Obsidian is an incredibly versatile and powerful note-taking tool that stands out from its competition. All thanks to its robust community-driven plugin library. The extensive range of community-created plugins is what truly sets Obsidian apart and enables users to customize and enhance their experience to suit their unique workflows.
In this article, I have handpicked 45 of the most useful plugins for Obsidian, designed to help you unlock the full potential of your vault.
While not every plugin may be the perfect fit for your workflow, I’m confident that you’ll discover some that will add tremendous value to your Obsidian experience.
So, let’s dive in. We’ll start with the most popular ones and go deeper and deeper into the less known yet useful ones.
Dataview
Dataview is one of the most powerful and useful plugins for Obsidian. It allows you to work with databases directly within the app. You can extract metadata from Markdown notes through a simple query or by utilizing the JavaScript API.
While there’s a slight learning curve to mastering Dataview, once you become proficient, its features significantly enhance Obsidian’s out-of-the-box capabilities,
This not only streamlines your workflow but also provides deeper insights into your notes.
Templater
Templater is a powerful alternative to the core plugin, templates. It’s like having templates on Steriods.
With Templater, you can create advanced functions and effortlessly insert variables into your notes. This makes it easy for you to personalize and automate your notes with ease.
Guide: Video
Tasks
Tasks transform Obsidian into a powerful task manager. With this plugin, you can manage tasks easily within the app.
It supports all the essential features of a task manager, turning Obsidian into a powerful productivity tool for managing your to-do lists and daily tasks.
Guide: Video
Advanced Tables
Working with Markdown tables can be tough. The Advanced Tables plugin eases this process. It simplifies the navigation and formatting of Markdown tables. This plugin makes managing tables in Obsidian a breeze.
Guide: Video
Excalidraw
This plugin integrates Obsidian with Excalidraw. It allows you to store and edit Excalidraw files in your vault.
You can embed drawings into your documents and create links between them. This makes visualizing ideas and connecting concepts within Obsidian easy and intuitive.
Guide: Video
Obsidian Git
This plugin provides seamless backup integration with git, ensuring your notes and files are secure.
Once installed in your vault, you can forget about losing data. Obsidian Git stores your content with file version history, offering a reliable and efficient backup solution to safeguard your work.
QuickAdd
The QuickAdd plugin streamlines many tasks in Obsidian, making your workflow more efficient. With this plugin, you can effortlessly create notes, add content, and perform various actions that would usually take considerable time and effort.
Guide: Video
Natural Language Dates
If you frequently work with dates, this plugin is a game-changer. It allows you to easily add dates and times to your notes using the flexibility of natural language.
With this plugin, managing and referencing dates in your Obsidian vault becomes a more intuitive and efficient process.
Periodic Notes
The Periodic Notes plugin takes the concept of daily notes further by introducing weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly notes.
This enhancement allows you to easily plan and reflect on your work and personal life on a periodic basis.
By organizing your thoughts and goals across different timeframes, you can achieve a more structured and comprehensive approach to your note-taking and planning process in Obsidian.
Guide: Video
DB folder
The Database Folder plugin uses dataview queries to enable you to create Notion-like tables in Obsidian. These tables are editable. This plugin works with metadata within notes.
Instead of opening individual notes, you can edit the field directly from the DB folder’s interface.
Guide: Video
Pandoc Export
With the Pandoc Export plugin, you can effortlessly export your notes to various formats without leaving Obsidian. Write your content in Markdown and easily convert it to your desired format, streamlining your workflow and enhancing your output options.
Guide: Video
OmniSearch
As an alternative to Obsidian’s default search feature, OmniSearch significantly improves your ability to find files quickly.
It’s not only limited to notes. This powerful plugin also scans PDFs and images using the Text Extractor plugin, ensuring you can locate the content you need with ease.
HomePage
The HomePage plugin is simple yet effective. It lets you set a specific note as your home page in Obsidian. You can also customize the plugin’s behavior from its option settings to suit your preferences.
Guide: Video
Buttons
With the Buttons plugin, you can create functional buttons within your notes. These buttons can be assigned various tasks, such as running a command, creating a new file with a specific template, and more.
This plugin adds a layer of interactivity to your Obsidian experience.
Guide: Video
Spaced Repetition
The Spaced Repetition plugin taps into a proven method for retaining information. Using flashcards, it helps you combat the forgetting curve by reviewing notes and flashcards within Obsidian, leveraging the power of spaced repetition to enhance your learning and memory retention.
Guide: Video
Hover Editor
The Hover Editor plugin enhances Obsidian’s page preview popover feature, turning it into a full-featured editor. You can drag and resize the popover for an improved experience. Plus, you can pin the popover to prevent auto-closing, keeping your content accessible.
Text Generator
The Text Generator stands out as one of the most advanced AI integration tools for Obsidian. It harnesses the power of generative artificial intelligence for personal knowledge management and organization within the app.
Guide: Video
Projects
The Projects plugin revolutionizes the way you use Obsidian. It lets you create projects from folders or Dataview queries and switch between different views like Notion’s Table, Board, Calendar, and Gallery.
This versatile plugin brings a new level of organization and functionality to your Obsidian experience.
Make.md
Make.md is another powerful and useful plugin for Obsidian. It offers you four features to help you improve your experience in Obsidian.
- Spaces: Organize projects and notes to find the information you need.
- Contexts: Simple tables and powerful databases to connect your data across notes
- Blink: Quickly open and edit anything in the workspace from anywhere
- Flow: Helps you to edit directly inline while writing or editing notes
Editing Toolbar
If you’re new to Obsidian and Markdown syntax, the Editing Toolbar plugin is a valuable addition to your toolkit. It displays a convenient menu at the top of the screen, providing a smooth writing and editing experience.
