Now that Bases is available in Obsidian, I'm curious how people are deciding between using it and sticking with Dataview.

For things like task dashboards, book libraries, project tracking, and notes filtered by properties, it seems like Bases could cover a lot of everyday use cases without needing to write queries. But I'm guessing there are still workflows where Dataview is more flexible or easier to work with.

For anyone who's tried both, what have you actually switched over to Bases, and what do you still prefer doing with Dataview? I'd be especially interested in examples from real vaults rather than just feature comparisons.

I've been building plugins for my own vault this year, and all seven are now in Community plugins. Here's a short run-through of what each one does:

• Safi Site Audit: audits any website (SEO, links, images, security, crawlability, 94 rules in total) and saves each run as a markdown note, plus JSON and HTML exports. Desktop only.
• Pixkit: resize, crop, rotate, compress and convert images (JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP) without leaving Obsidian. Nothing is uploaded. It can also optimize every image in a note at once and update the links.
• Vault CRM: clients, deals and projects, each stored as a plain markdown note with frontmatter. It has a drag-and-drop pipeline board, and a won deal turns into a project in one click. Desktop only.
• S-Charts: put a markdown table in an s-chart code block and get a bar, line, pie, radar or other chart in your theme's colours. It can also chart a property across many notes, like weight over 30 daily notes.
• S-Calc: a calculator code block. Each line shows its result as you type, and it handles units (20 ml in tea spoons), currencies (4 GBP in Euro) and dates (next friday + 2 weeks).
• S-Color-Inline: shows a colour swatch next to #hex, rgb() and hsl() values in inline code. Fenced code blocks are left alone.
• Property Reminders: add a reminder property with a date and time, and you get a notification that opens the note. It also works with two-property setups like date + startTime.

A few things they have in common:

• They follow your theme, light and dark.
• No accounts and no telemetry. The only network calls are S-Calc fetching currency rates and Site Audit fetching the site you point it at.
• Your data stays in your notes. CRM records, audits and reminders are all plain markdown you can read or edit by hand.

All seven are here: https://community.obsidian.md/users/abdulkader-safi

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome, either in the comments or on GitHub. I'd especially like to know whether Property Reminders behaves on Windows and Linux, since I've only tested it on macOS so far.

Thanks u/kepano and team

You can see all of them here

and each one is better than the other

NEW FEATURES

• Emoji Support: Portals now includes 300+ native, device-based emojis in the Icon Picker and a custom paste field.
• Auto-Collapse Tree: A new setting enables automatic folding and unfolding of folder and tag trees in the Portals explorer.
• Bulk Preview Toggle: A new floating button bulk-opens or closes all file previews. Individual per-file preferences are unaffected.
• Dynamic Portal Commands: Every portal is now registered as a command on load. Users can type Portals: Switch to... in the command palette. The Quick Tab Number feature remains as a visual aid for up to 10 portals.
• Reminders: A new side portal for tracking due dates.
  • Right-click any file to set, edit, or remove a reminder.
  • Tree markers display as a simple grey bell or dynamic color-coded urgency.
  • Optional startup notification for overdue or due-today reminders.
  • Reminder dates appear in file tooltips when tooltips are enabled.
• Properties Overhaul: The Properties side portal is now a full database view.
  • Multi-property filtering.
  • Saved custom views.
  • Collapsible grouping by any property.
  • Collapsible controls panel.
  • Inline editing of value badges.
  • Right-click search on Status and Filter buttons.

IMPROVEMENTS AND BUG FIXES

• Transparent Theme Support: Custom modals now render correctly on transparent and translucent themes.
• Instant Journal Updates: The Journal side portal updates immediately on settings or daily-note changes.
• Global Date Setting: A new display-only format setting (YYYY-MM-DD, DD-MM-YYYY, MM-DD-YYYY) applies across Reminders and Properties. Journal retains its own separate settings.
• Improved YAML Paste: The frontmatter editor now uses Obsidian's native YAML parser and accepts blocks with or without --- markers.
• General Code Cleanup: Stability, rendering, and usability improvements across the plugin.

Link - https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/portals

I'm trying to adapt to obsidian, and look for puglins to use in my day. But in main ones, and the most indicated, the last updated has more than a year. It's a problem? Personally form me looks is dying slowly.

