Creating Toggle Lists in Obsidian

How to create a (Notion-like) toggle list in Obsidian

I have been using Obsidian as my primary note-taking application for some time now and I absolutely love it. However, there are some things that are just easier and more straightforward to do on other platforms, such as Notion. For example, the ability to add toggles in Notion is a feature that I often use instead of regular bullet-points. Creating toggles in Obsidian may not be as straightforward, but it can be done, and in this article I’ll show you how.

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that is easy to learn and use. It uses simple syntax to indicate headings, emphasis, lists, links, images, and other formatting elements. Once you are happy with your text, Markdown files can be converted to HTML, PDF or other formats. However, markdown does not natively have a toggle element. But Obsidian has you covered.

Obsidian is a Markdown editor that supports the HTML <details>tag, allowing you to create collapsible and expandable sections in your notes, just like in Notion. The <details>tag is an HTML tag that allows you to include additional details (e.g. text, list, images, etc.) that the user can toggle to show or hide. Initially, the widget is collapsed and hidden, and when activated by the user it expands to display the content within.

To add a toggle in Obsidian, use the HTML <details>tag like this:

<details>
<summary>Click to expand</summary>

This is the content that will be hidden by default 
and revealed when the user clicks on the toggle.

</details>

All you need to do is place the <details> tag around the text or elements you want to include in your toggle. As you can see, you can use the <summary> tag to add a header text to your toggle. The result should look something like this:

Hope this helped!

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