I’ve been exploring Joplin’s current note linking capabilities and thinking about how they could be improved to better support fast knowledge navigation and a more connected note-taking workflow.
At the moment, Joplin allows linking between notes via Markdown links, but the process is still somewhat manual and not as fluid as it could be. I’d like to propose an idea inspired by tools like Obsidian, introducing a faster and more intuitive way to create links between notes directly while typing.
The core idea would include:
- A [note title] style syntax to quickly reference other notes
- Real-time autocomplete suggestions when typing [[, based on existing note titles
- Automatic conversion into valid internal Markdown links
- A backlink system, where each note shows which other notes reference it (e.g., in a sidebar or dedicated section at the end of the note)
- Automatic link updates when a referenced note is moved (e.g., to another notebook/subfolder), ensuring links never break
The goal is to significantly improve navigation between notes and enable a more “knowledge graph” like workflow, especially for users managing large collections of notes.
From a technical perspective, I imagine this would involve:
- Extending the editor to detect and handle the current [...] syntax
- Implementing a fast search/autocomplete mechanism over note titles
- Designing a lightweight backlink indexing system
- Handling note move/rename events to keep links consistent
Before going further, I’d really appreciate feedback from the community and mentors:
- Do you think this feature would fit well within Joplin’s core philosophy?
- Are there existing discussions, plugins, or constraints I should be aware of?
- Would it make more sense to extend an existing plugin instead of integrating this into core?