Automatically add backlinks | Voters

Automatically add backlinks

J. Mask.

I've never used any tool like reflect before. Within 5 minutes I was tired of having to add backlinks manually. I just want to simply write the note and then don't have to care about anything else.

You have to add a setting-toggle to "automatically add backlinks".

July 27, 2025

flippinGeo

While there are some apps that are leveraging AI to "auto backlink", I find them to be overly sensitive. Also, IMHO, you don't want all mentions of text that aligns with another notes title to be linked. That gets a bit cumbersome. 
You can try to just avoid inline backlinks and rely solely on "Suggested backlinks" on each target note. Then you can choose to either backlink it, or ignore it.
I'm sure at some point there will be no need for backlinks and the network will just be built based on reliable/robust AI integrations. Until then though, not sure how you get away from applying backlinks without manual intervention. 
I prefer being explicit (vs implicit) with my linking. 
Not sure if this helps, but you can "backlink" text by using the "@" in front vs "[[". Saves you a stroke of the keys.

J. Mask.

flippinGeo I want to have every keyword as a backlink, so it should be sensitive. My goal is to have a huge map where I can see all linkings - from cities to persons to topics. If you also have that goal, being explicit and having to write everything yourself (and to always make sure you do not miss one backlink) is kinda hard.

flippinGeo

J. Mask.understood. Our approach is different. Have you looked at Mem or Tana? I test Mem for a while, and it does pretty good job of connecting thoughts. But it's not really a graph, so it's all contextual. I came from Logseq, which is pretty good at "unmentioned links" but these still aren't explicit, unless you make them backlinks.

I'm sure we're not far from a world of backlink-free linking... but I've not seen one yet that is completely free of manual backlinks. I'd be curious myself to give that a spin

flippinGeo

J. Mask. I guess I just will backlink a note once with a destination, but any other mention, I do not. This establishes the connection between 2 notes. Since Reflect doesn't support block-level reference, I find this suffices. Admittedly, I'm not a atomic note taker (Zettels), so single backlinks to/from (per referenced note) is enough for me.