Color Tab

An Obsidian plugin that lets you assign a background color to any open tab, making it easy to visually distinguish notes at a glance.

Why use Color Tab?

When working with several notes simultaneously — researching, cross-referencing, or writing — it can be hard to quickly jump to the right tab. Color Tab lets you visually tag each tab with a color, so you can cycle through your open notes faster and reduce mental overhead.

Examples of how people use it:

• 🔴 Red – Note you are actively writing
• 🟢 Green – Reference material you keep coming back to
• 🟡 Yellow – Diagrams supporting my writing
• 🔵 Blue – Other useful reference notes
• 🟣 Lavender – Meeting notes or daily logs

How to install

From the Community Plugins directory (recommended)

1. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community Plugins.
2. Disable Safe Mode if prompted, then select Browse.
3. Search for Color Tab and click Install.
4. Once installed, toggle it on.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Copy them into your vault at:

   <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/color-tab/
   

3. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community Plugins and toggle Color Tab on.

How to use

Assign a color to a tab

1. Right-click on any open tab header.
2. The default Obsidian context menu will appear (Close, Pin, etc.).
3. Scroll to the bottom — you will see a separator followed by the 5 color options.
4. Click a color name to apply it. The tab background and title will update immediately.

Color assignments are saved and restored after restart, including for inactive tabs.

For Markdown notes, assigning a color also writes its lowercase palette name to YAML frontmatter:

---
color-tab: red
---

Custom palette names are supported, and shades use their palette's name. Other properties and the note body are preserved. Non-Markdown files are not modified.

Choose a shade

1. Right-click a tab that already has a color.
2. Open the submenu beside its selected palette color, such as Red.
3. Choose from three darker shades, the configured base color, or three lighter shades.

The submenu remains attached to that palette color after choosing a shade and marks the selected shade with a check.

Remove a color

1. Right-click the colored tab.
2. Click Remove tab color at the bottom of the menu.

The YAML property remains present but unset:

---
color-tab:
---

This also applies to Remove all tabs' color and automatic removal on closing. The property is written when assigning or removing colors; editing it manually does not change the tab color.

Open a history entry in a new tab

Hold Ctrl (Windows/Linux) or Cmd (macOS) while clicking Obsidian's Back or Forward history arrow. The history destination opens in a new tab without interrupting navigation.

Customize your colors

1. Go to Settings → Color Tab.
2. Each of the 5 color slots has a name field and a color picker.
3. Toggle Ensure text complies with WCAG 2.1 contrast ratio to maintain at least 4.5:1 contrast for colored tab titles.
4. Toggle Prevent Tab Duplication to keep only one tab per file.
5. Toggle Remove color on closing to remove a file's saved color when its last open tab closes. Its color is retained while another tab for that file remains open.
6. Changes take effect immediately — open tabs update live.
7. Click Reset to restore the default pastel palette.

Accessible tab text

The optional WCAG setting keeps the current Obsidian theme's text color whenever it already has sufficient contrast. Otherwise, Color Tab adjusts its lightness while preserving saturation and hue wherever possible. Inactive, hovered, and active tab titles are evaluated separately; tab icons are not changed.

Default colors

All defaults are soft pastels so they remain readable in both light and dark themes.

License

MIT

Contributors

Thanks to @xRyul for the startup restoration, WCAG contrast, color shade submenu, and modifier-click navigation contributions in PR #2, PR #3, PR #4, and PR #5.