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The Must-Have Obsidian plugins for 2025

An overview of the best Obsidian plugins. Make sure to read this and try these out!

Sebastien Dubois

14 Nov 2024 — 28 min read

The logo of Obsidian

In this article, I'll list my favorite plugins for Obsidian. Most of those are part of my Obsidian Starter Kit:

Introduction

Obsidian has a really large community and a huge library of community plugins (2000+ at the time I'm updating this).

Those plugins really add a lot of value to Obsidian and make for a much better user experience. Exploring those can be daunting as there are hundreds. Let me spare you some time and introduce you to the very best plugins out there!

A word of warning though: you don't need plugins to get started. Those improve and empower existing workflows, but none are mandatory. If you're just getting started, keep things simple. You can add some plugins over time, but don't waste your time in the beginning, and instead focus on what matters: taking and making notes!

TL;DR

Here's a quick overview of this article's content:

Type	Plugin	Description
Built-in	Audio Recorder	Easily record audio from Obsidian and add the recording as attachment
Built-in	Backlinks	Show links from other notes to the current one
Built-in	Command palette	Hit "Cmd/Ctrl + P" to show the palette and quickly execute commands
Built-in	File explorer	See the files and folders in the vault
Built-in	File recovery	Recover files
Built-in	Format converter	Convert Markdown from other applications to Obsidian's own format
Built-in	Graph view	View a graph that displays links between notes
Built-in	Notes composer	Manipulate notes (merge, split, refactor)
Built-in	Outgoing links	Show links from the current note to other ones. Also detects unlinked mentions
Built-in	Outline	Display the outline of the current note
Built-in	Page preview	Preview the content of links by pressing Ctrl/Cmd while hovering those
Built-in	Publish	Publish notes through Obsidian Publish
Built-in	Quick switcher	Use "Ctrl/Cmd + O" to navigate between notes
Built-in	Random note
Built-in	Search
Built-in	Slash commands	Allows triggering commands by typing "/" in the editor
Built-in	Starred	Star frequently used files and searches
Built-in	Sync	Synchronize files across devices using Obsidian Sync
Built-in	Tag pane	Display your tags and their number of occurrences
Built-in	Templates: insert templates	This one is great, but the "Templater" plugin discussed afterwards is much more powerful
Built-in	Word count	Display the word count
Built-in	Web viewer	Open external links within Obsidian
AI	Smart Connections	Creates embeddings for all your notes and enables you to find related notes with AI, to chat with your notes, and much more. It supports many different AI models
AI	Text Generator	Generate text using various AI models, summarize notes, and more
AI	GitHub Copilot	Integrates GitHub Copilot for chat and text completions
AI	AI Tagger	Automatically tag your notes using AI
AI	AI Summary	Automatically summarize your notes
AI	Companion	Autocomplete using AI, including ChatGPT, and local model (e.g., via Ollama)
Productivity	Calendar	Add a calendar to the sidebar, with periodic notes integration
Journaling	Periodic Notes	Easily create periodic notes (daily, weekly, monthly, ...). Supports Templater templates
Productivity	Rollover daily todos	Automatically move unfinished tasks from one day to the next
Querying	Dataview	Query your notes and see live results in your notes
Querying	Dataview Serializer	Leverage Dataview, but serialize query results to Markdown
Templating	Templater	Create templates and easily apply those to your notes (e.g., for meetings, daily notes, etc). Easy to invoke using ALT/Cmd+E
Automation	Auto Note Mover	Automatically move notes based on configured rules (e.g., if tag X is present, then move to Y)
User Experience	Homepage	Create a beautiful homepage for your vault
Productivity	Kanban	Create Kanban boards to track tasks and visualize progress
User Experience	Paste image renamer	Easily rename images you add to your vault (activated on paste)
Note quality	Linter	Format notes automatically
Maintenance	Tag Wrangler	Rename, merge, toggle and search tags
Text edition	Text transporter	Swiss army knife for text manipulation
Text edition	Notes refactor	Copy/extract text selections from a note into other ones
Text edition	Various complements	Powerful auto-completion
Productivity	Tasks	Advanced task management (supports due dates, recurring tasks, querying, filtering, etc)
Content capture	Extract URL	Capture external content more easily into Obsidian
Maintenance	Find unlinked files	Find orphaned files in your vault
Text edition	Natural language dates	Use natural language dates
Visualization	Excalidraw	Create various types of diagrams (e.g., mind maps, free canvas, etc)
Visualization	Mind Map	Display notes as mind maps
Text edition	Outliner	Better outlining support
Visualization	Image in editor	View images, transclusions, iframes and PDF files within the editor
Productivity	Recent files	List most recently opened files
Text edition	Table editor	Advanced editor for Markdown tables
Serendipity	Smart random note	Explore notes randomly based on the current search results
Text edition	Zoom	Zoom into headings and lists for deeper focus while writing
Productivity	Doubleshift	Open the command palette more easily
Maintenance	Vault statistics	Explore vault statistics
Journaling	Tomorrow's daily note	Quickly create and/or open tomorrow's daily note. Compatible with the Periodic notes and Template plugins
Versioning	Git	Backup your notes with Git
Text edition	Editing Toolbar	Add a visual toolbar to the editor

