One of the things that makes Obsidian so incredible is the plugin architecture that you can use to extend the functionality of the app. But finding which plugins are useful can be tricky because there are so many to choose from. At the moment that I record this there are 1639 plugins available in the community plugins directory.
Now you could sort them by the number of downloads and see which ones get installed most often, which puts all the popular plugins at the top of the list. For example, right now Excalibur is the most downloaded plugin with almost 2 million downloads. But popularity doesn't necessarily translate into usefulness.
In fact, there are some real gems further down the list that don't get talked about much. Some of my favorite plugins do very specific things and therefore don't have a ton of downloads. So in this video I want to share nine of the best Obsidian plugins you've probably never heard of. Now all of these plugins have less than 10,000 downloads which means that there's a good chance you've never seen these before. Some of these plugins add complex features while others do a single thing that makes Obsidian just a little bit nicer to use.
But all of these are plugins are ones that I personally use and I feel don't get enough credit for how useful they are to my productivity and creativity workflows. I'll start with the most obscure plugins and go in ascending order by the number of downloads. There's chapters for each one of these, so if one doesn't click for you, feel free to jump to the next one. But I'm sure that after this video you'll be able to find at least one of these underrated plugins to be beneficial in your own Obsidian-based workflows.
The first plugin I want to talk about with 106 total downloads is Tab Navigator. Now if you tend to open up a bunch of tabs in Obsidian, this plugin adds a command that lets you search those tabs and select the one that you want. Where this plugin becomes really useful though is when you assign that command to a hotkey, so you can trigger it without having to open the command palette first.
For example, I have mine set to control option command s, which opens a list of the open tabs showing the note title and location. From here you can just select the one that you want, then hit enter to instantly jump to that tab. The second plugin I want to talk about with 763 total downloads is Callout Suggestions. This plugin gives you a pop-up modal window that you can use to find and insert callouts into your notes as you type. Just type the greater than sign followed by the trigger that you set in the plugin settings to activate it, then select the callout type that you want from the list.
You can even use fuzzy search and start typing the name of the callout that you want to use. Note that this plugin does require you install and set up the callout manager plugin as well. If you want to see all the callouts and not just the custom ones that you've made there, You'll need to make sure that the option to find built-in Obsidian callouts is toggled on in the callout manager settings. But if you use callouts a lot, and if you don't you really should, then this plugin makes adding them a whole lot easier.
The third plugin is Media Notes with 1,924 downloads. This plugin actually has two parts. A JavaScript bookmarklet that you use to send YouTube videos to Obsidian from your browser, and a plugin that adds some additional features to the note where the video gets added. The URL for the video gets added here to a custom property type that embeds the video at the top of the note so you can watch the video right in Obsidian. Then the plugin adds a command that you can use to insert the current timestamp into the note itself so you can take notes on the video as you watch.
These timestamps are linked to the video above so when you come back to look at your note later you can click on a timestamp and jump straight to that part of the video which makes this a very handy plugin for people who want to take notes on YouTube videos. The fourth plugin is the Soundscapes plugin with 3,442 downloads. This plugin adds controls to the status bar in the lower right corner that you can use to play instrumental background music to help you focus when you're writing. It's basically like having a built-in focus soundtrack and you can choose from several different playlists including lo-fi hip-hop, thunderstorm sounds, relaxing jazz, coffee shop ambiance, ocean waves, even calm Nintendo music. I've used dedicated apps for this kind of thing before, but it's nice to have this embedded into Obsidian so I can toggle this on whenever I need a little help getting into deep work mode.
The fifth plugin is called Note Toolbar with 3,575 downloads. This plugin lets you add custom toolbars to notes in specific folders. For example, you could create a custom toolbar for navigating daily notes that gets added to the top of a note whenever you open it from your daily notes folder. You just create the toolbar from the commands or URLs that you want to use inside the plugin settings, then set the folder location of the notes you want the toolbar to be added to. What I like about these custom toolbars is that they're sticky, which means that if you have a longer note, as you scroll down to the bottom you can still see the toolbar at the top of the note tab.
The sixth plugin is the MonoNote plugin with 5,155 downloads. This plugin is actually developed by Carlo Zottman, the author of the Actions for Obsidian tool that I demoed in my Daily Notes Journaling Shortcut video. This plugin is very simple. It does one specific thing. It automatically closes duplicate tabs.
So for example, if you attempt to open a note in a new tab while you already have the tab open somewhere else, this plugin will close that tab and take you to the active tab with the note or file that you're trying to open. This keeps your tabs a little bit more manageable by preventing you from opening up a bunch of duplicate tabs that easily get lost when you have a bunch of tabs open and you can't remember where things are. The seventh plugin is the Checklist Reset plugin with 5,277 downloads.
This is another very specific plugin that allows you to reset all the checklist items in a specific note. I use this all the time with my Obsidian-based task management system, since subtasks in Obsidian are basically impossible with the Obsidian Task plugin. What I do instead is I link to checklists and my task names, so for example I have a task to publish the Bookworm podcast that repeats every two weeks, And in the line item for the task I link to my bookworm checklist note. This note has a bunch of things that have to be done in a specific order when publishing the podcast episode.
So I just work through this checklist and then check the items as I go. Then when I'm done I use the checklist reset command to uncheck all the boxes so the checklist is ready to go for next time. The eighth plugin is the writing goals plugin with 6,112 downloads. This plugin is really powerful allowing you to set writing goals for folders or notes in your Obsidian Vault. You can set the goal based on the total length or how many words that you want to write daily and the goals can be visualized either in the file explorer or in the right sidebar.
This is one of the features that I missed most from Ulysses when I started doing all of my writing inside Obsidian. And while I don't use this plugin all the time, it is helpful when I'm trying to make consistent progress on a long-form project. I actually covered this plugin previously in my Turning Obsidian into the Ultimate Writing App video, so go check out that video if this plugin looks interesting because there's a bunch of other writing-related plugin recommendations that you'll probably like that I go over in that video. The ninth plugin is BudaTab with 9,079 downloads.
Now this is another very simple plugin that adds a splash of color whenever you open a new tab. You can choose the category of pictures that are shown, for example, forests, lakes, or mountains. Then each time that you open a new tab you'll see a custom tab with a random picture.
You can also add the time, random quotes, or links to recently edited files, as well as search options in the top left or inline that use either Obsidian's built-in search or the OmniSearch plugin. Now one additional plugin that just passed the 10,000 download mark so it doesn't meet this criteria but it's still worth talking about is a plugin called ShareNote. This plugin takes a note from Obsidian uploads the contents of that note and all relevant CSS files to a web service, and then creates a link that allows others to view the note that you can share via email, Slack, or text message. It's by far the easiest way to share the contents of a note from your private vault. And the notes can be encrypted so the only person who sees the contents of the note is the person that you choose to share it with.
You can even set your links to automatically expire after a set period of time if you don't want anyone to stumble onto the note in the future. So there you have it, nine essential Obsidian plugins, all under 10,000 downloads, plus a bonus that just breaks that mark but is too good not to mention. Now I've provided links to all of these plugins in the description below this video if you want to try any of these plugins out for yourself.
And if you want even more Obsidian tips, resources, and template files, then check out my Obsidian University Starter Vault. You can download the Starter Vault for free by going to obsidian university dot com slash vault. I also have a free newsletter that I send out every Monday which includes an original essay on applying values-based PKM principles to help you be more productive and creative, something cool that's usually Obsidian related, and my personal notes from a different self-help or productivity book that I've read recently. You can sign up or view a recent newsletter by going to practicalpkm.com.
Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in another video.