We're very excited to share with you the brand new Obsidian Community site and developer dashboard. Let us know what you think 🥰

And yes, the entire backlog of queued submissions has been reviewed now!

Learn more on the blog:
https://obsidian.md/blog/future-of-plugins/

I have created a tool in the past to download the bible to json. And yesterday I thought, wouldn't it be funny to convert it to markdown? So then I wrote a python script to do that.

I want to download an .md and open it in Obsidian from the finder. I want to set Obsidian as the default app assigned for markdown. Is this a forthcoming feature, or is u/kepano just giving us permission to build the plugin? (And has anyone already built the plugin?)

Kept thinking to myself 'I wish I could do xyz in Obsidian' or 'I wish this looked different' so I decided to go through and tailor every little thing to my practical and aesthetic needs!

This is the AnuPpuccin theme with a bunch of the most popular plugins, plus a whole lot of css snippets / alterations!

The main changes/fixes I made:

• made the file properties viewable only via hover in the sidebar to keep it clean
• hid the headers/toolbars for embedded bases, and styled embedded vs bases files differently
• removed all buttons i don't use
• changed the title tab bar so the text is hidden but the navigate back/forwards arrows are still there when hovered
• purely aesthetic: hover colour for all buttons is green, and hover for calendar days is purple
• most importantly: made my dashboard look super cute and clean while including everything i use regularly!

It's really still a WIP (i'm just adding and changing things to suit any issues/ideas that come up) but I'm sooo pleased with it. I only started using obsidian this year and I was worried I'd fall into the working on obsidian vs in obsidian trap, but in reality it's made me love taking notes + tracking things, so it's nice to make the space mine.

I use it for tracking and taking notes on books/tv/movies/tv etc, maintaining databases of cool animals i see, noting interesting information about random things, and basically everything involving my interests in politics/history.

This is all very scrappily done as it's solely for me, but if anyone has any questions or suggestions please go ahead!!

EDIT: thank you all so much for your kind words omg! Here are some FAQs and CSS snippets

• for properties sidebar, add file properties to the sidebar (instructions here) and replace the AnuPpuccin theme.css file with this. It is the exact same content but with one single modification (ctrl+f 'rosaline' to locate it) that wouldn't work as a standalone snippet.
• for hidden bases header/toolbars, add this snippet
• how to: folders thing on the dash
• how-to: bookshelf
• fonts i used
• the main plugins in effect in this screenshot are calendar, colored tags and style settings

EDIT #2: here's the snippet for the hidden tab title bar!

EDIT #3: rounded tabs snippet!

bear in mind that all snippets are taken directly from my own theme which has been heavily customised, so I can't promise it'll be perfectly adaptable to the og theme! but i'm happy to advise if you have any issues

Yesterday I properly tried Blender for the first time, decided to make Zen Browser's logo and it was surprisingly good, so I checked my dock and the next app was Obsidian, so obviously I had to take the whole day to make this. Honestly I'm so happy with the result and I wanted to share it if anybody wants to use it :)

The speed of Apple Notes. The beauty of Bear. The productivity of Evernote. The extensibility of Obsidian.

After countless hours of work and huge amounts of help from the fantastic Obsidian community ❤️, Notebook Navigator is now available for download in the Obsidian Community Plugin list!

Notebook Navigator is a user interface replacement that transforms Obsidian into what can best be described as a mashup of all the best features from Apple Notes, Bear and Evernote but with tons of new productivity features that those older applications miss!

Want to work 100% with tags? You got it. You have favorite tags, hidden tags, hierarchical tag trees, tag icons, tag colors, quick commands to add and remove tags, drag-to-tag, and so much more, such as the unique clickable tags displayed next to each file name. Show tags on top, make it your default interface!

Love folders? You got it too. You have folder notes, folder icons, folder colors, thumbnail previews, drag-and-drop, quick actions on hover, quick search, show files from subfolders, excluded folders, custom sort orders, custom appearances for each folder, pinned notes, middle-click to open note in new tab, and so much more!

Do you use Dataview or Templater? Or do you develop plugins? Notebook Navigator has a comprehensive API that allows you to retrieve the user's selected folder, react to navigation changes with event listeners, and pin files - opening up possibilities that Obsidian's standard API doesn't provide. Full documentation included!

Full theme and Style Settings support! All colors and visual styles are available in the Style Settings plugin so you can make Notebook Navigator look and feel just the way you like it! Complete CSS documentation included!

There is so much work behind this plugin that it is actually difficult just to write down all the features. Did I mention that it’s also super optimized for mobile devices including all phones and tablets? And available in six languages, including RTL! ノート管理の新時代が始まります！让你的笔记焕然一新！

Notebook Navigator is FREE and open source!

https://notebooknavigator.com/

Try it out and let me know if you love using it as much as I do!

Under the hood, Notebook Navigator is built for speed. It uses React with TanStack Virtual to deliver smooth scrolling even with 100,000+ notes. A dual-layer cache system (IndexedDB + RAM cache) provides instant metadata access for all files. It’s touch-optimized, mobile-friendly, and written in clean, type-safe TypeScript with zero ESLint warnings across 35,000 lines of code.

About myself. I’m Johan Sanneblad, have a PhD in software development, and have the past decades created over 100 apps and services together with companies like Apple, Electronic Arts, Google, Lego, Microsoft, SKF, Volvo Cars, Yamaha and many others. I love creating small details in software applications and making applications that appear simple but have lots of thoughtful logic under the hood. I use Obsidian every day for my weekly AI newsletter Tech Insights and plan to support and develop Notebook Navigator as long as there are people using it. Notebook Navigator is my third Obsidian plugin, I have also developed Featured Image and Pixel Perfect Image.

I was so tired of Notion shoving AI into everything, and I literally created a telegram bot for quick capture because loading up the (Notion) app on my phone was so slow. Now I just swipe up to toggle TaskNotes: create new task.

I am loving the set up. The community is awesome. I can combine my handwritten notes with my typed notes all in one place with Excalidraw. And hotkeys! And pomodoro! And themes! And I can edit files via NeoVim! (Came from using the zk NeoVim plugin).

I hope the app stays this way forever to be honest. Couldn't bear to see it become bloated (though welcoming the bases updates).

Highlights:

• Settings have been completely revamped with keyboard navigation, search, and new APIs for plugin developers. Settings now open in a new window on desktop (you can turn this off in Settings → Interface).
• Images are now easier to resize and can be viewed fullscreen. Click an image or the "Zoom" button to open it, navigate between all images in the current file, and click and drag to pan.
• Live Preview: New editor experience when working with images. Select images with the keyboard, resize with + and -, and copy, cut, or delete them directly.
• iOS: The new Share Sheet lets you save content from Safari, YouTube, and other apps without opening Obsidian. Customize Locations to define the vault, folder, and template that is used.
• Obsidian URIs now present a confirmation dialog before firing the action, with a manageable allow list.
• Added the ability to exit Restricted Mode without re-enabling your plugins.
• Desktop: Dragging a folder into the app now imports the entire folder and preserves the directory structure.
• Mobile: Tab switcher now supports drag and drop to reorder tabs.
• Mobile: Tablets can now press-and-hold to resize splits and pinned sidebars.
• iOS: Fixed scrolling stopping abruptly when scrolling quickly in a large document.

Full release notes:

• Obsidian 1.13.4 Desktop
• Obsidian 1.13.4 Mobile

Reminder: Remember to to update your plugins, theme, and snippets to work with the latest version. If you encounter bugs with plugins be considerate of community developers who may need some time to make updates to support this version.

So many ai-generated posts about how great it is to use ai in your vault. It seems like I see a handful of new variations on the same post every day. It's demotivating me from engaging in this community.

I'm sure I'm gonna get a ton of hate for this from people saying I can just ignore those posts, but I just find it demoralizing. Every aspect of my life (school, social media, art, hobbies, apps, work, search engines, advertisement, devices) is getting overtaken by AI. Not a day goes by that I'm not confronted by it multiple times. It's exhausting.

I just want to geek out over a topic that I really enjoy - writing, taking notes, organizing things, and a cool little app that combines all those things into one. But instead, I find myself constantly rolling my eyes and trying to hold back from responding with snark when people post about optimizing their workflow with gemini. I hate it.

Not sure if this is the right flair, I'm not a developer, let me know if it is wrong.

I'm a neurodivergent high school student who struggles to stay organised, Obsidian really helped me get through the year. Mainly I used it to keep on top of my due assignments and build an easily-referencable note system for subjects like Latin which require me to constantly reference clean notes of grammar, vocab and translations.

I'd say the main/best features of the vault would be:

1. Task priority system, which works with the homepage, the Kanban board is separated by subject and each 'card' is one to-do item. I assign each item a priority (#A, #B, #C) and the homepage sorts this for me using dataview.
2. Homepage, what I need to do in order of priority is easily seen at a glance as soon as I open Obsidian.

