Floating Highlights

Obsidian Float

This plugin enhances Obsidian reading mode by animating highlighted content as it enters the viewport, so attention stays on important text while scrolling.

Features

• Supports animated float effects for:
  • Highlights (==text== / <mark>)
  • Bold (**text** / <strong>)
  • Italic (*text* / <em>)
• Per-tag controls:
  • Enable/disable animation per tag type
  • Independent scale amount per tag type
• Global controls:
  • Animation duration
  • Background opacity dimming for non-highlighted content
  • Animate word only (instead of full container block)
  • Animate bold/italic inside highlight blocks
• Highlight appearance:
  • Default highlight color (follows your theme unless you pick one)
  • Corner radius of the floating card
• Highlights inside callouts float without being clipped
• Scroll performance improvements:
  • Transform-only highlight transition for smoother scrolling
  • Ultra-smooth scrolling behaviour that temporarily removes shadow while actively scrolling, then restores it when scrolling stops

Usage

1. Use Obsidian's built-in highlight syntax to mark text: ==your highlighted text==
2. (Optional) In plugin settings, enable bold/italic animations and tune scale/duration
3. Switch to Reading mode (the plugin does not work in Live Preview or Source mode)
4. Scroll through your note — configured elements animate into focus as they enter the viewport

Note: By default, the entire container block (paragraph, list item, heading, etc.) is animated. Enable Animate word only in settings to animate just the matched word/inline element.

Settings Overview

• Global:
  • Animation duration
  • Background opacity
  • Animate word only
  • Animate bold/italic inside highlights
• Highlight Appearance:
  • Default highlight color: by default the plugin uses your theme's highlight colour, so highlights stay readable in light and dark themes. Pick a colour to override it (highlighted text then switches to black or white, whichever is easier to read); the reset button goes back to the theme colour. Obsidian's own coloured highlights and highlights coloured with inline HTML (<mark style="background: ...">) keep their colour.
  • Border radius: corner radius of the floating card, 0–20px; default keeps the original 0.5em, which scales with text size
• Per tag (Highlights, Bold, Italic):
  • Enable ... float
  • ... scale amount

Demo

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f2d16605-17cb-42e2-aa62-fe7204d5af16