avatarTrevor Tarakjian

Summary

The article introduces five productivity-enhancing Obsidian plugins that offer improved writing and organization capabilities.

Abstract

The Obsidian Community has developed a plethora of plugins, and the article aims to highlight five specific plugins that stand out for their utility. These plugins include Natural Language Syntax Highlighting, which aids in refining writing by visually distinguishing parts of speech; Highlightr, for versatile text markup; Omnisearch with Text Extractor, which enhances search functionality within Obsidian; Paste URL Into Selection, a convenience tool for embedding links; and Better Word Count, for precise text length measurement. The author vouches for these plugins based on personal experience and emphasizes their broad appeal, while acknowledging that some may cater to particular use cases.

Opinions

  • The author finds the Natural Language Syntax Highlighting plugin particularly useful for reducing overuse of adjectives and adverbs, drawing from their background in English Literature.
  • Highlightr is praised for its customization options, allowing users to create their own highlight colors.
  • Omnisearch is recommended for its speed and ability to index various file types, although it is noted that the accompanying Text Extractor is not without flaws.
  • Paste URL Into Selection is described as a simple yet significant quality-of-life improvement, streamlining the process of creating markdown-ready links.
  • Better Word Count is endorsed as a must-have for writers and bloggers, offering functionality that the author believes should be standard in Obsidian.
  • The author invites readers to share their own plugin recommendations for future consideration.

Productivity Boost: 5 Obsidian Plugins You Need to Know

The Obsidian Community has built hundreds of plugins, but it can be difficult to cut through the noise to determine which are actually useful. I won’t pretend that some of the plugins in this list might cater to specific people with specific usecases, but I can at least vouch for their overall usefulness. Note that I’ve included only plugins that I haven’t referenced before, since you can read about those in my other articles.

🎨 Natural Language Syntax Highlighting

This is a new one!

If you’re familiar with iA Writer, you might have heard of its syntax highlighting feature that color codes what you’ve wrote while you write it something you might find useful if you do any kind of long form writing. The Obsidian equivalent is appropriately called Natural Language Syntax Highlighting. This one is a fantastic addition to my arsenal as I just abuse adjectives and adverbs (a reminder of my English Literature past), and this helps me cut down on their use significantly by highlighting them in different colors.

Its one shortcoming is not being able to quickly toggle the feature on or off with the Command Palette but since it was just recently launched, I just begrudgingly disable the plugin when not writing anything too lengthy.

Pretty!

🌟 Highlightr

In keeping with the highlighting theme, Highlightr makes it quick and easy to markup your text in different colors. It gives you the option of not only picking from four different highlighting styles, but you can also create your own colors to choose from.

Check out these highlighted passages!

🔎 Omnisearch with Text Extractor

Omnisearch is a better search. It also has the ability to index PDFs and Images and can also be used in conjunction with Text Extractor to pull that content. The latter isn’t perfect, but I would still recommend Omnisearch on its own simply due to its speed.

👉🏻 Paste URL Into Selection

A lightweight quality-of-life plugin that allows you to highlight text and paste a URL (from your clipboard) into it, making it markdown ready. Otherwise, that process is a little clunky (and annoying). Simple.

📖 Better Word Count

Another lightweight plugin that I recommend for anyone who does any kind of writing whatsoever (and definitely for bloggers). This plugin simply lets you see word counts for selected text, which for some reason is not included in the official Word Count included by default (and I’d recommend disabling that if you have this installed)

If you have other recommendations, send them my way and they might make it into the next round-up!

Originally published at https://www.productnook.com on April 12, 2023.

Obsidian
Productivity
Technology
Writing
Work
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