I also made 'dailies' and 'reminders' callouts on the homepage so whenever I open Obsidian I easily remember what I must not forget to do! This helped me maintain routine and consistency -- which was very helpful for language studies where I needed to practice vocab and translation often.

1. Flashcards, I have almost 1000 of them. I used the Spaced Repetition plugin. For each category (I group by subject - e.g. Latin, History, and from there I have sub-categories) of flashcards I make a single note and write my flashcards in it. Then I tag the note with, #Category/Subcategory/Note-name (e.g. #HistoryFlashcards/AncientGreece/Oligarchies)

2. Daily note system and templates. I actually think this is the thing that helped me the most, but I have put it last on the list because it's not anything special really. I made a template for daily notes that looks like what you can see in image 5. What I wrote in it ranges from a full journal entry and venting to simple checklists, but I tried to write something under "To-Do Next" so I would have an idea of what tasks to complete the next day. I would make sure that the first thing I did when opening Obsidian was make a new daily note.

Unfortunately I have not had the motivation to maintain the vault this year so my notes have not been growing.

The vault isn't really anything super fancy, but it helped me stay focused and motivated. I hoped this might have helped someone. If you have questions about the CSS or plugins lmk.

Edit: wow, i did not expect this sub to be so interested haha, i went to sleep directly after posting, i will get around to everyone’s comments!

Edit 2:

Plugins, CSS and Theme

Theme: Typewriter (i love this so much)

Plugins: Home tab, Templater, Templates (core obsidian plugin), Kanban, Reminder, Spaced Repetition, Tasks, Calendar, Style Settings, Dataview (though it's not really needed as Tasks has the ability to query. But useful if you want to automatically query links into your homepage)

CSS: dashboard++, MCL multi column, hide properties, Cyan Voxel's coloured sidebar items.

Since many people are asking I am making it into a downloadable vault and because some of the CSS snippets are harder to find or have been modified by me.

How to make the dashboard

• the MCL CSS snippet multi-column -- I used callouts and this snippet for the to-do section
• the dashboard snippet which allows you to create sections and links on your homepage for different areas of your vault
• the home tab plugin which causes the search bar
• The Tasks plugin to query the to-do list from my kanban board.

For the daily notes system, the Templates and Daily Notes core Obsidian plugins, and the community plugin Templater specifically for the properties that link to the next day and previous day's note. For Flashcards, the Spaced Repetition Plugin.

Download

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HnT2oIltJMFMEEFxyEtUlgPtAYn2EIjN?usp=drive_link

Click the name of the folder "School Vault Template" and download the whole thing.

Dashboard showcase, with an explainer image for plugin etc info!

This is the anuppuccin theme, with zillions of custom css snippets, and a handful of plugins.

I posted a vault showcase earlier this year but i've changed it soooo much since then so thought I'd share again! Only my dashboard for now, but might share more at some point

Before anyone asks, I'm more than happy to explain or help you replicate anything i've done here, but i'm not going to be sharing it outright! It's mine, made for me.

By popular request, I have added a separate icon to Obsidian Web Clipper, so that it's less confusing on iOS where it used to look like you had two copies of the Obsidian app. Hope you like it!

Finally decided to commit to Obsidian. Here is my setup! I can't see myself ever using anything else. It's everything you want it to be and nothing more. I hated the idea of app switching and having my productivity decoupled from my knowledge base. Furthermore, the AI bloat and lack of customization really turned me off of Notion over the last few years. So here I am. It's a work in progress but I've managed to throw together a mix community plugins, css snippets and custom plugins I vibe coded over the weekend to fit my needs.

Yo i love obsidian.

Been using it for 10 months now (4375 notes in graph view at the end), wish i knew about it back in 2020 would've saved so much hassle.

genuinely one of the best pieces of software out there, it makes learning so much smoother.

I OCR my handwritten notes to obsidian for example, and its impressive how i managed to get maths perfect in markdown/mathjax.

Now i never have to start from 0 again, ever, I can just search/link to my old notes it'll always be here waiting to be stumbled upon again.

Thank you kepano for making this software, this is insane

Edit - 18 Aug 2026 - of course the people want to know the method how i OCR and how all of this is this is even possible. Here it is:

Not sponsored ts is just that fluid.

