Working on an article called “Essential Obsidian Plugins for New Users” and looking for some opinions by the community. 
What plugins would you suggest to someone relatively new to Obsidian? What are your “must have” plugins?
None to start out.
Okay, maybe Settings Search and Style Settings (if you are using community themes). 
How I use Obsidian is going to be very different than how Bob, Linda, and Mariko use it. I don’t want to be in the situation where I recommend a plugin and then become the support person for said plugin. Even for myself, the plugins I have installed on desktop, tablet, and phone are radically different because I use the devices in different ways.
I feel many folks download Obsidian and immediately install a load of plugins without having a basic understanding of how vanilla Obsidian works. Issues inevitably come up and they can’t troubleshoot them because they don’t know what is doing what.
Take notes, make some links, keep good backups, and only when you hit a wall and can’t do something you’d like to do… then go looking for a plugin.
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What ariehen said — I recommend starting without plugins.
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Guilty as charged.
I’m a relatively new user who watched a bunch of YT vids titled with some variant of “the plugins I can’t live without.” Now I find myself trying to back out of them to a more stripped down version so I can get back to what is doing what.
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I agree with you in general but would make exceptions for Remember Cursor Position and Pane Relief, and possibly File Explorer Note Count and Settings Search (which you mentioned), all of which improve basic usability and should probably be sherlocked.
If someone chooses a community theme, they should immediately check for any plugins the theme dev recommends. For example, Minimal calls for Minimal Theme Settings as well as Style Settings, and also suggests some additional ones.
Sorry for asking, but do you have the knowledge to be able to write a good article on this topic? Do you know the width and multitude of ways different people use Obsidian? That’ll color the answer to which plugins are essential.
Personally I came across Obsidian with a programming background, and to me Dataview and Templater was installed rather quickly, and are to this day the most used plugins in my vaults. Whether I would call them essential to all new users of Obsidian that’s something different, but for me they’re part of what attracted me to and allows me to use it efficiently.
Per my response to the thread on reddit, I have slightly pivoted the scope and message of the article.
I do plan to do more “targeted” articles for specific workflows in the future but the intent of this article is high level plugins that folks new to Obsidian may reach for, or things that are highly recommended that “should just be built in”.
I’ve removed the word “essential” because it came across too clickbaity and too “you MUST do this” and softened the language to “helpful” and make it clear in the article that these may be helpful… or may not, depending on your specific use of Obsidian.
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