Glasp for Obsidian

Import your Glasp highlights, notes, summaries, and bookmarks — from the web and from Kindle — directly into your Obsidian vault, and keep them in sync automatically.

Glasp is a social web highlighter that lets you highlight and take notes on the web, PDFs, YouTube, and Kindle, then own and export everything you collect. This plugin brings that knowledge into Obsidian as Markdown notes you fully control.

✨ Features

• 📥 Import web highlights & notes from Glasp into a folder of your choice.
• 📚 Import Kindle highlights & notes into a separate folder, so book highlights stay out of your web notes.
• 📝 Import summaries — your Glasp AI page/video summaries as notes, optionally embedding the full article/PDF text.
• 🔖 Import bookmarks — every page you've saved, as lightweight, metadata-rich notes.
• 🗂️ Database views (Obsidian Bases) — each source gets an auto-generated .base view collected in a dedicated Glasp Bases folder, so you can browse everything as a sortable Table or a Cards gallery with thumbnails. (Requires Obsidian 1.9+.)
• 🔁 Automatic background sync — every hour, every day, or once a week.
• ➕ Incremental & non-destructive — only new/updated items are fetched, and existing notes are matched by source URL and updated in place (no duplicates).
• 🎨 Customizable templates — define your own Markdown layout and frontmatter for every source, or use the sensible defaults.
• 📱 Desktop & mobile — works anywhere Obsidian runs.

✅ Requirements

• Obsidian 1.9.0 or later (the auto-generated database views use the built-in Bases core plugin). On older versions, use plugin v0.2.x.

📦 Installation

From Obsidian Community Plugins (recommended)

1. Open Settings → Community plugins in Obsidian.
2. Search for “Glasp”, click Install, then Enable.

Manual

1. Download main.js and manifest.json from the latest release.
2. Copy them into [YourVault]/.obsidian/plugins/glasp/.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Glasp under Community plugins.

🚀 Getting started

📺 Prefer a walkthrough? Follow the full step-by-step tutorial on exporting Glasp highlights into Obsidian.

1. Get your access token from your Glasp account: https://glasp.co/settings/access_token
   • 💡 If the link opens inside Obsidian and you can’t sign in, use the copy button next to the token field and paste the URL into your default browser (Chrome, Safari, etc.).
2. In Settings → Glasp, paste the Access token.
3. Choose an output folder for each source you want — web highlights, Kindle highlights, summaries, and/or bookmarks.
   • Leaving a folder unset simply skips that source, so you can enable any combination.
   • Tip: give each source its own folder to keep them tidy.
4. Pick an update frequency. Your data is imported on startup and then on that schedule. You can also trigger an import any time via the ribbon icon or the command palette (“Glasp: Import highlights”).

Once a source has imported, a matching database view appears in the Glasp Bases folder — open it and switch between Table and Cards at the top.

⚙️ Settings

🗂️ Database views (Bases)

For every enabled source, the plugin creates a Bases view in a top-level Glasp Bases folder — for example Glasp Bookmarks.base and Glasp Summaries.base. Each view is a live database over that source's notes, so your imports read like a table instead of a long file list:

• Table view for sorting and scanning by domain, date, tags, etc.
• Cards view with thumbnail covers for a visual gallery.

The views are created once and are not re-created if you delete them, so you're free to customize or remove them. A view's folder filter is updated automatically if you later change that source's output folder.

Bases is a core plugin included with Obsidian 1.9+. Enable it under Settings → Core plugins → Bases if it isn't already.

🎨 Customizing the template

You can fully control how each note looks using Handlebars placeholders. Leave a template empty to use the default.

Web highlights — available variables: {{url}} · {{glasp_url}} · {{thumbnail_url}} · {{tags}} · {{updated_at}} · {{content}}

Kindle highlights — available variables: {{url}} · {{glasp_url}} · {{author}} · {{thumbnail_url}} · {{tags}} · {{updated_at}} · {{content}}

Summaries — available variables: {{url}} · {{title}} · {{domain}} · {{thumbnail_url}} · {{created_at}} · {{updated_at}} · {{summary}} · {{content}}

Bookmarks — available variables: {{url}} · {{title}} · {{domain}} · {{category}} · {{description}} · {{thumbnail_url}} · {{created_at}} · {{updated_at}} · {{title_text}} · {{url_text}}

ℹ️ Frontmatter values (e.g. {{title}}, {{domain}}) are emitted already quoted so they can't break the note's Properties — keep them on their own line. The _text variants are unquoted, for use in the note body (e.g. a Markdown link). Keeping the URL property in your template is what lets the plugin match and update existing notes instead of duplicating them.

---
URL: {{url}}
Glasp URL: {{glasp_url}}
Thumbnail: {{thumbnail_url}}
Tags: [{{tags}}]
Last updated: {{updated_at}}
---
{{content}}

---
URL: {{url}}
Glasp URL: {{glasp_url}}
Author: {{author}}
Thumbnail: {{thumbnail_url}}
Tags: [{{tags}}]
Last updated: {{updated_at}}
---
{{content}}

---
Glasp: summary
URL: {{url}}
Title: {{title}}
Domain: {{domain}}
Thumbnail: {{thumbnail_url}}
Created: {{created_at}}
Updated: {{updated_at}}
---

## Summary

{{summary}}
{{content}}

---
Glasp: bookmark
URL: {{url}}
Title: {{title}}
Domain: {{domain}}
Category: {{category}}
Description: {{description}}
Thumbnail: {{thumbnail_url}}
Created: {{created_at}}
Updated: {{updated_at}}
---

[{{title_text}}](<{{url_text}}>)

🔒 Privacy & security

• Your access token is stored locally in your vault (.obsidian/plugins/glasp/data.json) and is used only to call the official Glasp API at https://api.glasp.co.
• The plugin has read-only access to your own content. It never sends your notes anywhere.
• ⚠️ If you sync or share your vault, be aware that data.json contains your token — treat it like a password.

🛠️ Development

git clone https://github.com/glasp-co/obsidian-glasp-plugin
cd obsidian-glasp-plugin
npm install
npm run dev      # watch & rebuild
npm test         # run unit tests
npm run build    # production build

To develop against a live vault, clone into [YourVault]/.obsidian/plugins/ and run npm run dev.

🐞 Bugs & feedback

Found a bug or have a feature request? Please open an issue.

🔗 Links

• 🌐 Glasp — highlight & organize what you read
• 📖 Glasp API documentation
• 📺 Tutorial: Export highlights into Obsidian
• 🔑 Get your access token
• 🧩 Obsidian

License

MIT © Glasp