The recently-added Web Viewer core plugin’s purpose (facilitating web research within Obsidian) would be much more fully realized if it had the same ‘highlight and capture’ capabilities of the official Obsidian Web Clipper extension for external browsers.
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Totally on the same page with you here! I’ve taken the liberty of expanding this request into a more detailed and polished form: Fleshing Out ‘Save to Vault’. Maybe it makes sense to consolidate things by retiring this thread and steering the discussion over to the updated version?
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Use case or problem
When using Obsidian’s in-app webview, there is currently no seamless way to save a webpage along with its metadata (such as title, URL, and content) directly to the vault. While Obsidian’s external browser plugin “Web Clipper” already achieves this functionality in external browsers, the “Save to Vault” command within the webview lacks this capability. This forces users into a multi-step process: opening the page in an external browser, using the Web Clipper plugin, and then saving it manually to the vault. The current workflow disrupts productivity and creates friction for users conducting research or organizing content within Obsidian.
Proposed solution
Enhance the existing “Save to Vault” command within Obsidian’s webview by adding functionality similar to what is provided by the Web Clipper plugin. Specifically:
-
Metadata Extraction: Automatically capture and save metadata such as:
- Page title
- URL
- Selected text (if applicable)
- Timestamp of saving
-
Content Formatting: Save the extracted metadata and page content into a Markdown file that aligns with user-defined templates or conventions (similar to Web Clipper).
-
Seamless Integration: Keep this feature lightweight and native to Obsidian’s core functionality without replicating or requiring full browser-like support for extensions.
By implementing this solution, users would be able to save pages from Obsidian’s webview into their vaults with minimal effort, streamlining workflows for research, note-taking, and content organization.
Current workaround (optional)
The current workaround involves several steps:
- Open the desired webpage in an external browser using “Open in Default Browser.”
- Use the Web Clipper plugin in that browser to save the page along with its metadata.
- Return to Obsidian to view or further organize the saved note.
While functional, this process is cumbersome and interrupts focus during research sessions.
Related feature requests (optional)
- The request for a more robust built-in web clipping tool within Obsidian has been mentioned by users seeking alternatives to third-party plugins.
- Requests related to improving integrations between core Obsidian features like
webviewandvault managementcould also benefit from enhancements like this.
I would also like to explore whether there are fundamental technical limitations inherent to WebView that might preclude the implementation of such a feature. When I previously introduced this concept in a Discord discussion—admittedly, not the most appropriate venue for such a topic—the idea was dismissed by a developer as being overly niche, unnecessary, and insufficiently considered. At the time, I chose not to engage further because the discussion seemed to veer away from constructive critique and more toward outright dismissal of the idea itself. In situations like these, fostering a dialogue rooted in mutual respect and intellectual curiosity is crucial, regardless of one’s personal valuation of an idea.
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I would like to highlight that there was some confusion in the discussion surrounding this topic. Many participants were referencing editing the Chrome browser plugin, which I believe is unrelated to the feature being proposed. Given this apparent obscurity, I felt it appropriate to create a new thread with an opening in the developer’s requested format to clearly articulate the feature request. My goal was simply to present the feature request in a way that minimized further potential misunderstandings.
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Hello @Pentatonic!
I get a “Page Not Found” when I open the link to what you characterized as ‘a more detailed and polished’ request.
Will you please either correct the link or delete the post that references it?
Their post was merged into this thread.
Here is the definition of WebView:
Web viewer, a new core plugin, lets you open external links within Obsidian. This makes it easier to read linked content without leaving the app and improves multitasking for web research.
Here is the reality:
If you find an article or webpage you want to use for your research(notes) you’ll have to open an external browser anyway to clip that article to use in your notes. So its limitations basically disrupt its intent.
Is it possible for a user to create their own plugin? Or is WebView a WebKit provided by the OS and functions much like it does in Visual Basic or Gambas or any other RAD environment that offer this functionality with minimal coding required because its pre-coded and there is nothing you can add to its functionality. Someone knows the answers.
Heartily agreed! I really like separating certain things into Obsidian only to keep myself organized; for example, Obsidian-related rabbit holes can stay in the Obsidian viewer (mostly) and I can just close it to keep myself from deciding to, I don’t know, completely change my workflow in the middle of the day (you think I’m joking). But if I want to instead make a note for later, I have to go back to pre-Clipper protocol or switch to my other browser.
It seems a little weird to roll them both out at the same time but not make them compatible. It’s great to have bookmarks available in-app, but the ability to template would be nice.
[Edited because I realized as I was doing this, accidentally – and y’all should highlight this more! – you can extract quotes to new notes, which IS helpful. Would still be nice to get the kind of note templates we can use on Clipper though.]
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The big question on my mind is: “Is it actually possible?” From what I understand, Electron includes a web viewer out of the box—essentially a drop-in component (referred to as a plugin, I suppose)—that’s based on the Chromium engine. That sounds like it should make integrating the web clipper function directly into the Obsidian notebook fairly straightforward.
However, in my experience working with Webview in other programming environments (in other similar RAD tools), its capabilities are often quite limited—and that may be the case here as well. While we usually try to avoid dwelling on platform limitations, sometimes they’re hard to ignore.
I’m not yet familiar with Electron, and one concern I have is about what the developer really means when they say the plugin would need to be “re-coded.” Does that mean you can’t create a plugin for the existing web viewer because of its hard-coded limitations? Would we need to build an entirely custom webview from scratch just to access the functionality that’s currently missing?
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Use case or problem
To be able to access the awesome features of obsidian-web-clipper via Web Viewer right inside Obsidian.
Proposed solution
Big fan of both Web Viewer and Web Clipper. The former streamlines the process of conducting research; the latter bridges the gap between scraping and note-taking. I’d love to see convenient or even deeper integration of the two together, further enhancing the overall workflow and possibly sparing the need to go outside of Obsidian.
With clipper templates, the potential would be exhilarating, further speeding up the process of building personal knowledge vaults.
Current workaround (optional)
Related feature requests (optional)
3 Likes
When I first installed the WebViewer release of Obsidian, I kind of expected it to have this integration. For a while, I admit, I was kind of in denial, not wanting to use the WebViewer at all.
This would be nice, but it probably will not be implemented, for a number of reasons. Fingers crossed.
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I think this is basically what you want
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Yes. Amazing work! This solves the issue and then some. Thank you for you time and effort.
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Happy to help, was no work at all, just happened to see these two post practically next to each other on the home page 
Push. Would really like WebClipper to be added to Obsidian WebView.
Implementation should not be that difficult and would greatly increase adaptation and use cases for WebViewer
The Obsidian dev team dismissed the idea, calling it too niche and insisting it would require a massive overhaul of their entire code base. They made it sound like an impossible ask. And yet here you are, delivering a clean, working solution like it was nothing. No drama, no excuses. Just results. Funny how ‘too hard’ suddenly looks a lot like ‘we just didn’t want to.’ Bravo to you for showing them how it’s done.