Laser Pointer

Author: Alessandro Vettorel
Version: 1.0.2
For: Obsidian (min. v1.13.0)

🎯 What it does

Laser Pointer is an Obsidian plugin designed for anyone who shares their screen, teaches, presents, records videos, or simply wants to highlight and guide attention to content inside their notes.

When you are on a call, recording a tutorial, or showing your vault to someone, the laser pointer lets you:

• Highlight words, sentences, and key concepts with a glowing dot
• Draw lines to connect ideas, circle important elements, or underline text
• Guide the viewer's eye without the native mouse cursor getting in the way
• Annotate freely with persistent or auto-fading trails
• Save and resume your drawings across laser sessions

It is your virtual laser pointer, right inside Obsidian.

🎬 Demo

✨ Features

1. Glowing laser pointer

A bright, colored dot follows your mouse everywhere. The system cursor is automatically hidden, leaving only the laser visible — clean, professional, and distraction-free.

2. Draw trails on the fly

Hold down the left mouse button and move: you draw a glowing line that follows your path. Perfect for:

• Underlining text
• Circling concepts
• Tracing connections between ideas
• Highlighting areas of the interface

The text underneath is never selected while you draw, so your notes stay clean.

3. Self-fading trails

Release the left button and the line stays visible for a configurable duration, then fades away slowly with an elegant fade effect. No manual cleanup needed.

4. Persist trails mode

Enable "Persist" from the floating toolbar. When active, every line you draw stays on screen permanently until you exit laser mode. Ideal for building up a full diagram, annotation layer, or complex illustration during a presentation.

5. Remember drawings

Enable "Remember" from the floating toolbar or settings. When active, all your drawn trails are saved when you exit laser mode and automatically restored when you re-enter. Perfect for resuming a presentation or tutorial without redrawing everything.

6. Auto reading mode

When activated, the plugin can automatically switch the current note to reading mode so you can draw freely without entering edit mode. When you turn the laser off, the original mode is restored.

7. Quick deactivation

Turn the laser off instantly using any of these methods:

• Right-click anywhere on the screen
• Press the ESC key on your keyboard
• Click the 🎯 icon in the sidebar

No need to hunt for buttons when you are done.

8. Floating toolbar (draggable & customizable)

When the laser is on, a compact horizontal toolbar appears at the bottom center of the screen. You can drag it anywhere by grabbing the header. It gives you instant access to all controls without opening Settings.

You can also customize which controls appear on the toolbar from Settings, making it as minimal or as complete as you like.

9. Customizable preset colors

Switch colors instantly from the toolbar. Out of the box it ships with 11 presets: 🔴 Red · 🟠 Orange · 🟡 Yellow · 🟢 Green · 🔵 Blue · 🟣 Purple · 🩷 Pink · 🟤 Brown · ⚪ Gray · ⚫ Black · ⬜ White

These are just the defaults — go to Settings → Preset colors to add, remove, or recolor entries. The toolbar always shows exactly the colors listed there: keep only 4 if that's all you need, or add as many as you like. A Reset to default colors button brings back the original 11 at any time.

10. Custom color picker

Click the 🎨 button on the toolbar to open the browser's native color picker and choose any color you want.

11. Adjustable trail width

Move the Width slider on the toolbar to change the stroke thickness on the fly — from an ultra-thin hairline (0.5 px) up to a bold, heavy stroke (40 px).

12. Stroke hardness (opacity)

Move the Hardness slider to control how opaque or transparent the trail is:

• Low → faint, semi-transparent line (delicate highlights)
• High → solid, bold stroke (strong markers)

13. Rectangle tool

Click the ▭ button on the toolbar to switch from freehand trails to a draggable rectangle: click and drag anywhere to draw a rectangle from corner to corner. It follows the same color, width, hardness, and persist/fade behavior as regular trails. Click ▭ again (or enter eraser mode) to go back to freehand drawing.

14. Straight line tool

Click the ╱ button on the toolbar to switch to the straight line tool: click and drag to draw a perfectly straight segment from the starting point to wherever you release the mouse. It follows the same color, width, hardness, and persist/fade behavior as regular trails. Click ╱ again (or enter eraser mode) to go back to freehand drawing. Like the rectangle tool, it's mutually exclusive with the rectangle tool — turning one on turns the other off.

