8 Obsidian Plugins That Supercharge My Notes
I rely on these nearly everyday.
I don’t know about you, but my love affair with Obsidian wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for the Community Plugins.
The Core Obsidian features are enough for someone who’s looking to store, link and develop ideas, but if you want to go further and uncover unlimited possibilities, then you need Community Plugins.
At the time of this writing, there are 723 plugins, all created by the Obsidian community, people who love the app and want to contribute to its flourishing. The incredible library of plugins in Obsidian speaks to the power of intrinsic motivation, being driven by a desire to give back and contribute meaningfully to a project you love.
And to give back to the community, I decided to share the plugins I rely on the most, the ones that I don’t see myself living without.
Advanced Tables
Creator: Tony Grosinger
I’ve only recently started using tables. I wanted to avoid it at all costs at first, but I realized it would simply be much easier to represent some ideas or organize information in tables, so I gave in.
This plugin has all the features you may need if you rely heavily on tables. If you previously used Notion or need this kind of organization, then this plugin will do the job. For my purposes, I don’t go fancy with my tables, but I’ve noticed I could visualize some data or concepts better using them, so I added the plugin to my toolbox.
Calendar + Periodic Notes
Creator: Liam Cain
If there’s one plugin that I can’t see myself without, it must be the Calendar. To enhance its functions, I use it in conjunction with Periodic Notes; this way it acts as a journal and review system.
Periodic Notes supports daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly notes. But I only activated the first 3 types. This way, I can do a review each week and can easily come back to any week if I’m curious what I was up to at that time.
A lot of our memories blend together into an amorphous body, leaving us with only a few distinct moments that stand out. The Calendar plugin helps us break the string of repetitive days and capture our experiences when they’re fresh. Not to mention it’s satisfying to read entries from months ago and see how you’ve grown.
QuickAdd
Creator: Christian B. B. Houmann
QuickAdd is a godsend for people who go through repetitive commands on a daily basis.
If you find yourself always going through 5 steps to complete a routine task in your notes, you will definitely benefit from this plugin. It lets you create commands and automate your workflow.
Let’s take a concrete example of how I use QuickAdd. I add new book notes into my vault regularly. Usually, the process was like this: Create a new note -> Add the Book Template -> Move it to the Books folder. With QuickAdd, I can skip all those steps by pressing a Hotkey (that I set myself) and QuickAdd takes care of the rest. I only have to enter the name of the book, and that’s it. The file, with the right template, sits in my Books folder. There are countless other ways to automate your tasks and I invite you to explore them on your own, because it’s truly an invaluable plugin.
Emoji Toolbar
Creator: oliveryh
Sometimes you just need to express yourself with an emoji.
This plugin gives you access to a large library of them. And you don’t have to endlessly go through rows of emojis to find the one you need, because it has a search functionality. Simply open the popup window and type a term related to the emoji you want.
After you install the plugin, all that’s left to do is set up a Hotkey for it.
To do that, Navigate to Settings -> Hotkeys -> type “emoji toolbar” in the search bar and choose a combination of keys to use when you want to open the emoji library. I use “ALT + E”
Kanban
Creator: mgmeyers
This plugin serves only one purpose for me: it helps me organize and keep track of my articles. It’s the most efficient way I’ve found to quickly sort through them, depending on which stage in the writing process they’re in. I have 5 stages or lists: Idea, Research, First Draft, Editing Phase and Published.
Imgur
Creator: Kirill Gavrilov
This is a new addition to my vault. After more than a year of using Obsidian, I’ve always felt something was missing: images. And it’s not because Obsidian doesn’t support images. If you want to add an image in your notes, it’s as easy as dragging and dropping it into the vault or copying and pasting it. But where does the image live? It will get stored in your Attachments folder (or whatever folder you designate for media.)
But there’s two problems with that: if you add too many images, you may max out your storage (if you use cloud) or your vault will be weighed down and run slower.
Finally, this is where the Imgur plugin comes into the picture (pun intended). You may be familiar with Imgur as a image sharing website, but you can integrate your account there with Obsidian through the plugin and unlock one pretty sweet benefit. Every picture you add to your notes won’t get stored in your vault, but rather on the Imgur servers.
Now, I can add as many pictures as I want and get the benefits of having some ideas better represented by a graph or a drawing.
For more details and a tutorial on how to implement Imgur into your vault, check out this tutorial on YouTube.
Journey
Creator: Alexis Rondeau
I’ve talked about this plugin in my guide to writing in Obsidian, as a little tool that helps me find unexpected connections between my notes. I also like to call it the Serendipity machine.
The premise is simple: insert the two notes that you suspect might have more in common than you think, and let Journey show you all the steps that lead from Note A to Note B. You can opt to follow only backlinks, or exclude tags. Playing around with Journey will for sure culminate in some valuable insights.
Sliding Panes (Andy’s Mode) — Honorable Mention
Creator: death_au
A few weeks ago, the Obsidian team launched version 1.0.0 of Obsidian. That was a truly exciting moment for all the people in the PKM space.
Among the changes and new features they introduced was the Tab functionality. Meaning, your vault can act as your personal browser, with each open note corresponding to one tab.
But that’s not the entire story. Apart from tabs, you also have the option of displaying your notes as overlapping panes. This is such a nice and thoughtful touch, because before the update, many Obsidian users, myself included, used a plugin called Sliding Panes, inspired by Andy Matuschak.
Inspired by its popularity, the Obsidian developers integrated it into the core features of the app. And although there’s no need for the plugin anymore, I thought it needed a mention because I used it for almost an entire year, and it’s been a central component to my note-taking.
Obsidian becomes a powerhouse of note-taking when you integrate some community plugins. Let me know if there are any plugins you rely on that I haven’t mentioned here!
