← Overview

Obsidian footnotes become real LaTeX footnotes — numbered automatically, placed at the bottom of the page.

How you write it in Obsidian

The named form is used for a sentence[^method] and the short form is written
directly at the spot^[a quick aside without a name].

The same source can be referenced twice[^method] in one note.

[^method]: Explained in detail by **Meier**, see [@meier2020, p.~14] and [[02 Methods]].

• Named form — [^name] in the text, plus a definition line [^name]: … anywhere in the same note. The definition is usually placed at the end of the file.
• Short form — ^[text] writes the note directly at the spot, without a name.
• The name is only a label. It never appears in the PDF, and the order of the definitions does not matter.

What Obsitex generates

The named form is used for a sentence\footnote{\label{fn:01_footnotes_method}Explained in detail by \textbf{Meier}, see \cite[p.~14]{meier2020} and \vref{sec:02_methods_methods}.} and the short form is written\\
directly at the spot\footnote{a quick aside without a name}.

The same source can be referenced twice\textsuperscript{\ref{fn:01_footnotes_method}} in one note.

Plain \footnote{…} — core LaTeX, no extra package, nothing to change in your preamble. Numbering is done by LaTeX itself.

How it looks in the PDF

<aside> 📸

Screenshot needed: a compiled page showing the raised footnote numbers in the body text and the matching notes separated by a rule at the bottom of the page.

</aside>

Tips & pitfalls

• Formatting works inside a footnote. Bold, italics, citations [@key, p.~14] and [[wikilinks]] are converted normally. Block elements (lists, tables, images) do not fit in a footnote.
• Footnotes are per note. [^1] in one file and [^1] in another are different footnotes — exactly as Obsidian shows them. A reference cannot point to a definition in a different file.
• Same name used twice produces one footnote with the same number at both places, not two identical notes.
• Long definitions may wrap across lines if the following lines are indented. They become one continuous sentence — the indent means “this still belongs to the footnote”, not “break the line here”.
• Numbering restarts per chapter in book, report, scrbook and scrreprt, while article counts straight through. That is a LaTeX class behaviour, so it changes with the document class set in your initialization file.
• A name without a definition stays visible as plain text (like a wikilink that leads nowhere), so you notice it. A definition that is never referenced produces no output.
• In a table cell a footnote is unreliable — LaTeX loses the text in a normal table, but keeps it in a multi-page one. Put the remark before or after the table instead.