Better Plugin Management with Folders and Links

Feature requests
1

Use case or problem

My plugins are many and my organization is poor. I can’t remember all the names of the plugins I use and so struggle to find it in the sidebar when I need to make a change.

I also find myself looking at a plugin in settings and wanting to open the GitHub link for it but needing to go to Community Plugins to search for it.

Lastly, because I can’t open multiple windows of my Vault, and since the settings panel opens over my vault, I can’t take notes on the plugins except with another app.

Proposed solution

The simplest solution I can think of would be to allow me to create folders for my plugins so I can group related plugins together.

For example, Calendar, Daily notes, and Periodic notes all belong together. Kanban and Todoist Plugin are both task related so they can go together. Style Settings, Markdown prettifier, style settings are all appearance related, so I can group those together, too.

To solve the issue of having to hop into “Community plugins” to find the GitHub page of the plugin I’m working with, perhaps take the information found in “Community plugins” and duplicate it inside the plugin options panel.

So, for example, inside a plugin like Calendar, show me the version number, a toggle to turn it off and on, a description of what the plugin can do, and make the plugin’s title a link that takes me to the GitHub page.

As for being able to take notes on my plugins, I have no idea how to solve that issue. I did have a vague idea around allowing me to take notes right inside the plugin, but I’m not sure how it would even get implemented. Open to ideas!

EDIT: Would also love if there were a link between the list of Installed plugins and their settings so I can get to the options panels for each one from there. Also, forgot to add that I’d want the groups of plugins to allow me to flick them on and and off as required. So I could turn off all task-management plugins, for example.

EDIT 2: Another advantage of grouping plugins together in a folder could be the ability to choose which plugins to sync and which ones to leave as device specific.

15 Likes
2

Weird how inactive this is - I would love a feature like this!

I’m not a developer, but it’s just a matter of manipulating community-plugins.json, right?

Being able to link active plugins to workspaces would be huge. I definitely oversubscribe to plugins, but -

The plugs I use for reviewing my notes are different are different from what I used to plan my day are different from creating tables, etc. I actually have two local vaults synced, primary-vault and primary-vault-lite` for just the essentials. This is obviously pretty wasteful, since it involves having two copies on my disc.

2 Likes
3

How about writing notes about plugin in their respective github page. For this we can use app like raindrop.

Its 2022, so opening new window is possible but still it is wasteful to write notes manually. I tried to edit the “manifest” file in the folder of a respective plugin, but there you can only edit how the plugin’s name appear in community plugins window, and if you update the plugin that changes are gone.

There is a plugin called divide and conquer. But it lacks the feature to specifically disable the plugin we want. I think after seeing it, devs won’t find it difficult to build a plugin that you talk about. But the question is “will the plugin be developed?”. Even if obsidian doesn’t allow that plugin to appear in community plugins section, I’m ready to take risks by downloading straight from github - i’m that desperate!

Another idea is just create a category of “default plugins” - it may vary as per user. Then create a copy of .json file that enables only those. And whenever you want to disable excess plugins turned on, you can replace the plugin.json file in .obsidian folder but we gotta do it manually.

I’ll be glad if any pros tell me a way to manage the plugin dilemma i have right now.

4

Just hopping in to second OP’s first idea. I have so many plugins and I really can’t remember all of them. It’s always a pain trying to locate them in the setttins panel.

5

I use Quick Plugin Switcher to group my plugins in at most 6 groups, color-coded and all, toggling groups on & off as I need them, and it works just perfect.