Obsidian Weekly 2025-02-09：Happy kick-off! Version 1.8 is still iterating at a rapid pace!

Obsidian Weekly 2025-02-09：Happy kick-off! Version 1.8 is still iterating at a rapid pace!

Abstract

Statistical time: 2025-01-19 21:00 ~ 2025-02-09 21:00
Statement: This column is inspired by a series of Obsidian Roundup articles written and published by Ms. Eleanor Konik from April 2021 to June 2023. Those interested may follow the original author’s personal website Obsidian Iceberg. The section’s content is sourced from the official Obsidian Discord channel and information on corresponding projects on Github or there independent websites. Descriptions may have been modified based on personal interpretation, and corrections are welcome if there are any inaccuracies. Thank you to the Obsidian team for bringing us such excellent software.

Official News

Obsidian v1.8.5 catalyst is now available!

Desktop

No longer broken

Fixed issue with adjacent numbered lists being considered part of the same list and having incorrect list numbers applied. Fixed issue where Shift-Enter inside a list did not add the correct indentation. Fixed missing CSS variable —font-mermaid for setting a custom font in Mermaid graphs. Web viewer: Clicking on results in the Web history view will open in the background if “Always focus new tabs” is turned off in Editor settings. Web viewer: Fixed issue with “Clear web viewer data” not fully removing the stored session data. Web viewer: Fixed issue with built-in Ad blocker not properly capturing web requests. Bookmarks: Clicking a bookmarked URL will now open it in your external browser by default, unless you have Web viewer configured to open external links. Fixed regression in Mermaid causing some text to get chopped off when the window’s zoom level was not 100%. Fixed page preview appearing unexpectedly after using Graph view then pressing Command/Ctrl. Third-party libraries Updated Mermaid to 11.4.1.

Mobile

Includes all new functionality and bug fixes up to Obsidian Desktop v1.8.5.

Android: The onboarding flow now has the option to use an existing folder as a vault.

PS: Obsidian v1.8.4 public changelog

Desktop

No longer broken

• Fixed bug where pressing Enter inside a blockquote would not continue the blockquote onto the next line.
• Fixed bug where Canvas preview image would sometimes fail to display.
• Fixed bug causing some plugins to not focus the correct tab when they open a file.

Mobile

Includes all new functionality and bug fixes up to Obsidian Desktop v1.8.4.

iOS: Fixed bug causing app to show a black screen after install.

PS: Obsidian v1.8 public changelog

Desktop

Highlights

• Web viewer, a new core plugin, lets you open external links within Obsidian. This makes it easier to read linked content without leaving the app and improves multitasking for web research. The plugin is disabled by default and must be enabled manually in settings.
• Sync now has a new view option, “Hide my changes,” which hides your own file changes in a shared Obsidian sync vault.
• File Explorer now includes an option to automatically reveal the active file.
• Added the “Download attachments for current file” command, which downloads all externally embedded images and replaces the external links with internal embeds.
• Added the “Insert footnote” command. Footnote autocomplete now provides a fallback to create a new footnote if no match is found.
• Tags view now includes a search filter.
• Outline now has an “Auto-scroll to current section” option.

Improvements

• When modifying a numbered list, the numbers are now updated automatically.
• Recently used commands now appear at the top of the command palette.
• Editor suggestions now scroll back to the top when input changes.
• Middle-clicking the tab forward/back navigation buttons now opens the file in a new tab.
• Added a “Comment” option to the editor context menu under the “Format” submenu.
• Improved handling of files with invalid frontmatter:
  • Reading mode now shows an error message at the top of the file.
  • The “Add property” command now shows an error instead of removing invalid frontmatter.
• Canvas groups can now have empty labels, which remain visible while editing.
• Canvas cards now stay mounted while being actively edited, even when zoomed out.
• Sync version history now renders a preview image when viewing a Canvas file.
• The “Search current file” search bar now displays the total number of results.
• Improved rendering of bookmarked URLs in the quick switcher.
• Pressing the Down arrow key in search now removes the cursor from the search bar, making it easier to navigate results.
• The “Insert template” command now sorts templates by file path and displays folder names.
• Right-clicking anywhere in the File Explorer now shows a context menu.
• File Explorer now includes a menu option to create a new folder with the selected items.
• Individual values from list properties can now be copied using the context menu or Command/Ctrl + C.
• Right-clicking anywhere in the Local Properties view now shows the property menu.
• Dragging a file over a collapsed folder in File Explorer now automatically expands the folder.
• Sort options are now available in the properties menu.
• <img>, <video>, <audio> and <source> tags with relative src paths are now rendered in Live Preview and Reading mode.
• The tab close button is now hidden if the tab is too small.
• In Sync History, clicking an active item now expands its entry.
• The callout context menu now includes an option to remove callout formatting.
• The “Show backlinks in document” preference is now saved for each tab in the workspace.
• The “Show ribbon” setting is now saved in appearance.json instead of app.json.
• Page previews on hover are now supported in tab headers of notes and attachments.
• Obsidian Publish now includes a new command, “Open in live site,” to open the current live version of a note.
• Improved the screen shown when connecting to a sync remote vault.
• The Sync plugin is now enabled by default to improve visibility in settings. Added a new command, “Sync: Set up sync.”
• File Explorer now automatically deselects files after they are moved into a collapsed folder.

