How to make a Symlink on macOS

A symbolic link, or symlink, on macOS or Linux is used to make a folder appear in two different locations to the operating system and apps using the file system. This way, you can create an Obsidian vault where you can access files and folders from other locations on your file system, and Obsidian would think all the files are within its vault. You can then keep using your own organizational system while also only using one vault to access everything.

For example you could have a folder somewhere on your drive:

/Users/yourname/Projects

and the location where you want the folder to appear:

/Users/yourname/Library/Mobile\ Documents/iCloud\~md\~obsidian/Documents

To make a symlink, we need to open Terminal on macOS and type the following command:

ln -s /path/to/the/original/folder/location/ /path/to/the/folder/in/which/it/should/appear/

Which would become:

ls -s /Users/yourname/Projects /Users/yourname/Library/Mobile\ Documents/iCloud\~md\~obsidian/Documents

Succes! Now you'll see a folder in you destination folder with a small arrow in the bottom left; this indicates the folder is somewhere else in reality, but is functionally in this folder.