ezHighlighter

[!CAUTION] Prototype only — this project was vibe-coded. It is not intended to be maintained or treated as production-ready software. Use it as an experimental prototype and keep backups of important notes.

ezHighlighter

ezHighlighter splits Obsidian's existing Format → Highlight context-menu item into two simple, theme-aware choices:

• Text highlight colors only the text, with no background.
• Background highlight adds a stronger colored background while retaining the theme's normal, readable text color.

Use

1. Select text on one line.
2. Right-click and open Format → Highlight.
3. Choose Text highlight or Background highlight, then choose a color.

Right-click highlighted text to change its color or remove the highlight. Select any larger range—even multiple mixed lines or the entire note—and use Remove highlight to clear every custom highlight in that selection at once. Plain text and ordinary Obsidian ==text== highlights are untouched. The highlighted text remains directly editable in Live Preview.

ezHighlighter also integrates with Obsidian's Clear formatting and Editing Toolbar's Clear Text Formatting commands. Those commands remove custom highlights together with the other formatting in the selected range, without modifying Editing Toolbar itself.

Editing Toolbar integration

ezHighlighter registers standard Obsidian commands, so no direct dependency on Editing Toolbar is required.

In Settings → Editing Toolbar, add this command to the Following toolbar:

ezHighlighter: Choose highlight style and color…

It opens the same theme-color palette beside the current selection or caret. For one-click color buttons, add any of these commands instead:

• ezHighlighter: Text highlight with Pink (and the other palette colors)
• ezHighlighter: Background highlight with Pink (and the other colors)
• ezHighlighter: Remove highlight(s)

Editing Toolbar can also group the individual color commands into one of its submenus. To keep Obsidian's ordinary ==text== highlight as a separate toolbar action, add the built-in Highlight command alongside ezHighlighter.

Markdown format

ezHighlighter uses compact, readable extensions of Obsidian's native highlight syntax. Existing text highlights retain their original format:

==pink|Android users==

Background highlights add a short bg- prefix:

==bg-pink|Android users==

The supported color names are pink, red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, and grey.

Without the plugin, Obsidian still recognizes the surrounding == as a normal highlight and shows the short color prefix. No HTML is generated.

Development

npm install
npm test
npm run build

Every build creates the complete distributable package in export/ez-highlighter/. It also mirrors the generated main.js into the project root, beside the source manifest.json and styles.css, so Obsidian can load this development checkout directly. For continuous rebuilding while editing, run:

npm run dev

That command watches the source and refreshes the export folder. npm run build runs the tests and type checker before creating a minified production build.

The regression suite covers parsing, multi-selection clearing, partial deletion, full-line cutting, marker repair, and replacing highlighted text.

Exporting the plugin

Create a clean, ready-to-copy production plugin folder with either:

npm run build
# or
npm run export

The final Obsidian files are written to:

export/ez-highlighter/
├── main.js
├── manifest.json
└── styles.css

Copy the entire ez-highlighter folder into your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory, then reload Obsidian and enable ezHighlighter under Settings → Community plugins.

Creating a release ZIP on Windows

Run or double-click:

_scripts/build-release.bat

The script validates and exports the plugin, then creates a versioned archive:

export/ez-highlighter-v1.0.1.zip

The ZIP contains the complete ez-highlighter folder. Extract it directly into the vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory.