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Welcome to My Obsidian Community Plugins Collection (As of August 2023)

Hello there! This README contains a curated list of the Obsidian Community Plugins that I've found incredibly useful in enhancing my Obsidian experience. This collection was assembled with the intention of sharing it with my fellow Obsidian enthusiasts to help elevate our knowledge management journeys. Obsidian is all about customization, and these plugins have been carefully selected to boost your workflow, enrich your note-taking, and add new dimensions to your knowledge management journey.

Please note that plugin development and updates can happen swiftly, so it's essential to stay up-to-date. For the latest information about these plugins or to discover more, visit the official Obsidian community forums, GitHub repositories, or the Obsidian plugin marketplace. These sources provide comprehensive details, installation instructions, and usage guidelines for each plugin.

Additionally, if you're looking for a friendly introduction to Obsidian Community Plugins, I recommend checking out some talented YouTubers who have dedicated playlists to Obsidian: :

Sergio: One of the best among the Obsidian ambassadors on YouTube. Make sure to check his Obsidian playlist here.
Nicole Van Der Hoeven: Nicole is the next-level Obsidian queen with a plethora of videos on the subject. Discover her Obsidian playlist here.
Christian Lempa: While not exclusively focused on Obsidian, his insightful videos are worth watching:
- You all NEED these Obsidian community plugins
- Use Obsidian (BEST Markdown editor) for note taking and tech docs!

Now, let's dive into the plugins that have shaped my Obsidian experience. Feel free to explore, install, and tailor your Obsidian vault to your liking. Remember, this collection is a reflection of my journey, and your perfect set of plugins might be just around the corner.

Happy note taking! 😁

PLUGINS FOR WORKFLOW OPTIMISATION

1. Omnisearch

A must-have, Omnisearch provides a smoother search engine than Obsidian's default one. It instantly shows you the most relevant results, thanks to its smart weighting algorithm. Nice feature, the switch to the in-file search option lets you search inside notes rather than among them.

2. Setting search

The Settings Search plugin adds global search functionality to the Obsidian settings, allowing users to quickly search for a particular setting from the settings menu, including searching other plugins.

3. Recent Files

This Recent Files plugin conveniently displays a list of the most recently opened files in the sidebar.

4. Automate your MOC with these two plugins: Folder Note + Waypoint

A) Folder Note

With just a click, Folder Note auto-creates a folder note that can be used as a MOC overview note. Nice features: Add a description note to a folder, generate a card-style overview of a folder, and make your vault to be a hierarchy note system.

B) Waypoint

As described in their Obsidian plugin marketplace page: "Waypoint is an Obsidian plugin that automatically generates tables of contents/MOCs within your folder notes. Once a waypoint is generated, it'll automatically link to every note within the folder and its subfolders. The Waypoint plugin will detect when you create/rename/move/delete a note and automatically stay up-to-date. No more dealing with loads of tags or manually updating your own content maps!"
Just add the Waypoint placeholder in the folder note create with Folder Note and you're good to go.

5. Obsidian Hover Editor

The Obsidian Hover Editor plugin enhances the core "Page Preview" plugin by turning a hover popover into a full-featured editor instance. So you can have a quick glance into a links note without opening it in a new tab and even edit it from the popover. Each popover: is draggable and resizable, has a nav bar which includes the document title and editor controls, can now be pinned to prevent it from auto closing, etc...

POWERFUL PLUGINS: THE MIGHTY COMBO

The two following plugins are, for good reason, among the most downloaded plugins and really take Obsidian to the next level. It doesn't hurt that they can be advantageously combined.

Both of these plugins have a lot of resources and documentation. You'll find them on their Obsidian plugin marketplace. For Dataview, Sergio has a great beginner-friendly playlist to help you get on board.

1. Dataview 🔥

Provided that you add a YALM header to your note or inline front matter within your note, Dataview allows you to create dynamic and customizable views of your notes and data stored within Obsidian, essentially turning your notes into a database. It has a learning curve but its cool features include:

Database-like Functionality: Dataview lets you treat your notes as a structured database. You can assign attributes (fields) to your notes and then query and manipulate this data.
Query Language: The plugin introduces a query language that enables you to filter, sort, group, and aggregate your notes based on the attributes you've defined.
Custom Views: You can create custom views by writing queries that retrieve specific notes based on criteria you define. This allows you to generate lists, tables, charts, and other visualizations directly from your notes.
Attributes and Fields: You can add attributes to your notes using front matter or inline YAML. These attributes become the data that you can query and display using the plugin.
Templates: You can create templates that define how the queried data should be presented. This allows you to generate reports, summaries, or any other kind of output based on the queried data.
Extensibility: Yyou can create your own custom functions, scripts, and templates to manipulate and present your data exactly as you need.
Dynamic Updates: The views you create with Dataview are dynamic. If you update your notes or change attributes, the views will automatically reflect those changes.
And more...

