Footprint Studio

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Footprint Studio is an Obsidian community plugin for creating and editing travel footprint notes with an interactive map, photos, and structured frontmatter.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5e18d479-8beb-4297-b91f-f25a9e1601a1

Features

• View all footprint notes on one map, including distinct markers for drafts.
• Create or edit a footprint through a dedicated form instead of editing frontmatter by hand.
• Import, reorder, caption, hide, and preview multiple photos.
• Read GPS coordinates and capture times from supported photo EXIF metadata.
• Search for places, reverse-geocode coordinates, and store structured address fields.
• Link footprint notes to Markdown or MDX posts in a configurable folder.
• Keep each footprint's images together in a dedicated attachment folder.
• Use the editor on desktop and mobile Obsidian.

The plugin interface is currently available in Simplified Chinese.

Displaying footprints on a personal website

Footprint Studio is primarily designed to organize footprint data in Obsidian. If you would also like to publish your footprints on a personal website, see bgo.me/footprints for an example. You can build a similar page by reading the footprint notes with your preferred website framework.

Installation

From Obsidian

Once the plugin is accepted into the community plugin directory:

1. Open Settings → Community plugins.
2. Select Browse and search for Footprint Studio.
3. Select Install, then Enable.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest GitHub release.
2. Create <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/footprint-studio/.
3. Copy the three files into that folder.
4. Reload Obsidian and enable Footprint Studio under Community plugins.

Usage

1. Select the map pin in the ribbon to open the footprint overview.
2. Create a footprint, choose a location, complete the form, and add at least one photo.
3. Select 保存足迹 to save the note and its managed attachments.
4. To edit an existing note, use its file-menu action 使用 Footprint Studio 编辑.

The default folders are:

• Footprint notes: footprints
• Managed photos: attachment/footprints/<footprint-name>
• Related posts: blog

All three paths, the map defaults, and the tile URL can be changed in the plugin settings. The command 保存当前足迹 has no default hotkey; assign one in Settings → Hotkeys if desired.

Data and network access

Footprint Studio stores settings through Obsidian and only modifies files in the configured vault folders. Removing a managed photo from a footprint may move that photo to the system trash when the footprint is saved.

The plugin makes direct network requests for its map features:

• Map tiles are loaded from the configured tile server. The default is OpenStreetMap's standard tile service.
• Place search and reverse geocoding use the public Nominatim service at nominatim.openstreetmap.org.
• Search text or selected coordinates are sent to Nominatim. Map tile requests disclose the requested map area and normal connection metadata to the tile provider.

No analytics or telemetry are collected by this plugin. Review the OpenStreetMap tile usage policy and Nominatim usage policy before heavy use.

Development

Requirements: Node.js 20 or newer and pnpm 10.

pnpm install
pnpm run dev

Run a production build and type check with:

pnpm run build

The build creates main.js locally. Compiled files are attached to GitHub releases and are intentionally not tracked in the source repository.

Releasing

Make sure all changes have been committed on main, then run one of:

npm run release -- patch
npm run release -- minor
npm run release -- major

The release script checks that local main matches origin/main, runs a production build, updates package.json, manifest.json, and versions.json, creates the release commit and version tag, and pushes both to GitHub. The tag triggers the release workflow, which publishes the GitHub release automatically.

To publish a specific version, use npm run release -- 1.2.3. Update minAppVersion in manifest.json and commit it before running the release command when compatibility requirements change.

The release must contain main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.

License

MIT