Keyword Decorator

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Give keywords a visual marker in Obsidian's editor and reading view. Rules can add text styles, emoji, Lucide icons, vault images, or pasted SVG artwork without changing your notes.

How to use

Open Settings → Keyword Decorator and create a rule. Choose Keywords (one per line) or Regular expression, then pick an appearance. One line matches one keyword; several lines share the same appearance. Changes save automatically and the preview updates as you type.

Highlights

A workbench for many rules

The rule workbench is built for vaults with dozens of rules:

• Groups organize rules, fold and expand, and toggle a whole set together. Shared group appearance is inherited by every rule until a rule overrides a field — ↶ restores inheritance.
• Fast reordering: drag a rule, a selection, or a whole group; Move up / Move down buttons and Alt + ↑ / ↓ work too. Earlier rules win overlapping matches.
• Multi-selection: Ctrl/Cmd-click to toggle rules, Shift-click for a visible range, then drag the selection together — even across groups — with relative order preserved.
• Bulk add pastes keyword lines, spreadsheet columns, or a JSON rule array, previews the result, and creates one editable rule per entry.
• Import and export move rules with their order, groups and switches preserved; group exports add a single group with collision-safe IDs.
• Autosave, filtering, duplication, deletion undo and a responsive two-pane layout with independently scrolling panes are built in.

Markers beyond text styles

• Emoji shortcodes: a built-in group converts :smile: → 😄 and 1,913 more aliases, fully offline via a bundled dictionary. Unknown names stay unchanged, and Hide matched text leaves only the emoji — move the cursor into a match to edit the original shortcode.
• Lucide icons: search icons with suggestions and previews; icons inherit the rule's text color by default.
• Vault images and SVG: pick vault images by name or path with thumbnails, paste complete SVG markup, or use direct image URLs. Width, height, corner radius and hide-text are configurable; sizes accept px or em (a plain number means px), and equal width and height with a half-size radius renders a circle. Failed loads leave the original text readable.

Whole-line styling and once-per-note rules

Enable Apply style to the whole line to paint the logical line containing a match, soft wrapping included. Right beside it, Only once per note keeps later matches plain so a frequent character name is decorated only at its first occurrence. Regular-expression ^ and $ anchors match each logical line consistently in the editor and reading view.

Precise boundaries

Decorations stay inside Markdown note bodies in Live Preview and Reading view; source mode keeps the original text unless you opt in. Links (labels, destinations, aliases, bare URLs), code, math, properties, tags, embeds and formatting markers are always skipped, while headings, lists, quotes, callout prose and tables remain eligible. Custom CSS is scoped to the note body with & targeting this rule's matches:

& {
  border-bottom: 2px dashed currentColor;
  border-radius: 4px;
  padding: 0 4px;
}

Features

Decoration boundaries

Decorations apply to Markdown note bodies in Live Preview and Reading view. Source mode shows the original text by default; enable Decorate source mode to opt in, with the same content exclusions as Live Preview. Quick Switcher, suggestions, hover previews, settings and other rendered UI remain outside this scope.

Links are excluded, including their labels, destinations, wiki-link aliases, references and bare URLs. Code, math, properties, tags, embeds and Markdown formatting markers are also skipped. Headings, lists, quotes, callout prose and tables remain eligible. Whole-line appearance skips protected content on that line.

Custom CSS is scoped to the note body and to enabled decoration editors. Global directives such as @import, @font-face and @keyframes are ignored.

Rule workbench

Open Settings → Keyword Decorator to manage rules:

• Use the master switch to pause all decorations and each rule's switch to pause one rule.
• Drag a rule by its grip to change priority, focus its grip and press Alt + ↑ / ↓, or use the editor's arrow buttons. Press Esc to cancel a drag. New rules focus the Keyword field immediately.
• Ctrl/Cmd-click rules to toggle selection, Shift-click to select a visible range, or Ctrl/Cmd + Shift-click to add a range. Drag any selected rule's grip to move the selection together, including between groups; original relative order is preserved.
• Duplicate a rule to reuse its appearance. Deleting a rule offers a short undo action.
• Search the rule list by name or keyword. The list and editor use equal columns and scroll independently. Collapse the editor to browse only rules until you select one again. At 620 CSS px of content width or less, selecting a rule opens its editor; modifier-clicking keeps the list open for multi-selection.

Groups and appearance

Create groups with the folder-plus button. Double-click a group name to fold or expand it; single-click to edit without moving the list. Toggle all its rules together, drag rules between groups, or drag a group to move its rule block. The group editor also has Move up / Move down buttons; the first and last positions disable the unavailable direction. The rule editor has a Group selector. Ungrouped rules come first, followed by groups in list order; earlier rules win overlapping matches.

Use Export group in a group's editor to export only its rules, order, shared appearance and switches. Import groups beside New group adds the exported groups as new content. Repeated imports create separate groups and remap rule references, preserving existing groups, rules and the master switch. Empty groups are supported.

