Generating News

Start with a Briefing Preset

  1. Open Settings > Community Plugins > Daily News Briefing
  2. Choose Morning Brief, Market Watch, AI/Tech Tracker, Research Digest, Company Monitor, or RSS Digest
  3. Click Apply preset, then edit topics if needed

Clicking Apply preset updates topics, output style, analysis mode, template type, and default briefing focus. Market Watch emphasizes catalysts and risks, Research Digest emphasizes methods and limitations, and RSS Digest stays concise. Presets preserve API keys, provider choice, schedule, archive folder, language, RSS feeds, retention, metadata, and cache.

Preset Best For Default Topics Output Focus
Morning Brief A balanced daily overview before work World News, Business, Technology Key developments, why it matters, what to watch next
Market Watch Investors and market watchers Stock Market, Federal Reserve, Technology Stocks Market impact, catalysts, risks, watchlist changes
AI/Tech Tracker Builders, operators, and technology teams Artificial Intelligence, Big Tech, Semiconductors Launches, regulation, funding, chips, competitive moves
Research Digest Researchers and knowledge workers AI Research, Healthcare Innovation, Climate Research Findings, methods, evidence quality, limitations, implications
Company Monitor Tracking companies, clients, competitors, or vendors Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI Company actions, business impact, competitive positioning, open questions
RSS Digest Summarizing user-provided feeds without extra setup Technology, World News Concise source-backed bullets, grouped related items, low repetition

Automatic (Scheduled)

  1. Enable Enable auto-generation in settings
  2. Set a schedule time (e.g., 08:00)
  3. Keep Obsidian running — news generates silently in the background
  4. Find briefings in your Archive Folder, organized by month
Obsidian must be running for scheduled generation. If closed, the plugin generates on next launch (if past the scheduled time).

Manual

Command Palette: Ctrl/Cmd+P > "Generate news now"

Sidebar button: Click the newspaper icon. Opens today's note if it exists, or creates a new one.

Retrying and understanding results

Run Retry news generation (save a new note) to retry without overwriting an existing briefing or your annotations. Successful topic caches are reused only while still within the selected time window; failed, empty and partial-feed outcomes are not cached.

“No source-backed news” is an empty result, not an API failure. Quality notes explain excluded references or uncertain dates. Source metadata dates, model-reported dates and unknown dates have distinct labels. AI analysis is separate from factual summaries.

File Organization

Your Vault/
  News Archive/
    2026-02/
      Daily News - 2026-02-25.md
      Daily News - 2026-02-26.md
    2026-01/
      Daily News - 2026-01-31.md
      ...

Notes are named Daily News - YYYY-MM-DD.md; retries append - Retry TIMESTAMP and auto-organized into monthly subfolders. Use the "Reorganize existing notes" button in settings to migrate old notes.

Language Support

6 fully supported languages with content translation and localized UI:

LanguageCode
Englishen
Françaisfr
Deutschde
Españoles
Italianoit
Chinesezh

News content, section headers ("Key Developments", "Analysis & Context"), and status messages are all translated. Unsupported language codes fall back to English.

Troubleshooting

No News Generated / Empty Content

  • Test Connection: Use the Test Connection button in Settings > API Configuration to verify your API key and model. Agentic tests perform a real search and may incur API/search usage.
  • API keys: Ensure secrets are saved in Settings > Secret Storage and linked in plugin settings. Check for expired keys or missing secrets (Google providers need all 3).
  • Topics: Must be comma-separated. Use specific topics for better results.
  • Network: Verify internet connection and API endpoint access
  • Debug: Open Obsidian console (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I) for error details

API Errors

ErrorSolution
Invalid API KeyUse Test Connection to confirm, then regenerate key and check for extra whitespace
Insufficient CreditsCheck billing in provider dashboard
Rate LimitingWait 5–10 minutes, reduce search results count
Quota ExceededCheck your project-specific model and search quotas. RSS + Gemini offers free-tier summaries; newer Gemini Search grounding requires billing. Legacy Google Custom Search is closed to new customers and ends January 1, 2027.
TimeoutCheck connection, try a different provider, reduce topics

Template Validation Failed

  • Ensure your template includes {{TOPICS}}
  • Placeholders are case-sensitive — check for typos
  • Switch to a preset template to verify the issue

Plugin Not Working After Update

  1. Reload Obsidian (Ctrl/Cmd+R)
  2. Disable and re-enable the plugin
  3. Check for new updates in Community Plugins
  4. If unresolved, open a GitHub issue with console logs