Built-in Obsidian plugins

Obsidian comes out of the box with a set of "core" plugins that are disabled by default. You can enable/disable those through the options, under "Core plugins". Many of those are super useful.

Here's a short overview:

Audio recorder: easily record audio from Obsidian and add the recording as attachment
Backlinks: show links from other notes to the current one
Command palette: hit "Cmd/Ctrl + P" to show the palette and quickly execute commands
Daily notes: create or open today's daily note. I don't recommend this plugin because the "Periodic Notes" plugin discussed later in this article is much more powerful
File explorer: see the files and folders in the vault
File recovery: recover files
Format converter: convert Markdown from other applications to Obsidian's own format
Graph view: View a graph that displays links between notes
Notes composer: manipulate notes (merge, split, refactor)
Outgoing links: show links from the current note to other ones. Also detects unlinked mentions
Outline: display the outline of the current note
Page preview: preview the content of links by pressing Ctrl/Cmd while hovering those
Publish: publish notes through Obsidian Publish
Quick switcher: Use "Ctrl/Cmd + O" to navigate between notes
Random note
Search
Slash commands: Allows triggering commands by typing "/" in the editor
Starred: star frequently used files and searches
Sync: synchronize files across devices using Obsidian Sync
Tag pane: display your tags and their number of occurrences
Templates: insert templates. This one is great, but the "Templater" plugin discussed afterwards is much more powerful
Web viewer: Open external links within Obsidian
Word count: display the word count

AI Plugins

Before we dive into the general purpose plugins I recommend, I want to cover AI plugins. By default, Obsidian does not include AI features. It fully relies on plugins to provide AI integrations. And if it's something you're interested in/curious about/absolutely need, then don't worry, there are many plugins out there providing AI features that leverage local or cloud-based Large Language Models (LLMs) such as OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, GitHub Copilot, and many more!

Smart Connections: creates embeddings for all your notes and enables you to find related notes with AI, to chat with your notes, and much more. It supports many different AI models
- Link: https://github.com/brianpetro/obsidian-smart-connections
Text Generator: generate text using various AI models, summarize notes, and more
- Link: https://github.com/nhaouari/obsidian-textgenerator-plugin
GitHub Copilot: Integrates GitHub Copilot for chat and text completions
- Link: https://github.com/Pierrad/obsidian-github-copilot
AI Tagger: Automatically tag your notes using AI
- Link: https://github.com/lucagrippa/obsidian-ai-tagger
AI Summary: Automatically summarize your notes
- Link: https://github.com/irbull/obsidian-ai-summary
Companion: Autocomplete using AI, including ChatGPT, and local model (e.g., via Ollama
- Link: https://github.com/rizerphe/obsidian-companion

Note that there are many more, and new ones pop up regularly: https://obsidian-plugin-stats.ganesshkumar.com/tags/ai

My favorite ones are:

Smart Connections: I use this one for finding new connections, and chatting with my notes
Text Generator: I use this one to generate and manipulate text using AI

Calendar

This plugin adds a useful calendar to the sidebar of Obsidian. It provides a simple way to navigate between your daily notes. I use it all the time instead of navigating through the file tree. At a glance, you can see the days for which you have taken daily notes. The second use case of this plugin is to easily create a future daily note. This is useful when you want to add a reminder for yourself.

Link: https://github.com/liamcain/obsidian-calendar-plugin

Periodic notes

Using the periodic notes plugin, you can easily create periodic notes (i.e., daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly notes).

You can associate a specific template with each periodicity (e.g. a template for daily notes, another for weekly notes, etc). This plugin is also well integrated with the calendar plugin above. When you click on a date in the calendar, it creates the corresponding daily note.

With this plugin, journaling is much easier to do on a regular basis, and so are weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly periodic reviews.

Link: https://github.com/liamcain/obsidian-periodic-notes

The Periodic Notes plugin for Obsidian

Rollover daily todos

If your list of tasks for the day is part of your daily notes (which I recommend), then this plugin is a must-have. It will automatically copy the incomplete tasks to the list of the next day. This makes it a breeze to continue where you left things off.

Link: https://github.com/shichongrui/obsidian-rollover-daily-todos

The Rollover Daily Todos plugin for Obsidian

Dataview

Dataview is the most powerful Obsidian plugin there is. Using it, you can add queries to your notes to fetch information from your knowledge base.

To give you an idea of how powerful it is, take a look at these examples, taken directly from the Obsidian Starter Kit.

Find quotes corresponding to a specific author:

LIST FROM #quotes and [[<% tp.file.title %>]]
SORT file.name ASC

Find recently modified notes:

$=dv.list(dv.pages('').sort(f=>f.file.mtime.ts,"desc").limit(5).file.link)

Find orphan notes:

TABLE file.ctime AS "updated"
FROM "" WHERE length(file.inlinks) = 0
AND length(file.outlinks) = 0
AND length(file.tags) = 0
AND file.name != "Orphans"
SORT file.mtime desc

Find duplicate notes:

// Reference: https://github.com/claremacrae/obsidian-experiments-plugin/issues/1#issuecomment-1139556976
function listFileNameIssues(dv) {
    let pages = dv.pages();
    let groups = pages.groupBy(p => p.file.name.toLowerCase());
    for (let group of groups) {
        let count = 0
        for (let page of group.rows.sort(p => p.file.path, 'asc')) {
            count += 1;
        }

        if (count === 1 ) {
            continue;
        }

        for (let page of group.rows.sort(p => p.file.path, 'asc')) {
            dv.paragraph(page.file.link + ': ' + page.file.path);
        }
    }
}

listFileNameIssues(dv);

Pick random notes:

const limit = 10;
const notes = dv.pages().sort(() => Math.random()).slice (0, limit).map(note => note.file.link);
dv.list(notes);

Count the number of notes:

$=dv.pages().length

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the official documentation of the dataview plugin for more details about its possibilities.

Link: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview

Dataview Serializer

This is a plugin that I've created and that adds a major feature currently not supported by the Dataview plugin. It requires the Dataview plugin to function.

The feature added by this plugin is the capability of automatically serializing dataview queries to Markdown.

When you write a normal Dataview query, "all you get" is a live view showing the results of the query. The output is never saved, it's just refreshed every time you look at the note containing the query. If you open that note with another editor, all you can see if the query, not the results.

With the Dataview Serializer plugin, you not only see the query, but also the output. This is powerful because it means that the data IS there. If you publish the note (e.g., using Obsidian Publish, Quartz or GitHub pages), then the data will also be there. As an added benefit, the data may also appear on your graph, which is mighty powerful.

Here's what it looks like:

<!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #quotes WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC -->
<!-- SerializedQuery: LIST FROM #quotes WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC -->
- [[20 years from now, the only people who will remember that you worked late are your kids]]
- [[A beautiful book is a victory won in all the battlefields of human thought.md|A beautiful book is a victory won in all the battlefields of human thought]]
- [[A busy mind accelerates the perceived passage of time. Buy more time by cultivating peace of mind]]
...
<!-- SerializedQuery: END -->

The first part with "QueryToSerialize" contains the query that needs to be executed. The second part, with "SerializedQuery", is added automatically by this plugin, and corresponds to the Markdown version of the query results.

