Featherlight

An Obsidian plugin that enforces character limits on notes — a live counter in the status bar shows characters used and remaining, and once you hit the limit, the editor simply won't accept more.

Inspired by the succinct nature of tweets: a hard ceiling forces you to think a little harder about what to write.

Features

• Hard limit, not just a counter — a CodeMirror transaction filter blocks additive edits once the note is at its limit. Deletions and selections always work, so you can edit your way back under. A notice says why when typing stops.
• Pastes are cut to fit — pasting or dropping more text than the note has room for inserts the part that fits, cut at a whole character, and a notice says how much made it in. With several cursors, the cursors are filled in order. Typing and autocomplete are never cut, so you won't end up with half a word or link.
• Live status bar counter — ✦ 231/280 · 49 left, colored green with plenty of room, orange within 10% of the limit, red at the hard stop (or · 12 over if the note is already past it).
• Counts what you see — an emoji (👍🏽, 👨‍👩‍👧, a flag) or an accented letter is one character, even when it's built from several code points.
• Twitter-era presets — 140 (Classic Tweet, 2006–2017), 280 (Modern Tweet, 2017–2022), or a custom limit of your choosing.
• Per-note override — add char-limit: 500 (any positive number) to a note's YAML frontmatter to give that note its own limit. The per-note value always beats the global setting.
• Leave properties out — optionally skip a note's properties when counting, so char-limit, tags, and other frontmatter don't use up the limit.
• Limited folders — optionally scope the limit and counter to specific folders (e.g. Tweets). Outside them, notes behave normally and the counter hides. Leave the list empty to apply the limit everywhere.
• Excluded folders — lift the limit from specific folders (e.g. Drafts), even inside a limited folder, so you can limit everywhere except a few folders, or limit a folder except one of its subfolders.

Settings

• Limited folders — select the list's + control and pick a folder from your vault; it's listed by its path, with a button to remove it. Subfolders are included, and renaming or moving a limited folder updates the setting automatically. A listed folder that's no longer in your vault (deleted, or renamed outside Obsidian) is marked so you can remove it. The limit and status bar only activate inside these folders; an empty list applies the limit to every note.
• Excluded folders — added, listed, and kept up to date through renames and moves the same way as limited folders. Notes inside them are never limited and the counter hides, even when the folder sits inside a limited folder or a note has its own char-limit.
• Limit preset — 140, 280, or Custom; choosing Custom reveals a field for any positive whole number.
• Count properties — on by default. Turn it off to leave a note's properties (its YAML frontmatter, char-limit included) out of the count, so only the note's body uses up the limit. You can still add and edit properties in a note that's at its limit.

Settings are built on Obsidian's declarative settings API, so every option shows up in the global settings search.

Notes

• Characters are counted the way you see them: an emoji (👍🏽, 👨‍👩‍👧, a flag) or an accented letter is one character, even when it's made of several code points. Spaces, punctuation, and line breaks count, and so do properties (frontmatter) unless you turn off Count properties.
• The limit only stops a note from growing past it. Notes that already exceed the limit (created before the plugin, or moved into a limited folder) aren't truncated — you just can't add more until you trim them below the limit.
• Undo and redo are never blocked, since they only bring back text the note already had.
• Only notes are limited. Editors without a file behind them, such as canvas text cards, are left alone and the counter hides.
• On phones, Obsidian hides the status bar, so the counter isn't visible there — the limit is still enforced, and the notice still tells you when you hit it.
• Changes that reach the file from outside the editor (Obsidian Sync, git, another app, or a plugin that writes the file directly) are never blocked, so the limit can't cause the editor to fall out of step with the file on disk. A plugin that edits through the editor is limited the same way typing is.

Installation

Requires Obsidian 1.13.0 or later.

In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Featherlight, then select Install and Enable.

To install it manually instead:

1. Create the folder <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/featherlight/
2. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release and copy them into it
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Featherlight under Settings → Community plugins

Changelog

1.1.2

• Custom limit must be 1 or more — a 0 or negative limit, which would block all typing, is rejected in the settings and never loaded.
• Undo and redo are never blocked, even in a note that's over a lowered limit.
• Canvas cards and other editors with no file are no longer limited.
• Multi-cursor pastes are cut to fit instead of being rejected.
• The settings tab redraws its folder lists when a folder is renamed while it's open.
• Faster counting on long notes made of plain text.

1.1.0

• Excluded folders — lift the limit from chosen folders, even inside a limited folder.
• Characters count as you see them — an emoji or an accented letter is one character, not two or more.
• Count properties — a new option to leave a note's properties out of the count.
• Pastes are cut to fit — a paste or drop that's too long inserts the part that fits instead of nothing, and a notice says when the limit stops typing.
• Folder picker — folder lists show each folder by its path, and + opens a searchable list of your vault's folders.

Development

This is a TypeScript project — src/main.ts (plugin) and src/settings.ts (settings tab). To build:

npm install
npm run build

This typechecks with tsc and bundles the sources into main.js via esbuild.

To check the sources against Obsidian's plugin guidelines (the same rules the community review uses):

npm run lint

Acknowledgments

Thanks to orl0pl, whose fork suggested excluded folders.

License

MIT