Org Roam

¶What is it?

Org-roam is a solution, built on org-mode, to capture notes in a non-hierarchical way.

Notes can relate to each other, creating a web of relations. It helps you implement a digital Zettelkasten slip box of notes.

¶What can you use it for

With org-roam, you can create your own wiki, powered by Emacs, org-mode features.

Org-roam helps you search, link to other notes, and also has a graphical view (using graphviz) of the relations between your notes.

¶Getting started

Have a look at the Org-roam Getting Started page.

The main actions you will perform:

1. create new notes (uses org-roam's own org-capture templates). Command org-roam-find-file on a new title.
2. search notes by name / tags. Command org-roam-find-file
3. create links to existing notes (manually, or using auto completion frameworks)
4. use any features of org mode you like (tables, source code block, bibliography, etc..)

If you enjoy video content, you might want to watch the System Crafters playlist Building a Second Brain in Emacs.

¶Hints

¶You can't find your notes, or they are not named properly

Org-roam indexes your notes, and it's possible that the index was not created yet, or is out of sync.

You can solve this problem in couple of ways:

1. make sure you followed the getting started steps to setup indexing, the after-init-hook and the update method
2. If your configuration is correct, but you still have an issue
   1. you have a wrongly named entry in your search, clear and rebuild your cache with the following commands (M-x):

      org-roam-db-clear-cache
      org-roam-db-build-cache
      

   2. you are missing some entry, build the cache manually with the following command (M-x): `org-roam-db-build-cache`

¶Renaming notes

Renaming titles within your note has an impact to the search. Make sure the index has the original name before changing a title. This is usually done by saving your note (C-c C-c, and possibly C-x C-s).

Without the note properly indexed, the changes will not be visible in the org-roam-find-file command.

¶Want different colors for org-roam links vs other links?

To get some visual queue about regular links vs org-roam links, you can set a different color for org-roam links like here:

(custom-set-faces
  '((org-roam-link org-roam-link-current)
    :foreground "#e24888" :underline t))

contributed by nackjicholson on IRC

¶Please contribute your own hints and tricks

What else do you know about org-roam that can be useful to all?