Prefer unique filenames & aliases
If your note title is also a very common word, then it may clog up the “unlinked mentions” in Backlinks Pane.
Obsidian will have to re-compute all backlink whenever your Backlinks Pane refreshes for that note (this may cause a lag spike and freeze). Though i’s not really that bad. Unless you’ve got a really common filename/alias like [[Now]] (broken link, note not found). It stays loaded in your RAM until it’s garbage-collected, or on app reload.
2026 Addendum: I’m not sure how meaningful or negligible an impact this affects performance, actually. It was much slower back then, but in 2026, it seems quite unnoticeable on my MacBook. It finds all text matches against your entire vault. It’s probably not much. However, it will still clutter your Unlinked Mentions pane, if you plan to use it for discovering unintended connections.
Solution: Use a modifier (prefix or suffix) to prevent this!
| Original filename | Better filename | note |
|---|---|---|
| Hindsight bias | - | This is good, unique enough |
| Cars | Cars (movie) | “cars” is too common a word, will appear everywhere |
| Trust.md | Trust (concept) | In some cases, you may actually want just “Trust” for Obsidian’s unlinked mentions |
| Numbers.md | The Book of Numbers | |
| index.md | _index, +Index, etc. | |
| Animal Farm | Animal Farm (book) | I personally prefer “Animal Farm” by George Orwell to have author in filename |
When in doubt, add suffix brackets, just like Wikipedia does! e.g. Obsidian (app), Obsidian (crystal)