HTML Reader-plus

Open and interact with trusted local HTML prototypes inside Obsidian. A dedicated desktop web view keeps the HTML document separate from the note editor while preserving its scripts and relative resources.

中文说明 · Releases · Report an issue

Features

• Open .html and .htm files from your vault, including browser-compatible JavaScript applications.
• Run React, Vue, ES modules, and import maps when their dependencies are available and compatible with a local file URL.
• Zoom from 25% to 300%, with a live percentage display. Click the percentage to reset to 100%.
• Find text: Enter moves forward, Shift+Enter moves backward, and Escape clears highlighting.
• Collapse the compact toolbar into a small edge handle. Expanding it keeps the current page and zoom.
• Switch the toolbar, menus, and messages between English and Chinese with EN / CN. The preference is saved. HTML page content is not translated.
• Refresh without rebuilding a healthy web view; search input is debounced and repeated refresh requests are combined.

Desktop only. The first public release targets Obsidian 1.13.7 or later; older versions have not been validated. It does not support mobile or MHTML.

Install

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the same release.
2. Create an html-reader-plus directory inside your vault's configuration directory under plugins/ (normally .obsidian/plugins/html-reader-plus/).
3. Copy the three files into that directory.
4. Open Settings → Community plugins, reload the list if needed, and enable HTML Reader-plus.

Disable another reader that already claims the HTML/HTM extensions before enabling this one. Community directory availability depends on completion of Obsidian's review; a GitHub release alone does not mean marketplace approval.

Use

Click an HTML file in the vault's file explorer. If it is not visible, enable Detect all file extensions under Settings → Files and links.

Use the toolbar to reload, zoom, find text, and change language. The top-right chevron hides the toolbar; the edge handle reveals it. The tab menu and command palette also offer reload and find actions. Finding from a menu automatically reveals the search field.

External changes to the source file are indicated in the reload button's tooltip. Reload deliberately when ready: automatic reloads could erase unsaved prototype state. Closing a view does not preserve its zoom or collapsed state.

Try the self-contained demo prototype: copy it into a test vault and open it. It makes no network requests.

Trust, privacy, and network access

Only open HTML that you trust. This is an interactive runtime, not an HTML sanitizer or a safe viewer for malicious files.

• The plugin loads the selected vault file as a local file: URL. It does not upload the file or send analytics, and has no account, payment, advertising, or telemetry service.
• HTML scripts execute. The HTML itself may contact any remote services it references, such as a CDN, font host, image host, or application API. Those requests go directly from the embedded browser to the services named by that HTML. The plugin has no built-in remote service or CDN dependency.
• Relative resources are resolved by the browser. HTML can reference local files outside the vault, subject to Electron/Chromium restrictions; the plugin does not impose a vault-only resource boundary. This supports prototypes that depend on adjacent assets and is another reason to use trusted files only.
• The web view enables context isolation, sandboxing, and web security, disables Node integration, and provides no preload script or popup permission. These settings reduce exposure but do not make arbitrary HTML trustworthy.
• A persistent browser partition is derived from the vault path. Browser cache, cookies, and page storage can persist between sessions. Page-origin storage may be shared across HTML files in the same vault partition; it is not a security boundary between prototypes.
• The saved toolbar language is stored in the plugin's data.json. No HTML file is modified by the reader.

Missing resources, network outages, browser restrictions on local files, and compilation inside large prototypes can still affect loading. This plugin does not bundle remote dependencies, bypass CORS, guarantee every website will work, or claim a measured memory/speed improvement.

Development

The runtime has no npm dependencies. Source is plain JavaScript, with a small Node.js build script that creates a single readable CommonJS bundle for Obsidian.

npm ci
npm run check

• prototype-view.js: web view lifecycle and controls.
• plugin.js: Obsidian view registration, commands, and saved language.
• styles.css: scoped, theme-aware UI styles, loaded by Obsidian.
• build.cjs: reproducible bundling with license notices.
• *.test.cjs: lifecycle, reload recovery, search, zoom, collapse, and language regression tests.

Node.js 22 or later is required for development. node build.cjs and node --test *.test.cjs also work without installing npm packages; linting uses the Obsidian official ESLint plugin as a development dependency. Mock-based Node tests do not replace testing a real Electron web view. The 30 MB test checks the loading path, not rendering performance.

Release provenance

Starting with 1.3.1, tagged releases are built and checked in GitHub Actions. The workflow verifies that the generated bundle matches the committed source, creates GitHub artifact attestations for all three installation files, and publishes those same files to the release.

To verify a downloaded file with the GitHub CLI:

gh attestation verify main.js --repo sancodeee/obsidian-html-reader-plus
gh attestation verify styles.css --repo sancodeee/obsidian-html-reader-plus
gh attestation verify manifest.json --repo sancodeee/obsidian-html-reader-plus

中文说明

HTML Reader-plus 用于在 Obsidian 桌面端运行可信的本地 HTML/HTM 原型，支持刷新、25%–300% 缩放、文字查找、工具栏折叠和 EN/CN 中英切换。语言切换仅影响插件界面，不翻译原型内容。

从 Release 下载同一版本的 main.js、manifest.json、styles.css，复制到知识库配置目录的 plugins/html-reader-plus/，再从第三方插件设置启用。需先停用占用 HTML/HTM 扩展名的其他阅读插件。

仅打开可信 HTML。 HTML 中的脚本会执行，也可能请求其引用的 CDN、图片、字体或 API；相对路径资源可能位于知识库之外。插件不上传原型、不采集遥测、不修改 HTML，但不会将原型限制在知识库资源范围内。网页缓存、Cookie 和存储可持续保存。缺失资源、网络及浏览器本地文件限制仍可能影响运行。

License and attribution

MIT. Chevron icons are adapted from Lucide / Feather; their ISC and MIT notices are retained in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and the generated bundle. This is an independent community project and is not an official Obsidian product.