Changelog

Shiny new things

• You can now download multiple themes and switch between them. They are now stored in the vault/.obsidian/themes folder. Be sure to disable the legacy option for obsidian.css when you do so!
• You can now add multiple CSS snippets, and choose to enable/disable them individually. They are stored in the vault/.obsidian/snippets folder.
• You can now check for third-party plugin updates and selectively update them.
• In preview mode, there is now a new section displaying the metadata of a file based on its YAML front matter.
• You can now give notes specific CSS classes using the front matter option cssclass. You can also specify multiple ones with the same syntax as tags and aliases, for example, cssclass: class1, class2. Combine this with custom CSS to selectively style notes.
• You can now sort tags in alphabetical order instead of by frequency.
• You can now collapse the front matter section in edit mode.

Improvements

• The custom CSS plugin has been merged into the app, under the "Appearance" setting tab.
• In preview mode, if the front matter fails to parse as YAML, an error message will be displayed in the code block if you had show front matter option enabled.
• Link suggestion will now suggest aliases of a file after you type |.
• Link suggestion no longer shows YAML front matter as a block to refer to.
• When renaming a file, Markdown links will now also change the display text if it matches the file name.
• File explorer has been improved to lag less on big vaults.
• Backlinks and unlinked mentions have been improved to lag less when there are many results.

No longer broken

• Highlights are now properly exported to PDF.
• After renaming a file, automatically updated Markdown links will now properly contain the .md extension.
• Choosing a spellcheck suggestion will no longer wipe adjacent characters.
• Creating or renaming a file now properly calculates backlinks to it.
• Embed images now shows up properly in block suggestions.

Developers

• moment.js has been replaced with moment-with-locales.js.
• CodeMirror has been updated to v5.58.3.
• A new event layout-change is has been added to Workspace.

Shiny new things

• Obsidian now has a native build for Apple M1 (Apple Silicon).
• There's now a build for 32bit Windows and arm64 Windows.
• There's also a build for Linux arm64.

Improvements

• Tags in front matter no longer requires the # character. You can now write tags: [tag1, tag2, tag3].

No longer broken

• Fixed unable to type in edit mode after inserting a template or opening command palette or quick switcher.
• Star/unstar file in more options menu has been added back.

Shiny new things

• You can now specify aliases in front matter. These will then show up in the [[ link suggestion, and auto-complete to [[Filename|alias]]. They will also be picked up in unlinked mentions. For example: aliases: [AI, Artificial Intelligence]. Add double quotes around your alias if it contains special characters.
• You can now specify tags in front matter. These will then show up in the tag pane, as well as in search queries using the tag: operator. For example: tags: ["#pkm", "#hype"].

Improvements

• Command palette and Quick switcher will now restore your cursor or selection when exiting.

No longer broken

• Graph filter tag operators no longer operate on links to non-existent files.
• The duplicate menu item "Copy obsidian url" has been removed from the more options menu.
• On Windows, you should now be able to drag the window from the top when it's maximized.

Developers

• frontmatter is now available in CachedMetadata.
• Some helper functions for front matter parsing are made available: parseFrontMatterEntry, parseFrontMatterStringArray, parseFrontMatterAliases and parseFrontMatterTags.
• The css class mod-root is now always added to the workspace center area.
• Deprecations: (the old name will remain in code for backward compatibility for a while)
  • Setting.addExtraSetting has been renamed to addExtraButton.
  • Workspace.getActiveLeafOfViewType has been renamed to getActiveViewOfType.

Improvements

• The updater has been improved to properly use system proxy settings when fetching downloads. (Requires installer update)

No longer broken

• Fix popups from IMEs for east Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese not properly positioned for heading with larger font than body text.
• Fixed search not working for double-quote full word match that includes punctuation characters.

Improvements

• A mechanism has been added to deprecate specific versions of third-party plugins known to cause data loss. A notification will be shown to indicate that such a plugin has been disabled.

No longer broken

• Fixed right click menu in edit mode.
• Fixed negative path filters in graph search causes tags to be removed.
• Mermaid Gantt charts are now properly sized according to the view size.
• Search results can be scrolled again.

Shiny new things

• You can now right click on search results, backlinks and unlinked mentions to show a file menu for some shortcuts.

