The 7 Best Obsidian Plugins I Can’t Live Without

Obsidian is a free note-taking app that I use almost every day. Its great features and customizable interface are key to my daily workflow. However, what makes Obsidian truly unique is its library of plugins. I have integrated these plugins so deeply into my workflow that I simply cannot live without them.

Dataview allows you to create dynamic tables and graphs with data from your notes. You can query and filter your notes based on parameters such as tags, dates, and keywords.

For example, if you have a note about your favorite books and their ratings, Dataview can generate a table of all books rated four stars or more. You can then sort this table by genre, author or publication date and refine it using specific tags or keywords.

In addition, Dataview allows you to create graphs to visualize your data and gives you a quick overview of your notes. This tool helps you comprehensively organize and analyze your content and provides enough flexibility.

As the name suggests, the Calendar plugin adds a calendar view to your Obsidian workspace, displaying monthly, weekly or daily notes with date markers. After installation, a small calendar icon will appear in the upper right corner.

Clicking on it will open a calendar side view with the current month highlighted. Each day has a dot for notes marked with that date, making it easy to track your activity. Use the arrows on either side to cycle through the different months and weeks.

To improve the visualization of your notes, use color-coded labels and icons for different dates—for example, green for important dates and red for personal events. This approach is a great way to manage daily activities, track ideas, evaluate progress and plan accordingly.

Another useful plugin for managing tasks and checklists is Tasks. It helps you track and organize tasks in your Obsidian vault. You can assign priorities, deadlines and recurring tasks to each item. When a task is completed, you can mark it as complete and track its progress.

Recurring tasks automatically generate new ones based on their due date. If you set a recurring task to every Monday, the task will appear in your list every week.

Additionally, Tasks lets you set priority levels from lowest to highest, which is great for managing your workload. So mark a due date checklist item as top priority to ensure it gets done on time. For a personal errand, you can give it a lower priority and focus on more urgent tasks first.

To create a task using Tasks, just add a checklist item to your notebook. Use the Markdown syntax: – [ ] task name. Once added, Tasks will recognize it as a task and include it in your list. You can also use keyboard shortcuts to quickly create and manage tasks in your notes.

Kanban is my favorite visual task management plugin in Obsidian. It allows you to create and customize Kanban boards in your Obsidian vault, similar to Notion or Trello. Each board represents a project or workflow where you can create task cards and move them between columns as you progress.

This makes it easier to track task status and identify bottlenecks. You can assign labels, deadlines, priorities, and checklists to each card for better organization. For my content creation process, I use a Kanban with columns for Ideas, Outline, In Progress, and Complete.

Whenever I have an idea for a new article, I create a tab in the Ideas column. Once I have a solid outline, I move it into the outline. As I work on an article, I’ll move it to In Progress and finally to Completed when it’s done. Under Completed, I have Published, Scheduled, and Promoted sub-columns to track the entire process from idea to publication.

Refining ideas and organizing them into a clear outline is essential to effective note-taking and content creation. Outliner simplifies this process with its intuitive and customizable features. It allows you to create outlines in notes like mind maps or bullet points. You can move lists and sublists, adjust the indentation, and create a hierarchical structure for better organization.

To indent or indent, highlight the text and press Tab or Shift + Tab. You can also use the drag-and-drop feature and keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation. Below are the default keyboard shortcuts for these actions, but you can customize them as you see fit.

For Windows and Linux:

• Move list and sublists up – Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow (↑)
• Move list and sublists down – Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow (↓)

For macOS:

• Move list and sublists up – Command + Shift + Up Arrow (↑)
• Move list and sublists down – Command + Shift + Down Arrow (↓)

You know how to create simple tables using Markdown syntax, but the Advanced Tables plugin takes table editing to another level. This plugin allows you to browse and format tables just like in an Excel spreadsheet. Its auto-formatting feature adjusts the layout as you add or remove columns and rows.

The plugin supports Excel-like formulas for calculations like SUM and AVERAGE and calculates and displays the result. To move quickly between cells, you can use the Tab and Enter keys – tab for horizontal movement and Enter for vertical.

You can align the columns left, center or right for a polished look. In addition, you can insert or remove columns and rows, rearrange them, or sort rows into a specific column. The plugin also transposes rows into columns and sorts the data in ascending or descending order. After editing, you can export your work to CSV format for further use.

Managing lots of files can make it easy to lose track of which files you’ve accessed recently. The Recent Files plugin keeps a record of your activities and displays them in a list for quick access, which is especially useful when juggling multiple projects.

After installing this Obsidian plugin, you can specify a maximum number of filenames to keep in the list. This will keep your sidebar from becoming cluttered and you can easily find what you need.

To access the list, just click on the clock icon in the header or use the keyboard shortcut set during installation. The list will appear in a separate pane and you can easily browse through recent files. Clicking on an item will open it in the active editor when Ctrl-clicked opens the file in another panel. In addition, you can hold Ctrl and hover over the file to preview its contents.