Claudian

A quiet Obsidian theme where your writing comes first and the interface stays out of the way.

Philosophy

A note-taking app should feel like a blank page, not a control panel.

• Writing comes first. Everything else waits until you need it.
• Quiet over loud. Hierarchy comes from type and spacing, not color or boxes.
• Calm over clever. Nothing should move, flash, or ask for attention while you think.
• Restraint over options. Good defaults beat a long settings page.

Install

From the Obsidian community

Open Claudian on the Obsidian community site, and install it from there. You can also open Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage in Obsidian, search for Claudian, and select Install and use.

Manually

1. Create a Claudian folder inside your vault's .obsidian/themes/ directory.
2. Copy theme.css and manifest.json into it.
3. In Obsidian, open Settings → Appearance → Themes and select Claudian.

Requires Obsidian 1.13.7 or later. For translucent dark mode, turn on Settings → Appearance → Translucent window (macOS and Windows).

Settings

With the Style Settings plugin, open Style Settings → Claudian to adjust:

• Background Opacity: how translucent dark mode is (default 30%).
• Hide Tab Bar: Dynamic (default), Always, or Never.
• Heading level markers, header hashtags, image captions, and link underlines.
• De-emphasized file properties and embedded backlinks.
• Visibility of the right sidebar button.

Development

Edit src/claudian.css, then run npm run build (Node.js, no dependencies) to regenerate theme.css with the license header. The source has three sections: base styles, the left sidebar, and extras.

Releasing

1. Update version in manifest.json and package.json (format x.y.z), then run npm run build.
2. Commit, then push a tag with the same version, for example git tag 0.1.0 && git push origin 0.1.0.
3. The release workflow checks the tag against manifest.json and publishes a GitHub release with theme.css and manifest.json attached.

License and credits

Claudian is released under the MIT License, © 2026 Yishen Tu.

Claudian builds on the work of two MIT-licensed Obsidian themes. Their copyright notices are kept in licenses/ and embedded in theme.css:

• Meridian by mvahaste (v1.19.1): the foundation for colors, typography, and the editor. Meridian is itself derived from Apex. License
• Baseline by svnaxis (v4.0.0): the left sidebar and tab layout. License

Thank you to both authors.