Obsidian/Q/Can the Obsidian journal button open today's daily note when it lives as a Folder notes nested path like Journals/YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD?

• Can the Obsidian journal button open today's daily note when it lives as a Folder notes nested path like Journals/YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD?

  • AI Answer

    • Short answer: Yes. The ribbon Open today's daily note button (and the matching command/hotkey) follows Daily notes core settings. Put the nested folder in Date format, not in Folder notes itself: New file location Journals + Date format YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD creates Journals/2026-09-09/2026-09-09.md. With Folder notes in the usual inside-folder mode (FolderName/FolderName.md), that file is already a valid folder note for the date folder.

    • Configure Daily notes (this drives the journal button)

      • Enable the Daily notes core plugin.
      • Settings → Daily notes → New file location → Journals (or your journals root).
      • Date format → YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD (Moment.js; / creates subfolders). Obsidian creates missing folders when opening/creating today's note.
      • Resulting path shape: Journals/2026-09-09/2026-09-09.md — same pattern as year/month nesting documented in Obsidian Help — Daily notes (e.g. YYYY/MMMM/YYYY-MMM-DD).

    • Role of Folder notes

      • Folder notes does not need a special Daily notes integration for the journal button to hit that path. Daily notes creates/opens the file; Folder notes only attaches Notion-style folder → note behavior once the note matches your storage type (inside-folder same-name is the common match for this layout).
      • There is an open feature request to have Folder notes itself create date subfolders + matching folder notes from Daily notes (issue #189); that is unnecessary for this layout because the core Date format path already produces the nested folder note file.

    • Caveats

      • Open previous / Open next daily note has historically broken or been disabled when Date format includes folder segments; Open today's daily note (the journal button) still works. If you rely on prev/next, test those commands or use a community alternative (e.g. Daily Named Folder, which documents the same YYYYMMDD/YYYYMMDD trick via core Daily notes).
      • Keep Folder notes storage type consistent with the path you generate (inside-folder same name). Outside-folder or index-file modes will not treat …/2026-09-09/2026-09-09.md as the folder note unless you reconfigure accordingly.

    • Sources

      • Obsidian Help — Daily notes (automatic subfolders via Date format)
      • Folder notes — community plugin
      • Folder notes docs
      • Feature request: Folder notes × Daily notes integration
      • Forum: nest Daily notes via Date format