![[promo-embed-home]] ![[new-superpower-cover.jpg]] Every Obsidian user eventually faces the same challenge: as your vault grows, finding and organizing specific information becomes increasingly challenging. You have valuable knowledge scattered across hundreds or thousands of notes, but accessing it efficiently feels like searching through a digital haystack. [^1] Obsidian's new Bases feature helps solve this problem elegantly by transforming any collection of notes into organized, sortable, and filterable databases—all while keeping your notes as plain text files. # From Notes to Databases Bases turns your notes into spreadsheet-like views without changing the underlying files. Think of it as adding a database layer on top of your existing notes, where each note becomes a row and your note properties become columns you can filter, sort, and edit. The excitement happens through Obsidian's properties system—the metadata you can add to notes like tags, dates, ratings, or custom fields. Bases reads this structured information and presents it in clean, organized tables or card views that update automatically as you modify your notes. No coding required. No query languages to learn. Just point, click, and watch your chaotic note collection transform into organized data. Here is a Base I setup for my [Readwise](https://bit.ly/rwreader) highlights. ![[new-superpower-rw-01.jpg]] The same view on a mobile device: ![[new-superpower-mobile.jpg]] # Why This Changes Everything For years, Obsidian users have had to choose between the flexibility of free-form note-taking and the power of structured organization. Manual index notes become outdated. Complex folder hierarchies become unwieldy. Even powerful community plugins like Dataview require learning custom syntax. Bases eliminate this trade-off. You can continue writing notes naturally while gaining the ability to view and organize them like a database when needed. Your morning book notes become part of a reading tracker by evening. Project updates automatically appear in status dashboards. Research papers sort themselves by relevance and date. This isn't just about organization—it's about making your accumulated knowledge more actionable and valuable. # Powerful Use Cases for Any Obsidian User Bases transforms how you work with different types of information, regardless of your field or vault size. **Research becomes manageable.** Whether you're tracking academic papers, industry articles, or course materials, you can organize by date, relevance, methodology, or any criteria that matters to your work. Students, professionals, and researchers finally have a way to make sense of accumulated knowledge without manual filing systems. **Projects stay on track.** Create dashboards showing status, deadlines, and progress across multiple initiatives. Meeting notes organize themselves by client and action items. Personal goals become trackable with milestone dates and progress indicators. The scattered nature of project information—a universal frustration—becomes a thing of the past. **Creative work flows better.** Writers can manage story ideas by genre and development stage. Content creators track articles from concept to publication. Artists organize inspiration by medium and project relevance. The creative pipeline that usually exists only in your head becomes visible and manageable. **Professional growth accelerates.** Client information organizes by industry and engagement status. Business ideas sort by market potential and resource requirements. Methodologies rank by effectiveness and applicability. Whether you're consulting, researching, or building a business, your professional knowledge becomes a strategic asset rather than scattered notes. The pattern is clear: wherever you have collections of similar information, Bases transforms chaos into clarity. # Getting Started with Bases Creating your first Base is surprisingly straightforward. You have several options to get started: **Creating a New Base:** - Right-click any folder in your file explorer and select "New base" - Use the Command Palette and search for "Bases: Create new base" to create one in your current folder - Use "Bases: Insert new base" to create and embed a base directly in your current note **Your First Base Setup:** Once created, your new Base will show every file in your vault by default. To make it useful, you'll want to add filters and configure properties. **Adding Filters:** Click the "Filters" button at the top of your Base. Start simple—try filtering by a tag you already use. Click "Property," select "file," then choose "has tag" and pick one of your existing tags. Your Base will instantly update to show only notes with that tag. ![[new-superpower-filter-tags.png]] **Choosing What to Display:** Click the "Properties" button to see all available properties from your vault. Check the boxes next to properties you want as columns—things like creation date, tags, or any custom properties you've added to your notes. The interface is smart and puts commonly used properties at the top. **Working with Views:** Every Base starts with a default Table view, but you can create multiple views for different perspectives on the same data. Click the view dropdown (initially labeled "Table") to rename your current view or create new ones. This lets you have different filters and property selections for different purposes. **Making It Useful:** The real power comes from consistent note properties. If your notes don't have much structured metadata yet, start small. Add a few properties to a collection of similar notes (like a "status" field for project notes or "rating" for book notes), then create a Base to organize them. Your first useful Base typically takes just a few minutes to set up, and you'll immediately see the organizational potential for larger collections of notes. # What I hope to see in the future Bases currently supports table and card layouts, I'd love to see a few more layout views, such as timelines and kanban boards. One constraint I noticed is that filtering is only available for note properties and file metadata—you cannot filter based on the note content itself. This means concepts need to be formally tagged or categorized in properties rather than just mentioned in the note text. For users with extensive existing notes, some property standardization may be necessary to maximize the effectiveness of Bases. # The Future of Knowledge Work in Obsidian Bases represents Obsidian's evolution from a note-taking app to a comprehensive knowledge management platform. By bridging free-form writing and structured data, it opens possibilities that neither approach could achieve alone. Whether you're managing research, tracking projects, organizing creative work, or building personal knowledge systems, Bases transforms scattered information into actionable insights. Your notes become more than just text files—they become a knowledge base that grows more valuable over time. For anyone serious about knowledge management in Obsidian, Bases isn't just a new feature—it's a fundamental upgrade to how you can organize, access, and leverage years of accumulated information. # Other Resources **Articles & Guides:** - [Getting Started with Obsidian Bases](https://obsidian.rocks/getting-started-with-obsidian-bases/) - Obsidian Rocks - [Dataview vs Datacore vs Obsidian Bases](https://obsidian.rocks/dataview-vs-datacore-vs-obsidian-bases/) - Comparison of query tools - [Goodbye Dataview! Hello Obsidian Bases!](https://dandylyons.net/posts/goodbye-dataview-hello-obsidian-bases/) - Daniel Lyons - [An Overview of the Bases Core Plugin in Obsidian](https://practicalpkm.com/bases-plugin-overview/) - Practical PKM - [Obsidian Quick Tip: Folder Overviews with Obsidian Bases](https://dandylyons.net/posts/obsidian-bases-folder-overview/) - Daniel Lyons - [First Look: Obsidian Bases](https://club.macstories.net/posts/first-look-obsidian-bases) - MacStories **Video Tutorials:** - [Obsidian Bases Just Changed Everything](https://youtu.be/VMMCGohQkm4?si=im0dInAz3pXvRd1G) - Nick Milo - [Game changing Obsidian Bases Update](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pus5BcmQVoc) - Danny Hatcher - [Obsidian 1.9 preview - What the new Bases plugin can (not) do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpyIuLmEidQ) - LeanProductivity **Official Documentation:** - [Obsidian Bases Documentation](https://help.obsidian.md/bases) - Complete syntax and feature reference - [Bases Functions Reference](https://help.obsidian.md/bases/functions) - Available formulas and operations --- [^1]: *Bases is currently available as part of Obsidian's early access program for [Catalyst members](https://obsidian.md/pricing) (a low-cost supporter license). The feature is expected to roll out to all users soon. ![[promo-embed-home]]