Why 5 Million People Are OBSESSED With Excalidraw

Excalidraw’s breakout advantage in Obsidian isn’t just that it lets people sketch—it lets sketches behave like first-class notes that stay linked to the rest of a “second brain.” The result is a workflow where visual brainstorming and written knowledge reinforce each other: drawings embed directly inside markdown notes, update automatically when the drawing changes, and can be navigated via links to specific regions of a diagram. That tight coupling is why millions of users keep returning to it, even after the initial learning curve.

The transcript starts with the setup: install Obsidian, enable community plugins, and add Excalidraw as the most popular plugin. From there, the core idea is to avoid jumping in too fast. Before touching Excalidraw, it’s crucial to understand Obsidian’s markdown linking and embedding—using double square brackets to create links between notes, and using an exclamation mark to embed one note’s content inside another. That same linking logic becomes the foundation for what follows.

Once inside Excalidraw, the emphasis shifts to “visual thinking” on an infinite canvas. The basics are taught in a non-overwhelming order: drawing and manipulating vector shapes (rectangles, diamonds, ellipses), moving around with the hand tool, and using keyboard shortcuts so the cursor stays “the pencil” rather than repeatedly hopping to icons. The transcript highlights practical editing behaviors: elements can be selected, scaled, rotated, duplicated (including alt/option-drag), and undone/redone (Ctrl/Cmd+Z). Arrows and lines are built point-by-point, can be adjusted after creation, and support sticky notes—text that lives inside a shape. Everything stays crisp at any zoom because the graphics are vector-based.

Styling then turns rough sketches into readable diagrams. Users can change stroke and fill colors, adjust “sloppiness,” tweak fonts, control opacity, and use grid/snap modes for alignment. Reusable components come next: group multiple elements, then add the group to a personal library so it can be dragged into future drawings. The transcript also shows how to import community libraries (downloadable icon sets like software architecture) and reuse them across projects.

The real leap happens with embedding and linking. Excalidraw drawings can be embedded into Obsidian notes using the exclamation-mark link syntax or the command palette. Embedded drawings remain dynamic: edits made in the drawing propagate into every note that contains the embed. Even more powerful, links can be created inside drawings and can jump to specific parts of a large diagram by copying links for selected groups (including the embed marker). The workflow extends beyond shapes: images, GIFs, PDFs, web pages (as interactive frames), and markdown files can be inserted as images or embedable objects, with references updating when filenames change.

Finally, the transcript introduces “back of note cards,” letting users attach additional markdown sections to a drawing—then open the drawing as markdown to edit those back-of-card notes. The most powerful feature is composability: import one Excalidraw drawing into another so complex ideas break into smaller visual modules. Excalidraw settings let users control where new drawings are stored and how links display, while Excalidraw scripts (installed via the Obsidian tools panel) add capabilities like better dark mode and slideshow-style presentation. The closing takeaway is clear: Excalidraw becomes most valuable when it’s treated as a connected knowledge system, not a standalone sketchpad.