Obsidian Stats logoObsidian Stats

Color Note

by mikagosz
5
4
3
2
1
Score: 50/100
Install Code

Description

Colour note titles in the Obsidian file explorer by their state. Define your own states, each with a colour and a sentence saying what it means, and set them from the right-click menu.

Reviews

No reviews yet.

Stats

0
stars
54
downloads
0
forks
8
days
1
days
1
days
0
total PRs
0
open PRs
0
closed PRs
0
merged PRs
0
total issues
0
open issues
0
closed issues
7
commits

Latest Version

0.2.0
a day ago

Changelog

0.2.0 — colours survive a folder rename, and the plugin stops working while you type

Fixed

  • Renaming a folder no longer loses the hand-picked colours of the notes inside it. Only the folder arrives in the rename event, while every path underneath changes at the same moment; the whole subtree now moves together. Stale entries no longer pile up in data.json either.
  • A colour that is not valid hex is drawn as a dashed outline next to the state, instead of nothing at all. A typo now looks like a typo rather than like a state with no colour.

Faster

  • The plugin watched the whole document for changes, so it woke on every DOM change in Obsidian — including each keystroke in the editor — to repaint rows that had not moved. It watches the file explorer now, and re-attaches when that pane is closed and reopened.
  • A change to one note updates one entry instead of re-reading every note in the vault. The full sweep is left where it is actually needed: the cold start and a settings change.
  • The "Front matter field" setting saves once you stop typing, not on every keystroke — each of which used to repaint the entire vault.

Also

  • Changing the front matter field says, in the settings, that notes already carrying a state keep it under the old name.
  • The defaults can no longer be edited in place by the settings tab.
  • Fifteen more tests: the path rule behind renames and deletes, and the settings merge.
  • README: install from the community catalogue, and the default states are named as the code names them.
See all version on GitHub

README file from

Github

Color Note

Colour note and folder titles in the Obsidian file explorer, from the right-click menu. The colours mean whatever you decide they mean — you define the states yourself, in the settings, without touching CSS.

A colour that means something

Most colouring plugins give you a palette. This one asks you what the colour is for.

A state is three things: a colour, a value written into the note, and a sentence saying what it stands for. That sentence is the point. Six weeks from now you will open the vault, see an orange title, and know that orange means "finished but nobody has tested it" — because the plugin still holds the sentence you wrote when you invented that state.

A palette alone cannot do that. Colour without meaning decays into decoration: you remember what red meant for about a week, and after that the explorer is just festive.

Because the state is written into the note's front matter, it also outlives the plugin. Other tools can read it, Dataview can query it, and a snippet can style it. Uninstall Color Note and your notes still say what they are.

Why

A file explorer full of grey titles tells you nothing about what is finished and what still needs work. Snippets can colour titles, but every change means editing CSS or front matter by hand, so in practice it stops happening — and a system you have to maintain by hand is a system that quietly stops being true.

What it does

  • Right-click a note → Color note. Pick a state and it is written to the note's front matter as status: <value>.
  • Right-click a folder → Color folder. Folders have no front matter, so they take a colour of their own.
  • Custom colour. For anything that does not fit a state, pick a colour directly. It applies to that one item and wins over its state.
  • Your own states. Settings → Add state: a name, a value, a colour per theme and a sentence explaining what it means. It shows up in the menu immediately.
  • Front matter is the source of truth. A state set by hand, by a template or by anything else colours the title just the same.

Four states ship as defaults — open, done, needs-testing and archived — with colours that read on both themes. Rename them, recolour them or delete them; none of them are special to the plugin.

Installing

Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Color Note, install and enable it. Updates then arrive on their own.

  1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release.
  2. Put them in <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/color-note/.
  3. Enable Color Note in Settings → Community plugins.

A copy installed this way does not update itself.

How it works

Front matter holds a note's state; the plugin's own data holds custom colours by path. Nothing else is stored, and nothing is written into your notes beyond the one field you chose.

Colouring happens through two custom properties set on the file explorer row, one per theme, consumed by styles.css. The plugin does not generate a stylesheet — Obsidian's guidelines forbid plugins from creating style elements, and a rule per note would not survive the explorer recycling its rows as you scroll.

If a note carries both a state and a custom colour, the custom colour wins: it was picked by hand for that one note, while a state is a rule of thumb.

Settings

Setting What it does
Front matter field Which field a state is written to. status by default.
States Your palette: name, value, meaning, colour per theme. Add, edit, delete.
Custom colours How many items carry a hand-picked colour, and a way to clear them all.

Development

npm install
npm run dev     # rebuild on change
npm run build   # type-check, test, bundle
npm run lint    # biome
npm run lint:obsidian

Colour resolution is pure and lives in src/resolve.ts, so it is tested without running Obsidian: npm run check.

Licence

MIT

Sponsors