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🌠 Roadmap updates, OCR & Podcast notes

There were so many new guides and showcases I had to group them by topic: daily notes, dashboards, academic uses, links vs. folders, etc.

Eleanor Konik
Written by Eleanor Konik

I write stories & articles inspired by all eras of history & science... so I wind up putting notetaking software like Obsidian & Readwise thru their paces.

6 min read.

In The Community

Obsidian Updates

  • Obsidian v0.15.6 has some important internal changes in this version, which brings popout windows out of Insider-only access and to all users. It's also designed to make the app feel more "native" on your operating system, which may have impacted your font. If you hate it and want the old font back, change the font to Inter in settings. I strongly recommend reading the release notes if you haven't already. Here's a great video about the value of the new popout windows feature.

Also, the roadmap was updated. Here's some of the major news and highlights.

  • @kepano, the developer of Minimal, is working on a new "default theme" for Obsidian. He said it "will follow many of the same design principles as Minimal, particularly in making Obsidian feel native across platforms. It will differ in that it will prioritize accessibility and affordances more than Minimal does. In addition the new default theme will make customization and theme development easier than before."
  • The developers are working on implementing "tabs" and plan to implement some kind of corkboard/whiteboard core plugin as the next big "push" after that.

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.

  • TimeDiff plugin by @dominiczaq  will calculate and displays diff in hours and minutes between two dates in a timediff markdown block.
  • Metadata Menu by @mdelobelle  adds options to file and link context menu to change metadata of the target note. It also allows for autocomplete of frontmatter and dataview fields. Here's a demo.
  • Typing Transformer by @aptend offers improved, configurable auto formatting as you type.
  • Text Expander JS by @jon-heard  lets users type text shortcuts that expand into javascript generated text.
  • Habit Tracker by @Narsail  makes it easier to visually track completion of habituated actions.
  • List Callouts by @mgmeyers  allows users to create simple callouts in lists.

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.

  • New Note Plus by @ilucaslee  offers a a new URL Scheme to create new notes using clipboard contents.
  • MOV Support by @connectdotz  lets users view/play embedded .mov videos inline.
  • Commander by @phibr0  lets users customize a workspace by adding commands everywhere.
  • Meeting notes by @TimHi  will automatically create a meeting note if a new file is created in a meeting folder.
  • Table Generator by @Quorafind  allows users to generate markdown tables quickly and works like Typora.
  • Focus and Highlight by @nagi1999a  will highlight and focus on the currently selected heading.
  • Eagle Embeds by @fengxxx  replaces Eagle links (mostly images) with embeds when previewing a file.
  • Path Finder by @jerrywcy  will find the shortest path between two notes.
  • Ninja Cursor by @vrtmrz  enhances cursor visibility.

Updates

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

Betas

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

  • Obsidian OCR allows users to search for text in the images and PDFs in a vault. I haven't had a chance to test it yet but I'm very excited; this is a feature I've been hoping for for a long time. Here's a showcase of how it works.
  • Podnotes is a new plugin from the developer of QuickAdd that is designed to make it easier to take notes on podcasts; it turns Obsidian into a podcast player, and works on mobile and computer, saves progress on the episodes, and lets you use plugins like QuickAdd or Templater to create notes and capture insights with linked timestamps that can launch the podcast from the appropriate moment for a re-listen.

For Developers

Feature Requests

Appearance

  • Encore by @Maldonacho  is new.
  • Ebullientworks 0.3.27 better supports sliding panes and popout windows, and got a bunch of small improvements to heading heights, callouts, etc.
  • Sanctum got a bunch of bug fixes. Sanctum is going to be changing how it handles releases going forward (Discord link) to align more closely with Obsidian updates — you can check out the Roadmap here in the meantime.

Showcases & Guides

Discussions

Ancillary Tools

Housekeeping

  • It's official; I'm headed back to work in August. My first day is August 15, and students return on the 29th. I'll be teaching 11th grade World History, which is a pretty good fit for my interests and skills and better than I was afraid I'd get. It will be fun figuring out how to best use Obsidian to learn a new content area while working in a field where I have to collaborate using Office and Google products, for varying measures of fun. The Obsidian Roundup itself will continue as normal, but I will by necessity be somewhat less active on social media going forward.

Note: There are a couple of affiliate links & codes scattered around, but these always come from links I was already recommending and usually I share them because they benefit you too (i.e. getting you extra time on trials).

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