Heads up: This is not an app for sale, just for personal use and is indeed helped coded with claude because I have a coding skill level of a blind baby with feet for hands (therefore, ai tag)

---

So I was designing a skin theme for a personal music player app and was having trouble managing all the hex code colors during editing the json files and somehow i made this app instead.

It started during a weird barren work-related non-existence where barely any design jobs are coming my way and i decided to just have a fun project and made a personal music player. And yes, i was vibe-coding that one too just for fun cause hey what's another 20 bucks of claude subscription gonna matter if your credit card balance is already shot.

I was having a lot of trouble cause im trying to manage like 50 different hex codes on a page of code text editor hell just for a simple music app and my brain just gave up visualizing all the colors from all the text. I opened Obsidian like always when my head is shot and started listing them in a note. and after like the 10th time of rearranging a clumsy table on my note im like, you know what, ima code an obsidian plugin with ai cause why not?

I gave that up instantly after reading a bit on how to make obsidian plugins and 5 hour videos of codes that went in and out my brain so quick like its sliding its way slathered with lard and petroleum jelly.

Alright, a simple stupid web app it is. At least something, some squares of colors that can help me design things. Going back and forth in adobe photoshop/illustrator on this is a chore and their color swatch thing is hilariously unhelpful. I mean it works, but the annoying parts of the back and forth makes me scratch my eyeballs.

So I started making it with electron cause its the easiest bloaty web app platform I can manage to create without making my head explode, and somehow after a weird zen like hyperfocus I got to what I have now. Even got some nice useful things for managing other branding projects too

At this point its like hey this is nice, I can finally start on making this winamp/sonique bastard skin in a proper way, but then I got distracted again on how Icons are positioned... differently in my desktop...

\insert gif of headpalm**

My undiagnosed ADHD rears its head once more I blacked out for three days researching about how windows and mac icons have different placements and why does nothing look right and figured out why small icons are actually different and not a lot of free icon converters online are supporting multi image inputs for specific sizes and \continues rant for 2 more minutes inside my head**

...so another weird electron child is born. Right. Not to mention the three additional days i groggily spent coding this icon set converter that reminded me oh yeah I have another semi-abandoned side projects to design a whole frickin desktop icon set with like 10 different themes.

Such is life.

---

Anyway... thank you for reading my somewhat proud showcase and simultaneous rant. What I'm saying is. I need to get back to actual paid work. Oh and Obsidian helps me lots with this tumultuous scattered life. It gave me a small sense of organization and place to put my crazy thoughts into, and now i can put some ideas as colors blocks... too...

^{PS: I need to get my ADHD properly diagnosed but I kept delaying getting it done. help.}

Hi everyone,

Just want to showcase this plugin I've been working on for a while now. It's basically just Garmin Connect inside Obsidian (with limited functionality of course).

Authentication is headless and done through their SSO portal, your password is never saved, instead a refresh token is stored in Obsidian's Keychain. Data is synced with Garmin Connect and stored as JSON files directly in your vault. This means you can even view the dashboard with all your data offline.

Some future features I have in mind: Opt-in AI feature that help analyze your data (bring-your-own-key style most likely), customizable layouts and themes + user theme compatibility, stats UI cards that you can embed into notes.

Open to feature requests and feedback!

Also I want to acknowledge:

- Garmin Health Sync by fcandi, which inspired this project and was, I believe, the first Garmin plugin for Obsidian. It stores Garmin data as properties in daily notes.

- python-garminconnect by cyberjunky, which saved me a huge amount of reverse-engineering (Garmin's API is non-public).

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Garmin. In fact, I'll probably need to change the name to avoid any legal trouble lol.

I've been messing with obsidian on and off for a year, mostly using it to keep track of my DND campaign and I started to feel comfortable enough to use it for writing my new story. I did a lot of planning, outlining etc and had a blast. Everything is so organized and easily accessible. I just finished writing my first chapter-- I made the choice to keep each scene separate inside a chapter folder to make it easier to move things around later as I edit. Everything is labeled so it appears in order (ie. ch01sc01, ch01sc02, [...], ch02sc01, etc etc). Now that I want to edit I can't figure out how to easily navigate back and forth through the files.

I saw a built in shortcut to 'Navigate Forwards/Back' but instead of cycling through the files in the folder it's just going back through every note I opened regardless of organization. I'm on ios so I tried the swipe gesture but it works the same way. The only thing I can think of is creating links at the bottom, but that was one of the things I disliked about notion. Is there a way to create a keyboard shortcut for this? Or maybe a way to view the contents of a folder as a single file?

