Excalink

Suggests and links the named frames and groups inside your Excalidraw drawings as you type [[filename# in the editor.

Demo

How it works

1. Give a frame a name in Excalidraw, or select a few elements and group them (add a text element inside the group if you want it to have a name too).
2. In any note, start typing [[my-drawing# — Excalink detects the pattern and opens a fuzzy-search picker of every frame and group in that drawing.
3. Filter with fuzzy search, pick one with ↑↓ + ↵, and Excalink completes the link for you:
   • Frames: [[my-drawing#^frame=FrameName]]
   • Groups: [[my-drawing#^group=elementId]]

Both formats are the block-reference syntax already understood by the Excalidraw plugin, so the resulting links embed and navigate correctly.

Unnamed groups still show up in the picker — Excalink looks for a text element inside the group to use as its label, falling back to a generic Group N name if none is found.

Settings

Available under Settings → Community plugins → Excalink:

• Enable suggestions — turn the picker on or off entirely
• Include frames / Include groups — choose what shows up in the picker
• Show recent first — most recently edited frames/groups appear at the top
• Max suggestions displayed — cap the picker's list size
• Show file context — show the source filename under each suggestion

A Rescan vault action (in settings, or via the command palette) rebuilds the index on demand; it also updates automatically when Excalidraw files change.

Installation

From Obsidian Community Plugins

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for "Excalink", click Install, then Enable

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy them into VaultFolder/.obsidian/plugins/excalink/
3. Reload plugins in Obsidian and enable Excalink

Development setup

git clone https://github.com/AarambhaAnta/Excalink.git
cd Excalink
npm install
npm run dev    # watch mode
npm run build   # production build

Changelog

1.2.0

• Suggestions now show a small preview of the actual drawing (shapes, colors, rotation) instead of a generic icon, falling back to the icon when there's nothing visual to show (e.g. a text-only group)
• "Show recent first" now sorts by each frame/group's real last-edited timestamp instead of its position in the file

1.1.0

• Added group support: grouped elements are now suggested and linkable alongside frames, with automatic name detection from nearby text
• Reorganized the codebase into src/
• Trimmed the settings panel to the options people actually use
• General security, styling, and logging cleanup for community plugin review

1.0.x

Initial release: frame detection, fuzzy-search suggestion modal, caching, file watching, and a full settings panel.

License

MIT License — see LICENSE file for details.