Top 10 Obsidian Plugins I Can't Do Without
Based on Nicole van der Hoeven's video on YouTube. If you like this content, support the original creators by watching, liking and subscribing to their content.
Calendar adds a month view plus daily notes and optional weekly review pages, compensating for the lack of a native calendar in Obsidian.
Briefing
Obsidian’s “missing piece” for many users isn’t the core note-taking interface—it’s community plugins that turn a plain vault into a searchable, publishable, and actively reviewed knowledge system. After initially finding Obsidian unintuitive, the creator describes switching from frustration to a workflow built on more than 10,000 notes across multiple vaults, crediting plugins for the change. The tradeoff is clear: note security remains the user’s responsibility, so installing third-party extensions requires comfort with that risk.
The top plugin is Calendar, described as essential because Obsidian lacks a native calendar view. Calendar adds a month view plus daily notes, and it can also generate weekly review pages when enabled. For extra customization, the creator pairs it with Fantasy Calendar—originally designed for tabletop role-playing use, but repurposed here as a content calendar that offers more control than Calendar alone.
Dataview is framed as the biggest shift in how notes are structured and queried. By using YAML front matter (metadata) to define custom fields, Dataview lets users search and filter notes like a database. It supports a SQL-like query language and also allows JavaScript, enabling everything from tracking meetings and people to cataloging books and tools.
Several plugins focus on readability and workflow speed. Editor Syntax Highlight improves code legibility inside notes by applying language-specific highlighting—useful for anyone pasting code while developing or documenting solutions. Outliner brings a task-list style interface with keyboard shortcuts for moving items up/down and indenting or unindenting, easing a transition from Rome Research’s more structured bullet format.
For visual planning, Kanban is recommended even by someone who doesn’t like kanban for task management. The practical use here is a content pipeline: each card represents a piece of content (code, workshop sections, blog posts, videos), with custom columns and embedded images to make planning more tangible.
Periodic Notes supports Obsidian’s philosophy of revisiting and processing knowledge rather than only capturing it. It provides scheduled review cycles—daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly—helping the user step back and reassess goals, including use cases like OCR and objective setting.
Publishing and synchronization round out the list. Obsidian Publish (premium) enables quick publishing of selected notes to a custom domain, reducing “inertia” between writing and learning in public. Readwise Official connects highlights from Readwise—covering ebooks, web articles, audiobooks, tweets, and PDFs—into the vault for later analysis. Obsidian Sync (premium, optional) replaces Dropbox for multi-device syncing across a laptop, iPad, and Samsung mobile, since Dropbox can’t sync between those devices in the needed way. Finally, Templater extends Obsidian’s core templating by running JavaScript in the vault, effectively “opening up” automation beyond basic templates.
Overall, the list positions plugins as the mechanism for turning Obsidian into a living system: structured data, faster editing, visual planning, scheduled reflection, and low-friction publishing and syncing.
Cornell Notes
Community plugins are presented as the key upgrade that makes Obsidian feel intuitive and powerful—especially for someone managing thousands of notes. Calendar adds daily notes and weekly reviews via a month view. Dataview turns YAML metadata into a searchable, database-like system using a SQL-like query language and JavaScript. Periodic Notes supports scheduled review cycles to help turn captured knowledge into processed learning. Publishing and syncing plugins—Obsidian Publish, Readwise Official, and Obsidian Sync—reduce friction for learning in public and keeping notes consistent across devices.
Why is Calendar treated as a must-have rather than a nice-to-have?
How does Dataview turn notes into something closer to a database?
What’s the practical purpose of Editor Syntax Highlight in an Obsidian workflow?
Why recommend Kanban if the creator doesn’t like kanban for tasks?
What role does Periodic Notes play in Obsidian’s “process, don’t just capture” philosophy?
How do Obsidian Publish, Readwise Official, and Obsidian Sync fit together?
Review Questions
- Which plugin(s) convert note metadata into searchable or queryable structures, and what inputs do they require?
- How do Periodic Notes and Calendar work together to support recurring review habits?
- What automation capabilities does Templater add beyond Obsidian’s core templating, and why does that matter for scaling workflows?
Key Points
- 1
Calendar adds a month view plus daily notes and optional weekly review pages, compensating for the lack of a native calendar in Obsidian.
- 2
Dataview uses YAML front matter metadata to create custom fields and then enables database-like searching with a SQL-like query language and JavaScript.
- 3
Editor Syntax Highlight improves code readability inside notes by applying language-specific syntax highlighting, making documentation and dev notes easier to scan.
- 4
Kanban is most useful here as a visual content pipeline, with custom columns and embedded images per card rather than traditional task tracking.
- 5
Periodic Notes supports daily through yearly review cycles, reinforcing Obsidian’s focus on revisiting and processing knowledge.
- 6
Obsidian Publish enables low-friction publishing of selected notes to a custom domain, supporting “learning in public.”
- 7
Readwise Official and Obsidian Sync extend the system by importing highlights into the vault and syncing notes across multiple devices.