How to Use the New Canvas Plugin in Obsidian

Video Instruction on Obsidian Canvas by Ric Raftis

Until now, Obsidian has lacked a Canvas tool, but not anymore. The latest Obsidian release, 1.1, which, as I write, is only available as an Insider Build but will be available to mainstream users shortly. (Edit: Now publicly available)

The lack of a Canvas tool in Obsidian has been frustrating to date and forced devotees to use other programs such as Miro, Clickup, etc. It can interrupt your workflow when jumping around between apps.

Whiteboards or visual tools are popular for several things, such as concept maps, fleshing out articles, mind maps, flow charts, organisational charts and brainstorming, to name but a few. Canvas provides a brilliant solution in Obsidian for all these tasks.

The beauty of Canvas is that you can do these things and more within Obsidian. One of the greatest benefits is being able to view a bunch of notes, images and even websites on the Canvas. The video shows you how to do all these things, but here is a rundown.

1. First, you need to appreciate that it does not limit the canvas to the size of the note on the screen. You can zoom in or out and it can end up being huge if you wish.
2. You can drag notes from the left-hand sidebar directly onto the canvas. You can also resize and drag them to wherever you like. Hold the Shift key down while dragging the corners of the note to maintain scale.
3. You can bring images from the vault also and drag them straight to the Canvas. You can also drag them from File Explorer or Finder and scale them also by dragging the corners, but no need to hold the Shift key down.
4. Add a website by opening in your browser and copying the URL from the address bar. You can paste it directly onto the Canvas or drag the address from the browser onto the Canvas.

Another nifty feature of this release is that you can move icons around in the left-hand ribbon. The video shows this feature as well.

Summary

No doubt there will be more features added to this plugin over time, but its inclusion in Obsidian is a game changer. Canvas adds another string to Obsidian’s bow as my PKM app where I can do more and more.

When you watch the video to see how it all works, I would really appreciate a Like or Subscribe.

Thanks! I really appreciate you reading my work. If you enjoyed this article and found it useful, you can clap (up to 50 times) and follow me for more articles. If you spotted something that wasn’t clear or wish to add to the content, please leave a comment below.