Every time a note containing a serialized query is opened, the queries are evaluated again, and the serialized output gets updated. It's also possible to refresh the output of all Dataview Serializer queries.

I use this plugin extensively in the Obsidian Starter Kit, for instance for Maps of Content, Dashboard queries, and more!

Link: https://github.com/dsebastien/obsidian-dataview-serializer

Documentation: https://developassion.gitbook.io/obsidian-dataview-serializer

Templater

The templater plugin is a powerful templating engine for Obsidian. It provides many functions to help you create really cool templates.

Here's an example, again taken from the Obsidian Starter Kit which uses the Templater plugin extensively:

---
tags:
- weekly_notes
---

# <% tp.file.title %>
<< [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-[W]WW", "P-1W") %>]] | [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-[W]WW", "P+1W") %>]] >>
Current month: [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM") %>]] | Next month: [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM", "P+1M") %>]]
Year note: [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY") %>]]

## Goals
-

## Achievements
-

## Discoveries
### [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD") %>]]
-

### [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 1) %>]]
-

### [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 2) %>]]
-

### [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 3) %>]]
-

### [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 4) %>]]
-

### [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 5) %>]]
-

### [[<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 6) %>]]
-

## Challenges
-

## Gratitude
-

Once you have created a template, you can easily add it to any note using the ALT/Cmd + E shortcut.

Take a look at the Templater plugin reference documentation to learn more about its capabilities.

Link: https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater

Auto Note Mover

The Auto Note Mover is one of my favorite Obsidian plugin. It provides a way to automatically move notes around within your knowledge base. This is great as it removes the need to manually file notes.

Link: https://github.com/farux/obsidian-auto-note-mover

Homepage

The homepage plugin does exactly what it says: it lets you create a homepage for your knowledge base. I personally rely on this plugin to create my productivity dashboard. The homepage is just a note like any other, meaning that you can add whatever you want to it: text, titles, images, tasks, dataview queries, etc.

Link: https://github.com/mirnovov/obsidian-homepage

Kanban

This plugin makes it possible to create Kanban boards in Obsidian. Thanks to this plugin, you could manage your entire todo list within Obsidian instead of using other tools such as Trello.

Link: https://github.com/mgmeyers/obsidian-kanban

Paste image renamer

The Paste image renamer allows you to rename images and attachments when you add those to your Obsidian vault. This is a must-have.

Link: https://github.com/reorx/obsidian-paste-image-rename

Linter

This Obsidian plugin formats and styles notes automatically, based on the rules you configure. This helps a lot to maintain a consistent knowledge base.

Link: https://github.com/platers/obsidian-linter

Tag Wrangler

The Tag Wrangler plugin helps you rename, merge, toggle, and search tags from the Obsidian tag pane.

Link: https://github.com/pjeby/tag-wrangler

Smart Connections

Chat with your notes right in Obsidian. This plugin processes your notes with OpenAI ChatGPT, GPT-4 and Embeddings.

Be cautious if you care about privacy. If it's not too big of a deal for you, then this plugin is incredibly powerful.

Link: https://github.com/brianpetro/obsidian-smart-connections

Text transporter

The Text Transporter plugin is a Swiss Army Knife of text manipulation for Obsidian. Clearly a must-have to apply transformations to your notes.

Link: https://github.com/TfTHacker/obsidian42-text-transporter

Notes refactor

This plugin lets you copy/extract text selections from a note into other ones. It completements the features offered by the text transporter plugin.

Link: https://github.com/lynchjames/note-refactor-obsidian

Various complements

This plugin boosts productivity by automatically completing what you type, proposing to add links when some text matches the title of a note, etc.