I still consider myself a bit of a noob when it comes to obsidian, I wouldn't call it intuitive but once things click into place it just works for me. I would love to avoid just writing my chapters in one file, but if I have to I'd like to make the switch now rather than several chapters in.

Hey everyone!

I've been tinkering with Obsidian's interface for a while, and all those experiments eventually turned into a theme of my own: Lifein. I wanted to share it with you and hear what you think!

I've always loved how customizable Obsidian is, but after trying quite a few themes, I could never find one that felt just right. Some had beautiful colors but layouts I didn't like. Others had great typography, but the sidebars or plugin interfaces weren't quite my style.

I used to fix these things with CSS snippets, but as they piled up, maintaining everything became a hassle.

So I thought: What if I could bring the most common UI styles together, offer a few ready-made options for each, and let users fine-tune everything through Style Settings? A theme that adapts to my workflow, rather than the other way around.

That's how Lifein started.

🎨 What's different about Lifein?

Lifein currently offers 225 customizable settings, so you can tweak most of the interface through Style Settings without writing any CSS.

1. Color palettes

9 built-in palettes, with separate choices for light and dark mode. You can also pick your own accent color and let the theme generate matching UI colors.

2. Four workspace layouts

Inspired in part by the excellent Baseline theme, Lifein offers four switchable layouts: Default, Baseline, Cards, and Frame.

3. Auto-hiding floating sidebars

Sidebars expand when you hover over them and hide when you move away. One of my personal favorites, especially on smaller laptop screens!

4. Customizable UI elements

Headings, tables, tags, checkboxes, callouts, code blocks, properties, and more come with 3–4 preset styles that you can further fine-tune.

For example, there are 4 heading styles, 3 table styles, two-column and card-style property layouts, and hover-to-show headers for embedded Bases tables.

5. Adjustable glassmorphism

Menus, dialogs, and sidebars share a consistent frosted-glass look. You can adjust the transparency, blur, and corner radius, or turn it off entirely.

6. Community plugin styling

I've added styling support for Dataview, Calendar, Tasks, Kanban, TaskFlow, Style Settings, and more, so they feel more like a natural part of Obsidian.

🧩 The idea behind Lifein

Even with all these customization options, I don't want people to spend more time tweaking settings.

The idea is simple: start with good presets, then give users the freedom to fine-tune things if they want.

Spend a little time making Obsidian feel right, then forget about the settings and focus on your notes and work.

🔗 Links

GitHub (open source, MIT licensed):
https://github.com/ichris007/Lifein-theme

Theme overview & screenshots:
https://lifein.vip/lifein_theme/

Lifein works on its own, but I recommend using Style Settings to get the most out of its customization options.

💬 I'd love your feedback!

This is my first time turning all these UI experiments into a complete theme.

If you give Lifein a try, I'd love to hear what you think!

I'm also curious: Is there anything about Obsidian's interface you've always wanted to change but never found a good solution for?

Suggestions, ideas, and bug reports are all welcome. Hope Lifein gives fellow Obsidian tinkerers another fun option to try!

Hello, I’ve been using obsidian for a few months and have been getting really into it. I love that it’s super customizable while remaining simple. I’ve held off on introducing AI to my system to take time to really build one and use one. It’s been over a month since I’ve changed/optimized my vault and I am ready to use AI on it.

What are some cool use cases for obsidian + Claude. I’m testing the personal wiki right now but are there other features I’m missing?

My goal is to use AI to help build my system, but I want my system to be AI free. Mostly looking for ideas for cool or fun projects. Thanks!

i dont sit down to write for myself that often, so when i do i want as little distractions as possible. im generally not a fan of having everything visible at once, especially stuff i barely use.

ive been stacking css snippets and plugins to hide all the clutter in Obsidian, so i ended up making a little plugin called Zen UI.

it basically adds a bunch of toggles to hide ui elements, customize the sidebar and file explorer, plus some extras like a deciated git sync tab.

maybe some of u find it useful too!

https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/zen-ui

https://github.com/merlinkraemer/obsidian-zen

*edit: repost after takedown with different reddit flair

He infravalorado Obsidian, pero veo que algunos han acomodado su espacio de trabajo de tal forma que se ve hermoso, animaciones y elementos vintage, decoración minimalista entre muchas otras cosas más… ¿Cómo lo logra ?

