PDF Thumbnails

Full online PDF toolkit: https://minopdf.com

Render ![[file.pdf]] embeds in Obsidian as a lazy page-thumbnail grid with an in-note lightbox. Powered by pdf.js via @kbmjj123/pdf-thumbnails-core.

Features

• Reading-view auto-render: ![[file.pdf]] embeds become a paginated thumbnail grid; click any page to open it in a lightbox.
• In-note lightbox: prev/next navigation, Esc or click-outside to close — no need to open the PDF separately.
• Lazy rendering: only visible pages are decoded; large PDFs stay smooth while scrolling.
• 4 settings: toggle the override, grid columns, thumbnail width, and initial page count.
• Fully local: PDF decoding runs inside your vault. No telemetry, no accounts, no cloud sync.
• zh / en i18n: the UI follows your Obsidian interface language.

Example

Drop a PDF into your vault and embed it in a note:

![[report.pdf]]

In reading view the embed is replaced by a thumbnail grid; click a page to zoom into the lightbox.

Screenshots

Place images in assets/screenshots/ using the exact filenames below (broken images before they are added are expected placeholders).

Settings

The settings tab offers 4 options:

1. Override PDF embeds — on by default; off restores the native viewer.
2. Columns — number of thumbnail columns in the grid.
3. Thumbnail width — width of each thumbnail in pixels.
4. Initial pages — pages rendered on first load; the rest lazy-load on scroll.

Privacy

All PDF decoding happens locally inside your vault — no telemetry, no accounts, no cloud sync.

One exception: the pdf.js decode worker is loaded from jsDelivr (a public CDN) on first use, so the very first render needs network access. Nothing is uploaded — only the local file is decoded.

Install

From the community store (recommended)

1. Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for PDF Thumbnails
2. Install and enable

Manual / BRAT

Download main.js, manifest.json, styles.css from the GitHub Release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/pdf-thumbnails/.

To beta-test via BRAT, add the repository kbmjj123/obsidian-pdf-thumbnails.

Support

If this tool helps you, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/kbmjj123

License

MIT