Link: https://github.com/tadashi-aikawa/obsidian-various-complements-plugin

Tasks

The Obsidian Tasks plugin helps you track tasks across your Obsidian vault. It supports due dates, recurring tasks, querying, filtering, etc. This plugin, combined with the Kanban plugin is a killer combo.

Check out the official plugin documentation for more details.

Link: https://github.com/obsidian-tasks-group/obsidian-tasks

Extract URL

This plugin makes it really easy to capture external content into Obsidian. It extracts Markdown compatible with Obsidian out of URLs. Thanks to this plugin, you can paste the URL of a Website in an Obsidian note, invoke a command and have the URL be replaced by the content converted into Markdown.

Link: https://github.com/trashhalo/obsidian-extract-url

Find unlinked files

This plugin enables you to quickly identify orphaned notes (i.e., notes with no backlinks) and notes with broken links.

Link: https://github.com/Vinzent03/find-unlinked-files

Natural language dates

This plugin allows you to use natural language dates more easily.

Link: https://github.com/argenos/nldates-obsidian

Excalidraw

This plugin integrates Excalidraw. This provides a great way to create mind maps and other schemas.

Link: https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin

Mind Map

An Obsidian plugin for displaying markdown notes as mind maps using Markmap.

Link: https://github.com/lynchjames/obsidian-mind-map

Outliner

Allows you to work with your lists exactly like in Workflowy, RoamResearch or LogSeq

Link: https://github.com/vslinko/obsidian-outliner

Image in editor

Enables you to view Images, Transclusions, iFrames and PDF Files within the Editor without a necessity to switch to the Preview mode.

Link: https://github.com/ozntel/oz-image-in-editor-obsidian

Recent files

Display a list of most recently opened files.

Link: https://github.com/tgrosinger/recent-files-obsidian

Table editor

An editor for Markdown tables. It can open CSV data and data from Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers and LibreOffice Calc as Markdown tables from Obsidian Markdown editor.

Link: https://github.com/ganesshkumar/obsidian-table-editor

Smart random note

This plugin adds a way to open a random note based on the list of search results. This is a great addition to explore your knowledge base randomly (always useful to re-discover old/forgotten notes)

Link: https://github.com/erichalldev/obsidian-smart-random-note

Zoom

This plugin lets you "zoom" into headings and lists. This makes it much easier to focus on specific parts of long notes.

Link: https://github.com/vslinko/obsidian-zoom

Doubleshift

Obsidian Plugin to open the command palette by pressing shift twice. Software developers will love this one!

Link: https://github.com/Qwyntex/doubleshift

Vault statistics

Status bar item with vault statistics such as number of notes, files, attachments, and links.

Link: https://github.com/bkyle/obsidian-vault-statistics-plugin

Tomorrow's daily note

Easily open tomorrow's daily note

Link: https://github.com/frankolson/obsidian-tomorrows-daily-note

Obsidian Git

Backup your Obsidian.md vault with git. A bit technical but really valuable!

Link: https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git

This plugin adds a visual toolbar you can use to modify text styles in your notes. If you're not used to Markdown yet, then this can prove very useful.

Demo: https://github.com/PKM-er/obsidian-editing-toolbar/raw/master/editing-toolbar-demo.gif

Links: https://github.com/PKM-er/obsidian-editing-toolbar

And more... There is an Obsdian plugin for each use case

There are many other really interesting plugins for Obsidian. Here are some you might want to check out as well:

Admonition: https://github.com/valentine195/obsidian-admonition
Banners: https://github.com/noatpad/obsidian-banners
Day Planner: https://github.com/lynchjames/obsidian-day-planner
Emotion picker: https://github.com/dartungar/obsidian-emotion-picker
Icon shortcodes: https://github.com/aidenlx/obsidian-icon-shortcodes
Kindle: https://github.com/hadynz/obsidian-kindle-plugin
Simple embeds: https://github.com/samwarnick/obsidian-simple-embeds
Review: https://github.com/ryanjamurphy/review-obsidian
Syntax highlight: https://github.com/deathau/cm-editor-syntax-highlight-obsidian
Reading time: https://github.com/avr/obsidian-reading-time
Better word count: https://github.com/lukeleppan/better-word-count
Dialogue: https://github.com/holubj/obsidian-dialogue-plugin

How to find additional Obsidian plugins

First of all, keep in mind that this list is opinionated. There are many many more plugins out there. So let me first tell you where you can find additional ones.

