Coming from Obsidian
Good news: an Obsidian vault is, for the most part, already a Foam workspace. Both store your notes as plain Markdown files in a directory, so in most cases you can just open your vault folder in VS Code with the Foam extension installed and start working.
Try it in 30 seconds
Section titled “Try it in 30 seconds”- Install the Foam extension in VS Code.
- File → Open Folder… and pick your existing Obsidian vault.
- That’s it — wikilinks, backlinks, the graph, and tags should all work.
You can keep using Obsidian on the same folder side-by-side. Foam doesn’t change your files unless you ask it to.
What works the same
Section titled “What works the same”| Obsidian | Foam |
|---|---|
[[wikilinks]] | Wikilinks |
![[embeds]] | Note Embeds |
[[note#^block-id]] | Block Anchors |
| Backlinks panel | Backlinks |
| Graph view | Graph Visualization |
| Daily notes | Daily Notes |
| Templates | Note Templates |
Tags (#tag) | Tags |
| Frontmatter / aliases | Note Properties |
What’s different or missing
Section titled “What’s different or missing”These are the things most likely to surprise you:
- Live preview / WYSIWYG editing. Foam uses VS Code’s standard split editor + preview pane rather than inline rendering.
- Community plugins. Obsidian plugins don’t run in Foam. Foam relies on the wider VS Code extension ecosystem instead — see Recommended Extensions.
- Canvas. Not supported (tracked in #1450).
- Tasks plugin syntax. Not supported (tracked in #1466).
- Callouts / Admonitions (
> [!note]). Not rendered natively; works as a normal blockquote. - Wikilink resolution. Foam and Obsidian agree on most cases but resolve identifier-style links slightly differently. See the comparison table in Wikilinks.
A few practical tips
Section titled “A few practical tips”.obsidian/folder. Leave it alone if you’re keeping both tools. Add it to.gitignoreif you only want to track notes.- Templates. Foam templates live in
.foam/templates/— see Note Templates for the format. - Don’t see something here? Search open issues — chances are someone has already asked.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Wikilinks — full link syntax reference
- Creating Your First Workspace — set up Foam from scratch
- Recommended Extensions — VS Code extensions that pair well with Foam
Published with Foam