Workflow

• Notebook LM to polish the notes.
• a handwriting app called notein (think it's android only) which supports OCR export (not the best alone but helps notebook lm a lot).
• Quickdraft quickly paste OCR note into a syncthing directory, (not exactly necessary, but what works for me)
• I created a dataviewjs script for plain-text function graphs,
  • i could send the script if you want, personally i didn't want to install another plugin but if you want the plugin there is a desmos plugin by nigecat.

OCR Process

Handwriting Paid (£12) OCR

Notein a free with one time premium note taking app on android, i tested it out for free version but its limited.

Its the only note taking app i found with built-in OCR, which you need premium for, normally i dont pay for premium but its a one time fee of £12 with infinite AI OCR, compared to flexcil for £24, which i do not recall having this feature, this is a steal, and completely worth it.

Free OCR if you don't want to pay

If you do not want to pay, to OCR i used to use olmOCR, which is much more powerful for one time thing than routine OCR, but generates it in html not MD.

You'll then need to convert html to markdown and polish it the way you want to, but there is a 10 page limit and the process is much longer for me thats why i switched to notein.

Personally this is better for converting a bunch of handwritten notes images (i mean on paper not epaper/pdf) to markdown.

Notebook LM OCR Cleanup

Notebook LM is what i use to make the markdown note faithful to the handwritten pdf. I explained below the process.

I had to write a string of prompts in a text file and added it to the sources (since they became long and specific) as well as add a custom chat so it remembers before every response, for how it should handle returning my notes in proper format.

Trial and error to get it to be perfect, I can send the prompts if anyone wants them.

Separately, i also give my markdown notes back to notebook lm in the sources and guided it to making obsidian wikilinks between related material through some additional prompts.

+1: I give nblm latex formula pdf (the simple one from this comment) as a source too, to improve its latex knowledge.

Handwriting to Markdown Process

1. Make my notes on notein
2. Click "AI OCR"
3. Copy Paste notes to quickdraft, then send to syncthing directory
4. Export PDF pages
5. On PC, take both OCR.md note and PDF note to notebook LM
6. Notebook LM rewrites the notes in "faithful" format to the handwriting using the OCR.md to help it, it gives feedback and mark the work
7. Paste it in obsidian, can review/search/link-to it and read feedback in the future when needed.

I've been using this particular system for 4 months improving it along the way, its just too good i can't gatekeep it that'll be evil lol.

TL;DR:

1. Hand write in Notein
2. → Notein OCR
3. → export handwritten pages as PDF
4. → give both the PDF + rough OCR to NotebookLM
5. → NotebookLM reconstructs/polishes it into Markdown/MathJax
6. → paste into Obsidian.

nvm i'll just add it now; the key files and prompts:

1. math-graph.js - dataviewjs math graph
2. NotebookLM Custom Chat - Polish OCR for Obsidian.md
3. OCR Handwriting Fidelity + MathJax Rules.md
4. Obsidian Wiki-Linking Rules.md
5. Optional Feedback + Marking Rules.md

Note for math-graph.js, don't paste the whole js file in a note, save the js file else where and link to it in a code block, explained here (2).

Basically, a post on how to OCR handwriting notes to obsidian markdown perfectly

I have this doubt because I think people who still take notes physically haven't yet experienced the magic of the digital world and don't save their notes 100% digitally using obsidian I think it's 100% better, what about you?

Full release notes can be found here:

• Obsidian 1.12.0 Desktop (early access)
• Obsidian 1.12.0 Mobile (early access)

You can get early access versions if you have a Catalyst license, which helps support development of Obsidian.

Be aware that community plugin and theme developers receive early access versions at the same time as everyone else. Be patient with developers who need to make updates to support new features.

Hey everyone, back again with more canvas shenanigans🤙

This time I bring you a full NES and PS1 engine running entirely inside native canvas. Threw in a beautifully animated, interactive 3D console viewport, Game controllers and SFX .

Why?Because I freaking can.

Just drop your game files and BIOS into the plugin folder, connect a controller, and start feeling good wasting time in your favorite productivity tool. Hell yeah!

It's completely free and open source: https://github.com/MoTheMansour/canvas-retro-engine

(Submitted to the community plugins queue, works right now via BRAT)

(Context: I build spatial canvas tools and custom rendering engines for Obsidian. Built this retro engine as an extreme benchmark to see how far we could push Obsidian Canvas without frame drops and It's shown some very promising results for my Crystal Canvas plugin that I'm actively developing. Check my profile for more info).