The migration assistant that was added in Obsidian 1.9.12 let you change your sync region for a remote vault automatically (without having to manually create a new vault and delete the old one). The update text said:

"This tool will allow you to perform migrations for your remote Sync vaults, such as encryption upgrades, and in the future the ability to switch regions."

I was wondering if this is still in the works, as I'd love a way to be able to switch my sync region by clicking a button, rather than going through the current manual process.

I've been thinking lately I want to start keeping a curiosity journal - basically a place to jot down something that sounded interesting/pique my attention/I may want to deep dive into later. I thought doing this in Obsidian would be great because of the tagging and linking systems, seeing if anything overlaps etc.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done something similar, and if you have any suggestions for a template?

So far, I have folders with sub-pages on the following topics (not part of the curiosity journal)

Folder 1: Books (non-fiction). Each page in this section is dedicated to a separate book.

Folder 2: Lecture Notes

Folder 3: Main Notes. This area is full of pages on a separate topic which doesn't fit in any other folder.

and now... Folder 4: Curiosity Journal. I'm thinking of maybe using the daily note function and putting it in here?

Not mine: it's a new open-source library from the Obsidian org on GitHub.

In the video the same diagram goes through their playground: 0.2 ms with Pele, against 42.6 ms with Mermaid.js. It renders Mermaid syntax straight to SVG, with no dependencies.

Repo: https://github.com/obsidianmd/pele

Does anyone know whether it's meant to replace the Mermaid renderer inside Obsidian itself?

---

I am building the Home Cards plugin to give Obsidian a home page experience you'll use every day. The objective is to build a home page that looks and behaves like 'native' Obsidian, and fits the way you organize your vault. Everything on it comes from your notes' properties, tags, links and folders, and it takes its fonts and colors from your theme.

Thank you for all the feedback on the first release. I've worked through your suggestions over two releases, and many of the changes below started as comments in that thread. You can download it from the Obsidian community page: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/home-cards

Here's what's new.

Pages

• Give a folder, a tag or a property its own page. Each page uses the home page's sections or its own.
• Each page gets a command you can bind to a hotkey, plus a link such as obsidian://home-cards?page=Reading.
• Right-click any folder and choose Open Home Cards page.

Sections that follow your work

• Continue working shows the notes from your latest work session.
• Related to recent work shows notes that link to, or share links and tags with, the notes you just opened.
• Rediscover has six strategies, including forgotten gems (old notes that others still link to), on this day, sleeping hubs and old friends.
• Conditions let a section keep notes such as "due is in the next 7 days", "status is active" or "rating is at least 4".

Cards

• Cover images and thumbnails come from a property such as cover, or from the note's first embedded image.
• Each section can show up to three properties on its cards.
• Pin a note to Home from any note menu, and add a Pinned section to see your pins. Snooze a card for a week or a month.

Quick changes from the page

• The + on a section creates a note with that section's values.
• Drag a card from Active to Done, and Home Cards updates the note's status for you.
• Keyboard: / filters, j and k or the arrow keys move, Enter opens, Space previews and p pins.

Looks

• Thirteen background patterns, or (new) use an image of your own.
• Grid or rows layout, with flat, elevated or frosted cards.

Under the hood

• Home Cards uses only Obsidian's public API and makes no network requests. Card images come only from your vault.
• Pins and snoozes live in the plugin's settings. Home Cards changes a note only when you ask it to.
• Your existing setup loads unchanged, and every new section type starts switched off.

To install, go to Settings → Community plugins → Browse and search for "Home Cards", or download it from GitHub.

As before, I'd like to hear what works, what doesn't, and what you'd want next. Please file bug reports as GitHub issues.

Hi everyone,

I often have many notes open in Obsidian and use the tab dropdown shown in the screenshot to navigate between them.

I’m looking for a way to add a close button (×) next to each tab in this list so I can close individual tabs directly without switching to them first.

Is this possible through a setting, plugin, or custom modification? Ideally, I’d like to keep this dropdown rather than add a separate vertical-tabs sidebar.

Thanks for any suggestions!

This is v2 of my simple plugin called Trouble Tags (GitHub). The main idea is to have keywords such as TODO, FIXME, CLAUDE, etc., so you can track them in long notes in the current note, originally inspired by todo-comments.nvim.

