Intro
This is a more than exhaustive list of the plugins I like and talk about it. There are actually a few I have installed but excluded from this list because I’m still checking them out and/or am not ready to recommend them.
I’m loosely sorting plugins into Workflow, Cosmetic and QOL, each of which is described under it’s main heading. It’s then rated according to “Ease” or how quickly you can start using it after installation, and “Adaptability” or whether this plugin’s output can be replicated or transferred over outside of Obsidian.
These are very vague, very subjective ratings with no real matrix besides vibes. But you can imagine Ease as a scale from “Install it and forget about it” (5 stars) to “Gateway into coding” (1 star); and Adaptability as a scale from “The plugin’s effects/output will survive the death of Obsidian” (5 stars) to “Only applicable inside the app” (1 star).
Plugins marked with “❣️” are special favorites and are the ones I mention the most whenever I get asked for recommendations.
Lastly, as you’ll discover by scrolling, this note is far from finished. However, I’m still publishing it in its unfinished state and you can assume plugin mentioned here==approved and recommended by me.
Workflow plugins
Change, improve, augment, direct the way I work in Obsidian entirely. Disabling one of these apps will result in a (major or minor) change in a current process.
Dataview ❣️
Complex data views for the data-obsessed.
- id:
dataview - Ease: ⭐ 3 if you stop at plain DQL, 1 if you proceed into DataviewJS. Please bookmark the documentation.
- Adaptability: ⭐⭐ Extremely opinionated to Obsdian. However, it’s popular enough that other community tools Quartz/Quartz Syncer look into supporting Dataview in some way due to requests.
- My use case: Best seen in Library (tables) and attributes (lists). My review of this may be affected by the projected release of Datacore or Bases.
Dataview Serializer
Serialize Dataview queries to Markdown, and keep the Markdown representation up to date.
- id:
dataview-serializer - Ease: ⭐⭐⭐
- Adaptability: ⭐⭐
- My use case: This one existed primarily to make my Dataviews publishable to Quartz, but since I integrated Quartz Syncer, I haven’t needed this. I think this is needed for the core Publish plugin, though, so I’m leaving this up here as a subset of Dataview. It also does a nice QOL where it renders Dataview output that does show up on the graph.
Linter ❣️
Formats and styles your notes. It can be used to format YAML tags, aliases, arrays, and metadata; footnotes; headings; spacing; math blocks; regular markdown contents like list, italics, and bold styles; and more with the use of custom rule options as well.
- id:
obsidian-linter - Ease: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ You may need to re-configure it from time to time as your needs change, and the amount of settings can be pretty overwhelming, but they’re all fairly straightforward.
- Adaptability: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Linter makes changes to the note for you, but those changes remain even if you turn Linter off.
- My use case: Does small things like “Delete trailing spaces” and “Add an empty line break after tables,” and slightly more important things like “Add the
publishproperty if it doesn’t exist.” Mostly I use it to clean up my properties, especially when I’m refactoring notes in bulk.
Meta Bind
Make your notes interactive with inline input fields, metadata displays, and buttons.
- id:
obsidian-meta-bind-plugin - Ease: ⭐⭐ The buttons are easy and have a button-maker command, but the input fields gave me a hard time (and still do).
- Adaptability: ⭐⭐ The buttons absolutely don’t work outside Obsidian and won’t render on Quartz, but the property changes made by the input fields will persist, much like Linter’s effects.
- My use case: The plugin has two use-cases for me: command-invoking buttons, and input fields (text box, slider, radio buttons, etc.) that then update certain properties. Nowadays I make use of the buttons more than the input fields, but this may change as I migrate my media consumption tracking to Obsidian.
QuickAdd ❣️
Quickly add new pages or content to your vault.
- id:
quickadd - Ease: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The terms are confusing at first, but once you know what the fields are, you can make dozens of QA shortcuts.
- Adaptability: ⭐ I mean it’s just a macros-making workflow, but it is specific to Obsidian env.
- My use case: This virtually replaces any and all kinds of “Create new note” motions I make, especially when it builds on Templater. My favorite use case must be when I’m bulk-creating multiple notes of the same type: character sheets for a fiction project, astrology notes, people notes.
Quartz Syncer
Manage and publish your notes to Quartz, the fast, batteries-included static-site generator.
- id:
quartz-syncer - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Templater ❣️
Create and use templates
- id:
templater-obsidian - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Quality of Life (QOL)
Adds convenience or makes annoying things less annoying. Wouldn’t interrupt my workflow to turn this off, though.
Advanced URI
Advanced modes for Obsidian URI
- id:
obsidian-advanced-uri - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Auto Link Title ❣️
This plugin automatically fetches the titles of links from the web
- id:
obsidian-auto-link-title - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Code Editor Shortcuts
Add keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) commonly found in code editors such as Visual Studio Code (vscode) or Sublime Text
- id:
obsidian-editor-shortcuts - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case: A very important QOL, if I’m being honest.
Excalidraw ❣️
An Obsidian plugin to edit and view Excalidraw drawings
- id:
obsidian-excalidraw-plugin - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Homepage ❣️
Open a specified note, canvas, or workspace on startup, or set it for quick access later.
- id:
homepage - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
HTML Reader
This is a HTML file reader plugin for Obsidian. Can open document with “.html” and “.htm” file extensions.
- id:
obsidian-html-plugin - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Lazy Plugin Loader ❣️
Load plugins with a delay on startup, so that you can get your app startup down into the sub-second loading time.
- id:
lazy-plugins - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Load plugins with a delay on startup, so that you can get your app startup down into the sub-second loading time.
PDF++
- id:
pdf-plus - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Quiet Outline
Make outline quiet and more powerful, including no-auto-expand, rendering heading as markdown, and search support.
- id:
obsidian-quiet-outline - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Simple Table Math
Do some math (sum, average, etc.) in your markdown tables.
- id:
simple-table-math - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Substitutions ❣️
Do some math (sum, average, etc.) in your markdown tables.
- id:
substitutions - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Tag Wrangler
Rename, merge, toggle, and search tags from the tags view
- id:
tag-wrangler - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Zoom
Zoom into heading and lists.
- id:
obsidian-zoom - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Cosmetic
Changes presentation only and makes things more visually appealing — in some ways a QOL specific to appearance.
Callout Manager
Easily create and customize callouts.
- id:
callout-manager - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Minimal Theme Settings
Change the colors, fonts and features of Minimal Theme.
- id:
obsidian-minimal-settings - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Style Settings
Change the colors, fonts and features of Minimal Theme.
- id:
obsidian-style-settings - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case:
Supercharged Links ❣️
Add properties and menu options to links and style them!
- id:
supercharged-links-obsidian - Ease:
- Adaptability:
- My use case: