How To Create Symlinks on Mac for Obsidian
April 24, 2026 · Mike Murphy
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create symbolic links (symlinks) on a Mac so you can access any folder inside your Obsidian Vault without moving it from its original location. If your Vault lives in iCloud Drive but you want to work on Markdown files that live in your home directory (like coding project READMEs), this is the video for you.
Description
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create symbolic links (symlinks) on a Mac so you can access any folder inside your Obsidian Vault without moving it from its original location. If your Vault lives in iCloud Drive but you want to work on Markdown files that live in your home directory (like coding project READMEs), this is the video for you.
🧠 What You Will Learn
- Symlinks vs Aliases: why only symlinks work in Obsidian
- ln -s: the single command that creates a symlink
- Terminal basics: cd, pwd, ls, and ls -la
- Custom names: rename the symlink on creation
- Three-way sync: edit anywhere, everything stays in sync
- Verify symlinks: spot the “l” and the arrow in ls -la
- Remove safely: delete the symlink without touching the original
🔗 Links
🌐 Hostinger VPS (Affiliate Link):
https://www.hostg.xyz/SHIDN
Obsidian:
https://obsidian.md
Obsidian Web Clipper:
https://obsidian.md/clipper
**⏱️ Timestamps
**00:00 Intro: About The Tutorial
00:26 Problem Symlinks Solve
01:13 Note For Windows Users
01:31 What is a Symlink?
02:18 Alias vs Symlinks
03:38 What is an Obsidian Vault?
05:19 Overview: How To Create Symlinks
06:09 CD: Change Directories
06:48 pwd: Print Working Directory
07:08 ls: List Files
07:31 Symlink Command: ln -s
08:11 Copy as Pathname
10:52 How Symlinks Work (Syncing)
12:23 Deleting Symlink Folders
13:00 Alias Demo
15:35 Terminal: Alias vs Symlinks
17:10 Inspect Aliases (ls -la)
18:40 How To Identify Symlinks in Terminal
20:01 Delete + Remove Symlinks
20:32 Symlinks: Custom Names