Allow to Configure How Node-Size is Calculated

[akaalias]

Dear Obsidian team,

First off, thank you for making a software that I love to use every day.

Coming from this love, I would like to make a request:

Can we please have the ability to configure what variables are used to calculate and render the size of nodes in the graph-view?

I believe the graph-view is one of the most important features of Obsidian. It has the potential to completely change how we discover, reason about and share new ideas.

After figuring out how it currently works, adjusting my own Obsidian install and discovering new insights I realized that how node-sizes are calculated is one key to unlock this potential.

Node-sizing should be configurable to accomodate different ways to investigating the network.

Examples of these variables are (in order of personal preference):

• Number of backlinks (app.js:17627 l.weight += 0, d.weight += 1)
• Word count per file
• Length of file name
• Number of outgoing links
• Number of backlinks and outgoing links (current status)
• Tags per file
• Time since file creation
• Time since last edit

Ideally, I could select a variable by clicking in a preferences panel or similar.

Thank you again for your hard work and your consideration.

Alexis

[ryanjamurphy]

This is a great set of variables. I think there’s a lot of room to grow in the graph view. I can also imagine, for instance, illustrating a variable along a colour spectrum (e.g., old notes could be cold colours, new notes could be warm). https://kumu.io, a graphing software for systems mapping and social network analysis, provides some more ideas:

• Note border colour
• Note border width
• Note shadow opacity
• Note shadow size
• Arrow width

There’s more, but the point is that the graph could be quite the insightful, personalized visualization.

One more thing: I’d like to add centrality measures to the list of variables you’ve proposed, such as:

• Closeness
• Betweenness
• Reach and reach-efficiency
• Eigenvector
• Eccentricity

Performance might be an issue if Obsidian was constantly calculating these values, so they should probably be implemented via a plug-in and run manually.

[akaalias]

Bumping this request since the Graph View has gone through so many iterations but doesn’t yet allow to change how node-size is calculated.

Team Obsidian: Is there a chance this can be built at some point?

[Silvestris]

These sort of enhancements would be great. If they were also opened up to plugins, I’m sure there could be some pretty creative uses.

[stixard]

+1 for this request. Is there a chance that we will have this feature someday?

[inkstee]

Bumping this. Configuring node size based on number of backlinks would be groundbreaking for me.

[nbo]

Bumping this as well. +1,000,000 for Centrality Measures proposed by @ryanjamurphy.

I would be willing to contribute to a plugin, but am not down to be the sole developer