In Obsidian, you can have more than one vault.
## Opening a new vault
To open a new vault, click on the icon in [[The Obsidian UI and settings#The toolbar|the toolbar]]:
![[ui-open-another-vault.png]]
Create or select another vault. Another instance of Obsidian is opened.
## Why have multiple vaults?
Here are some reasons to have multiple vaults:
- You want to [[Sharing your notes|share]] a vault with others, but not all vaults.
- Security: you could have a high security vault that doesn't use [[Community plugins]], and a low security vault that does.
- Create a new test vault for experimentation without affecting your real notes.
- Create a vault to contain types of assets (such as images, videos, audio, PDFs) that you don't want to clutter your main vault with.
- Keep a reference vault of content you didn't create.
## Why have one vault?
However, there are limitations to having multiple vaults.
- You can create links between vaults, but they do not update when the files being linked to update.
- You can't see [[Backlinks]] from another vault.
- The [[Graph view]] is per vault only.
- Having multiple vaults adds complexity.
## How to link between vaults
Open up a note, right click on the tab, and select *Copy Obsidian URL*. It looks something like this: `obsidian://open?vault=o4e-06&file=00%20Obsidian%20for%20Everyone%20course%2F00-02%20First%20steps%20with%20Obsidian%2FWorking%20with%20multiple%20vaults`
In the other vault, type it out in this format:
```
[text here](paste the link here)
```
Like [this](obsidian://open?vault=o4e-06&file=00%20Obsidian%20for%20Everyone%20course%2F00-02%20First%20steps%20with%20Obsidian%2FWorking%20with%20multiple%20vaults).