Width Wizard

An Obsidian plugin with two jobs:

1. Line width. Make your notes use more (or all) of the screen instead of Obsidian's narrow 700px text column.
2. Table column width. Drag the border between two table columns to resize them, in both Live Preview and Reading view.

Line width

Obsidian's "Readable line length" keeps text in a column about 700px wide. Width Wizard replaces that number:

• Custom width: pick any width from 400 to 3000px.
• Full width: use the whole pane.

It works in Live Preview, Source mode and Reading view. The command Toggle custom line width switches it on and off.

Resizing table columns

Hover over the border between two columns. The cursor changes and a guide line appears. Then:

Command: Reset column widths in this note (in The note mode this removes the width comments from the note).

Resizing is for mouse and trackpad. On touch devices, saved widths are shown but can't be changed.

Where widths are saved

Markdown tables have no place for widths, so Width Wizard offers two options. Choose one in the settings under Save column widths in.

Plugin data (default). Your notes are never touched. Widths are kept in the plugin's own data.json and follow a note when it is renamed or moved inside Obsidian. Each table is recognised by its header row plus its order among tables with identical headers, so adding, removing or reordering other tables, editing cells, and renaming a header all keep your widths. The catch: if a note is renamed or moved outside Obsidian (Finder, a git pull, a sync tool), its widths are lost, and widths don't come along if you copy a note to another vault.

The note. Width Wizard adds a one-line comment under a table once you resize it:

| Name | Role | Notes |
| ---- | ---- | ----- |
| Ada  | Dev  | ...   |

<!-- width-wizard: 120, 90, 300 -->

The widths now travel with the file: renaming, moving, copying, syncing and git all keep them, and so does copying the table into another note. In exchange, your note changes whenever you finish dragging a border. Live Preview would normally show that comment as grey text, so Width Wizard hides it there completely, together with the blank line after it, which means a resized table takes up the same space as before. To see or edit the comment, switch to Source mode. You can turn the hiding off in the settings. The comment must be the first thing below the table (blank lines in between are fine), and the plugin removes it again when you double-click a border or use Reset column widths in this note.

Switching between the two doesn't move anything: widths saved one way are kept, but not shown, while the other way is selected.

Limitations

• With The note storage, the hidden comment lines are skipped by the cursor in Live Preview. If you press Backspace twice at the start of the paragraph right below a resized table, the second press can merge that paragraph onto the comment line; the comment then no longer parses and appears as plain text. Undo, or tidy it up in Source mode.
• A table inside an embedded section (![[note#Heading]]) shows its saved widths but can't be resized there. Open the note itself to resize it. (In The note mode it only shows widths if the comment is inside the embedded section.)
• Tables nested inside a table cell or produced by other plugins (e.g. Dataview) aren't supported.
• Columns are sized in pixels. A table wider than the pane scrolls horizontally.

Installation

Width Wizard needs Obsidian 1.5.0 or newer. It makes no network requests and collects no data.

From the community plugins list

1. Open Settings → Community plugins. If you see "Restricted mode", turn it off.
2. Select Browse, search for Width Wizard, then Install and Enable.

Manually

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Put them in a folder named width-wizard inside <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/.
3. Reload Obsidian, then enable Width Wizard under Settings → Community plugins.

Development

npm install
npm run dev     # rebuild main.js on every change
npm test        # unit tests (table parsing, width storage, edit planning)
npm run lint    # Obsidian's plugin review rules
npm run build   # type-check + production bundle

For live iteration, symlink the project folder into your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ as width-wizard, run npm run dev, and use the Hot Reload plugin.

License

MIT