Daily Notes from Others

Daily Notes from Others creates missing Obsidian daily notes from dates found in the filenames of other notes.

It is useful when another app or workflow creates dated notes—voice notes, meeting notes, journal imports, or similar files—and you want each date to have a corresponding Obsidian daily note. The plugin reads the date from the source filename and asks Obsidian to create the normal daily note for that date. It does not copy or merge the source note's contents.

Features

• Finds valid dates anywhere in Markdown filenames inside a configured source folder.
• Uses the filename portion of your existing Daily notes date format.
• Creates every missing daily note from a ribbon action or command.
• Creates the daily note associated with the active Markdown file.
• Optionally watches for newly created source notes and creates daily notes automatically.
• Lists one source note for each date missing a daily note, with filtering and quick access to the source note.
• Skips dates that already have daily notes and avoids duplicate work when several source notes share a date.
• Shows an Obsidian notice after each successful creation and continues a batch if one file fails.
• Runs locally without telemetry, accounts, or external services.
• Supports desktop and mobile Obsidian.

How date matching works

The plugin uses the last path segment of the date format configured in Obsidian's Daily notes core plugin. For example, a nested daily-note format of:

YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD

uses YYYY-MM-DD when inspecting source filenames. All of these source notes therefore match July 16, 2026:

2026-07-16 meeting.md
Voice note 2026-07-16T1234.md
Imported 999 2026-07-16 journal.md

Running the plugin creates the daily note for 2026-07-16 using Obsidian's Daily notes configuration. Impossible dates such as 2026-02-31 and filenames without a matching date are ignored.

Requirements

• Obsidian 1.13.0 or newer.
• Obsidian's Daily notes core plugin configured with the folder, date format, and optional template you want to use.

Installation

Community plugins

After the plugin is available in Obsidian's community catalog:

1. Open Settings → Community plugins.
2. Select Browse and search for “Daily Notes from Others.”
3. Select Install, then Enable.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest GitHub release.

2. Create this folder inside your vault:

   <Vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-daily-from-others-plugin/
   

3. Copy the three downloaded files into that folder.

4. Reload Obsidian.

5. Open Settings → Community plugins and enable Daily Notes from Others.

Configuration

Open Settings → Daily Notes from Others and configure:

• Notes location: Select the folder containing the dated source notes. The bulk scan and file watcher consider Markdown files whose paths start with this location. If no folder is selected, the bulk scan covers the entire vault.
• Watch file creation: Automatically process new Markdown files created under Notes location. Reload the plugin after enabling or disabling this setting so the file watcher is registered correctly.
• Debounce delay (ms): Wait this long after a source note appears before processing it (default: 500 ms).
• Wait for Obsidian Sync: Enabled by default. Queue automatic creation until Obsidian Sync on this device reports that it has fully synced. This setting takes effect immediately; manual commands remain available.

Usage

Create all missing daily notes

Select the calendar-plus ribbon icon or run Daily Notes from Others: Create all daily notes from the command palette.

The plugin scans Notes location, finds one source note for each date without an existing daily note, and creates the missing notes.

List all missing daily notes

Run Daily Notes from Others: List all missing daily notes from the command palette.

The plugin scans Notes location and opens a filterable list with one source note for each date missing a daily note. Select a result to open its source note; this command does not create anything.

Create a daily note for the active file

Open a Markdown source note and run Daily Notes from Others: Create daily note for this file from the command palette.

If the filename contains a valid date in the configured format and that day's note does not exist, the plugin creates it. Otherwise, no new note is created.

Create daily notes automatically

Enable Watch file creation and reload the plugin. When a new Markdown file appears under Notes location, the plugin checks its filename and creates the corresponding daily note when needed.

With Wait for Obsidian Sync enabled, the plugin first waits for both the creation delay and confirmation that local Sync has finished. It then checks again for an existing daily note, which may have arrived during Sync. Sources deleted while waiting are skipped, and pending work is canceled when the plugin unloads.

If the Sync core plugin is disabled, automatic creation uses only the configured delay. If Sync is enabled but paused, disconnected, or reporting an error, automatic creation stays queued until Sync finishes. If the internal API cannot be read, a one-time notice explains that creation is waiting. You can use a manual command or disable Wait for Obsidian Sync to proceed.

Behavior and limitations

• The date must appear in the source filename; note properties and contents are not inspected.
• At most one daily note is created per date, even if several source files contain that date.
• Existing daily notes are never overwritten.
• Source notes are not modified, linked, copied, or merged into the daily note.
• Individual creation failures are written to the developer console, and the remaining files in a batch are still processed.
• Sync detection uses undocumented internal APIs and may need updating after an Obsidian release. It listens for local status changes and checks once per second as a fallback. The implementation was checked against installed desktop Obsidian 1.14.3; it still needs testing on a phone.
• Local Sync completion does not guarantee another device has uploaded all its changes, or prevent simultaneous creation on multiple devices. Other sync services, such as iCloud, are not detected.

Privacy

Daily Notes from Others operates entirely inside your Obsidian vault. It makes no network requests, collects no analytics or telemetry, and sends no filenames, note contents, or settings to third parties.

Development

This project uses TypeScript, npm, and esbuild.

npm ci
npm run dev

npm run dev watches the source and rebuilds main.js. Reload Obsidian after rebuilding the plugin.

Before submitting changes, run the complete validation suite:

npm test
npm run lint
npm run build

Releasing

1. Update the version in package.json and manifest.json.
2. Add the version-to-minimum-Obsidian mapping to versions.json.
3. Create a Git tag matching the version exactly, without a leading v.
4. Attach main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css to the GitHub release.

License

0BSD