Remark My Words

Read a PDF. Mark a passage. Give your thoughts room.

Remark My Words is an Obsidian community plugin for reading and annotating PDFs. Write categorized comments beside passages and arrange every PDF page with its comments on one interactive canvas. Use it for manuals, reports, books, articles, and other PDF documents in your vault.

Canvas preview with a sample document in the browser test harness.

Read closely, think spatially

Use the default categories or create your own categories for each annotation. Each comment can have a title, description, and tags. Page thumbnails and document-wide notes are included.

Install

Requires Obsidian 1.13.7 or later, using an up-to-date app or desktop installer. Mobile installation is enabled for testing. iPhone/iPad testing requires iOS/iPadOS 17.4 or later; compatibility with the actual Obsidian mobile app is still being verified. Browser simulations cover PDF rendering and basic comment workflows, but do not certify native text selection, the on-screen keyboard, or vault storage.

Install Remark My Words from Settings → Community plugins → Browse. The PDF renderer is bundled with the plugin, so no additional download is needed.

Get started

1. After installing, enable Remark My Words under Settings > Community plugins.
2. Run Remark My Words: Open PDF from the command palette or click the pen-and-file ribbon icon. The active PDF opens immediately; otherwise choose a PDF from the vault. You can also right-click a PDF and choose Open in Remark My Words.
3. Choose Reading mode for one page at a time or Canvas mode for the whole document. Canvas initially fits the first page; Fit PDF and comments opens the full overview. Returning from Reading restores your previous Canvas camera. Both modes support passage selection and comments.
4. Select text, click a category in the floating toolbar, and fill in Add comment. Right-clicking selected text also offers categories.
5. In Reading, click a highlighted passage to open its comment, then use Edit or Delete as needed. Read page comments opens a dockable right sidebar that follows page navigation and supports editing and deletion.
6. In Canvas, click to select one item; Ctrl/⌘-click or Shift-click adds or removes items. Drag a page by its title bar or a comment by its header; dragging a selected item moves the whole selection. Drag a selection rectangle on the background, holding Ctrl/⌘ or Shift to extend the selection. On touchscreens, enable Select multiple items and tap the items. Group the selection from Canvas actions or the right-click menu. Drag the group title to move its members together. The page thumbnails on the left jump to each page's current position. Rearrange pages and comments stacks pages vertically with comments on both sides, calculating spacing from their heights and preserving groups.

Canvas uses the same PDF text layers, highlights, comments, and passage connections as Reading. Right-click opens Obsidian menus for the page, comment, group, or background. The Canvas actions toolbar menu provides grouping and selection actions on touchscreens. Undo/Redo canvas change, next to page navigation, restores layout operations; Snap to grid and objects enables alignment, with Alt temporarily bypassing it while dragging. Double-click a group title to rename it; Ungroup selection keeps its members.

The first page becomes usable while the remaining page sizes are prepared in the background. Large comment collections only build cards near the visible area, and recently viewed pages use a limited cache for faster back navigation.

The layout is saved in the existing annotation JSON file. Older .remark.canvas files from version 0.3.0 remain untouched and can still be opened in Obsidian. Their independent edits are not imported into this unified PDF view.

Navigate pages with thumbnails, arrows, or the page number. In Reading, mouse-wheel scrolling past the bottom opens the next page at its top, or past the top opens the previous page at its bottom. On touchscreens, use the page controls to change pages. Deleting a comment asks for confirmation.

Customize

Click Customize in the PDF toolbar. The same manager is available from Settings > Remark My Words and the command palette. Choose the plugin interface colors for the background, panels, borders, text, secondary text, and accent states. You can also add a category, change its name, color, or icon, move it up or down, or delete it; then choose Save. Category order applies to selection tools, filters, and comment menus. Cancel leaves the previous settings unchanged.

The initial categories remain Claim, Evidence, Method, Concept, Limitation, and Note. Changes apply across PDFs in this vault and survive restarting Obsidian. Keep at least one category. Deleting a category removes it from new comment choices; existing comments keep their category and remain editable. An existing deleted category appears as (deleted) in the comment editor.

Your data stays in your vault

The plugin does not send PDFs, comments, or notes to an external service. It has no accounts, telemetry, or paid features. Normal reading and annotation do not make network requests. Plugin installation and updates are handled by Obsidian and GitHub.

Comments and notes are stored beside the PDF in a readable JSON file:

document.pdf
document.pdf.obsidian-annot.json

The original PDF is not modified. Keep the PDF and its annotation file together when moving or backing up your documents. Renaming the PDF currently requires renaming its annotation file to match. Your vault's existing sync service can sync these files; the plugin does not provide its own synchronization.

Keyboard shortcuts

On touchscreens, spread or pinch two fingers over the PDF to zoom around their midpoint. In Reading, one finger scrolls the page; in Canvas, drag the background or use the hand tool to pan with one finger.

Export selected comments

In Canvas, select one or more comments, pages, or groups, then choose Export selection… from Canvas actions or the right-click menu. Use Select all pages and comments first to include the entire document's comments. A selected page includes every comment on that page, including comments hidden by category filters. Selecting both a page and one of its comments exports that comment once. The dialog shows the number of comments and pages in the selection.

Choose one combined Markdown file (organized by PDF page, with a heading for each comment) or one Markdown file per comment. Exports include titles, quotes, comment text, category labels, tags, a link to the PDF page, and a link back to the original comment in Remark My Words. General document notes are optional; in individual-file mode they get their own file. The folder defaults to a new notes folder next to the PDF; leave the folder field empty to use the vault root.

Existing notes are never overwritten: repeated exports and duplicate names get numbered file names. If writing fails partway through, Retry export continues with the remaining files while the dialog is open. Canceling after a partial export keeps the files already created. Exports are independent snapshots; editing them does not update the PDF comments. The PDF and annotation sidecar remain unchanged. Exported Markdown notes can be added to a native Obsidian Canvas.

Current limits

• The unified Canvas is a plugin view with PDF annotation tools and Obsidian menus. It does not embed Obsidian's complete Canvas editor or support arbitrary native Canvas cards.
• Undo/redo covers layout changes in the current session. Comment deletion still requires confirmation and cannot be undone.
• Scanned documents need an existing text layer; OCR is not included.
• Annotations live in the JSON file, not as native annotations inside the PDF.
• Concurrent edits to the same PDF from multiple views or devices are not merged.
• Mobile installation is available for testing; compatibility in the actual Obsidian iOS and Android apps has not yet been verified.

Feedback and development

Report a bug or request a feature. For bugs, include your Obsidian version, plugin version, operating system, and steps to reproduce. Share only non-sensitive sample documents.

• Contributing
• Development, architecture, and data format
• Release and Community directory submission guide
• Changelog

License

Remark My Words is released under the MIT License. PDF rendering uses Mozilla's PDF.js, licensed under Apache 2.0. License notices are retained in the distributed bundle. See third-party notices.

This is an independent community project, not an official Obsidian product.