I Spent $50 On These Obsidian Plugins
Here are some of the best Obsidian plugins money should buy.
Inside baseball/meta comment: I swear after I wrote this post, the amount I wanted to pay for each app happened to add up to exactly $50 which gave me the idea to change the title. The old title is now the subtitle 🙂.
Over the years, Obsidian has developed a remarkable set of plugins, and I really wish there was a more frictionless way to pay developers for them. While many plugins link to ‘buy me a coffee’ or ‘donate’ buttons, it would be great to see ‘first class’ functionality in the Obsidian app itself. It would encourage developers to develop even higher quality plugins and reward them for their work. There could be few models developers could use integrated with Obsidian:
- Free, but slightly annoying: occasional reminders to pay for a reminder-free version
- Freemium: free, but pay for advanced features
- Trial period: must pay after some time
- Pay immediately: no preview mode
IMHO I would pay for most if not all of these below if it was integrated better in Obsidian. In fact, I will put my money where my text is after writing this. I will make a concerted effort to donate the amount of money below for each plugin. But that’s exactly the point: I have to make a real concerted effort, and I don’t want to.
One way is to look at it from this perspective: maybe we should be paying developers for their good work by habit. If I want to develop that as a good habit, I need the least amount of friction possible. Obsidian could basically help us build this good habit by providing a framework to do so that bridges the gap between ‘buy me a coffee’ and the Apple App store. To take a quote from the excellent book, Atomic Habits:
Technology can transform actions that were once hard, annoying, and complicated into behaviors that are easy, painless, and simple. It is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.
James Clear
Anyway, enough of that and onto the plugins themselves in no particular order other than alphabetical.
Backlinks
Show the backlinks directly in the document. I find this handy because many times I collect notes on a topic in my daily log and tag the topic it’s related to with a link. When I dig deeper in the topic, I can group and sort all these notes front-and-center directly in the note I linked to. This is more convenient for me than in a separate pane.
What I am paying: $1
Calendar & Daily Notes
I live by these plugins since daily note-taking and journaling are my primary use cases of the tool. I love that when I start Obsidian, it will default to the current day’s note in my setup. It is also so handy to see notes in the context of the calendar month and it’s so easy to hop to a particular point in time that I remember doing something and re-visit and expand on a note.
What I am paying: $5
Day Planner
This is not one that I use, but for those who are really into time blocking, this plugin shows a great visual display of how you’re using your time.
Not using, so not paying.
Excalidraw
This is probably one of the best plugins out there and I use it all the time for visual note taking. I love Excalidraw’s playful style. Its open source core and local file storage also makes it perfect fit as a plugin. I generally recommend Excalidraw outside of the Obsidian context for collaborative work as well.
What I am paying: $10
Markmind
This is absolutely an amazing plugin and actually is paid. It adds enough value to warrant being paid and is a pleasure to work with. The image below from their website says everything:
What I am paying: $12 (lifelong version)
Minimal Theme
OK so a theme is not a plugin but there are so many settings on this one that it feels a little like a plugin. It is by far my favorite theme that makes me feel like I’m not working in a code editor and more in a beautiful space to write and explore my thoughts.
What I am paying: $10
Readwise Official
The official plugin for Readwise that allows exporting of highlights to Obsidian notes. You get a lot of control over how it formats the notes as well. More on how I capture these highlights here:
I am a Readwise Full subscriber already.
Simple Embeds
This plugin is great because it allows you to preview content like YouTube videos and Tweets (see the image above as an example). I use it all the time in my journaling to conveniently play segments of videos I like.
What I am paying: $2
Tasks
Last but not least, I use this plugin to capture all of my personal tasks through my daily practice of Interstitial Journaling and creating tasks in notes where they are appropriate. It is a very versatile plugin that allows me to set up a daily dashboard of tasks that plays well with my journaling approach. More on how I do that here:
What I am paying: $10
Hopefully these recommendations help you in your exploration for what plugins will be most useful to you.