Obsidian Projects: How to Manage Your Note-based Projects in Obsidian

Obsidian Projects is a community plugin built to turn note-based “projects” into something you can actually manage inside Obsidian—complete with table, board, calendar, and gallery views. It’s aimed at the gap between writing and planning: instead of treating notes as scattered documents, the plugin organizes them into a project dashboard where front-matter properties drive how tasks and ideas appear across different views.

Setup starts in Obsidian’s Settings → Community Plugins → Browse, where “obsidian projects” is installed and enabled. The plugin doesn’t rely on complex configuration; it mainly uses hotkeys to create new nodes and store projects. Creating a project begins by choosing a folder to hold all project notes (for example, a “007 creation” folder). The setup also offers a choice between using DataView queries or a folder query. Using DataView makes project content read-only, while folder query keeps notes editable—so the workflow typically favors folder query when ongoing editing is required. A template can be attached at project creation time so new notes start with consistent front matter.

Once created, the project dashboard becomes the control center. Notes inside the project folder appear as “nodes,” and their front-matter fields become columns in the table view. In the example workflow, a “YouTube content” project uses a template that defines properties like status (e.g., “up next”), published (false by default), priority (e.g., “free”), and optional fields such as due date, tags, and image. The table view can be customized by hiding fields that aren’t needed, leaving only the most useful columns (such as name, status, and priority).

From there, the plugin adds multiple management perspectives. A board view groups nodes by a chosen property—status is used first, and adding new status values (like “done” or “doing”) creates new columns. The transcript notes that moving individual nodes between columns isn’t supported yet, though it’s on the plugin’s roadmap. A calendar view uses due dates to place nodes on specific days, with filters driven by front matter such as published (false vs true). The calendar view also supports creating new nodes directly by double-clicking a date.

Finally, a gallery view lays project nodes out in a grid, but it requires an image field in each note’s front matter. When an image link is provided (either local or from the web), the gallery renders covers for each node, making it easier to visually scan ideas. The overall payoff is fast switching between views—table for metadata, board for workflow status, calendar for deadlines, and gallery for visual browsing—so note-based projects can be planned and tracked without leaving Obsidian.