Icon Board

A visual workspace for Obsidian — build dashboards with icon tiles, a freeform canvas, kanban columns, sticky notes, checklists, images, audio, bookmarks, and linked notes, all stored in a single .iboard file in your vault.

Note for beta testers: Screenshots are coming. In the meantime, the Usage section below describes every part of the interface.

Features

Grid Mode

• Icon tiles that open folders, notes, canvases, kanban files, or nested boards
• Customise each tile's Lucide icon or emoji, background colour, label, and subtitle
• Drag to reorder; right-click to edit

Freeform Canvas

• Card types: icon tiles, sticky notes, checklists, note links (with live Markdown preview), images, audio players, bookmarks, and kanban columns
• Connections between any two cards — straight or elbow-routed, with colour, thickness, line style, arrowhead, and inline label
• Multi-select via marquee or Shift-click; group drag, alignment bar, and even distribution
• Resize any card by dragging any of its four corners
• Pan with middle-click (or Space + drag) over any element on the canvas

Kanban Columns

• Drag items between columns; set WIP limits
• Rich-text formatting in items (bold, italic, strikethrough, colour, highlight)
• Link items to vault notes; add tag pills
• Drop images or audio files directly into a column
• Toggle the column title; set background and accent-strip colours

Sticky Notes

• Inline rich-text editing with ⌘ B / I / U and ⌘ ⇧ S shortcuts
• Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough buttons in the context bar
• Background colour and top-strip accent via the context bar colour picker

Checklists

• Toggle the card title on or off
• Set background and top-strip colours to match your visual style
• Header rows to group items into sections

Text Formatting

• Select any text in a sticky note, checklist, kanban item, or image caption to reveal a floating toolbar
• Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text colour (preset + colour picker), and highlight colour

Image & Audio

• Paste images from the clipboard
• Drag from Finder or the Obsidian file explorer onto the canvas or into a kanban column
• Add from the vault or upload from disk via the toolbar
• Images always display at their natural aspect ratio
• Toggle captions with ⌘ ⇧ C (Mac) / Ctrl ⇧ C (Windows/Linux)
• All imported files are automatically sorted into _Assets/ subfolders (see Asset Management below)

Asset Management

• Auto-sort: every image, audio clip, video, or document imported into a board is automatically moved to the correct subfolder in the vault root:
  • _Assets/Images/ — jpg, png, gif, webp, svg, …
  • _Assets/Audio/ — mp3, wav, ogg, flac, …
  • _Assets/Video/ — mp4, mov, mkv, …
  • _Assets/Documents/ — pdf
• Auto-relink: scan all boards and fix broken file paths when a unique filename match is found in the vault. Three ways to run it:
  • On open — toggle Auto-relink on board open in Settings to fix links silently every time a board loads
  • Settings button — Settings → Assets → Relink now
  • Command palette — Icon Board: Relink all board assets

Keyboard Shortcuts

Installation

Community Plugin Browser (once listed)

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for Icon Board
3. Click Install, then Enable

Manual Installation (for beta testers)

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. In your vault, create the folder .obsidian/plugins/icon-board/
3. Copy the three files into that folder
4. Open Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins, and enable Icon Board

Usage

Opening a board

• Run Icon Board: Open home board from the command palette
• Or click the layout-dashboard icon in the left ribbon

Creating your first board

1. Click + New board in the empty home screen
2. A .iboard file is created in your vault root (you can move it later)
3. The board opens in grid mode — click the + button to add your first icon tile

Grid mode

• Click a tile to open its target
• Right-click a tile to edit, change icon, change colour, or delete
• Drag tiles to reorder them

Freeform canvas

• Switch to canvas mode with the toggle in the top-right corner of any board
• Right-click the canvas background to add a card (sticky, checklist, image, etc.)
• Pan by dragging the background, middle-clicking anywhere, or holding Space and dragging; zoom with the scroll wheel
• Right-click a card for options (edit, style, connect, delete)
• The toolbar on the left has one button per card type; click it or drag it onto the canvas

Connections

• Right-click a card → Connect to enter connection mode, then click a second card
• Click a connection to select it; right-click for colour, thickness, and style options

Fixing broken asset links

If you move files in the vault and board assets stop loading, run Icon Board: Relink all board assets from the command palette. For automatic fixing every time you open a board, enable Auto-relink on board open in Settings.

Saving

Boards save automatically as you work. All data lives in the .iboard file — no external database or sync service is required.

Compatibility

Development

git clone https://github.com/RK-Admin-01/obsidian-icon-board.git
cd obsidian-icon-board
npm install
npm run dev        # watch mode — rebuilds on save
npm run build      # production build

Copy or symlink the folder into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/icon-board/, then enable the plugin in Obsidian.

License

MIT — © RK-Media