Cove

A bookmark manager for Obsidian where every bookmark is a Markdown file with YAML frontmatter — no proprietary database, no lock-in.

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Overview

Cove stores each bookmark as a single .md file with YAML frontmatter, inside a folder you choose. There is no proprietary database and no cache you depend on — only your notes. If you disable Cove tomorrow, every bookmark remains a plain Markdown file in your vault: openable, searchable, versionable, and syncable like everything else Obsidian touches. The plugin keeps a lightweight in-memory index for speed, but it is derived entirely from those files and never the source of truth.

Adding a URL fetches the page's og:title, og:description, og:image, favicon, author, and estimated reading time, then writes them into the new note's frontmatter. Folders map one-to-one to real subfolders under your bookmarks root, and the same dataset renders through four switchable layouts:

• List — a dense, sortable table for fast triage.
• Cards — visual browsing with og:image heroes.
• Board — a Kanban view over the status workflow (Inbox → Reading → Done → Archive).
• Tree — a list-and-preview reading layout with an inline editor.

Features

• Plain-Markdown storage — one .md file per bookmark; your vault is the database and your export is the backup.
• Four switchable layouts — List, Cards, Board, and Tree, all rendering the same underlying files.
• Automatic metadata — title, description, cover image, favicon, author, and reading time, fetched via Obsidian's networking API.
• Inline editor — edit title, URL, description, status, tags, folder, and a custom icon in place, plus a Markdown notes field with Edit/Preview tabs.
• Full-text search — matches across title, description, domain, URL, tags, and each bookmark's notes, with match highlighting.
• Real folders — mapped to actual vault subfolders; create, rename, set an icon, delete, and drag rows between them (nesting supported).
• Status workflow — Inbox, Reading, Done, Archive, and Broken, changeable from a menu, the board, or the inline editor.
• Tags — a pill editor with autocomplete, intersecting sidebar filters, and optional per-tag Lucide icons and colors.
• Smart filters — Recently added, Pinned, Untagged, and Broken links.
• Pinned bookmarks — kept at the top regardless of the active sort.
• Custom icons — per bookmark, per tag, per folder, and per status, chosen from a searchable Lucide icon picker.
• Bulk actions — multi-select across any layout to tag, set status, move, archive, or delete in one step.
• Link health checks — run on demand or periodically in the background; unreachable URLs are flagged as Broken, and links that recover return to the status they had before. A run where every check fails (you're offline) is skipped rather than marking your whole collection Broken.
• Import & export — read and write the Netscape Bookmarks HTML format used by Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Pocket, Raindrop, and Pinboard.
• Desktop and mobile — works on both; destructive actions use in-app dialogs and export adapts to the mobile app.

Installation

Requires Obsidian 1.5 or newer.

Community plugins (recommended)

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse.
2. Search for Cove, then Install and Enable.

BRAT (for the latest pre-release)

Install BRAT, then add Real-Fruit-Snacks/Cove as a beta plugin.

Manual

Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release into <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/cove/, then enable Cove under Settings → Community plugins.

Getting started

1. Click the bookmark ribbon icon (or run Open Cove from the command palette) to open the view.
2. Set your storage folder under Settings → Cove → Bookmarks folder (defaults to Bookmarks).
3. Click + Add — or press Ctrl/Cmd+P → Add bookmark. The dialog pre-fills from your clipboard if it holds a URL, fetches metadata in the background, and warns you if the URL is already saved.

Commands

Keyboard shortcuts

j / k / arrows move focus · e toggles the inline editor · x toggles selection · Enter opens in the browser · / focuses search · Esc clears the selection.

How a bookmark is stored

Every bookmark is just a Markdown file. Cove reads and writes its frontmatter through Obsidian's FileManager, so the YAML stays valid and internal links stay intact. A typical file looks like:

---
url: https://example.com/great-article
title: A Great Article
domain: example.com
description: A short summary pulled from the page's metadata.
status: reading
tags:
  - research
  - typescript
added: 2026-07-07T14:03:00.000Z
favicon: https://example.com/favicon.ico
cover: https://example.com/og-image.png
author: Jane Doe
reading-time: 7
pinned: true
---

Your own Markdown notes go here, below the frontmatter.

Most fields are optional; pinnedAt, opened, and lastChecked are added automatically as you pin, open, and check links.

Architecture

cove/
├── manifest.json    Plugin metadata
├── versions.json    Plugin version → minimum Obsidian version map
├── main.js          Plugin code (single-file CommonJS, no build step)
├── styles.css       Scoped to .cv-* classes; themed via Obsidian CSS variables
└── docs/            Documentation site and logo assets

• No build step — a single hand-written CommonJS main.js, with no framework or bundler.
• Reads — bookmark data comes from Obsidian's metadataCache (frontmatter only). The parsed list is cached in memory and invalidated on vault and metadata events, so views stay fast without re-reading files. Note bodies are indexed on demand for search using cachedRead, keyed by modification time and capped per file.
• Writes — frontmatter changes go through fileManager.processFrontMatter (atomic, preserves YAML and links); note-body edits go through vault.process (atomic and line-ending-safe), so metadata is never clobbered by a concurrent edit.
• Safety — bookmark, favicon, and cover URLs are scheme-validated on read; the only network activity is Obsidian's requestUrl fetching page metadata and checking links for URLs you add. No telemetry, no third-party services.
• Theming — all UI uses namespaced .cv-* classes and Obsidian's CSS variables, so it follows your light/dark theme.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct before opening a pull request.

License

Released under the MIT License.