No longer broken

• Live Preview now renders reference-style links correctly.
• The “Tab indent size” setting now controls the visual width of tabs/indents.
• Fixed renaming headings and block IDs showing the incorrect number of modified files.
• Graph view no longer considers Canvas files as attachments.
• Fixed search sort order preference not always being saved.
• Layout and config changes now always save before quitting Obsidian.
• Fixed a rare bug where “Insert template” failed if the cursor was at the start of a file and the template content began with a horizontal rule.
• Fixed a bug where right-clicking the property icon while the property name was empty would hide the entire row.
• Fixed Alt-Enter not working if the cursor overlapped with the embed start ![[.
• Fixed an issue where the app switched to the default theme after removing an inactive theme.
• Canvas now shows additional context menu options when multiple file cards are selected.
• Fixed missing margin on code blocks and callouts inside embeds.
• Fixed “Rename file” not working if a sidebar view was active.
• The media selection prompt no longer allows file creation when no results match the input.
• Pressing Shift-Enter in text property input now correctly uses the current input text value.
• Fixed link resolution when a filename ends with a Greek character.
• Footnote IDs are now case-insensitive.
• Fixed flickering when selecting text in PDFs.
• Embedded headings now correctly render Markdown formatting (e.g., ## *Hello*, World).
• Increased contrast for code color and added CSS variables for code block borders.
• Clicking the “Copy” button in a callout no longer switches it to source mode.
• Added a “Retry” button when failing to load remote vaults due to a poor network connection.
• Fixed some Japanese characters rendering incorrectly when using the default font.
• Fixed rem units in pop-out windows not matching the main window.
• Fixed an issue where inline footnotes were not always processed by the metadata cache.
• Fixed CSS specificity of task checkbox position in editable lines to avoid conflicting with rendered checkboxes in source mode (e.g. callouts).
• Property value inputs now respect the spellcheck setting.
• Fixed Search sometimes forgetting the sort order after using “Search in all files.”
• Fixed “Rename heading” and “Rename block ID” not working when triggered from an embed.
• Fixed the “Excluded files” screen not properly saving.
• Updated the description of “Tab indent size” to better match its behavior.
• Fixed a bug where editing an embedded heading (e.g., [[file#heading]]) from Page Preview modified the heading text.
• Fixed MathJax not rendering inside embedded headings.
• Fixed a bug where commands did not work correctly when navigating from a note to an attachment. For example, Command/Ctrl + F sometimes did not work in PDF view.
• Fixed PDF view’s “Copy link to selection” sometimes applying the selection to the wrong text node.
• Pressing Enter in a multi-line list item now continues the list properly.
• Fixed “Toggle comment” sometimes placing the cursor in the wrong position.
• Fixed an issue where closing a pop-out window at certain times prevented events like saving the workspace from firing.
• Fixed a bug where opening a note with folded headings didn’t restore folds correctly if a heading contained a code block.
• Fixed Graph view errors when setting “force” options to 0.
• Fixed page previews not working reliably in Graph view:
  • Hovering over nodes now reliably opens page previews.
  • Hovering then pressing the modifier key also opens the page preview.
  • Hovering over multiple nodes in quick succession now properly updates the preview.
• Clicking a link in the sidebar (without pressing a modifier) now correctly focuses the tab.
• Fixed an issue where double-clicking a node label in Canvas switched the node to edit mode.

Third-party libraries

• Updated Electron to 33.3.2.
• Upgraded Prism.js to 1.29.0.
• Upgraded Turndown to 7.2.0.
• Upgraded Mermaid to 11.3.0.
• Upgraded CodeMirror to the latest version.

