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Astro Modular

Astro Suite Vault (Modular) Guide

• 4 min read • 879 words

Astro and Obsidian logos stacked vertically with a "+" (plus) sign between them.

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 the Modular Astro theme.

Philosophy

  1. Plug-and-play Astro blogging experience.
  2. Emphasis on modularity.
  3. Customize your experience to get it just right.

Theme

For out-of-the-box customization, Minimal theme is used. It uses an understated color scheme with high contract options.

The Minimal Theme Settings, Hider, and Style Settings community plugins are also installed by default, giving you complete control over your experience.

CSS Snippets

An optional custom CSS snippet called custom-draggable-top-area.css makes moving your window is easier when the window frame is hidden and there’s no tab bar. There are also versions specific to Windows and Mac that have OS-specific UI offsets, or just use the base version for no offsets. All can be configured in Settings > Appearance > CSS Snippets. None of these are active in mobile.

hide-tabs-icon-mobile.css removes the tabs icon in the mobile version of Obsidian. If you enable the Disable Tabs plugin, you may want to enable this snippet as well.

Both hide-longpress-flair-mobile.css and hide-header-title-mobile.css are also related to making the mobile interface more simple. Enable any of these snippets to hide these elements.

Important Hotkeys

Here’s a guide for some important hotkeys, some default, some set especially for this theme:

  • New note: CTRL + N
  • Open settings: CTRL + ,
  • Command palette: CTRL + P
  • Search vault: CTRL + O
  • Open a new tab: CTRL + T
  • Close current tab: CTRL + W
  • Toggle left side panel: CTRL + ALT + Z
  • Toggle right side panel: CTRL + ALT + X
  • Toggle tab bar: CTRL + ALT + S
  • Open homepage: CTRL + M
  • Add a new property: CTRL + ;
  • Toggle reading view: CTRL + E
  • Toggle Zen mode: CTRL + SHIFT + Z

If you’re on Mac, CTRL = CMD.

Plugins

Disabled default core plugins:

  • Canvas
  • Daily notes
  • Note composer
  • Page preview
  • Templates
  • Sync

Community plugins enabled:

  • Astro Composer
  • Default New Tab Page
  • Hider
  • Homepage
  • Image Inserter
  • Minimal Theme Settings
  • mdx as md
  • Paste image rename
  • ProZen
  • Style Settings
  • 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.

You can also define and set default properties that can be generated automatically or manually set for any open note as well.

Unlike other themes, you can use Wikilinks or standard markdown links, without having to convert those to internal links for Astro with the “Convert internal links for Astro” command. This theme supports any internal link that works with Obsidian.

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 in the 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.”

Minimal Theme Settings, Hider, and Style Settings

As mentioned earlier, these plugins keep you focused and distraction-free while allowing for customization of your experience.

Should you need to reveal any of the main hidden panels, you can use CTRL + ALT Z for the left side panel, CTRL + ALT + X for the right side panel, or CTRL + ALT + S for the tab bar. Pressing it again will hide it.

In Style Settings, the only options that have been modified are hiding the Properties heading and the “Add Property” button.

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. With the tab bar hidden, you won’t see this unless you unhide it.

ProZen

Zen mode offers another quick option to focus on your writing. Pressing CTRL + SHIFT + Z will enter Zen mode: automatic full-screen, all elements removed except for your content. This is a great alternative if you don’t prefer to use Hider to remove the UI, and prefer to toggle it all on or off at once as needed. Alternatively, you can use the Focus Mode included in the Minimal theme.

BRAT (Temporary)

Only used temporarily to load Astro Composer and Disable Tabs 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.

Disable Tabs

This is also off by default, but if enabled, opening any new tab replaces the current one only. Especially nice for when you’re hiding the tab bar and don’t want multiple tabs. When combined with the Homepage and New Default Tab plugins, CTRL + T and CTRL + M essentially do the same thing.