I am very glad that so many community plugins have been released recently. However, it is becoming more difficult to find plugins that have the features I want or that are actively being updated. I would like developers to add features to make it easier to find plugins.
Proposed solution
Some ideas:
Sort community plugins by update date
We would like to be able to sort the plugin list by update date in order to find plugins that are still actively being updated.
Tagging
I don’t know if developer tagging or user tagging would be better, but tags for plugin attributes such as ‘daily notes’, ‘hotkeys’, ‘tables’, etc. would make it easier to find plugins. Maybe a tag like “Most downloaded in June 2022” would be nice.
Community Plugin category in the forum
This is not about Obsidian program itself. Currently, threads about specific plugins in the official forum are mainly in the Share & showcase category, but they are also distributed among Feature Requests and Plugin Ideas. It would be easier to consolidate information if we create “Community Plugin” category and have one thread per plugin (or multiple threads for complex plugins) there.
I don’t personally need to sort by update date — normally there are only a few candidates for whatever need I’m trying to fill — but I’d like to see the update date in the plugin listings.
I’m not sure tags would add much over the existing descriptions. Most plugins I’ve seen include a long description, and the plugin search reads those descriptions.
I would like to see the Community Plugin category, but definitely not with one thread per plugin — that makes it hard to scan for info (already a problem in Share & Showcase). Maybe Community Plugins should be Community Plugins & Themes, as I’ve seen some very long threads about themes in Share & Showcase.
@CawlinTeffid
Yes, even without the sorting function, just showing the update date would be helpful. Community Plugins & Themes might be more appropriate, as some plugins are closely related to CSS themes.
@Denna
Thank you for telling me excellent site! I still think it would be beneficial to add such features to Obsidian, but that site would be a great help to me in my search for plugins.
I agree, I was also just looking for a ‘recently updated’ option in Obsidian itself. This website is nice, but don’t see why we shouldn’t have it in Obsidian itself either
There are now 600+ community plugins, and we may know that we’ll never use some of them for some reason:
no more maintained by author
a newer plugin does a better job
too specific for our usage
So I think it would improve QoL if we could exclude the community plugins we don’t want to see anymore in the list.
It may be a core feature, but a plugin could probably do the job.
What do you think?
The number of plugins available is increasing, which is a good thing. However, the number of downloads does not always reflect a plugin's utility or quality in practice.
Proposed solution
To address this, I propose implementing a system of 5-star ratings to better reflect a plugin's quality. Additionally, categories could also be implemented to further organize plugins, but this would require more thought and consideration.
I often go to find interesting and new plugins, but when I browse the Community Plugin Market, I found that there is no option to sort by recently most downloaded. I think it would be useful for new plugins
There are lots of community plugins in Obsidian now (It is 1077 now.). When you wanna search a plugin for not specific one, I mean, you wanna explore the plugins. You simply lost yourself.
Proposed solution
By tagging the community plugins like “AI, front-matter, auto complete, theming, utilty, metadata etc.”.
I agree. A rating and review system will be a major improvement in addition to sort by date first published or last updated. It would also open another channel for feedback about a plugin other than opening a GitHub issue which most users may not do.
Now that I think of it, implementing a rating system would require an account of some kind to track who gave the rating or wrote the review. And since Obsidian itself needs no account, this would be tricky. Maybe Obsidian Forum account can be used to track the ratings and reviews.
All credit to the author for sparking this discussion.
We collectively recognize the growing importance of community plugins. Their popularity is undeniable, and their use is expected to increase in the coming times.
The following suggestions resonate with my perspective.
Plugin Discovery:
A sort-by-update feature would be highly beneficial, as plugins not updated for 6 months could potentially pose security concerns.
Proposed Category: Community Plugins
It’s evident that a dedicated category would greatly assist in locating specific plugins. Currently, information on certain plugins can be hard to come by.
An similar point is to filter them. Buggy and unmaintained plugins waste the time and frustrate the user.
Last updated, works, works not with …, works on android, Windows, …, latest release numbers and dates, needs …, alpha, beta, number of open issues, number of current users, sends content to KI, … are some of the criteria, one needs to make a decision.