15. Filled or outline rectangles

The ⬜ / 🔳 button sits right next to the rectangle tool button and only appears on the toolbar while the rectangle tool is active. It switches new rectangles between filled and outline-only, can be flipped at any time, and the current choice is also saved as the default in Settings. Like every other control, it can be hidden from the toolbar via Toolbar visibility in Settings (it also requires the rectangle tool button itself to be enabled there).

16. Eraser mode

Click the 🧽 button to enter eraser mode. The pointer changes to a ring cursor. Click on any existing trail, rectangle, or line to delete it individually. Click 🧽 again to return to drawing mode.

17. Clear All

Click the 🗑️ button to delete all drawn trails, rectangles, and lines instantly — both persistent and saved ones.

18. Full settings panel

Go to Settings → Community Plugins → Laser Pointer to set your defaults:

• Laser color — default color of the pointer and trails
• Trail width (px) — default stroke thickness (0.5 to 40 px)
• Stroke hardness — opacity of the trail (5% to 100%, in 5% steps)
• Trail duration (seconds) — how long trails stay visible before fading (1 to 10 seconds)
• Persist trails — when on, trails remain until laser mode is exited
• Remember drawings — when on, trails, rectangles, and lines are saved and restored across sessions
• Auto reading mode — automatically switch to reading mode when laser is on
• Rectangles filled by default — whether the rectangle tool starts filled or outline-only
• Preset colors — add, remove, or recolor the dots shown on the toolbar; starts out matching the 11 built-in colors, with a button to reset back to them
• Toolbar visibility — choose exactly which controls appear on the floating toolbar

All settings are saved automatically.

🚀 Installation

Manual

1. Extract the package into a folder on your computer.
2. Open a terminal in that folder and run:

   npm install
   npm run build
   

3. Copy the generated files manifest.json, main.js, and styles.css into:

   .obsidian/plugins/laser-pointer/
   

   inside your vault.
4. In Obsidian, go to Settings → Community Plugins, find Laser Pointer, and enable it.

Via GitHub Releases (recommended)

Download the latest release from the GitHub releases page and extract the three files (main.js, manifest.json, styles.css) into .obsidian/plugins/laser-pointer/.

🎮 How to use

💡 Use cases

• Teaching & tutorials — guide students to key concepts in your notes
• Work calls — show colleagues exactly what you are referring to
• Video & screen recordings — make your explanations clearer and more dynamic
• Presentations — replace a physical laser pointer, directly inside your vault
• Code / note reviews — highlight bugs, tasks, or ideas to remember
• Diagramming on the fly — enable Persist + Remember to sketch full diagrams that survive across sessions
• Live annotation — underline, circle, and connect ideas in real time

📝 Technical notes

• The plugin uses an SVG overlay with pointer-events: none, so it does not interfere with normal Obsidian use (clicking links, selecting text, using menus…)
• The mouse cursor is hidden only while the laser is active
• Obsidian's context menu is temporarily disabled in laser mode to allow quick right-click deactivation
• Drawing calls preventDefault() so text underneath is never selected while you trace
• The floating toolbar ignores laser drawing events — you can click its buttons safely
• The laser pointer is hidden while dragging the toolbar to avoid visual clutter
• When Persist trails is enabled, all trails are automatically cleared when laser mode is exited (unless Remember drawings is also on)
• Remember drawings saves trail geometry, color, width, opacity, and glow data to disk and restores it on re-entry
• The eraser mode temporarily enables pointer-events: auto on the SVG overlay to allow trail selection
• Auto reading mode saves the original view state (source/preview) and restores it on deactivation

📋 Changelog

1.0.2

• Customizable preset colors — add, remove, or recolor the dots shown on the toolbar from Settings; starts out matching the built-in colors, with a button to reset back to them
• Rectangle tool with a filled/outline toggle
• Straight line tool
• Lower stroke hardness floor — the hardness slider now goes down to 5% in 5% steps (previously 10% in 10% steps)
• Minimum Obsidian version raised to 1.13.0 (from 1.0.0), required by the declarative settings list used for the new preset color editor

1.0.1

• Preset colors — 11 fixed color dots on the toolbar
• Persist trails — trails can stay on screen until laser mode is exited instead of always fading
• Remember drawings — trails, rectangles, and lines can be saved on exit and restored on re-entry

1.0.0

• Freehand trail drawing that fades after a set duration
• Floating toolbar
• Eraser mode
• Clear All button

📄 License

MIT