Improvements

• A new option has been added for changing the default mode (edit vs preview) when opening new notes.
• Graph filter query has been tweaked to prevent path: and file: filters from removing tags.
• Search queries with double quotes now properly performs full word search if your query starts or ends in a punctuation character.
• Allow mermaid internal links using the /Note internal link format.

No longer broken

• Clicking now properly hides context menus, which previously were sometimes left on the page if clicking on editable text.
• Fold all/unfold all now properly updates the fold indicator.
• Graph hover preview is now back.
• Ctrl-click on internal links should now work on MacOS.
• Popups from IMEs for east Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese should no longer obscure the line you're typing on.
• Internal links now render properly in footnotes.

Shiny new things

• You can now right click internal links to see many file options, such as opening in new pane, revealing in file navigation, open with default app, etc.
• Global search will now show recent search queries when the search is empty.
• Global search now has an "x" to clear the search query.

Improvements

• Global search and backlinks pane now save your options for collapse results, show more context and sort order. Global search also saves match case and explain search term.
• Backlinks pane also saves the folding of the Linked mentions and Unlinked mentions sections.
• Several new API are now available for plugins to use.
• Plugin authors can now mark a required version of Obsidian for their releases. They can also provide a list of older versions of their plugin that's compatible to older versions of Obsidian.

No longer broken

• Fixed fold all previously did not work in preview mode.
• There was a race condition for saving large files on slower computers which could prevent saving the last few characters typed into the note. That should no longer happen.
• Checklist styles have been fixed, they should no longer have an awkward offset from the left side.
• Hover previews now properly renders embeds.
• Indenting from a numbered list to an unordered list no longer causes undefined to appear.
• Printing to PDF no longer generates clickable app://obsidian.md links for internal links.

Shiny new things

• You can now export notes to PDF.
• You can now fold headings in preview.
• Fold/Unfold all command/hotkey now works in preview as well.

Improvements

• Plugin API: Vault APIs now normalize all input paths.
• You can now see installed versions of third party plugins in the "Third party plugins" section directly.
• The "Use Markdown links" setting has been moved to "Files" tab and has been renamed to "Use Wikilinks" to avoid users unintentionally turning on Markdown mode.
• Search in preview now automatically selects the first result.
• <iframe> now has permission to show modal like alert().

No longer broken

• Word count now works for languages that previously didn't work, such as Hebrew and Georgian.

Shiny new things

• Community plugins page now has a download count, and is sorted using it.
• Clicking on the plugin information now goes to the community plugins page where more details can be found.

Improvements

• Third party plugins now store their plugin data in their respective folder.
• Third party plugins that fail to initialize will now show a notice about the failure.

No longer broken

• Lists in slides no longer show the collapse indicator.
• Tables in edit mode no longer shows a weird space in the middle.

Improvements

• API now exports View.
• Plugin onInit has been removed to avoid confusion.

No longer broken

• Third party plugins should no longer be disabled on reload.
• Clicking on a graph node should no longer cause an error in the developer console.

Shiny new things

• There is now a community plugins page to discover and install third party plugins.
  • Check out the updated sample plugin on how to structure your plugin and how to release.
  • See publishing instructions on how to add your plugin to the list.
• You can now uninstall third party plugins.
• More API has been made available.

Improvements

• Block and heading link suggestions are now sorted by best match.

No longer broken

• Spellchecker will no longer attempt to spellcheck < and > characters.
• Fixed updating the wrong part of the link in Markdown links when renaming files.
• Fixed text wrapping to next line, then jumping back to the same line when adding space character.
• Sized images will now stay at their specified size, even if the pane is smaller.
• Extra unnecessary scrollbar from heading/block embeds have been removed.

Shiny new things

• The Plugin API alpha is now available! Hype!
  • Keep in mind that the plugin API is in alpha status. Any part of the API could introduce breaking changes in a future release.
  • For plugin developers, see our sample plugin repo and the plugin api
  • To install a plugin, simply place the plugin files inside the folder MyVault/.obsidian/plugins/my-plugin/.
  • For users, currently there is no "app store" for distributing plugins yet. This will come in a future release.
• You can now search in preview.
• You can now fold lists in preview. However, the fold state is not saved yet.
• There is now a new command to copy the obsidian:// URI for a file.
• A new search action is now available for obsidian:// URIs. Here's an example: obsidian://search?vault=my%20vault&query=MOC

Improvements

• The app is now much quicker to launch for large vaults.
• Local graph now has a screenshot menu item too.
• Mermaid has been upgraded to v8.8.2.

No longer broken

• Switching from preview to edit now properly scrolls to the same place you were viewing.
• Fixed resizing panes sometimes glitches and causes other panes to become tiny.
• Fixed unable to change language when checking for updates.
• Fixed ogv video files not properly included.

Breaking changes

• Block references now require the ^ character to be part of the link, like so: [[Filename#^blockid]].
• Block auto-complete will generate this new format automatically.
• The old format from v0.9.5 [[Filename#blockid]] will stop working.
• A conversion tool is added for existing block references from v0.9.5. Use the Markdown format importer plugin's "Block ID upgrade". Remember to backup your notes since this operates on the whole vault.

Improvements

• Block auto-complete will also display and search the block ID if one is present.
• Block IDs can now contain the dash character -.
• Auto-complete trigger with the prefix #^ such as [[Filename#^ now behaves identically to [[Filename^.
• "Toggle checklist status" command/hotkey now adds the checkbox syntax - [ ] for any selected lines that does not already have a checkbox.

No longer broken

• Image size syntax now works for internal images using the Markdown standard link format.
• Link auto-complete no longer strip characters after a . in the filename when using Markdown links.

Shiny new things

• Block references and block embeds are now available.

  • Simply type ^ when linking to trigger the auto-complete: [[Filename^.
  • Use [[^^ to auto-complete blocks globally.
  • The generated link will look like this: [[Filename#blockid]].
  • Block IDs will be generated using the syntax ^blockid when using the auto-complete.
  • Alternatively, you can manually create the block ID using any alpha-numeric character.
  • The block ID must be located at the end of the paragraph or list item, and must include a space character before the ^.
  • To identify more complex blocks, like tables, you can add the ^blockid as its own after the block you're referring to. There must be an empty line before and after ^blockid for this to take effect.
  • Quick reminder that this syntax for block reference isn't portable Markdown (no other tools support it yet), so please use some discretion when considering working with other tools!

• You can now auto-complete headings and blocks globally.

  • Be aware that this may be slow if your vault is large.
  • Auto-complete blocks globally by typing [[^^.
  • Auto-complete headings globally by typing [[##.

• There is now a new command for toggling the checkbox state between [ ] and [x]. Ctrl/Cmd+Enter is the default hotkey.

Changes

• The community theme page has been re-styled to be easier to use.
• HTML <iframe> now has a sandbox attribute added for extra security.

No longer broken

• Fixed removing links to an opened file causes the backlink pane to sometimes keep showing the removed link.
• Fixed inability to see the last few characters when editing table that's longer than screen width.
• Malformed Markdown URLs no longer cause parsing failures.
• Linking an unlinked mention now shows up in linked mention right away.

Shiny new things

• In preview mode, internal links to notes that don't exist yet are now given the CSS class is-unresolved, and now shows up in a different color than links to existing notes.
• You can now downsize images using the new syntax:
  • For Markdown images, use ![AltText|100x100](https://url/to/image.png)
  • For embeds, use ![[image.png|100x100]]
  • To have the image scale according to its aspect ratio, omit the height ![[image.png|100]]
• Obsidian Publish:
  • Backlinks! Turn it on to add the new backlink section at the end of each page.
  • Your site can now be styled with custom CSS! Just upload either obsidian.css or publish.css. You can also upload both so you can use your existing obsidian.css and add some extra tweaks for publish in publish.css.
  • There's a new mode you can turn on called "sliding windows". This overhauls your site's navigation to open links beside the current page. Inspired by Andy Matuschak's website
  • Page URLs now encodes space characters as + instead of %20 for a cleaner look.

Changes

• Obsidian now recognizes .bmp, .svg, and .tiff images.
• Hover preview now pops up where your cursor is, rather than at the position of the link.
• Improved performance when computing backlinks for large vaults.
• Improved performance when auto-completing links for large vaults.
• Embeds got their styling tweaked to be less prominent and less distracting.

No longer broken

• Deleting folders on Linux should no longer give an error message.
• Hover preview now fixed for graph view. It stays up nicely and disappears only when the cursor is off the hover and the graph node.
• Fixed a possibility that the hover preview gets stuck when clicking on the link.
• Fixed some characters not decoded properly when using obsidian:// URLs, such as the comma %2C.
• Removed duplicate backlinks for links within footnote definitions.

Shiny new things

• Clicking on checkbox within an embed block or a hover preview now updates the underlying file.
• Embedded notes now update when the underlying file is changed.
• New "Workspaces" plugin allows saving the entire workspace, including panes with their open files as well as all sidebar configuration. Especially useful if you use a vault for multiple purposes to jump between different pane configurations quickly.
• When using global search, you can now copy the search results file list. This can be optionally formatted as wikilinks and/or as lists.
• Hover preview can now be scrolled.
• Hover preview can now stack, meaning you can hover links inside a hover preview and pop out another preview for that link.

Changes

• Publish plugin now has an "unchanged" section which can be used to un-publish files.

No longer broken

• Local graph search filter no longer filters out the current file, which causes everything else to disappear.
• Resetting graph to default now properly resets forces as well.
• Changing search queries now saves to workspace properly.

Shiny new things

• There is now a publish plugin that works with Obsidian Publish. For more information, check out the Obsidian Publish Service
• Graph now has an option to tweak when the text fades out.
• You can now mouse hover in graph view with Ctrl/Cmd to bring up the hover preview if the page preview plugin is enabled.
• If your vault is large, there is now a loading progress bar when starting the app, instead of freezing and not functioning until the app properly loads.

Changes

• Clicking on search results and backlinks now scrolls to the Markdown section containing the first result in preview mode.
• Clicking on search tab now focuses on the search textbox so it can be typed in right away.
• The graph simulation engine has been rewritten to bring even more performance and save battery. Note that the graph simulation engine is responsible for computing where each node moves.
• The graph rendering engine has been tweaked to initialize a bit faster.
• Graph filters have been re-categorized to differentiate between display options and forces. Changing display options now no longer re-activates graph simulation.
• When opening global search with selected text, the query is now properly double-quoted if the query contains space characters.

No longer broken

• Fixed styling of backlink/unlinked mentions broken by the previous release.
• Navigating backward/forward should no longer cause the pane type to change from edit/preview to graph, backlinks or outline.
• Slides can now be styled via custom CSS without having to use more specific rules.
• obsidian:// URIs now fixed for Linux.
• Fixed more instances where preview scroll was reset when scrolling with large images.

Changes

• Search queries on graph now applies to all nodes, including tags and links to files that haven't been created yet.
• When hovering graph nodes, the node name now shifts down to avoid being covered by the mouse cursor.

No longer broken

• The account page now works again. This did break before and we've taken more steps this time to make sure it won't happen again.
• The vault chooser's "Create vault" functionality has been restored.
• Obsidian URI's shortcut mode obsidian://vault/vaultname now properly recognize URI encoded characters such as Chinese characters.
• Previewing documents with large images that are longer than your your screen no longer causes jumping or flickering when scrolling.
• Hovering graph nodes will now stop hovering when the node moves away from the cursor.
• In some rare situations, the app would freeze when loading, where nothing can be clicked and the app is completely unresponsive. This shouldn't happen anymore.

