Obsidian Gems of the Year 2021 nomination - Plugins

File Tree Alternative Plugin

I would like to nominate the plugin I created (Yeah, very humble of me :smiley:).

Default file explorer has files and folders in a single view and it is not very convenient for me. This plugin now creates 2 panes separated for files and folders. Since I first created the plugin, I have never touched the default explorer. It has almost all functions that are provided by the default explorer. You have additional functions like searching files by names, focusing on a certain folder, showing/hiding files from sub-folders, excluding certain folders, and many other just out of the box. I believe it can be considered at least as a candidate :slight_smile:

5 Likes

I nominate Style Settings by @mgmeyers !

This plugin absolutely changed the way theme creatores think about their themes, and how users interact with them! It opens up a TON of customization options, and enables users to fine-tune their favourite themes in order to reach their dream setups. The importance of this plugin to the community can’t be overestimated!

17 Likes

Recent Files by Tony Grossinger
GitHub Link

Greatly undervalued plugin flying under the radar in my view. The functionality is very straightforward, namely simply displaying your recently browsed files in the sidebar. But once you figure out how to adapt your workflow to it, it can become one of the most valuable plugins.

  • No need for sliding panes, tabs, multiple panes, or guess work how often you have to press the navigate back button. No need to have multiple panes open, when you can simply switch back to any note you recently used. And when you do not use a note anymore, it simply falls down in the list of recent files – no need for the good old “close your unused tabs/panes” problem many of us are familiar with from Browsers.
  • No need for a file explorer. Together with the Quick Switcher plugin, Breadcrumbs, or another plugin that allows you to navigate between notes, the Recent Files plugin allowed me to ditch the file explorer for good. The file explorer displays notes in the same folder, but more often than not, I am rather interested in notes I used recently than notes of the same category.

This is a great example how a really simple plugin can still provide great value.

18 Likes

Style Settings is the best.
It just works with many themes.

1 Like

Excalidraw

Life changing for me. In fact, it’s the only plug in that I’ve installed that I kept. Often, I use images & spatial layouts to think & deep dive on notes, thoughts & topics. One of the limitations I often run into in most knowledge base apps is they excel in text but fell short with visual layouts. This plug in let’s me sketch things all & stay in my knowledge base (Obsidian). The fact that links work in the images is game changing. A feature I’ve always looked for but thought it was just a dream. Handy having visual index vs text & mindmaps are interesting as well. Dev introduced me to thinking maps which is interesting as well. Would love certain features added at some point but very powerful plug in

7 Likes
  • Outliner
  • GitHub - vslinko/obsidian-outliner: Work with your lists like in Workflowy or RoamResearch
  • I prefered Obsidian over Roam, Dynalist…etc. I found Obsidian to be way more customisable for someone to build his PKB the way he wants. But the default style/format of the dashed/bullet list in Obsidian is still basic and this plugin solve many of the issues, which makes the reading and eye scanning of long bullet lists much better and faster. It’s to some degree add a Dynalist flavour into Obsidian so one can have both worlds in one unified dashboard & database.

Hopefully the developer will keep maintaining and developing it for years to come.

6 Likes

You left me with a cliffhanger! What features do you have in mind? I suggest to continue the discussion on GitHub or on Discord…

2 Likes

Style Settings

I was just about to nominate Style Settings but figured I’d better check first, and sure enough Daniel beat me to it. Not all themes use it yet or implement all the possible settings, but when they do it makes life much easier for those of us who aren’t fluent in CSS and would otherwise have to either try to find snippets somewhere (or beg for them on Discord), or else put up with details that aren’t necessarily bad but we’d always be wishing we could change.

2 Likes

I’ve never tried Self-hosted LiveSync, but it’s intriguing as a third way after Obsidian Sync and iCloud to sync iOS with other platforms, especially since (unlike iCloud) it’s encrypted and is supposed to also sync with Android, Windows, and probably Linux. Using it with the free IBM Cloudant account (which sounds like the simplest option) would only give you 1 GB, but for a vault that includes only markdown notes it would probably be sufficient.

Macros

I can’t believe this plugin isn’t more popular. Macros makes it simple (I mean, anyone can do it) to combine pretty much as many commands from the command pallet into one. You can even add delays if necessary to make sure a command has completed before the next one is called. This is POWERFUL automation that’s accessible even to nontechnical people.

5 Likes

Encrypt

This plug-in makes it easy to securely obscure the contents of an entire note, one or more lines, or a snippet of text.

Decrypted data can be displayed in a temporary dialog or saved over its encrypted version in place within the note.

Passwords aren’t saved anywhere – which is good! – but could render your encrypted data inaccessible if you forget the password you used. The new ‘password hint’ feature significantly reduces that risk, while making it more practical to use different passwords for different purposes.

I use it to secure account #s, passwords, and my own and others’ personal and confidential information.

6 Likes

Name: remotely-save
Link: https://github.com/fyears/remotely-save
Reason: Yet another unofficial plugin allowing users to sync notes between local device and the cloud service (S3, Dropbox, webdav). It supports Obsidian mobile. It also supports end-to-end encryptions.
Disclaimer: I am the plugin author.

1 Like

I nominate Advanced Slides by @MSzturc

Developing presentations based on my notes make my notes better.

Translating a topic into a presentation helps me to find a common thread across the topic. It changes the structure of the notes, because using them and integrating them means that I cut my notes even in smaller pieces and make them more precisely and thus come closer to the core of the message i want to transfer

With this plugin all of this is now possible without leaving Obsidian. Much more, my presentations are now hubs in my graphs that feel more natural than MOCs, they connect knowledge and represent structured paths through my notes graph.

This plugin has changed the way I work with my notes.

9 Likes

Buttons
Makes everything so much easier to do, it’s so powerful, and I especially like to make multiple inline buttons.

5 Likes

A post was split to a new topic: How to use advanced slides?

Obsidian Vimrc Support

The native vim support is nice, but for many of us it’s not useful without at least remapping the Esc key. It’s added some nice functionality lately, including mapping vim commands to Obsidian commands, and the ability to access the system clipboard within vim. This one is essential for me, glad to have it!

2 Likes

“Remember Cursor position” does just that. This is super useful in long notes and when switching back and forth between different notes.

7 Likes
  1. enhancing mindmap
  2. GitHub - MarkMindCkm/obsidian-enhancing-mindmap: obsidian plugin editable mindmap,you can edit mindmap on markdown file
  3. simple and easy-to-use mind map plug-in, visual markdown file
1 Like

Obsidian Citations plugin

As nobody mentioned it yet, I have to do it. On a first view, it may seem rather simple as compared to some other, really amazing plugins - and yes, further development seems to be lagging behind the author’s original intentions, but even the plugin’s basic functions are incredibly useful.

For me as a (part-time) researcher, much of obsidian’s power couldn’t be realized if I wouldn’t have the possibility to access my bibliography directly from within obsidian, linking my arguments and ideas to articles and books - and all of that without interrupting my current workflow!

4 Likes

Code Editor Shortcuts

As a developer, many of these text editing shortcuts have become reflexive for me and I was missing them in Obsidian’s editor. I created this plugin to add that functionality, making the editing experience more efficient for me (and hopefully others as well).

1 Like