Drawio Preview

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Drawio Preview renders .drawio diagrams inside Obsidian — both as inline embeds and as the file view — without opening an embedded editor. Diagrams are drawn as SVG by a bundled drawio viewer, and on desktop a click opens an interactive viewer where you can zoom, pan, go fullscreen, or hand the file to your local drawio app for editing.

Features

• Read-only preview. ![[Diagram.drawio]] and .drawio files render immediately. Editing stays in your desktop drawio app — the viewer's Edit button opens the file with your system's default application.
• Preview cache. The first render of a diagram takes a moment; afterwards the SVG is served from a cache, so the drawio viewer is not loaded again.
• Link-driven sizing. Native wikilink syntax controls the box: ![[Diagram.drawio]] fits the pane width, ![[Diagram.drawio|400]] pins a width, ![[Diagram.drawio|400x300]] pins width and height. Diagrams scale proportionally inside the box.
• Multi-page support. Diagrams with several pages get ‹ / › controls, and the pin button writes the current page into the link so the note remembers it.
• Interactive viewer (desktop). Zoom in/out, fit to box, pan a zoomed diagram, and go fullscreen. Esc leaves fullscreen.
• Three appearances. Light, dark, or transparent, or follow Obsidian's current theme automatically.
• Create new diagrams. A command, a ribbon button and a folder context-menu entry create an empty .drawio file — at the attachment folder, next to the current note, or in a folder you pin in the settings.

Installation

From the community plugins directory

1. Open Settings → Community plugins in Obsidian and make sure restricted mode is off.
2. Select Browse, search for Drawio Preview, and install it.
3. Enable the plugin.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Create the folder <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/drawio-preview/ and put the three files in it.
3. Reload Obsidian, then enable Drawio Preview under Settings → Community plugins.

Usage

Embed a diagram

![[Diagram.drawio]]
![[Diagram.drawio|400]]
![[Diagram.drawio|400x300]]
![[Diagram.drawio#Page-1]]

The size syntax is the same one Obsidian uses for images, so it behaves the way you already expect. Editing the number in the link resizes the preview immediately.

Interact with the preview

Click a preview to activate it. A toolbar appears in the top-right corner:

Button	Action
+ / −	Zoom in / out (desktop)
Fit	Return to the fitted view
Edit	Open the file in your default application (desktop)
Fullscreen	Expand the preview to the whole screen (desktop)
×	Leave fullscreen

While zoomed, drag the diagram to pan. Click outside the preview to deactivate it.

Multi-page diagrams

Use ‹ and › to flip pages. The pin button writes the page you are looking at into the embed's link, so the note keeps showing that page after a reload.

Create a new diagram

Use the command Drawio Preview: New diagram, the ribbon icon, or New drawio diagram in a folder's context menu. Where the file lands is controlled by the New diagram location setting.

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
New diagram location	Where diagrams created by the command are saved: follow Obsidian's attachment folder, the folder of the current note, or a folder specified below.	Follow attachment folder
Folder specified below	Only editable when the location is set to a specified folder. Supports folder autocomplete; created automatically if missing.	—
Diagram preview appearance	When following the theme is on, the preview matches Obsidian's light/dark theme and the dropdown is disabled. Otherwise the dropdown picks light, dark, or transparent.	Follow theme with light
Cached preview files	Maximum number of cached SVGs. The oldest files are removed first. Only cache files are deleted, never your diagrams.	20 (range 10–30)

Data, privacy and permissions

Drawio Preview is designed to work fully offline:

• No network requests. The drawio viewer is bundled in main.js; nothing is downloaded at runtime.
• No telemetry and no analytics. The plugin does not collect, transmit, or store usage data.
• Vault access is read-only, with two deliberate exceptions:
  • The Edit button asks the operating system to open a single .drawio file with its default application.
  • The preview cache is written to <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/drawio-preview/cache/. It holds rendered SVG files only, is capped by the setting above, and can be deleted at any time — the plugin simply regenerates it.
• No access to files outside your vault.
• The mobile app shows a static preview with no interaction.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the first open slow? The first time a diagram is shown, the plugin loads the bundled drawio viewer (roughly 2.7 MB) and renders the diagram. The result is cached, so the same page opens almost instantly afterwards. A different page or an edited file needs one new render.

The Edit button does nothing. It hands the file to your operating system, so a .drawio file needs an associated application. Install the drawio desktop app (or point the file type at the web app) and try again.

Where does the cache live, and can I clear it? <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/drawio-preview/cache/. Delete the folder whenever you like; it is rebuilt on demand. The number of files kept is controlled by the Cached preview files setting.

Credits and license

• Draws on doge-liang/obsidian-drawio (MIT); the original author is credited in LICENSE.
• Bundles the drawio viewer, version v31.1.8, which is licensed under Apache-2.0. Its license text is included in licenses/drawio/.
• This project is released under the MIT license.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome — please open an issue first for anything larger than a fix, so we can agree on the approach.

When reporting a problem, include your Obsidian version, the plugin version, and whether the diagram is an embed or a .drawio file view. A minimal .drawio file that reproduces the issue helps more than a screenshot.