Shiny new things

• Graph view has been completely revamped.
  • New options for filtering are now available. You can now:
    • Filter files using same syntax as search. This can be especially useful to exclude certain folders like daily notes with path:-"Daily notes".
    • Choose to show #tags.
    • Choose to show attachments such as images, audios, and PDFs.
    • Choose to hide links to non-existent notes (only show existing files).
    • Choose to hide orphan notes (files that do not have links, and is not linked to).
  • New layout options are available to customize the graph to your vault. You can now:
    • Choose to show arrows for links.
    • Change the size of nodes and the thickness of links.
    • Change the centering force, the repelling force, the link force, and the link distance.
  • Local graph also has a few new option available. You can now:
    • Choose to hide incoming or outgoing links.
    • Choose to showing neighbor links. Disabling this option hides links between neighbor notes.
  • You can now navigate the graph using the keyboard. Arrow keys to pan, + and - to zoom, Shift to speed up movement.
  • All graph options, including local graph depth and zoom level, are now persisted through restarts.
  • Dragging to pan now has inertia. Zooming has been reworked to be much smoother.
  • Graph colors now support custom CSS color: rgba() values as well as opacity: 0.5.
  • New graph CSS classes are .color-fill-tag, .color-fill-attachment, .color-fill-unresolved, and .color-arrow.
  • Graph simulation is now done in a worker thread. This should make large graphs much more manageable.
  • Several optimizations have been implemented to make the graph blazingly fast on vaults of all sizes. Many tricks are commonly used in modern day video games!
• Obsidian now supports obsidian:// URIs. For the user manual, check out the help doc Advanced use > Using obsidian URI.
  • Remember to use %20 to encode the space character, and %2F to encode the forward slash /.
  • obsidian://open?vault=myvault will open the vault "myvault".
  • obsidian://open?vault=myvault&file=mynote will open the file "mynote" inside the vault "myvault"/
  • obsidian://open?path=%2Fabsolute%2Fpath%2Fto%2Fmynote will open the file at the absolute path "/absolute/path/to/mynote" assuming a vault exists for the one of the parent folders.
• The two shorthand from v0.8.15 are still available:
  • The vault format: obsidian://vault/myvault.
  • The vault + file format: obsidian://vault/myvault/mynote.
  • The triple slash format for absolute paths: obsidian:///absolute/path/to/mynote or on Windows obsidian:///C:\path\to\mynote (forward slash also works).
• New CSS classes are added for #tags in the editor for those interested in styling different tags in different colors. For a hypothetical tag #mytag, the class will be .cm-tag-mytag. Unfortunately, this only supports English letters, -, and _, since those are the limitations of CSS class names.
• New CSS classes are now added to <body> to indicate the operating system. They are .mod-macos, .mod-windows, and .mod-linux.
• Markdown importer can now convert Bear style highlight ::highlight::.

Changes

• Global search and edit mode find functionality now copies selected text into the search bar when triggered.
• The vault switcher window now has a language switcher.
• Search should now be much faster if only using file: or path: operators, because the file content does not need to be loaded.

No longer broken

• On Windows, the vault switcher should now show vault name instead of the full path, which took a lot of unnecessary space.
• Splitting a new pane sometimes caused the new pane to be very thin. That should now be fixed.
• Clicking on file:/// links should now work properly on Linux. This was broken on a previous release.
• On MacOS, sometimes when double clicking the app titlebar to zoom, the window disappears and can't be made to reappear even if restarting the app. This will no longer happen.

Shiny new things

• The app now registers the URL scheme "obsidian://". This will attempt to open a file in any previously opened vaults.
  • On MacOS, this requires installer version 0.8.12+ to work.
  • To open a vault that you have previously opened, use the format obsidian://vault/vaultname, where vaultname is the name of the folder of the vault.
  • To open a file inside a vault, use the format: obsidian://vault/vaultname/path/to/file.
  • To open a file with an absolute path, use the triple slash format: obsidian:///absolute/path/to/file or on Windows obsidian:///C:\path\to\file (forward slash also works). This will open the file in the most nested vault that's capable of opening this file.
  • If the URL does not do anything, then it means the file does not belong to any vault you have previously opened.
  • If the vault opens, but does not navigate to the specified note, then it means the file of that path was not found.
  • On Linux, you will have to setup an obsidian.desktop file with Exec=obsidian %u. Details see here.
• Alphabetical sorting has been improved.
  • Sort is now case insensitive.
  • Sort correctly understand accent characters such as "é" to be the same as "e".
  • Numbers are now naturally sorted, so "1", "2", and "10" will now sort in the expected order.
• Outline items are now collapsible.

Changes

• Embed can now be rendered up to 5 layers deep.
• Pasting images now use a 14 digit timestamp format "Pasted image 20200914050118.png" instead of a regular number "Pasted image 15.png".
• Graph view will now prioritize rendering frames instead of performing physics simulation, which previously caused multi-second lags on large graphs.

No longer broken

• Fixed Frameless titlebar text is not properly center aligned.
• Linking an unlinked mention now properly removes the entry from the unlinked mention section.
• Removed hidden titlebar when fullscreen which caused the top section of the app to not accept clicks.
• Drag and drop panes no longer cause the moved pane to lose CSS styles and pane headers.
• MacOS can now double click the frameless window header to zoom or un-zoom.
• Numbered lists with checkboxes now renders correctly.