Mobile

Improvements

• The file explorer context menu now shows:
  • a folder’s file and folder count
  • a file’s creation time and modified time
• We no longer wait for iCloud to finish syncing your configuration files. If a configuration file was offloaded, it will be redownloaded and you will be prompted to reload the app once the file was been synced.
• Added a command to open the tab switcher. This can be bound to the pull down action.

No longer broken

• The active file will always be highlighted in the tab switcher.
• Fixed active file sometimes not getting reset when closing sidebar view.
• On iOS, tapping the status bar now always scrolls to the top of the active file. And scrolls to the top of the sidebar if one is active.
• Long-pressing on tabs in the tab switcher will no longer drag the tab preview image.
• Fixed Android keyboard auto-correction inserting extra text.
• iOS: Fixed rare bug where a folder would be created, but not detected by Obsidian until the app is rebooted.

Plugin News

Community Plugins

New

Goal Tracker By Goal Tracker

A simple and flexible goal tracking plugin that allows you to track your goals using daily, weekly, or monthly views.

Current File Tags By Trung Tran

Display the active Markdown file’s tags and associated files.

Missing Link File Creator By Lemon695

Creates both missing links and the corresponding files.

Paperless By Talal Abou Haiba

Insert PDFs from their self-hosted paperless-ngx instance into their Obsidian notes.

Cooksync By Cooksync

Automatically imports Cooksync data.

Recent Notes By Kamil Rudnicki

A plugin that shows your recently edited notes in a clean, organized timeline view, similar as Apple Notes. Perfect for keeping track of your latest work and quickly accessing recently modified notes.

Mahgen Renderer

Display mahjong images inline or in block using Mahgen.

Backgroundset By daonali

Allow you to set background image set(folder).

Friend Tracker By Dan Au

Keep track of friends, birthdays, and interactions.

Anchor Link Display Text By Robert C Arsenault

This plugin automatically sets the display text of anchor links (links to a heading of another note) to be the name of the heading instead of showing the link text as it appears.

Sentinel By Giorgos Sarigiannidis

Update properties or run commands based on document visibility changes. For example, you can add a views property that auto-increments every time a Note opens, a modified property that captures the current datetime when you exit a Note with modifications, run a Linter when a Note opens or exits, and so on.

Boardgame Search By Marlon May

Track and manage your board game collection directly within Obsidian.

Keep the Rhythm By Ezben

Visualize daily word count with a heatmap.

Easy Test By Forrest

This Obsidian plugin is designed to make learning more efficient and interactive. By focusing on bold text within a note, the plugin allows users to transform key parts of their content into a dynamic quiz format. This helps users test their understanding and reinforce knowledge directly within their notes.

Hanko By Telehakke

Register and paste any text.

Clipper Catalog By Greg K.

A catalog view that provides a powerful interface for all your clipped web articles and content.

Frontmatter Markdown Links By mnaoumov

Adds support for markdown links in frontmatter.

pycalc By pycalc

Executing Python code directly within the editor by pressing the Enter key.

Note Annotations By Jan Beck

Add multi-colored highlights and comments to your notes.

Updates

Lineage v0.8.1 By ycnmhd

• Improvements
  • (toolbar) add the ability to hide toolbar buttons
• Bug fixes
  • (sidebar) can’t scroll cards list
  • (sidebar) can’t copy active sidebar card
  • (minimap) minimap is blank when the document is too large
  • (align-branch) misc scrolling issues
  • (settings) modal height not limited to view height
  • (hotkeys) search returns empty groups in outline mode
• Changes
  • shift + double click to center the active branch instead of double click

Chronos Timeline v1.1.9 By Claire Froelich

• New features
  • Adds Chinese (simplified and traditional)
• Bug fixes
  • Fixes bug where locale wasn’t being applied

Appearance

Sunbather Theme By babidisrc

A minimal pink theme based on vim-sunbather theme.

Sei Theme By iwa

Personal theme for Obsidian, designed with clarity and simplicity in mind.

OLED.Black Theme By Inc44

A minimalist, pure black theme optimized for OLED displays, offering maximum battery efficiency and a clean aesthetic.

Zen Theme By laughmaker

Zen is a modern theme designed specifically for writing. It removes redundant elements that can affect writing and reading, extensively uses Gaussian blur effects, and features a modern minimalist style. It has also been specifically optimized for Chinese users.