oblogger

oblogger is a side-panel plugin for Obsidian that focuses on tags as the primary organizational tool. oblogger lets you choose the tag groups you want to display as well as some pre-defined groups such as dailies, recent documents, files, and all of your untagged documents (these pre-defined groups can be hidden)

features

• tag explorer
  • custom note icons using frontmatter
  • support for obsidian bookmarks
    • bookmarked notes/files will be denoted with a bookmark icon
    • bookmarked notes/files will appear at the top of their respectve group
  • recent list
    • status indicator reveals notes that haven't been tagged in any way
    • can cycle between 5, 10, and 15 recents in list
  • non-md file list
    • organized automatically regardless of folder
    • different sort groups
  • daily notes section for sorting notes tagged "#daily" by year/month/day
    • "#daily" can be changed to any tag you'd like to assoicate with daily notes
  • untagged note list
  • custom tag groups let you add any of your tags as a group
    • supports adding "all tags" group
    • supports tag nesting
    • supports multiple tags per file and multiple files per tag
    • supports tags in body and frontmatter
  • use a photo as an avatar to add some personality to the side panel
    • default avatar will show first letter of vault

roadmap

• multi-select
• expanded frontmatter editing

faq

• why can't I rename notes/files from the side panel?
  • because it's hard :(. if you figure out how to link into the FileExplorer core plugin in a clean way, please let us know!
• how do I remove the avatar picture?
  • you have to go to your data.json for oblogger and remove the avatarPath setting. sowwy :( (feature incoming)
• can I at least hide my avatar?
  • yup! click on the nav bar gear. you can hide all sorts of stuff.
• how do i set a custom document icon?
  • add icon: "..." to a file's frontmatter. the ... can be almost anything from https://lucide.dev eg: try adding icon: "dog" to a file :)
• I created a daily for yesterday and now my dailies are out of order?
  • by default, we use the file.ctime to sort the dailies. However, you can override the date by adding either created: YYYY-MM-DD or day: YYYY-MM-DD to the frontmatter.
• how can I give you guys money for all your hard work?
  • thank you so much! see buy me a coffee

how to build the plugin

quick commands (will not work without npm but putting up top for quick access)

npm run dev for debug and watching

npm run build for release

install npm using nvm

as of (2026-05-01), nvm is the currently suggested way of doing this (according to https://nodejs.org/en/download)

# Download and install nvm:
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.4/install.sh | bash

# in lieu of restarting the shell
\. "$HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh"

# Download and install Node.js:
nvm install 24

# Verify the Node.js version:
node -v # Should print "v24.15.0".

# Verify npm version:
npm -v # Should print "11.12.1".

setting up a dev environment

this should allow you to make changes to CSS files and see them update in obsidian in our test vault

• clone this repo using git. the rest of the documentation will assume it's at "~/Projects/obsidian-oblogger"

set up gnome builder

• create the build directory: mkdir ~/Projects/obsidian-oblogger/build
• install gnome builder
• open the repo as an existing project in gnome builder
  • start gnome builder
  • click "select a folder" at the bottom
  • select the cloned folder location (~/Projects/obsidian-oblogger)
• click the build button
• go to configure project in the dropdown next to the build button
• click commands
• click create command
• call it "dev"
• the command should be npm run dev
• set the working directory to ~/Projects/obsidian-oblogger/build
• save the command window which should take you back to the project configuration window.
• on the left, select "Application" and change "Run Command" to "dev" (if you don't see dev, try closing and re-opening builder. if you still don't see it, start this section again. if you still don't see it, these instructions are likely out of date.
• close the configure project window
• click the play button and this will
• whenever you save a file, it should run the command and refresh the build artifacts in the build directory

setup the test vault

• install obsidian
• open ~/Projects/obsidian-oblogger/test-vault in obsidian and trust community plugins
• open community plugins and ensure that "hot reload" plugin is installed and enabled

at this point, you may have oblogger already showing up, but ensure it isn't the version from obsidian's manifest or your local changes won't stick.

if you want to be really sure,

• click the folder icon next to "installed plugins" to open nautilus at the plugins location
• if there are any oblogger folders
  • make sure to backup the data.json if you don't want to lose your settings
  • delete the oblogger folders
• right click open space in the folder and "open in console" to open console at that location
• enter ln -s ../../../build oblogger to create a link from plugins to the build directory
• back in nautilus, there should now be a link called "oblogger" in the plugins folder. follow the link and if there is no file called .hotreload, go back to the console and enter touch oblogger/.hotreload to create an empty file that enables the hot reload plugin to auto-refresh obsidian when the plugin's files change
• back in obsidian, click the refresh button next to installed plugins and then find and enable the oblogger plugin

at this point, you should be able to start making changes to files in css/*.css and when you save them, obsidian should refresh and show your changes

you can test this by opening css/pane_tab_content.css finding .greeter-vault-name and changing display: ~flex? to display: none. when you save, the vault name in the oblogger pane under the avatar should disappear.

whenever you close builder (or click the stop button) you can just click the play button again to re-enable "change detection" deployment

how to release

• update the version in package.json
• from .../obsidian-oblogger/, execute npm run version
• run git add package.json
• verify that git status and git diff --cached show that three files are being changed with matching versions:
  • package.json
  • versions.json
  • manifest.json
• run git commit -m "version bump"
• push the change with git push
• if you are on a branch, merge the branch into main via PR or directly
• run git tag {version} where version is the new version text without anything else. ie: git tag 1.0.2
• run git push --tags
• execute npm run build
• create a release using GitHub for that tag
• attach 3 files as binaries for the new release from .../obsidian-oblogger/build
  • main.js
  • manifest.json
  • style.css
• now that...
  • there is a new highest tag version number on GitHub
  • that tag is attached to the three binaries
  • the version in the manifest.json matche the version number of the tag
  • ... obsidian will pick up the new version

acknowledgments

we want to thank the obsidian plugin-dev discord server for all the help they gave us when we felt stuck. if you're reading this and working on a theme, plugin, or just want to engage more with the obsidian community, do yourself a favor and join that discord channel.

buy me a coffee