🌠 Popping out Plugins & Calendar Imports

In The Community

• As of this week, there are over 600 plugins officially in the community plugins list!

Obsidian Updates

• Insider v0.15.2 has some fixes and improvements. Working out the kinks of the major 0.15.0 update and helping plugins get adapted to the new Codemirror changes was a pretty major focus this week.

Plugin News

New in Community Plugins

These plugins went through code review and are now available in Obsidian's plugin list. For the full list, check out the plugin stats page.

• Redirect by @jglev  is for redirecting links based on YAML frontmatter.
• Google Calendar and Contacts Lookup by @ntawileh  will import contact and calendar event information from your Google account.
• Code Block by @paddan  converts text into code blocks with automatic language detection.
• Task Progress Bar by @Quorafind  adds a progress bar for tasks.
• Share as Gist by @timrogers  shares an Obsidian note as a GitHub gist, which is handy for sharing an individual note.
• obsidian echarts by @cumany  renders Apache ECharts, an open source JavaScript visualization library, in Obsidian.
• Stack Overflow Answers by @bramses  lets users import Stack Overflow answers directly into Obsidian.
• Linkify by @matthewhchan  will convert matching text into links, for example anything prepended with @ into a twitter link.
• Table to CSV Exporter by @metawops  allows for exporting tables from a pane in reading mode into CSV files.
• Obsidian shared to Notion by @EasyChris  lets users share files in their Obsidian vault to Notion with using Notion's API.
• Thumbnails by @Meikul  will insert video thumbnails into your notes.
• Image Gallery by @lucaorio  is an easy way to set up a masonry-style image gallery in Obsidian.
• Wielder by @victorb  lets you run Clojure scripts inside your Obsidian documents, similar to how Templater lets you do JavaScript. Here's the introduction tutorial.
• Timestamp Notes by @juliang22  improves side-by-side notetaking with videos. It makes it easier to annotate your notes with timestamps to directly control the video and remember where each note comes from.
• Translator by @luhaifeng666  translates selected text.
• braincache by @XSPGMike  is a new way to create flashcards from obsidian notes.

Pending (as of Friday morning)

Note: Not all new plugins are available in the community list yet, as they need to go through code review first. You can manually install plugins that aren't in the community list yet by using the Beta Reviewer's Auto-update Tool. Note, though, that this is not as safe as waiting for them to go through code review.

• Zotero Link by @MunGell  will insert links to Zotero items from Obsidian interface using Zotero Bridge.
• Obsidian GnuPlot by @theFr1nge  turns gnuplot code blocks into plots

Updates

If you want a comprehensive list of what plugins updated this week, check out this plugin updates index by Ganessh Kumar.

• v0.1.2 Fleeting Notes Sync added mobile support.
• Database Plugin now lets users add and delete files directly from the table.
• The new Control Characters update requires Obsidian 0.15.0 or higher, but lets users define what characters will be visible for note, and show other invisible characters, optionally within a selection.
• Another Quick Switcher plugin v5.0.0 allows users to disable "search from headers," use alt instead of ctrl/cmd as part of the hotkeys, and got some other fixes — but only works on Obsidian 0.15.1+
• Excalidraw 1.7.0 allows Excalidraw to support the insider 0.15.0 popout windows. This method is not expected to be the permanent solution, but it does work for Obsidian 0.15.2+. ExcaliBrain was also updated to support the insider build.
• Quick Explorer was also updated to work with 0.15.2 multi-window support.
• Sliding Panes was updated to fix some focus issues, and got separate desktop and mobile leaf width options.
• Pane Relief got updated to resolve a minor rendering issue introduced in the insider 0.15.0 build.

Betas

Note: these plugins have not yet been submitted for code review, and are being made available primarily for testing purposes.

• Meta Bind beta 0.1.4 allows users to link to other files, got two-way-sync coded in, and allows for styling with custom CSS.
• Hover Editor 0.10.0 supports multiple windows in Obsidian 0.15.2 (the current insider build)

For Developers

• Here's a discussion about solutions for supporting popout windows for plugins dealing with complex view things like kanban and excalidraw.

Feature Requests

• Here's a feature request for better search support for nested tags you can add your support to if you like.

Appearance

• Minimal 5.3.0 is a breaking change; if you set your fonts using Minimal Theme Settings you'll need to move them into the Obsidian Appearance section.
• Willemstad v0.5.3 Jordaan was updated to support Obsidian 0.15.x, updated the Publish file, and got some other visual visues.

Guides

• There's a new index of useful information for vim users on the Obsidian Hub.
• Here's a tutorial for how to make a book tracker in Obsidian.
• Here's a guide about how to automatically trigger a template based on the filename of a link.

Discussions

• Here's a discussion about different ways to organize book and course notes via Reddit.

Ancillary Tools

• The Raycast extension lets users do full content search, use more temples, automatically finds vaults, and more.
• Here's a way to see the "backlinks" for HackerNews and Reddit discussions.
• Taio is an iOS/macOS markdown app with excellent accessibility features. It's especially useful for searching nested tags.
• Here's a markdown-based method for creating timelines that is similar to mermaid.

Housekeeping

Welcome to all the 200 or so new folks who signed up for the Obsidian Roundup in the last week! I'm excited to know that my piece about how I find themed logs more useful than daily notes resonated with so many of you.

I'll send another longform piece of insights about my Obsidian usage to financial supporters on the third Thursday of every month, but in the meantime, this is the "regularly scheduled" content. As soon as I get my newsletter host (Ghost) upgraded to the new version 5.0, you'll be able to opt out of the Obsidian updates and just get the longform essays, if that's your preference.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!