Vault switcher lets you switching between existing vaults and create new vaults.

## Open vault switcher

To open the vault switcher, click on the vault icon at the bottom group of the [[Ribbon]] actions. The tooltip text should say “Open another vault”.

You can see the [[#current vault list]] and [[#create new vaults]] here. Because this is the first screen new users see, it also displays name of the program and the current version, along with a dropdown to switch [[Interface language]].

## Current vault list

On the left side of the vault switcher, you can see all the vaults you have accessed before on this device. For each vault, you can see the name of that vault (which is the name of the vault folder), and the path to that folder.

Clicking on a vault in this list will open that vault. The cross icon lets you delete the vault from this list.

> Note: deleting a vault from this list **will not delete the vault folder from your device**. It will be “forgotten” and removed from the list.

## Create new vaults

Vaults can be created in two ways:

1. Choose “Create new vault” and enter the name of the vault along with where it will be stored. Essentially Obsidian creates an empty folder in that location and open it as a vault for you;
2. Choose “Open folder as vault” and select a folder on your device. This is the recommended method if you already have a backup or exported folder of Markdown files.