Even for seasoned Markdown users, features such as text highlighting and color-changing can significantly improve your note-taking experience.
Readwise Official
The Readwise Official plugin serves as the official solution for syncing notes and highlights from the Readwise platform.
It seamlessly integrates your notes and highlights from your reading list into Obsidian.
Notion like tables
This plugin enhances your tabular data management in Obsidian. This feature simplifies the process of creating and managing tables. You get a notion like familiar and user-friendly experience for an improved an intuitive way of working with Obsidian.
Zoom
Zoom plugin is perfect for managing long notes. By zooming into a heading or a bullet list, it displays only the content under that specific list or heading.
This declutters your view and allows you to focus on the relevant information.
Guide: Video
Kindle highlights
You can Sync your Kindle book highlights with the Kindle Highlights plugin. You can even upload your “My Clippings.txt” file to extract highlights from books purchased outside of Kindle, ensuring all your reading insights are conveniently stored in Obsidian.
Cycle through panes
This plugin allows you to navigate different tabs in Obsidian using your keyboard. This functionality mirrors the familiar experience of browsing the web, making it easier to switch between panes and improve your workflow within Obsidian.
Obsidian Memos
The Obsidian Memos plugin enables quick additions of tasks, notes, and images to your daily notes. It helps to capture new ideas and information in Obsidian without the need to open a specific note.
Table of Content
This plugin allows you to insert a table of contents into your notes effortlessly. This can make it easier to navigate and reference specific sections.
Sortable
Sortable plugin enhances your table management experience in Obsidian. Compatible with both standard Markdown tables and Dataview tables, it allows you to sort tables according to their headers, bringing order and clarity to your data.
Remember Cursor Position
The Remember Cursor Position plugin eliminates the frustration of scrolling to find where you left off in a note.
It remembers the cursor position and scroll for each note, ensuring you can easily pick up where you left off without wasting time searching.
Book Search
A must-have for avid readers, the Book Search plugin helps you find books and create book notes by extracting metadata from the web. You can use it alongside Dataview to build a comprehensive book tracker.
This can help you keep track of your reading progress and future reading plans.
Cardboard
The Cardboard plugin transforms your tasks into a Kanban-like view. It provides a visually engaging way to manage your workload.
You can either create date-based boards for today, tomorrow, and someday views, or use tag-based boards to organize your tasks according to your preferred system.
Guide: Video
Quiet Outline
The Quiet Outline plugin serves as a powerful outliner for Obsidian, making it easy to navigate long notes. It features a collapsible outline, search support, and the ability to focus on specific headings, allowing for a more organized and efficient note-taking experience.
Guide: Video
Longform
The Longform plugin is an excellent alternative to Scrivener for writers. It integrates research and facilitates the easy organization of a series of notes into a structured manuscript, streamlining the writing process for both fiction and non-fiction projects.
Guide: Video
Smart Connections
You can enhance your note-taking with the AI-powered Smart Connections plugin. Utilizing AI, it discovers and creates links between different ideas, sparking new insights and connections.
Its key features include Smart View, which helps you find connections, and Smart Chat, enabling you to converse with your notes for a more interactive experience.
Obsidian Columns
The Obsidian Columns plugin adds multi-column functionality to the app, a feature missing from the default Markdown note-taking environment. With this plugin, you can create columns that even work on mobile devices, enhancing your note organization and layout capabilities.
PodNotes
PodNotes is a podcast player integrated within Obsidian, simplifying the process of taking notes from podcasts. You can listen and learn while efficiently capturing insights, all within the same workspace.
Guide: Video
Digital Garden
With the Digital Garden plugin, you can publish your notes to the web for free, eliminating the need for an Obsidian Publish subscription.
While it may not have all the features of Obsidian Publish, it’s a powerful alternative for sharing your content online without any additional costs.
Surfing
The Surfing plugin enables you to open web links directly within Obsidian, effectively turning the app into a browser. It streamlines your research process by keeping everything within the same environment.
Guide: Video
Task Progress Bar
You can add a visual indicator of task completion with the Task Progress Bar plugin.
It displays a progress bar near bullets or headings, although it only works in preview mode. This feature helps you keep track of your progress and stay motivated.
Plugin Groups
You can manage multiple plugins in Obsidian with ease using the Plugin Groups plugin. It offers another feature called delayed plugin loading, which can significantly improve loading times in Obsidian, especially if you have a slow computer and use many plugins.
Ledger
The Ledger plugin transforms Obsidian into a personal finance tracker, allowing you to store all your financial data in plain text. You can keep your data secure and private.
Guide: Video
Webpage HTML Export
Webpage HTML Export plugin enables you to export your entire vault as a single HTML webpage. While similar to Obsidian Publish, this plugin generates an HTML file of all files in your Obsidian.
DangerZone Writing
You can get into a state of flow with the DangerZone Writing plugin. This tool pushes you to write quickly and continuously, erasing your work if you stop before the timer ends.
Start with a topic and let the words pour out. This will help you overcome writer’s block and move forward with your project.
HomeTab
HomeTab enhances your navigation experience with a browser-like default new tab featuring a search bar and a grid of recent and starred files. You can easily access your recent notes and other important notes and streamline your workflow.
Copilot
This plugin allows you to integrate ChatGPT within Obsidian. This powerful tool leverages OpenAI’s GPT technology to assist you in personal knowledge management.
You can talk to your past notes, receive quick AI-generated responses, and supercharge your second brain for better productivity and organization.
That’s all. This was a list of the most useful plugins for Obsidian. I will be adding new useful plugins to this list as they are added to the plugin library.
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It would be good to mention for beginners like me thatt Copilot and Smart connections both require a paid for version of Chat gpt and that installation instructions are only written in github speak. These plugins might be great but I will never know.