Siden

Siden adds annotations to Markdown notes and PDFs in Obsidian.

Select a passage, write a Markdown comment in the sidebar, and return to it later. Markdown annotations can also appear beside the text as margin cards.

Features

• Annotate selected Markdown and PDF text
• Review, search, edit, resolve, reopen, and delete annotations in one sidebar
• Highlight annotated passages
• Show responsive margin cards in Live Preview and Reading View
• Navigate between sidebar comments and their source passages
• Keep source notes and PDFs unchanged
• Store annotations as human-readable Markdown
• Recover Markdown anchors after edits when they can be identified safely

PDF annotations use sidebar comments and highlights only. Margin cards are available for Markdown notes.

Installation

Once Siden is accepted into the community plugin directory, install it from Settings → Community plugins → Browse.

For manual installation, download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the same GitHub release and copy them into:

<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/siden/

Reload Obsidian, then enable Siden under Settings → Community plugins.

Usage

Annotate Markdown

1. Select text in Live Preview.
2. Right-click and choose Add Siden annotation, or run Siden: Add annotation to selection.
3. Write the comment in the Siden sidebar.
4. Press Ctrl/Cmd+Enter to save.

Annotate a PDF

1. Select text in Obsidian's PDF viewer.
2. Right-click and choose Add Siden annotation, or run Siden: Add annotation to PDF selection.
3. Write and save the comment in the sidebar.

Add a document comment

Run Siden: Add annotation to current document without selecting text.

Open the sidebar

Run Siden: Open annotations or use the message icon in the ribbon.

The sidebar can show annotations for the current file or the entire vault. Use its search box and status filter to find open, resolved, or orphaned annotations.

Settings

Siden lets you configure:

• Highlight visibility, color, opacity, and style
• Margin visibility, side, and maximum width
• Automatic narrow-pane fallback
• Resolved annotation visibility
• Forced wrapping for very long words, links, and code

Margins automatically choose the side with more space. They are hidden when the Siden sidebar is open or when neither side has enough room.

Storage

Annotations are stored as individual Markdown files under:

.siden/annotations/

Deleting an annotation moves it to .siden/trash/. Source Markdown and PDF files are never modified.

Run Siden: Export all annotations to Markdown to create a readable export under .siden/exports/.

Privacy and permissions

• Siden does not collect telemetry, display ads, require an account, or make network requests.
• Annotation data stays inside the vault in .siden/.
• Siden reads selected source files and writes only its annotation, trash, and export files. It does not access files outside the vault.
• Siden does not update itself. Updates are delivered through Obsidian or manually installed GitHub releases.

PDF selection and highlight positioning integrate with Obsidian's internal PDF viewer DOM because the public plugin API does not expose those features. An Obsidian update can therefore require a compatibility update to Siden.

Development

Requires Node.js 24 or newer.

npm ci
npm run lint
npm test
npm run build

The production build writes main.js to the repository root.

Releasing

1. Run npm version patch, npm version minor, or npm version major.
2. Push the commit and its numeric tag, for example 0.2.0 (without a v prefix).
3. GitHub Actions validates the tag, lints, tests, and builds the plugin, then creates a draft release containing main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.
4. Review and publish the draft release.

The version in package.json, manifest.json, the Git tag, and the GitHub release must match exactly.