It's no secret that I love Obsidian; the number of articles I've written about its utility is proof enough of that. Even out of the box, it's an amazing bit of software, but Obsidian becomes so much better when you start to utilize plugins. One of my favorite things to do to kill time is searching for lesser-known plugins, and I've stumbled across several options that add a ridiculous amount of utility to my setup, despite several of these plugins having fewer than 20,000 downloads. When you consider that the most popular plugins (Excalidraw, Dataview, Templater, etc.) have upwards of four million downloads each, that's practically unknown.

Doubleshift

A must-have for the command palette

You can easily activate many of Obsidian's plugins just by clicking a button, but some require opening the command palette to access their full functionality. In addition, the command palette gives you access to a huge range of functionality that can enhance your day-to-day usage of Obsidian. It's easy enough to open — just click the icon on the left-hand side of the screen — but that can slow down your workflow. That's where Doubleshift comes in. I didn't realize how inefficient it was to click to open the palette until I came across this plugin, but now, I just click the Shift key twice in succession, and it opens the palette for me. It's a straightforward, simple plugin, but its utility is immense.

Beyond providing an easy way to open the command palette, I can set custom hotkeys; for instance, I can program it to open a new tab if I double-tap T. That's not the best example, since I would obviously trigger it while typing, but you get the gist. Doubleshift even works with command palette inputs from other plugins. It's one of the most versatile plugins out there, especially for anyone that wants to improve their workflow.

Mononote

Boring but effective

Mononote is one of those plugins that is the opposite of flashy. In fact, it barely does anything — but it excels at preventing me from doing something. Namely, opening the same tab more than once. The entire purpose of Mononote is to ensure a tab is only opened in one instance at a time. For example, when working in Bases, it's easy to accidentally open the same note several times, in several different tabs. After installing Mononote, if I attempt to open a note I already have opened, it will swap to the corresponding tab without loading a new one. It prevents unnecessary clutter and cuts down on resource usage when I have a lot of tabs open at one time. Like I said: it's not flashy, but it serves its purpose extremely well.

Horizontal Blocks

Easy idea comparison

I use Obsidian as a knowledge base. As a result, I often need to compare different subjects to one another at a glance. Horizontal Blocks is one of the easiest ways I've found to do this; the plugin takes advantage of Obsidian's built-in codeblock functionality and makes it easy to create comparison charts for different ideas. For example, I can compare two genres together and easily see the differences and similarities between the two (like the attached screenshot up above, detailing the difference between magical realism and fantasy). It's not just text, either; Horizontal Blocks supports automatic image scaling, and multiple columns can be created — just use the "---" separator between each one.

Pretty Properties

Pure aesthetics

A lot of people use Obsidian as a way to track media consumption. I'm guilty of it, too; I turned a portion of my vault into something Goodreads wishes it could be. Pretty Properties is a must-have for anyone using Goodreads to track books, TV shows, music, etc. It adds a banner to the top of a note, creating a nicer-looking layout and providing a swath of different settings to customize exactly how everything appears. Is it necessary or better for productivity? Not at all — Pretty Properties is purely for the aesthetics.

It's incredibly customizable and allows for images to appear on the right or left side of the data, lets users create custom tag colors, and much more. You can implement banners, icons, covers, and much more, and even change the appearance of dates within the notes. It makes my vault feel just a bit more personalized, and the setup time is next to nothing. It's hard to imagine using Obsidian without this plugin after having it as part of my setup for so long.

Virtual Linker/Glossary

Automatic linking between notes

One of Obsidian's greatest strengths is the ability to link between notes. For example, if I have a note laying out the plot of Haruki Murakami's "Sputnik Sweetheart," I might mention that its genre is best described as magical realism. Since I have another note titled "magical realism," I can link to it using Obsidian's Wikilinks format (double brackets, like [[magical realism]]). Of course, that requires a little bit more effort. The Virtual Linker/Glossary plugin automatically links to notes if you mention their name in your text, so you don't have to use the double-bracket format.

This plugin makes it easy to find potential connections between notes, especially because it automatically highlights them. You can adjust how sensitive it is in the settings; for example, you have to adjust how it matches text, or the word "fastest" will link to a note titled "test." You can choose to exclude entire notes from the linking process, so they won't appear at any point. For instance, I have several notes titled "simplify" and "summarize" that contain commands for CoPilot. I have chosen to exclude those from Virtual Linker because I don't want them to link each time those words are used in a note.

The secret to hidden gems is to find the overlooked and under-used plugins

Obsidian has hundreds of plugins to choose from. Some are tremendously useful, like Dataview and Templater, while others have more niche applications. Every single Obsidian user has a unique workflow, so the massive number of plugins is a huge benefit to someone looking for the perfect setup for themselves. These five often-overlooked options have added new levels of convenience to my daily workflow, and I would strongly recommend them to anyone who uses Obsidian on a regular basis. But they aren't the only options out there; since I don't code much, I didn't include the dozens of code-focused plugins that are available. Nor did I include some of the more "fun" plugins, like Pixel Pets (which gives you a virtual cat that runs around your vault!) Take the time to browse the Obsidian plugin library. You never know what you'll find, and it's constantly getting updated.