Click a group name to configure shared appearance. Unset rule fields inherit the group; explicit values, including disabled toggles or cleared colors, override it. Use ↶ beside a field to restore inheritance, or reset all appearance fields from the rule editor. Disabling a group preserves each rule's own switch. Full exports preserve groups, group order and appearance.

Lucide icons offer keyword suggestions with a preview and name. Icons inherit text color by default; this can be turned off. Each marker type remembers its own value. Background color can optionally include the prefix marker.

Emoji shortcodes

The default Emoji shortcodes group displays :smile: as 😄, :heart: as ❤️ and :happy: as 😄, in both the editor and reading view. Its single rule recognizes 1,914 aliases using a bundled local dictionary. No images, extra runtime dependency or network connection are required; appearance follows the device's emoji font. Unknown names stay unchanged. Discord server custom emoji and animated emoji are not included.

This is a special built-in group, marked Built-in in the list. Click its name for Enable conversion and Hide matched text; it has no ordinary rule list or match-type selector. Normal rules offer only Keywords and Regular expression. The group is added once after existing rules, preserving their priority; existing presets are recognized with their saved appearance and disabled state intact.

Hide matched text is enabled initially: move the cursor into a match to edit the original shortcode, or turn the switch off to show the emoji alongside its shortcode. Notes keep their original Markdown. The built-in group can still be reordered to change its priority; new custom rules are created outside it.

The aliases come from gemoji, with an additional happy alias. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for the pinned source and license.

Images and SVG

Choose Vault image to search image names and full paths, with thumbnails. The picker saves the full vault path so files with identical names in different folders remain distinct. You can also enter a vault path or wikilink manually.

Choose SVG code and paste a complete <svg>…</svg> element. Active content and external references are removed before display. Configure width, height and corner radius in px or em; images keep their proportions inside this box.

Choose Image URL to paste a direct HTTP or HTTPS image link, including URLs with query parameters. Network images share the same size and hide-text controls as vault images. The preview loads the image directly from its host, without sending a referrer. Invalid links and failed loads leave the original text readable.

Hide matched text is off by default for ordinary rules. For emoji, image and SVG markers, it leaves only the marker visible. Move the editor cursor into a match to reveal and edit its original text. The underlying Markdown is preserved.

The plugin runs locally. An image URL beginning with https:// or http:// connects to that image's host when displayed; using vault images or pasted SVG avoids these network requests. No account, telemetry, or paid service is required.

Bulk add

Use the list's Bulk add button. Each line creates a separate rule:

Obsidian
Review
Important

Paste tab-separated columns from a spreadsheet to give each rule its own name, keyword, and optional vault image:

Name	Keyword	Image path (optional)

The first row is data too; omit column headings. A JSON rule array or previously exported rule package is also accepted. Preview the rule count and fix any errors before adding. You can optionally inherit the selected rule's appearance.

Several lines in a Keywords rule share one appearance. Bulk add creates independent rules that you can edit individually. Commas in the new Keywords mode are literal text; legacy comma-separated rules keep their original matching behavior and are displayed as separate lines when opened for editing.

Import and export

Export copies or downloads a JSON package with rules, priority, and master-switch state. Older exports containing a map of rule IDs are also accepted. Import validates pasted JSON or a selected file automatically and defaults to appending new content. You can explicitly choose to update matching IDs or replace all rules. The empty-replacement confirmation appears only when needed. Summaries and footer actions stay visible while editing.

Performance

Editor matching is restricted to visible content. Matchers are compiled when rules change; saves are debounced and serialized. Image resolution is cached, and disabled rules skip matching. Avoid complex regular expressions: JavaScript cannot safely interrupt a pathological expression on the UI thread. See DEVELOPMENT.md for validation details and development commands.

Installation

The plugin will be available directly from the Obsidian plugin browser.

Alternatively, you can install with BRAT by using the following link: https://github.com/Moyf/keyword-decorator.

Acknowledgments

• Built on Dynamic Highlights by NothingIsLost ❤️ — Keyword Decorator is a ground-up redesign and extension of that work
• Emoji aliases come from gemoji by GitHub — see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md

More from Moy

If you appreciate my plugin design and quality, check out my other Obsidian plugins:

See all my plugins on my Obsidian Community page.

Friend plugins I contributed to: Note Toolbar & Typify ❤️

Support

If you like Keyword Decorator, consider buying me a coffee on Ko-fi ☕

Development

pnpm install

Copy .env.example to .env and set VAULT_PATH to an existing Obsidian vault containing .obsidian. The copy script reads the process environment first, then .env files in the repository and parent directories. Relative vault paths resolve from the matching .env directory.

pnpm run test
pnpm run lint
pnpm run build:local

Build outputs are in dist/. Local builds copy only plugin assets, preserving the vault's existing data.json. Reload the plugin, then open its settings. Use pnpm run build:local:set to build and open settings when Hot Reload is active.

License

MIT. Based on the original work by NothingIsLost.