I've now added the same features across the full vault. As well as some toggles and sorts.

As well as list-callouts (a plugin I love and use all the time), and actual tasks. So you can use it as a simple to-do for your current note, or overall.

You can toggle TODO checkboxes through the sidebar plugin (obviously), but also all the keywords (it will wrap a ~~TODO~~ around the keyword to mark it done).

Sharing it here as it might be helpful to some of you.

Hi everyone — I’m releasing Inkpad, an Obsidian plugin built around handwritten study notes on an infinite canvas.

I started it because I wanted something that felt responsive with Apple Pencil on iPad, while keeping every drawing inside the vault and compatible with third-party sync such as Remotely Save. (The main reason im building this).

Main features:

• Infinite canvas with pen, pencil, marker, highlighter, eraser, lasso and shapes
• Apple Pencil-first input, one-finger pan and two-finger pinch zoom on iPad
• Desktop support: mouse drawing, wheel zoom and middle-mouse panning
• Import PDFs, images, Markdown notes, audio and text cards directly onto the canvas
• Full-page PDF rendering for lecture slides, with ink on top
• SVG and PNG export
• Viewport bookmarks and fit-to-content
• Portable .ink JSON files stored directly in your vault
• No cloud service, telemetry or external database

The first public release is v1.0.4:

https://github.com/Blulyk/obsidian-inkpad/releases/latest

For manual installation, download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css, then place them in:

<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/inkpad/

It is currently being prepared for the Obsidian Community Plugins directory. Feedback—especially from iPad and Apple Pencil users—is very welcome.

Go check it out!

I work with game design and I have been looking for a way of making it easier to visualize and present (and transcode later) a map and its informations. If I can make the graph view static over a image, it is all I would want really, put some plugins and go.

If I could put the graph view on excalidraw and it still work as the graph, for example. It solves it.

I tried background image for graph, even excalibrain, it does not do the trick.
If one knows how I could make anything like it, I would apreciate.

I keep a lot of numbers in my notes (revenue, weight, habits) and wanted charts that look like they belong in my vault, without writing Dataview JavaScript or opening a spreadsheet. So I built S-Charts.

You write a normal markdown table inside an s-chart code block:

```s-chart
type: bar
title: Monthly revenue
---
| Month | Revenue | Costs |
| ----- | ------- | ----- |
| Jan   | 4200    | 3100  |
| Feb   | 5100    | 3300  |
| Mar   | 6300    | 3500  |
```

Move the cursor out and it draws.

What it does:

• Bar, line, area, pie, doughnut, scatter and radar, all from the same table. Change type: and the chart changes.
• Uses your theme's accent and colours by default, and redraws when you switch to dark mode or change theme.
• Palettes in settings if you want brand colours (palette: brand), or colors: for one chart.
• Chart properties across notes: source: "#daily", x: date, y: weight draws one point per daily note and updates when you edit them.
• Charts come out fully drawn and sharp in Export to PDF.
• Numbers like 4,200, $4,200, KWD 4,200 and 42% just work. Empty cells leave a gap instead of a zero.
• If you make a mistake, it tells you the line and what's wrong instead of showing a blank box.

It runs offline, sends nothing anywhere, and never edits your notes. Turn it off and your table is still a readable table.

Install: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/s-charts

Docs, with a page for each chart type and its options: https://abdulkader-safi.github.io/obsidian-s-chart-plugins/

GitHub: https://github.com/Abdulkader-Safi/obsidian-s-chart-plugins

It's free and MIT licensed. I'd like to hear which chart types or options you'd want next, and whether it looks right in your theme. I've only tested a few so far.

i switched to obsidian mostly because it's fast, offline and uses plain markdown. loved that part at first then i realized what's the point it is just a notes app.

also i don't get the whole "second brain" and graph hype at all. you link two notes together, open the graph, see a line between two dots... and then what? okay, they're related, but how does seeing that line actually help you learn or solve anything?

honestly feels like people spend 4 hours tweaking css, plugins and making pretty graphs just to avoid doing the actual hard work of studying or coding.

not trying to hate, but has anyone here ever had an actual "aha" moment from looking at their graph, or is it basically just a cool visualization gimmick? how do you guys realistically use this?

I use all three systems (moc-files, tags and folders): this helps build better connections, leads to more frequent interaction with various notes, and improves my recall of them. I am a philology student, pedagogic set.