2. Templater 🔥

Templater allows you to use placeholders or variables that are replaced with actual content when the template is applied. This can be useful for creating consistent note layouts, inserting repetitive content, automating, and/or dynamically populating certain sections of your notes with its replacement functionality. Once you've added a template to Templater in the options pane, you can then go to the Obsidian Hotkeys in Settings and add a customised hotkey to insert a template more quickly. I'm using it a lot to add code bloc snippets. You can also set a specific template that will be assigned to a specific folder, which will become the default one automatically apply if you create a note from this folder. There is a very powerful plugin.

PLUGINS FOR EDITING AND FORMATTING

1. Note Refactor

As Described by Sergio, "The Note Refactor plugin lets you break a note into multiple different notes in many different ways. For instance, if you have a lot of headers in one note you can use a not refactor to move those headers into their own individual note. You can also attach your selection to an existing note or create a new node entirely with a bunch of preset parameters (...) or split a selection using the first line as the file name."

2. Outliner

Help you create a deeply structured list and move items by pressing on hotkeys. Its features include: moving lists back and forth, drawing vertical indentation lines, folding and unfolding your lists, drag-and-drop lists items to reorganise the structure of your lists, etc.

3. Past URL into selection

The Past URL into selection plugin allows you to, well.. paste an URL into a selection. Dah. 😄

4. Table of Contents

Another simple but useful plugin, Table of Contents allows you to create a table of content based on your headings, which can be pretty convenient when you have llllloooonnnnnggggg structured notes.

5. Remember cursor position

Yet another simple but useful plugin, Remember cursor position "remembers the cursor position and scrolls for each note. This is very convenient when you switch between notes, go from link to link, go back, you do not need to scroll to the place where you were the last time" (as described in its Obsidian plugin marketplace page).

6. Mousewheel Image Zoom

As described in its Obsidian plugin marketplace page, "Mousewheel Image Zoom plugin enables you to increase/decrease the size of an image by holding down a configurable key (...), hovering over an image in preview mode and scrolling."

7. Natural Language Dates

One more plugin in our "Dah" series, Natural Language Dates allows you to add dates... using natural language! 😁

8. Emoji Shortcodes

Do I need to describe this one? 🤔

9. Better word count

Better word count adds a few more functions to the built-in Word Count plugin, hence its name.

PLUGINS FOR VISUAL AND WORKFLOW CUSTOMISATION

1. Customise yourself a fancy Dashboard:

This is not strictly speaking a plugin but it's pretty cool and you'll actually need the Style setting and Banners plugins described below in this section. To set it up, go on TfTHacker's GitHub Repo where you'll find all the resources you need, including the codes, a link to an article by its creator, explaining the principles, and a video tutorial by Sergio. What else?!

2. Style setting

I'm using the popular AnuPuccin theme and thanks to its creator AnubisNekhet, I've extended the customisable options by adding the snippet of the extended-colorschemes.css. Style setting is the plugin that enables you to import and apply additional css style snippets. Check this cool video by Nicole Van Der Hoeven to be seamlessly guided to set everything up.

3. Banners

Pretty fancy, Banners is a cool plugin which allows you to add banner images to your notes by selecting a local image as a banner for your note, or by copy an image URL within the YALM frontmatter block code.

4. Commander

Commander is another cool plugin which allows you to add commands to different parts of the user interface: in the left Ribbon, Tab Bar, Status Bar, Editor Menu, File Menu, etc...

5. Buttons

The Buttons plugin allows you to add a button and link it with a specific action or command.

6. QuickAdd

As described in its Obsidian plugin marketplace page, "QuickAdd is a powerful combination of four tools (called choices): templates, captures, macros, and multis. Template, for example, would allow you to define a quick action to create a new note in a particular location, with a templatized title, and templated content."

