Multi-user identity

Daily Notes NG supports multi-user environments where multiple people share the same vault via Obsidian Sync, git, or any file sync service. This is the feature that differentiates Daily Notes NG from every other periodic notes plugin.

New to the terminology? See the glossary for definitions of device ID, person note, resolution chain, and other terms.

The problem

In a shared vault, everyone’s daily notes go to the same folder (Journal/Daily/). There’s no way to know who created a note, route notes to per-person folders, or apply different templates per person. You end up with:

Journal/Daily/
├── 2026-03-24.md    ← Who wrote this? Alice? Bob?
├── 2026-03-23.md    ← Can't have two people's notes for the same day
└── ...

The solution

Daily Notes NG assigns each device a unique ID and maps it to a person note. From that mapping, the plugin resolves per-person folders, templates, and creator attribution.

graph LR
    A1["Alice's Mac<br/>ID: abc-123"] --> Alice["Person Note:<br/>Alice Smith.md<br/><i>type: person</i>"]
    A2["Alice's iPad<br/>ID: def-456"] --> Alice
    B1["Bob's PC<br/>ID: ghi-789"] --> Bob["Person Note:<br/>Bob Jones.md<br/><i>type: person</i>"]

    style Alice fill:#7c3aed,color:#fff
    style Bob fill:#7c3aed,color:#fff
    style A1 fill:#2d1854,color:#c4b5fd
    style A2 fill:#2d1854,color:#c4b5fd
    style B1 fill:#2d1854,color:#c4b5fd

Result:

Journal/
├── Alice Smith/
│   └── Daily/
│       ├── 2026-03-24.md    ← creator: [[Alice Smith]]
│       └── 2026-03-23.md
└── Bob Jones/
    └── Daily/
        ├── 2026-03-24.md    ← creator: [[Bob Jones]]
        └── 2026-03-23.md

Setting up person notes

Create a markdown note with type: person in its frontmatter. This is how the plugin identifies who someone is:

---
type: person
title: Alice Smith
timezone: America/New_York
periodic:
  daily:
    folder: Journal/Alice Smith/Daily
    templatePath: Templates/Alice Daily.md
  weekly:
    folder: Journal/Alice Smith/Weekly
---

Field	Required	Description
`type`	Yes	Must be `person` (or your custom type value)
`title`	No	Display name (falls back to filename)
`timezone`	No	IANA timezone for this person
`periodic`	No	Per-person periodic config overrides

The periodic block is optional. If omitted, this person uses the vault-wide periodic settings (with person interpolation if configured).

Registering a device

Open Settings > Daily Notes NG > Identity
Toggle Enable multi-user identity
In “Register this device”, enter the path to your person note (e.g., People/Alice Smith.md)
Click Register

Your device now appears in the registered devices table with its auto-detected name, associated person, and last-seen timestamp.

Tip: Each device gets a unique UUID stored in localStorage — it’s never synced. So Alice’s laptop and Alice’s phone can both map to the same person note, and the plugin knows they’re both Alice.

Per-person folders with `{{person}}`

The simplest multi-user setup: use the {{person}} placeholder in your vault-wide folder paths.

Settings > Periodic notes > Daily folder:

Journal/{{person}}/Daily

This resolves based on who’s using the device:

On Alice’s Mac: Journal/Alice Smith/Daily
On Bob’s PC: Journal/Bob Jones/Daily
On an unregistered device: Journal/Daily (placeholder stripped)

This works for all periodicities: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly.

Creator attribution

When enabled, every new periodic note automatically gets a frontmatter field linking to the creator’s person note:

---
creator: "[[Alice Smith]]"
date created: 2026-03-24
dnngId: ecb819f0-339f-493d-bdeb-251b665c036f
---

Settings:

Auto-set creator on new notes — toggle on/off
Creator field name — default: creator

This enables Dataview/Bases queries like “show me all notes I created this week.”

Note UUIDs

Each periodic note can receive a stable UUID in frontmatter (default property: dnngId). UUIDs survive file renames and moves, enabling reliable cross-references even as your vault evolves.

Settings:

UUID property name — default: dnngId (empty to disable)
Auto-generate UUIDs — toggle on/off

Group notes

Group notes represent teams or collections of people:

---
type: group
title: Dev Team
members:
  - "[[Alice Smith]]"
  - "[[Bob Jones]]"
  - "[[Backend Team]]"
---

Groups support nesting: a group can contain other groups. The plugin resolves all members recursively with cycle detection (max depth 10) and deduplication.

Use groups for:

Group-scoped journals (e.g., “Team retro”)
Team-scoped Dataview/Bases queries
Shared journal entries attributed to group members

How identity interacts with journals

The identity system controls which journals each device can see. The journal resolver filters the journal list:

flowchart LR
    All["All journals"] --> Global["Global<br/>Always visible"]
    All --> Person["Person<br/>Visible if ownerPath<br/>matches registered user"]
    All --> Group["Group<br/>Visible if user is<br/>a group member"]
    All --> Off{"Identity<br/>disabled?"}
    Off -->|Yes| OnlyGlobal["Only global<br/>journals shown"]

    style Global fill:#059669,color:#fff
    style Person fill:#7c3aed,color:#fff
    style Group fill:#2563eb,color:#fff
    style OnlyGlobal fill:#d97706,color:#fff

This is simpler than a layered override system — each journal is a complete, standalone definition. If Alice needs different settings than the global “Daily” journal, she creates her own person-scoped “Alice daily” journal with its own folder and template.

Example: Alice’s person note sets daily.folder to Journal/Alice/Daily. Bob has no overrides. The vault-wide config is Journal/Daily.

On Alice’s device: daily notes go to Journal/Alice/Daily (layer 2 overrides layer 4)
On Bob’s device: daily notes go to Journal/Daily (layer 4, no overrides)
The format (YYYY-MM-DD) and template come from layer 4 for both (not overridden)

Enterprise configuration

For vaults that use different frontmatter conventions, all type-detection property names are configurable under Settings > Identity > Advanced type configuration:

Setting	Default	Description
Identity type property	`type`	Frontmatter key used to detect person/group notes
Person type value	`person`	Value in the type property that means “this is a person”
Group type value	`group`	Value in the type property that means “this is a group”
Members property	`members`	Frontmatter key containing the group’s member list

Example: If your vault uses role: team-member instead of type: person:

Setting	Value
Identity type property	`role`
Person type value	`team-member`

Discovery folders

By default, the plugin scans the entire vault for person and group notes. For large vaults, restrict scanning to specific folders:

Person notes folder — e.g., People/ (only scan this folder for person notes)
Group notes folder — e.g., Teams/ (only scan this folder for group notes)

Leave empty to scan the entire vault.

Disabling identity

When Enable multi-user identity is off:

All identity UI is hidden in settings
No device registration, no creator attribution, no per-person folders
The plugin behaves like a standard periodic notes tool
The resolution chain still runs but simply returns vault-wide config (no person/device layers)

This is the default state. Identity is entirely opt-in.

Glossary — Definitions of all identity terms
Architecture — How the identity system is wired internally
Testing — How to test identity features via CLI
Settings reference — Full settings table including identity