Astro Suite Vault Guide★
Overview
All plugins, key bindings, and the theme can be customized to your liking, but this is what’s on by default. Optimized for use with Slate Astro theme.
Philosophy
- Plug-and-play Astro blogging experience.
- Maintain vanilla Obsidian look and feel.
- Emphasis on clarity and flexibility.
Important Hotkeys
Here’s a guide for some important hotkeys set especially for this theme:
- Toggle left side panel:
CTRL + ALT + Z - Toggle right side panel:
CTRL + ALT + X - Navigate back:
ALT + ← - Navigate forward:
ALT + → - Open homepage:
CTRL + M - Toggle reading view:
CTRL + E - Toggle Zen mode:
CTRL + SHIFT + Z - Insert image:
CTRL + ' - Start Terminal:
CTRL + SHIFT + D - Git: Commit and Sync
CTRL + SHIFT + S(off by default)
If you’re on Mac, CTRL = CMD.
Plugins
Disabled default core plugins:
- Backlinks
- Canvas
- Daily notes
- Graph view
- Note composer
- Outgoing links
- Page preview
- Property Over Filename
- Templates
- Sync
Community plugins enabled:
- Astro Composer
- Commander
- Custom save
- Default New Tab Page
- Homepage
- Image Inserter
- Paste image rename
- Shell commands
- Title-Only Tab
Astro Composer
Handy for easily creating new notes as Astro blog posts. Just create a new note with CTRL + N, type in a title in Title case or with special characters, and the note or folder name generated is a kebab-case version of the title without special characters. This is ideal for automating post slugs. CTRL + R allows you to easily rename blog posts, and note filenames (or parent folders) get updated in kebab-case automatically.
You can also define and set default properties that can be generated automatically or manually set for any open note as well.
Once you’ve used wikilinks or markdown links, you can also convert those automatically to internal links for Astro with the “Convert internal links for Astro” command.
You can also easily grab links to headings by right clicking one and selecting “Copy Heading Link”. These will be Astro-ready links by default, but you can use Obsidian wikilnks or markdown links, too.
Custom save
This defines a set of commands to fire once CTRL + S is initiated. For convenience, both “Convert internal links for Astro” and “Standardize properties” commands from the Astro Composer plugin are included. You can add or remove any if you’d like - this is designed for posts to be “publish-ready” when manually saved.
Homepage and Default New Tab Page
Both of these work together so you’re default screen is a .base file that’s a directory of all of your blog posts, listed in reverse-chronological order. You’re able to customize the note properties and views to your liking.
The Base is nested within a folder called _bases because Astro will ignore files and folders with an underscore prefix, letting you use this for Obsidian without processing it for the live site.
I call this “Home Base.”
Paste Image Rename
Quickly drag and drop image files or paste directly from your clipboard and give them kebab-case, SEO-friendly names.
Image Inserter
Pull in images from Unsplash or other sources easily with just a few keystrokes. Just use CTRL + ' to insert an image - and immediately set a SEO-friendly filename for it via the Paste Image Rename plugin.
Title-Only Tab
Pulls from the title property instead of using the filename for any tab.
Property Over Filename
When linking or searching notes, you can use the title property as its primary identifier, which is more helpful semantically for linking between and searching for posts since note filenames are post slugs in kebab case instead of titles.
When you link to another note, its title is automatically set as the hyperlinked text, but you can easily change it to something else after it’s been inserted.
Shell commands and Commander
Shell commands helps us open two things quickly: terminal and Astro’s config.ts file.
To open terminal quickly, use the Start Terminal command. It’s been modified for Windows, macOS, and Linux to start terminal in the relevant directory so you can easily do standard package manager commands like npm or pnpm. It can be activated with CTRL + SHIFT + D.
To open your config.ts file quickly, simply use the Astro Configuration command. You can also press CTRL + SHIFT + , to open it with your default application.
Commander helps us place a button for each of these actions on the file explorer UI.
Linux user warning: on Linux, there isn’t a universal method to open the default terminal. Additionally, the widely used Flatpak (via Flathub) employs non-trivial sandboxing, which introduces further challenges.
BRAT (Temporary)
Only used temporarily to load Astro Composer, Disable Tabs, and Property Over Filename plugins before they’re available in the Obsidian plugin directory. Future versions of this vault will remove BRAT in favor of the official releases.
Git
The Git plugin is turned off by default, if you turn it on, you can easily publish to your Astro blog without leaving Obsidian using CTRL + SHIFT + S. Simply enable the plugin and configure with git to turn it on.
CSS Snippets
An optional custom CSS snippet is included called swap-new-tab-icon-with-home-mobile.css which replaces the new tab button’s icon on the mobile view with a home icon. Since opening a new tab using the combination of Default New Tab Page and Homepage plugins opens your “home base” view, the icon better represents what’s happening when you tab the button. Disable to bring back the standard plus (+) icon. This is off by default, but you can turn it on if you’d like.