There are various ways to discover valuable Obsidian plugins. First of all, you can use the official community plugins list:

Second, you can use the Obsidian Plugin Stats website to explore popular plugins, search by tags, etc:

Obsidian Plugin Stats - Explore New, Updated, Trending and Most Downloaded Obsidian Plugins

Discover all Obsidian plugins with the latest updates, trending plugins, and the most downloaded ones. Stay informed about the best plugins to enhance your Obsidian experience.

Explore New, Updated, Trending and Most Downloaded Obsidian Plugins

Third-party Obsidian Plugin stats

Third, you can follow Nuno Campos, who regularly reviews the newest plugins:

Home :: Obsidian Journey

Unveiling the Gems: Exploring and Reviewing the Best Obsidian Plugins

Obsidian Journey

He previously published on Medium:

If you're a geek like me, you can keep an eye on the official plugins list, which is defined in this JSON file:

And if you're a nerd like me, you could even leverage AI and programming to analyze the raw plugin stats to discover popular/trending plugins:

Bonus: The Web viewer core plugin

Since version 1.8.0, Obsidian integrates a Web viewer (core) plugin that lets you open external links within Obsidian. It makes it a breeze to read content without leaving Obsidian.

Web page opened in the Web viewer plugin of Obsidian

With this core plugin, external links open as a tab within Obsidian. As with any other tab, you can move it around, split it, open it in a pop-out window, etc.

Web viewer tabs can be rearranged, just like any other Obsidian tab

Moreover, this plugin also enables embedding Web pages in canvas files. Pretty cool if you ask me!

Once enabled, you can configure the following:

You can always open external links using the Web viewer plugin by enabling "Open external links". You can also:

Set a homepage to load by default in Web viewer tabs using the "Homepage" option
Set a folder where to store pages you save using Web viewer
Enable/disable the built-in ad blocker, configure the ad blocking rule sets, and their update frequency
Clear the Web viewer data (i.e., browser cache)

Last but not least, as the settings above hint at, the Web viewer plugin lets you save pages to your Obsidian vault:

This can be used to save Web pages that you want to explore later on. Note that when saving Web pages to your vault, Obsidian converts those to be more readable.

Bonus: The Obsidian Web Clipper

A last "plugin" I want to mention is the official Obsidian Web Clipper. This one is actually a browser extension, but you don't want to miss it. It makes it a breeze to curate/capture content from anywhere on the Web and to send it all to your Obsidian vault.

The Obsidian Web Clipper not only captures and converts content to Markdown, but also extract useful metadata (e.g., page title, tags, og meta, and more!).

It also enables capturing highlights, which is a great way to capture insights as you explore the Web.

Go check it out now:

Conclusion

In this article, I've listed the best Obsidian plugins I know of, and then some. The Obsidian developer community is large and very productive. The plugin ecosystem of Obsidian adds a ton of value and really deserves your time and attention. Check those plugins out and tell me which ones you love most. I'm also curious about which plugins you think I should add to this list!

That's it for today! ✨

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About Sébastien

I am Sébastien Dubois. You can follow me on X 🐦 and on BlueSky 🦋.

I am an author, founder, and coach. I write books and articles about Knowledge Work, Personal Knowledge Management, Note-taking, Lifelong Learning, Personal Organization, and Zen Productivity. I also craft lovely digital products . You can learn more about my projects here.

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Ready to get to the next level?

To embark on your Knowledge Management journey, consider investing in resources that will equip you with the tools and strategies you need. Check out the Obsidian Starter Kit and the accompanying video course. It will give you a rock-solid starting point for your note-taking and Knowledge Management efforts.

If you want to take a more holistic approach, then the Knowledge Worker Kit is for you. It covers PKM, but expands into productivity, personal organization, project/task management, and more:

If you are in a hurry, then do not hesitate to book a coaching session with me: