🌠 PDF improvements & More AI Options

Obsidian Updates

• v1.2.8, which removed support for app://local URLs, is now available for everyone.
• Insider v1.3.0 comes with an all new PDF viewer. You can also bookmark individual blocks, HTML tables will now paste as markdown if you enable auto converting HTML, and there are some spellchecking improvements.

Plugin News

New in Community Plugins

These plugins went through code review and are now available in Obsidian's plugin list. For the full list, check out the plugin stats page.

• Slide Note by @Phantom1003 makes it easier to take notes on PDF course slides.
• Chem by @Acylation renders SMILES strings into chemistry structures.
• Custom State for Task List by @OkamiWong  adds custom states to task list items.
• Last Modified Timestamp in Status Bar by @Yustynn  offers dynamic display of file modification timestamps in the status bar.
• Colored Text by @erincayaz  makes it easier to color the selected texts.

Pending (as of Friday morning)

Note: Not all new plugins are available in the community list yet, as they need to go through code review first. You can manually install plugins that aren't in the community list yet by using the Beta Reviewer's Auto-update Tool. Note, though, that this is not as safe as waiting for them to go through code review.

• Arcana by @A-F-V offers a collection of AI powered tools inspired by famous historical figures; conversation, text generation, flashcard generation, auto tagging, and note naming.
• Interlinear Glossing by @Mijyuoon is a plugin supporting interlinear glosses used in linguistics texts.
• Attachment Management by @trganda makes it easier to customize the attachment path and auto rename etc.
• Share to Cubox by @Redwinam  makes it easier to share notes to Cubox using the provided API.
• Enhanced Treemap by @erikshelley lets users create enhanced treemaps :P
• Mermaid Themes by @jvsteiner  makes it easy to apply custom mermaid.js themes and apply other tweaks.

Updates

If you want a comprehensive list of what plugins updated this week, check out this plugin updates index by Ganessh Kumar.

• Excalidraw 1.9.0 lets users import PDFs and annotate them in Excalidraw.
• Last Modified Timestamp in Statusbar lets you see when your current file was last modified and enables customization of the text and timestamp format to suit your workflow. Here is a demo.
• Notion Like Tables v6.6.0 added a keyboard-based focused navigation system and more options to the folder context menu.
• advanced paste v2.1.0 introduces a new drop-in replacement for Obsidian's pasting function focused on tables and task lists.
• Obsidian Front Matter Title 3.2.0 adds the return note link feature.
• Hover Editor 0.11.10 and 0.11.11 add support for Obsidian 1.3.0's PDF viewer and implement workarounds for popup glitches with the Obsidian 1.2.x-1.3.0 Bookmarks view respectively.
• Daily Note Outline v1.1.0 introduces new context menu settings, improved indentation options, additional display file information choices, and  fixed compatibility issues with the Periodic Notes plugin.
• Tasks 3.6.0 adds the ability to sort by recurring, group by urgency, and better sorting of group headings.
• Pane Relief 0.5.0 brings major styling updates for Obsidian 1.2.x.

Betas

Note: these plugins have not yet been submitted for code review, and are being made available primarily for testing purposes.

• Copy Reading in Markdown is a new concept plugin that converts the HTML view of Obsidian to markdown.

Appearance

• Minimal theme 6.3.3 introduces customization options for the new PDF viewer in Obsidian 1.3.0.
• Buena Vista by @oqipoDev  adds some small quality of life improvements to the default theme, like bigger click targets.
• Prism 3.2.5 adds styling for the new native PDF Viewer and updates the styling of the embedded audio elements.

Thoughts & Guides

• Bryan Jenks had a well-regarded video about how to utilize the bookmarks plugin.
• Here are some uses of the Strange New Worlds plugin.
• Here's a software-agnostic article with some thoughts about how to design a tag system.
• Here's how to use Obsidian to learn.
• Here's how to integrate Obsidian and the Napkin app, which focuses more on very short thoughts.
• Here's a podcast interview with the creator of the Johny Decimal and how he uses the system across various apps and projects.
• Here are some great tips for using AI in your vault.