Section Meter

Section Meter is an Obsidian plugin that shows reading-time badges beside markdown headings and the note title in the editor.

Each heading counts the readable content in its section. A section starts at the heading and ends before the next heading of the same or higher rank, so parent headings include the text in lower-rank child headings.

Vibecoded with Codex by Martino Wong.

Features

• Editor badges for ATX headings from # through ######.
• A note-title badge showing whole-note counts and reading time.
• Whole-note stats in Obsidian's bottom status bar.
• While text is selected, the nearest heading badge above the selection shows selected-text stats.
• Selected-text stats can appear in Obsidian's bottom status bar.
• Parent sections include nested child-heading content.
• Readable prose counting that excludes frontmatter, code blocks, inline code, embeds, comments, and HTML.
• Minute-and-second timing labels.
• Selectable badge text.
• Toggle controls for word count, timing, and character count labels.
• Separate status-bar toggles for whole-note stats, selected-text stats, words, timing, and characters.
• Character counts include spaces by default, with a toggle to exclude spaces.
• Configurable single-character separator between enabled label parts.
• Visible Target: ... lines for whole-note and per-heading writing goals.
• Target progress badges with compact target labels and a compact bar while keeping the normal section stats visible.
• A reading-speed slider with guidance for read-aloud, typical, and fast reading paces.
• A configurable overage warning threshold for writing targets.
• A target label setting for count labels such as 120 / 250 w or percentage labels such as 48%.
• Settings for minimum word count and empty-section visibility.

Writing targets

Add a visible Target: ... line before the first heading for a whole-note target, or inside a heading section for that section's target. Target lines are ignored by the word, character, and reading-time counts.

Target: 1200 words

# Draft

Target: 250 words
Section text...

## Shorter subsection

Target: 1800 characters
More text...

## Timed section

Target: 3 min
More text...

Supported targets include words, characters or chars, and reading time such as 3 min, 3m, or 2m 30s.

Target labels use compact units like w for words and c for characters. Target bars move from grey to yellow to light green as progress increases, turn green when the target is reached, and turn red at the configured overage threshold. The status bar also shows the current section target as Target: ... when the cursor is inside a targeted section.

Future ideas

• Optional reading-view badges in addition to editor badges.
• Per-note or per-folder words-per-minute overrides.
• A click-to-copy action for heading badges if CodeMirror text selection remains awkward.
• More precise rendered-text counting using Obsidian's markdown parser.
• Optional compact labels such as 1817 chars instead of 1817 characters.

Known Limitations

• Section Meter is editor-only for now; reading view support is deferred.
• Counts are based on fast local Markdown cleanup rather than Obsidian's full Markdown renderer.
• Dynamic plugin output from tools such as Dataview, rendered transclusions, and complex math may not match exactly what appears on screen.

License

Section Meter is released under the MIT License.

Section Meter is an independent community plugin and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Obsidian.

Manual Installation

Download or build the plugin files, then copy these files into .obsidian/plugins/section-meter in your vault:

• main.js
• manifest.json
• styles.css

Restart Obsidian or reload plugins, then enable Section Meter from Community plugins.

Development

Install dependencies:

npm install

Run tests:

npm test

Build the plugin:

npm run build

For local Obsidian testing, copy or symlink this folder into a vault's .obsidian/plugins/section-meter directory, run npm run build, then enable the plugin in Obsidian.