Simple Gantt

A calm, beautiful Gantt chart for Obsidian.

Plan a project, or a whole dissertation year, on one timeline. Your plan stays a normal note, and one click gives you a print-ready chart for your report.

See it in action · Features · Quick add · Keyboard & mouse · Your data · Install · Support

• ⚡ One line to add anything. Type Interviews 3–28 May #data and it lands in the right phase on the right dates. Deadlines, milestones, places and journal notes work the same way.
• 🖐️ Feels like Canvas. Drag empty space to move around, drag bars to move them, select several at once, and link steps so a delay pushes what comes after. Ticking something off gets you confetti.
• 📄 Just a note. Each timeline is a Markdown note with readable YAML. It syncs, works with git, and is still there if you ever uninstall the plugin. No accounts, no network.

See it in action

Move around like on a Canvas

Drag any empty space to move around the chart (or use the middle mouse button). The tools in the chart's top-left corner switch what a drag does: ✋ move around (H), ⬚ select (V) or ✚ draw tasks (D).

Add things in one line

The live preview shows exactly what you'll get before you press Enter.

Drag to move, resize and push

While you drag, guides show the new dates. Drop a bar anywhere: on another row, in another phase, even on top of something else, and it stays where you put it (nothing else jumps out of the way). Hold Shift to keep it in its own phase, or Alt to move everything after it too. Right-click a row and choose Arrange rows automatically to go back to automatic placement.

Link steps so the order holds

Drag the dot at the end of a bar onto what comes next. Move the first step and the next one follows. Click a line to detach it.

Select several, like on a Canvas

Pick the select tool (V), or hold Shift and drag on an empty spot, to draw a box. Drag one item and the whole group moves.

Right-click menus and renaming in place

Every item, link and row has a menu. Double-click an item (or press F2) to rename it right on the chart.

Tick things off, then ask "how did it go?"

Confetti, a mood and a line of reflection, collected in a journal you can save as a note for your reflective chapter.

Zoom and fold

Year, quarter or month, with smooth zooming. Fold a phase into one summary bar, or press F to fold everything.

A panel in your sidebar

The overview panel shows your next deadline, what's on now and what's coming up. Click anything to jump to it on the timeline. Drag its icon to any tab group in the sidebars to put it where you like, for example next to Files at the top, or into the bottom half.

Print it, your way

Export → Print / PDF… opens a print window with a live preview. Pick A4, A3 or Letter, landscape or portrait, how much room there is between the rows and how big the text is, and what to show: phase lengths under each phase's name (its working time, without vacations and buffers), a milestone table (every milestone with its date, earliest first), a vacations and buffers table (each one with its pattern, dates and length), task dates, a Today line, arrows (also the long ones across phases, as on the board), buffer and vacation names with their dates (above the bar, below it, or wherever there's room), Plan B names, week dates, the subtitle, and a countdown to the next deadline. By default the page only says things that stay true, so it still reads right weeks later: lengths and dates, not "in 4 weeks" (a countdown can be switched on). Names never lose their dates to make room: when two would collide, one moves under the bar. Time is counted one way throughout the page: in weeks ("in 20 weeks", "2 weeks 3 days"), in days, or mixed (weeks, then months). Your choices are saved with the timeline. Save PDF writes a print-ready PDF and opens it; print it at 100%.

The page itself is kept clean: deadlines in red in one row at the top, each with a line through the whole chart; milestones as bold diamonds with their dates; no legend, because the picture explains itself. No label ever runs off the page.

Import a plan

Export → Import… (or just paste several lines into the quick-add bar) brings in a table from Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, a CSV or Markdown table, a Mermaid gantt chart from a note, or a plain list. You see a preview first, and the imported items arrive selected.

Critical path and plan vs. reality

C highlights the chain with the least slack before a deadline. B compares today's chart with the plan you saved, showing where everything was planned and how far it moved.

Features

Print export	Dark, quarter zoom
Journal	Plan B
Editing	Features on/off

Quick add

Type a title and a date; everything else is optional.

• Dates: 15 Feb, Feb 15, February, Jan–Mar 2027, 2027-02-15, 15/2/2027 (day first), today, tomorrow.
• Years: if you leave the year out, it's picked so the date falls inside the project.
• Types from words: "deadline" or "due" makes a deadline; "meeting", "conference" or "viva" makes a key date.
• Enter adds the item, Shift+Enter adds it and opens it, and / jumps to the input.

Keyboard and mouse

Where your data lives

New timelines are created in the Gantt/ folder (you can change this in settings). A timeline note looks like this:

---
simple-gantt: true
---

```simple-gantt
title: PhD Dissertation — Year 2
start: '2026-09-01'
end: '2027-08-31'
phases:
  - id: literature
    name: Literature review
    color: blue
items:
  - title: Systematic literature review
    type: task
    phase: literature
    start: '2026-10-01'
    end: '2026-12-18'
    progress: 40
    planB:
      by: '2026-12-01'
      title: Narrow the review to 2015 onwards
    id: lit-review
  - title: Research question agreed
    type: milestone
    phase: literature
    start: '2026-10-21'
    done: true
    doneOn: '2026-10-26'
    review:
      mood: 4
      text: Took two extra meetings, but it's much sharper now.
    id: question
  - title: Christmas vacation
    type: task
    phase: literature
    start: '2026-12-21'
    end: '2027-01-06'
    buffer: true
    pattern: dots
    id: xmas
checkin: fortnightly
baseline:
  saved: '2026-09-01'
  items:
    lit-review: 2026-10-01/2026-12-04
    question: 2026-10-21
```

• Hand edits: you can edit the YAML yourself; the board reloads.
• Embedding: copy the block into any other note to show the chart there.
• Privacy: everything stays in your vault. The plugin makes no network requests.

Install

• From Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Simple Gantt, then Install and Enable.
• With BRAT (to try new versions first): add the beta plugin Nexziz/simple-gantt.
• By hand: download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release, put them in <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/simple-gantt/, and enable Simple Gantt under Settings → Community plugins.

Then click the timeline button in the left ribbon, or run Simple Gantt: New dissertation timeline from the command palette.

Commands: Open timeline · Show overview in the sidebar · Import into the open timeline · Print or save as PDF · New dissertation timeline · New blank timeline · Open this note as a timeline

Development

npm install
npm run dev          # rebuilds main.js on change; symlink this folder into a test vault's plugins dir
npm run build        # type-check + production build
npm test             # unit tests + an end-to-end run in Chromium against an in-memory Obsidian mock
npm run screenshots  # regenerates the screenshots in docs/images
npm run gifs         # records the GIFs in docs/gifs and the hero images (needs ffmpeg)

dev/preview.html (after npm run preview) runs the board in a plain browser with sample data.

• src/core/ holds the logic: dates, the quick-add parser, layout, links and slack, the saved plan, SVG rendering, and YAML (de)serialisation.
• src/ui/board.ts is the interactive board.
• src/view.ts and src/main.ts connect it all to Obsidian.

Support

Simple Gantt is free and open source. If it helps you plan your dissertation or your project, you can say thanks with a coffee. It keeps the updates coming ☕

Bug reports and ideas are welcome too, in Issues.

License

MIT