FROM CAPTURE TO INTEGRATION

1. Readwise Official

Negative connotation apart, I've heard a few powerful readers and Obsidian users say about Readwise / Reader that this service is a bit like Sauron's ring: "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

Why? Well, before, we had different applications and services, like Feedly for the RSS flux, Pocket and Instapaper for highlighting our articles and books, and apps to deal with newsletters. Different tools for different tasks. Now, we have Readwise/Reader that does it all and, thanks to the Readwise Official plugin, export your highlights and notes, even from YouTube videos, to your Obsidian vault! The only downside is the price but for all it allows me to do, I'm still willing to pay it.

2. Kindle highlight

If you are not a paying customer of Readwise but a Kindle reader, the Kindle highlight plugin is an absolute must as it lets you seamlessly import and sync your Kindle highlights to your Vault.

3. Eloquent: Quick Capture and Highlighting 🔥

Eloquent is not an Obsidian plugin but a very useful Google Chrome Extension that you can add to your Google browser to help you capture and highlight articles and media, like videos. You can then very easily send your highlights and notes to your obsidian vault. Doesn't hurt that it's for free! A great alternative to Readwise, even if with way fewer functionalities.

4 Zotero Integration

Insert and import citations, bibliographies, notes, and PDF annotations from Zotero into Obsidian.

THE THINKING AND CONTENT KIT

1. Canvas Mindmap

The Canvas Mindmap plugin adds a few hotkeys to the great built-in Canvas plugin. Nothing crazy, but why not?

2. Obsidian42 - Strange New Worlds (SNW)

This plugin helps you to see the connections between the different notes in your vault so that you can increase the interconnectivity of your notes.

3. Smart Random Note Obsidian Plugin

Offers you more options that the Random Note built-in plugin. The idea is for you to open a random note to encourage you to review your past notes, improve them or connect them to more recent ones. You might be surprised at what come up. I find it kind of fun.

4. Book Search

The Book Search plugin helps you to create book notes. You can query a book using a book title, author, publisher or ISBN and the plugin will use Google Books API to get the book information. Nice to create collections in combination with Dataview and Templater.

TASKS AND ORGANISATION PLUGINS

1. Calendar

Once enabled, Calendar creates a simple Calendar view in the right sidebar, for visualizing and navigating between your daily notes.

2. Google Calendar

The Google Calendar plugin is great to help you manage your Google Calendar from inside Obsidian. You can add daily, weekly customisable views within your notes or a monthly calendar view in the right sidebar, create or edit events, etc...

3. Tasks

As described in its Obsidian plugin marketplace page, the Tasks plugin "track tasks across your entire vault. Query them and mark them as done wherever you want. Supports due dates, recurring tasks (repetition), done dates, sub-set of checklist items, and filtering."

4. Kanban

The Kanban plugin creates markdown-backed Kanban boards in Obsidian. This visual tool can help to manage tasks, projects, or workflows using cards and columns. Here, each card represents an obsidian note, and columns could represent different stages of the workflow, such as "To Do," "In Progress," "Completed" or anything else according to your needs.

5. Projects

As described in their Obsidian plugin marketplace page: "Projects is a plugin for Obsidian that lets you manage and visualize notes for project management.

Create projects from folders and Dataview queries.
Switch between four different views: Table, Board, Calendar, and Gallery.
Configure note templates for each project. For example, if you're a content manager, Projects can help you manage your content calendar. Create drafts, keep track of their status, and when they are scheduled to be published."

VAULT MAINTENANCE PLUGINS

1. Plugin Update Tracker

Just like its name says, the Plugin Update Tracker plugin tracks any updates of your installed community plugins. It adds a small icon to the status bar to let you know when it finds some. From there you can click on it and make sure your community plugins are updated to the latest Obsidian update and won't bug. Considering the number of plugins I have, I appreciate this simple but useful help.

2. Janitor

The Janitor plugin helps you keep your vault under control, by possibly, if you so choose, removing the Orphan files, the Empty files, the Big files, etc... Now, don't panic, it doesn't do it automatically, it just list them for you ta have a look at.

MORE TO COME...

I have my eyes on more plugins that look very promising, including plugins powered by AI, but as these things go, it's a work in progress. I'll do my best to keep this list updated in the hope that it will inspire you, to build or improve your own Obsidian Vault to your liking 🙂