Blackboard — native pressure-sensitive stylus drawing directly in Canvas nodes and Markdown embeds

[jameswolensky]

Is this project open source? Yes
Is this project completely free? Yes
Is this project vibe-coded beyond the author’s ability to comprehend how it works? No
Community Directory: Blackboard

Hey all — I built Blackboard, a plugin that lets you draw freehand directly inside Obsidian, without opening a separate editor. I’ll keep all future updates in this thread.

The main ideas:

• Pen-down, draw. In a Canvas node or a ![[embed]], you touch the screen and draw. No click-to-open step.
• Pressure-sensitive — Apple Pencil and stylus input drives variable-width strokes via perfect-freehand. Mouse input works too (uniform width).
• Palm rejection — touch is ignored while a stylus is active.
• Plain files — .blackboard files are human-readable JSON. They diff cleanly in git. No binary blobs.
• Pen, highlighter, eraser — one shared floating toolbar follows your active drawing.
• Per-embed sizing — the Canvas node’s geometry (or the |WxH in a Markdown embed) controls display size. Resizing scales the drawing without distortion.
• Optional SVG export — writes a .svg alongside the file on save.

Embedding in a Canvas

Embedding in a Markdown note

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How it compares to Excalidraw and Ink

	Blackboard	Excalidraw	Ink
Draw directly on Canvas node (no open-to-edit step)	✓	✗	✗
Live drawing in Markdown embed	✓	✗	✓
Plain-text, git-diffable files	✓	✗	✗
Diagramming: shapes, arrows, text	✗	✓	✗

Blackboard is focused on fast, frictionless pen drawing inside your notes and canvases. It’s not trying to replace Excalidraw for diagramming.

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Install

Community Plugins (recommended):

1. Open Settings → Community plugins
2. Click Browse and search for Blackboard, or go directly to Blackboard in the Community Directory
3. Click Install, then Enable

Manual:
Download main.js, manifest.json, styles.css from the latest release and copy into .obsidian/plugins/blackboard/.

GitHub: https://github.com/jameswolensky/obsidian-blackboard

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Platform notes

Primary target is iPad + Apple Pencil. Desktop with mouse works (uniform stroke width). Android tablet with stylus: supported (pressure varies by device).

Bug reports and feedback very welcome!

Looking forward to hearing what you think. Especially interested in feedback from Apple Pencil users and anyone using Canvas heavily.

[potatge]

Cool! Only thing I noticed when I tried it out using my Wacom Movink tablet was that the pen’s calibration seemed to be a bit off sometimes. Where my Wacom pen was trying to draw seemed to put down a slightly off line, I couldn’t capture it well in the screengrab. Yet as you said you’ve made it for Apple devices, so I dunno if my feedback is helpful.