The plugin that makes canvas URL nodes usable

[Qbject]

I found the default behavior of canvas link nodes in Obsidian to be practically unusable since they load entire pages as soon as the node comes into view, causing various issues such as performance impact, security concerns, flickering, or unexpected autoplay.

To address these problems, I created the Canvas Link Optimizer plugin. It allows link nodes to load a URL and save a lightweight thumbnail for the page, which is displayed instead of the full page. You can still load the full page by clicking the thumbnail.

I initially made this plugin for my own use but decided to share it with the community in case others face similar issues. I hope you find it as useful as I do!

Here’s the default behavior of link nodes in Obsidian:

With the Canvas Link Optimizer Plugin enabled, it looks like this:

[demeneer]

Thanks for this, seems like this should have been native functionality. For even smoother performance, check out this snippet I wrote: Performance issue with Canvas when panning out of region with a large number of nodes - #2 by demeneer