Changelog

No longer broken

• "Zoom in" and "Zoom out" commands now respect the same min and max zoom levels in Settings → Appearance.
• Canvas: fixed outline view and local graph view not updating to match the selected file card.
• Canvas: improved canvas performance when setting a large background image.
• Canvas: fixed images images inside embedded file cards not having the correct width.
• Canvas: fixed "remove background image" not properly saving.
• Fixed issue where native context menu does not appear in the correct location when window zoom is not 100%.
• Canvas: fixed issue with rendering invalid frontmatter section.
• Canvas: added message when trying to export an empty canvas.

Improvements

• New Obsidian Publish default theme. Brings Publish up to par with the CSS theme and variables created for the Obsidian 1.0 desktop app. You can check it out by going to the Help site.
• See our guide on Best practices for Publish themes

This update primarily focuses on Canvas improvements and overall bug fixes within the app.

• Canvas improvements — Canvas settings, readonly mode, global search results, and more.
• Bugfixes — fixes for Export to PDF, mermaid graph colors, and list numbering.

Canvas improvements

We've made a lot of improvements to Canvas since its initial release.

Arranging cards

Arranging cards on your canvas is now easier than ever. You can now resize multiple cards at once by dragging from the selection box. You can also nudge selected cards in any direction by pressing the arrow keys.

Readonly mode

Once you have your cards arranged exactly how you like them, you can use the new readonly mode to lock your canvas content in place. While in readonly mode, a canvas and its contents cannot be modified.

Canvas settings

There is now a settings page for Canvas with the following configuration options:

• Default location for new canvas files.
• Use scroll wheel zoom instead of pan.
• Options to hide the card labels.
• Global setting for "snap to grid" and "snap to objects."
• Configurable zoom threshold for when cards switch from showing their content to just showing the card title.
• Configurable behavior of Ctrl/Command + Drag.

Global search support

Content from text cards will now appear as search results in the global search view.

Background images for Canvas groups

Canvas groups can now have a background image associated with them. With a group selected, press the new "set background" button and choose an image from your vault.

The image can be set to cover the entire group or be used as a repeating pattern.

Jump to group

The new "Jump to group" command allows you to search for groups in your open Canvas by name. Selecting a group will quickly pan the viewport to that group. Some other notable improvements to Canvas:

Narrow to block

Similarly to the "Narrow to heading..." feature, there is now a "narrow to block" menu item for file cards in the Canvas. Just right-click on a file card and choose "Narrow to block..." to see a list of all blocks in the given file. Selecting a block from the list will change the card to only display the contents of that block.

Bug fixes

• Deleting a file now closes its tab if there are other tabs in the tab group.
• Obsidian Sync's settings page will now warn you if your vault is in Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive. Using multiple sync providers can lead to data conflicts.
• "Follow link under cursor" commands will now create a new canvas file if the linked canvas (i.e. [[dashboard.canvas]]) doesn't exist. Previously a Markdown file called dashboard.canvas would get created.
• Removed the redundant 🔗 icon from the tab header for linked tabs.
• Fixed LaTeX syntax highlighting.
• Fixed Mermaid gitgraph colors.
• Fixed bug where embeds and code blocks in Live Preview were not properly unloaded when switching files.
• Fixed context menu position when using "Show context menu under cursor" command while "native menus" is enabled.
• Fixed bug with "fold less" command not unfolding content on the selected line.
• File BOM will now automatically be stripped when Obsidian reads a file.
• When editing at the bottom of the window, the view will now scroll to have enough room to show the current line of text above the status bar.
• Fixed an issue where dragging tabs around the workspace sometimes causes an image in your clipboard to get pasted into the open editor.
• Color inputs now have a focus state when selected via the keyboard.
• Improved Mermaid text colors.
• The vim Codemirror extension has been updated to include all the latest upstream fixes and patches.
• Code blocks in Live Preview now show a copy icon if there is no language set.

No longer broken

• Canvas: Fixed canvas settings not showing previously saved new file path.
• Search: Fixed file: operator not working for canvas files.
• Fixed export to PDF not inheriting cssclass in frontmatter.
• Fixed export to PDF error out when downscaling too much.
• The "excluded files" selector no longer allows you to accidentally add an empty entry.
• Fixed some more color issues for mermaid graphs.

No longer broken

• Fixed issue where searching with an operator (e.g. "tag:") would cause all canvas files to show in search results.
• Canvas: Fixed selection box appearing behind a Canvas group's background image.
• Canvas: Fixed issue where clicking a link in a canvas would sometimes fail and cause an error message to be shown.
• Canvas: The placeholder image no longer flashes on screen when opening or closing a canvas file.
• Canvas: Fixed group background images not appearing if the file path contained parentheses.
• Canvas: Fixed issue where embedded web pages could access privacy-related APIs like microphone or send desktop notifications.
• Code blocks in Live Preview now show a copy icon if there is no language set.
• macOS: Fixed issue where scrollbars would sometimes appear when using "print to PDF."
• macOS: "Print to PDF" will now use Inter by default to fix the issue where copying and pasting text in the generated PDF would appear reversed.
• Fixed an issue where dragging tabs around the workspace sometimes causes an image in your clipboard to get pasted into the open editor.
• Color inputs now have a focus state when selected via the keyboard.
• Improved Mermaid text colors.
• The vim Codemirror extension has been updated to include all the latest upstream fixes and patches.

Developers

• The Lucide icon library has been upgrade to v0.114.0 meaning there are new icons available to be used.

Shiny new things

• Canvas: Content from text cards will now appear as results in global searches.
• Canvas: Added support for resizing multiple cards at once.
• Canvas: Added "Readonly" mode for canvases. While in readonly mode, a canvas and its contents cannot be modified.
• Canvas: Groups can now have a background image.

Improvements

• Canvas: Added support for YouTube timestamped links.
• Canvas: Added "convert to file" command to the command palette.
• Canvas: Added new setting to specify the default canvas file location.
• Added a short delay before showing tooltips in the app.
• Canvas: Cards can be resized regardless of zoom level.
• Canvas: Alignment menu is now shown when a group is selected.
• Canvas: recent files and recent attachments are now kept track of separately, so the attachments modal should be filled with more useful options.
• Canvas: improved the behavior of macOS "Smart zoom." Now double tapping the trackpad will always zoom to the node under the cursor.
• When editing at the bottom of the window, the view will now scroll to have enough room to show the current line of text above the status bar.

No longer broken

• Fixed bug where linking to blocks would autocomplete the full file path even when “shortest path when possible” is set.
• Fixed bug where linking to a heading in the current file would sometimes insert the full path.
• Markdown lists will now properly be renumbered when pressing Enter twice to escape a sublist.
• Canvas: Fixed bug where opening a card in its on tab would not scroll to the correct block or heading.
• Canvas: slightly improved "Export as image" so that it waits for content to be loaded before capturing the image.
• Canvas: Fixed bug where dragging a note into canvas would not properly give focus to the canvas view.
• Canvas: Allow dragging multiple folders from the file explorer into a canvas.
• Obsidian Sync: Added a warning if you keep your vault in a folder that is managed by iCloud that Obsidian Sync and iCloud may conflict with one another.
• "Follow link under cursor" commands will now create a new canvas file if the linked canvas (i.e. [[dashboard.canvas]]) doesn't exist. Previously a Markdown file called dashboard.canvas would get created.
• Removed the redundant 🔗 icon from the tab header for linked tabs.
• Fixed LaTeX syntax highlighting.
• Fixed Mermaid gitgraph colors.
• File explorer: ensure that leading and trailing spaces are always stripped when renaming a file.
• Fixed bug with "fold less" command not unfolding content on the selected line.
• File BOM will now automatically be stripped when Obsidian reads a file.

No longer broken

• Fixed bug where linking to heading would insert the full file path even when "shortest path when possible" is set.

Shiny new things

• Introducing Canvas. You can now lay your notes out in an infinite, spatial canvas.

Core update

• Includes all new functionality and bug fixes up to Obsidian Desktop v1.1.10. This includes support for Obsidian Canvas!
• There is now a new Vault picker in the left sidebar. Tap on the vault name to show a list of your Obsidian vaults for faster switching. Tap "Manage vaults..." to open the vault setup screen.
• Phone only: The ribbon menu in the bottom navigation bar is now configurable. In the Appearance settings, you can now manage the order of the ribbon items as well as specify a "quick access" ribbon item.
• iOS: fixed Command-W closing the entire app instead of closing the current tab.
• iOS: fixed issue where numbered lists were being rendered as bullets.

No longer broken

• Canvas: fixed bug where arrow keys would move cards when editor was focused.
• Canvas: fixed bug where card position was not properly saved after moving a card via arrow keys.

Improvements

• Deleting a file now closes its tab if there are other tabs in the tab group.
• Obsidian Sync's settings page will now warn you if your vault is in Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive. Using multiple sync providers can lead to data conflicts.
• Canvas: Added new "Narrow to block..." menu option. This works the same way as "Narrow to heading" but offers finer grained narrowing options.
• Canvas: New "Jump to group" command allows quickly jumping to a group by name.
• Canvas: You can now nudge selected cards with the arrow keys. Use Shift to move the cards at a greater multiple.
• Canvas: Added a new Canvas settings tab for configuring Canvas preferences for your entire vault. The currently available settings include:
  • Use scroll wheel zoom instead of pan
  • Options to hide the card labels
  • Global setting for "snap to grid" and "snap to objects"
  • Configurable zoom threshold for when cards switch from showing their content to just showing the card title
  • Configurable behavior of Ctrl/Command + Drag

No longer broken

• Fixed bug where embeds and code blocks in Live Preview were not properly unloaded when switching files.
• Fixed bug where large images were not properly scaled in the hover preview popups.
• Canvas: Headings are always visible in narrowed cards regardless of "Show inline titles" preference.
• Fixed context menu position when using "Show context menu under cursor" command while "native menus" is enabled.
• Fixed Markdown tags with underscore not displaying correctly in Live Preview.
• Fixed indented images not rendering properly indented.
• Canvas: Fixed nodes not always loading cards on their correct layers.
• Canvas: Fixed linux middle click.
• Canvas: Fixed bug where dragging cloned nodes were not properly snapping to objects.

Developers

• Fixed Menu.showAtPosition not working when user has enabled "native menus."
• Fixed processFrontMatter passing null when frontmatter section is empty, fixed not working with CRLF line endings.

The installer has been updated to use Electron v21 (requires downloading the latest installer).

No longer broken

• The page preview popover no longer shows file names twice.
• Canvas: Fixed "reload page" menu item not working consistently.
• File recovery now supports canvas files.
• Prevent obsidian://new URIs from creating folders outside of the vault.
• Prevent external websites embedded in canvas and plugins from opening URI links.

Improvements

• Canvas: YouTube embeds are now shown at 16:9 instead of square.
• Canvas: Added a "privacy" toggle to the export modal. This will allow you to share the canvas while masking all the text on the cards.
• Canvas: Added a command to export your canvas as an image.

No longer broken

• Canvas: Auto-resizing file cards now works more reliably.
• Canvas: Fixed bug where pressing undo (Ctrl/Cmd + Z) would undo the file rename in addition to undoing an action on the Canvas.
• Canvas: Fixed issue where creating a new text card does not always zoom in to edit automatically.
• Canvas: Fixed crash when opening a modal while an iframe was focused.

Improvements

• Canvas: Added new alignment options to justify content horizontally or vertically.
• Canvas: the drag handles has been removed from connection lines. Now you can drag from anywhere on the line to move it.

No longer broken

• Canvas: fixed extra spacing being added to the top of cards.
• Fixed duplicate titles appearing for embedded notes (i.e. ![[some note]]).
• Fixed hotkeys acting inconsistently across pop-out windows when a modal was visible.
• Canvas: fixed group label getting truncated while editing.
• Canvas: fixed bug where the file title would stay selected after updating the title. This caused some unexpected behavior when pressing undo (Ctrl/Cmd + Z) or paste (Ctrl/Cmd + V).

Improvements

• Canvas: Inline titles now render in file cards when enabled.
• Canvas: Replaced the "Copy screenshot" canvas menu item with a new "export as image" menu option. This will allow you to export either the current viewport or a full high resolution PNG of your canvas.
• Canvas: Embedded canvases now show the connection lines in addition to the card boxes.

No longer broken

• Renaming a file will no longer cause the current scroll position to be lost.
• Canvas: File-specific options have been removed file card's context menu if the card is narrowed to a specific heading.
• Canvas: Dragging a nested group will no longer try to snap to itself. This was causing some jittering.
• Canvas: fixed "Replace" command not working in canvas file cards.
• Canvas: Fixed an issue where following links from the canvas would prevent editor-specific hotkeys from firing.
• Canvas: Fixed loading a website in a pop-out window causes Obsidian to crash on boot.

Improvements

• Embedded canvases now render a diagram of the underlying canvas. This works for canvases embedded within Markdown files (i.e. ![[daily_notes.canvas]]) or embedded on another canvas.
• Canvas: Add new options to distribute vertically/horizontally, stack vertically/horizontally, and auto-organize cards into grid.
• Canvas: The Find/replace menu (Ctrl/Cmd+F) now works inside cards embedded in the canvas.
• Canvas: Web pages now has a menu to open in the browser, you can also Ctrl/Cmd-click the card label.
• Canvas: Slight performance improvements when interacting with larger canvases.
• Canvas: Added "Go to source" and "Go to target" menu items on the connection context menu to quickly jump to nodes.
• Canvas: Ctrl/Cmd + Drag now shows a menu to quickly add a card or create a group where your selection is.
• Canvas: Images, websites, videos, and audio will now always render instead of becoming a grey box when zoomed out.
• Sync: When merging during a sync conflict, the original local version is now stored in File Recovery (if enabled).

No longer broken

• Fixed bug preventing hotkeys from being set if there is no default hotkey.
• Canvas: Links and embeds inside text cards will now properly get updated when the target files are renamed.
• Canvas: Fixed duplicating groups not copying their children cards.
• Canvas: Fixed bug where opening a new canvas in a hidden tab would occasionally go blank and crash.
• Canvas: Fixed bug causing some websites to crash when moving a canvas view to a popout window.
• Canvas: Fixed issue where websites could not be interacted with in a popout window.
• Canvas: PDFs should be slightly less blurry.
• Canvas: Fixed bug where cards are unable to resize when an adjacent card is touching.

Shiny new things

• Canvas: Added "Groups" to canvas. Groups can be thought of as placemats for your cards. They always render below cards and dragging the group label will move all notes in the group at once. To create a group, select multiple cards then right-click and choose 'Create group.'

Improvements

• Canvas: Improved performance when interacting with large canvases.
• Canvas: On Windows and Linux, you now hold Ctrl to duplicate the selection instead of Alt. On macOS, this is still Option+Drag.
• Canvas: Added right-click and drag to pan around the viewport.
• Canvas: Added 'copy screenshot' menu item.
• Canvas: Added 'reset zoom' button.
• Canvas: Double-clicking the bottom of a card now auto expands it to the size of the contents.
• Canvas: The canvas will always zoom to fit on open.
• Canvas: PDFs and iframes that have been interacted with will stay loaded even when zoomed out.
• Canvas: text cards now have dynamic padding so they shouldn't appear with scrollbars on small sizes.
• Canvas: Web pages now have a label with the site title.
• Canvas: Right-clicking on web pages now gives the option to copy the URL or reload the page.

No longer broken

• Canvas: The connection menu will exclude embeds.
• Canvas: Fixed issue where deleted cards and connections would sometimes reappear and be un-selectable.
• Adding a hotkey to a default hotkey no longer results in the default hotkey being removed.

Developers

• Canvas files are now multi-line formatted when saved. This should make the diffs more human-readable when stored in version control.

Improvements

• Live Preview has been tweaked to avoid flashes of "unstyled" content while scrolling through larger documents.
• Canvas: We have updated how colors work inside of Canvas. The six colors in the color palette are now themeable. There is a new 7th slot with a color picker.
• Canvas: Added a new menu item to paste in a web URL. Right clicking on an existing web page in Canvas now shows an option to change the URL.
• Canvas: YouTube links will now automatically get inserted as Youtube's embed version.
• Canvas: There's a new 'help' button to view all the currently hotkeys available for Canvas.
• Canvas: Dragging a connection line from a file card now shows a menu with all outgoing links to quickly add them as connections.
• Canvas: Added a new 'Narrow...' menu option to file cards. This will narrow the card contents to only the selected heading.

No longer broken

• The frontmatter YAML will now always be hidden in reading mode. The "Show frontmatter" toggle now toggles the metadata section.
• macOS: Fixed bug in Canvas where cards would drag when ctrl-clicking.
• Fixed issue when using multiple cursors where an extra cursor would appear in the top right.
• .canvas files now show in the editor link suggest.
• Linux: middle-clicking on the canvas will no longer trigger 'paste.'

Developers

• Added a notice when opening a Canvas that fails to parse.

No longer broken

• Canvas: fixed bug where text nodes don't always save their content.

Improvements

• Canvas: 'delete' has been renamed to 'remove' to avoid confusion.
• Canvas: cards can now be dragged by the filename label.
• Canvas: Ctrl/Command-clicking on a filename label will open that file in a new tab.
• Other plugin views should now properly respond to selecting a card in the Canvas. This includes the Outline pane, the Backlinks pane, etc.
• Templates core plugin properly inserts into the canvas editor.
• The viewport will now pan while dragging nodes close to the edge of the screen.
• Pressing Shift-enter inside the file select modal in canvas will now create a file based on your current input (same as the quick switcher behavior).
• Improved appearance of file name modal when using "Convert to file..." Canvas action.
• Increased the max zoom distance in Canvas.

No longer broken

• Sync: canvas files will now sync between devices (oops!)
• Canvas: fixed bug causing editor to occasionally lose track of inserted text and cursor position when typing quickly.
• Canvas: connections cannot be drawn from a card back to itself.
• Canvas: fixed issue where shift-clicking on a card would cause the editor to appear in an unfocused card.
• Canvas: fixed text suggest menu not closing when clicking outside of a card.
• Canvas: Fixed dragging links from cards into their own cards.
• Canvas: Fixed dragging links from the embedded canvas editor.
• File explorer: added back missing 'Open in new window' command to the context menu.

Developers

See v1.1.1 in the Developer CHANGELOG.

Shiny new things

• Introducing the Canvas core plugin. You can now lay your notes out in an infinite, spatial canvas.

Improvements

• Ribbon items can now be rearranged (drag & drop) or hidden (right click on the ribbon for options). Configuration is also available in Settings (Appearance → Ribbon menu). Note: if you are using an existing plugin to manage the ribbon, this might interfere.
• Plugins can now be sorted by "Recently updated."
• Added theme version information to the debug modal.
• Added "Close window" command (Ctrl/Command + Shift + W).
• Pressing Shift + Enter in the editor Find Dialog will find the previous instance.

No longer broken

• Linux: fixed middle-click to paste.
• 'Split' commands will now focus the newly created tab group.
• Fixed issue where File explorer would not always select the right items when using shift-clicking.
• Popout windows will now open with the same zoom level as the main window
• Fixed Home behavior in task lists.
• Moving folders to the Obsidian trash (.trash) will no longer add a trailing .
• Fix ordered lists showing as bullets.
• Plugin gallery will no longer cache the results if there's no internet connection.
• macOS: fixed issue with spell check replacing the wrong word on the same line.
• Improved styling of text when the accent color is lighter than a certain threshold.
• Fixed "Fold more" and "Fold less" commands not working properly on list items.
• The File explorer will no longer capture arrow key events when modifier keys are used. This was breaking hotkeys such as Ctrl + Shift + →.
• Fixed issue with folds in Reading mode getting unfolded when creating a new tab.

Developers

• We have added a Developer CHANGELOG to our API repo. Moving forward, we will keep developer-facing changes cataloged here.
• Canvas uses a new JSON-based file format, see the spec.
• Added new metadata APIs.
• Added macOS calendar entitlements.
• Added support for fundingUrl in the plugin manifest. The donation URL will be shown in the plugin gallery entry.