TIL: Easier linking to local files in Obsidian

01 Mar, 2026

In Obsidian, I want to link to local files that aren’t in my vault. For example:

![Some dust I found](file:///Users/sal/Documents/Google Drive/cool pic of dust.jpg)

The above markup will fail due to the spaces in the file path. I spent a few minutes a while back on a script to percent-encode the paths, but the results were unreliable, so I got annoyed and moved on.

BUT! This week I learned a much better way. Wrap the path in angle brackets, like so:

![Some dust I found](<file:///Users/sal/Documents/Google Drive/cool pic of dust.jpg>)

Et voilà! It works!