While I had believed that mind mapping is unsuitable for lengthier works — ones with many intersecting ideas — the reverse is true. Though it’s seemingly daunting with its crisscrossing lines, scattered blocks, and layered notes, consolidating all the ideas into a single view actually lowered my tendency to forget key information. Now, it’s my go-to method for planning out my first drafts.

I started on paper. When the size of the page became a limitation, I turned to the Transform app on my iPad. Its basic features sufficed for a while, but as my writing grew even lengthier, I sought another app that integrated with my notes—one that would relieve me of retyping existing information.

This is how the Obsidian Canvas tool has been so helpful. It pulls my notes directly from my notebook into the board, lets me color-code them, and arrange my blocks and their connections as I see fit. I can easily build a flowchart, add external references, or export and share them in a range of document formats.

Still, there are ways to make it better. And based on the plethora of plug-ins available in Obsidian’s plug-in hub, the community agrees. Here are a few of my favorite Canvas plug-ins that have improved my experience.

5 Advanced Canvas

The essential Canvas upgrade

We could dedicate this whole article to Advanced Canvas’s vast feature set. For anyone using Canvas in any capacity, this plug-in is a must.

For starters, it greatly bolsters Obsidian’s lackluster Canvas-style customizations. Adding new options like text alignment and border adjustment improves both readability and overall appearance. It also adds a full set of flowchart node shapes for structuring process flow. If that’s not enough, the plug-in enables full customization of the default Canvas styles using CSS classes and attributes.

There are tons of quality-of-life improvements as well. Some are minor, like adding Groups and Slides to the card menu at the bottom for easy access, while others, like edge path customization, collapsible groups, and content-aware node resizing, are incredibly helpful.

Those are just a few of my most frequently used features, and they’re only scratching the surface. The plug-in has so much to offer, and I recommend it for any Obsidian user.

4 Charts

Not a Canvas-specific plug-in, but helpful nonetheless

In rare moments when I work with datasets in Obsidian, I’ve found that tables are hard to see when the Canvas is zoomed out. This is why I prefer turning them into interactive charts with the Charts plug-in. When imported into Canvas, a bright, colorful chart is far easier to spot and more visually appealing than boring tables.

Charts support the common chart types used in basic reports, including bar, line, pie, radar, and more, with a variety of color and appearance options for styling. Creating them is easy. For smaller datasets, I directly enter the values into the plug-in’s chart creation tool. For larger datasets, Charts can use existing tables within the note. Of course, it isn’t as robust as Excel or R, but it more than suffices for day-to-day writing.

3 Optimize Canvas Connections

Rein in all the lines

This plug-in untangles the knots of paths that often occur after moving nodes around. It only has two commands, one preserving the connected path axes and one for the shortest path. It’s activated through the command line. When activated without first selecting a node, it optimizes the path (with axes preserved) for the entire canvas. In my experience, the optimized paths still need adjusting, but it’s far easier than adjusting every path manually.

2 Canvas Mindmap

Adds a bunch of useful hotkeys

Most of Canvas Mindmap’s node styling enhancements are included in Advanced Canvas, but it adds a cohort of useful hotkeys to improve workflow. I especially found its ability to create a child text node using hotkeys to be indispensable. Rather than creating an isolated node and then connecting it to an existing node, it does so at the press of a hotkey. It also lets me specify the distance between the child node and the path direction. It’s such a subtle change, but it improves workflow tremendously.

1 Link Exploder

See all the connections

There are times when my drafts don’t start with a mind map (say, in a Zettelkasten). Since Obsidian is built around linking notes, many users have a brilliant set of interconnected notes. Obsidian’s Graph View can help identify clusters of strongly linked ideas; however, sifting through them isn’t as intuitive as laying them out onto a canvas.

The Link Exploder plug-in provides a solution. It grabs all the linked notes, both inbound and outbound, as well as their linked notes, and embeds them into a dedicated Canvas. This spreads out the linked ideas in an easy-to-navigate 2D view along with a preview of their content. This is not only great for ideation, but also for reviewing for exams and presentations.

Although helpful, it does have limitations. The plug-in can only import notes into its dedicated Canvas. Connecting them to an existing Canvas needs a reference link (also called a portal). Also, I’d imagine that sometimes there can be too many linked notes to practically lay them out onto a Canvas view.

Mind mapping doesn’t have to be messy

I’m not the most organized person, so for most of my tasks, I prefer a serial structure of steps so I can focus on one task at a time. When I first started mind mapping, it was anything but. Its non-linear and non-hierarchical nature made my head spin until I started using digital tools like Obsidian Canvas. Even after beefing up the base Canvas with plug-ins, I still needed to apply good note-taking techniques. That means eliminating fragments by consolidating similar ideas, condensing wordy notes, and picking my sources carefully. After planning a few articles, I’ve learned that the Canvas is only as useful as what I put on it. If my idea is unclear, then no amount of fancy styling and awesome hotkeys will help.