, images, but also other note content, e.g.

![[Markdown cheatsheet]]

You can also link to specific sections of another file using #:

[[Markdown cheatsheet#Headers|Check the header section]]

Advanced

Formulas

You can use the LaTeX syntax for formulas. Use $ to enclose inline equations and $$ for blocked equations.

This $\pi = \pi$ is an inline equation

$$
\frac{\pi}{2} = \frac{\pi}{2}
$$

Horizontal lines

I add a horizontal line

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between these two paragraphs

Quotes

> A wise woman said this thing

Footnotes

This is a sentence with a footnote. [^1]
[^1]: This is the footnote text

Callouts

There are different types of callout boxes, the default is a note:

> [!note]
> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

You can change the title:

> [!note] This has a custom title
> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

You can make the callout foldable by adding a + (unfolded by default) or - (folded by default) after the type:

> [!note]- This has a folded callout
> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

Depending on what you put in the [], the callout will look differently. Other types are:

> [!abstract]
> [!info]
> [!todo]
> [!tip]
> [!success]
> [!help]
> [!warning]
> [!failure]
> [!danger]
> [!bug]
> [!example]
> [!quote]

Inline code

This `word` is formatted like code because of the backticks.

Code blocks

Code blocks start and end with 3 backticks. After the 3 backticks in the first line, add the language (e.g. R, python, cpp, …)

```R
# This is an R code block
library(tidyverse)
my_data <- read_csv("my_data.csv")
```

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Back to Exercise 1 · Back to the workshop page