GoodBases

A custom Bases view for Obsidian that renders your databases as a Notion-style table: clean chrome, hover-reveal OPEN buttons, colored value pills, and inline cell editing.

Requires Obsidian 1.10.2+ with the Bases core plugin enabled.

Demo

The page panel

Click + New (or set Open notes in to Page panel and use the hover OPEN button) to work on a note without leaving the table, in a centered Notion-style panel:

• Title — a real heading; type to rename the note, Enter jumps to the body.
• Properties — the note's frontmatter, editable exactly like the table: pill values open the select editor (with the color picker), checkboxes toggle in place, text and numbers edit inline.
• Body — rendered as formatted Markdown; click it to edit the source, click away and it renders again. Changes save automatically as you type.

Features

• Notion-style table — system font stack, hairline borders, hover wash, and a horizontal scroll container so columns never crush, even in embeds and reading mode.
• OPEN button — hover a row to reveal a button that opens the note, just like Notion's database rows.
• Colored pills — list properties (tags, multitext) render as pills using Notion's 9-color palette (accurate light- and dark-mode values). Colors are assigned by a deterministic hash, so a value keeps its color forever — unless you choose your own.
• Per-value color picker — click the colored square next to any value in the pill select menu and pick a color from Notion's palette. Your choice is saved and applies everywhere that value appears. (You can also set colors in bulk with the Pinned pill colors view option — value=color, e.g. Done=green.)
• Inline editing — click a cell to edit text and numbers in a floating input; checkboxes toggle in place. Pill cells open a select-style menu listing every value already used for that property, with search and create-on-Enter.
• Page panel — + New opens the freshly created note centered in a Notion-style panel: an editable title, the note's properties (editable just like the table), and the body rendered as formatted Markdown. See The page panel.
• Choose what OPEN does — the Open notes in view option points the hover OPEN button at a new tab (default) or at the page panel.
• Grouping support — respects the Bases group by configuration.
• View options — wrap cell content (on by default), toggle vertical lines, choose how OPEN opens notes, force specific properties to render as pills, and pin pill colors.

Usage

1. Enable the Bases core plugin and create a base.
2. In the base toolbar, open the view selector and choose Notion-style table.
3. Configure columns, filters, sorting, and grouping with the normal Bases controls; this view adds its own options (wrapping, vertical lines, open mode, pill properties, pinned colors) in the view settings.

Notes on editing:

• Only note frontmatter properties (note.*) are editable; file.* and formula.* columns are read-only by nature.
• tags pills are intentionally read-only for now — tags have special semantics and deserve a careful write path.

Installation

From the community plugin browser

Once accepted: Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for GoodBases, install, and enable. Then, open the view selector and pick Notion-style table.

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Put them in VaultRoot/.obsidian/plugins/good-bases/.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins.

Optional: Notion-style toolbar

The blue Notion-style New button and icon-only Sort / Filter / Properties / Search are an optional CSS snippet (the toolbar is core Obsidian UI, outside the plugin's view, so it isn't styled by the plugin itself):

1. Copy snippets/goodbases-notion-toolbar.css into VaultRoot/.obsidian/snippets/.
2. Enable it under Settings → Appearance → CSS snippets.

The snippet only affects a Base's toolbar while a GoodBases view is open; every other base keeps its native toolbar.

Support

GoodBases is free and open source, built and maintained in my spare time. If it makes your vault a little nicer to work in, you can buy me a coffee ☕ — it goes toward new features and keeping up with Obsidian's API changes.

Roadmap

Where GoodBases is heading. These are directions, not dated promises — want to nudge one up the list? Open an issue.

• ✅ First public release (0.3) — Notion-style table view: colored pills, inline cell editing, the pill select editor, pinned colors, hover-reveal OPEN button, grouping, and view options.
• ✅ Per-value color picker (0.4) — recolor any value from Notion's palette; your choice persists everywhere it appears. Cells wrap by default.
• ✅ Page panel (0.5) — create and open notes in a centered Notion-style panel: editable title and properties, body rendered as formatted Markdown, and an Open notes in option for the OPEN button.
• 🔵 Column resizing (next) — drag handles on column borders, with widths persisted per view.
• 🔵 Calculated footers (next) — a Notion-style per-column Calculate row (count, sum, average, and more).
• 🔵 Editable tags (next) — extend the select editor to write tags safely (currently read-only).
• ⚪️ Board & gallery views (exploring) — Kanban boards and card galleries; deprioritized for now while table fidelity comes first.

Changelog

The full history and downloadable builds are on the Releases page.

0.5.3

• Changed: addressed the community plugin review feedback — inline styles now go through Obsidian's setCssStyles/setCssProps APIs, modal lifecycle methods match Obsidian's types, and styles.css no longer uses !important (overrides win by selector specificity instead). No functional changes.

0.5.2

• Fixed: in the page panel, editing the body of a note with many properties could squeeze the editor to nothing, hiding the content — the editor now grows with its content and the panel scrolls.

0.5.1

• Added: the base's native toolbar New button now opens the page panel too, while a GoodBases view is active (other Bases views keep the core popover).
• Added: an open-in-new-tab button next to the page panel's close button — it saves pending edits, closes the panel, and opens the note in a new tab.

0.5.0

📄 New — Notion-style page panel. + New now opens the freshly created note centered in a panel, like Notion's page peek: an editable title, the note's properties — pills open the same select editor as the table, checkboxes toggle, text and numbers edit inline — and the body rendered as formatted Markdown (click to edit the source, click away to render it again; changes autosave as you type).

Also in this release:

• Added: an Open notes in view option — point the hover OPEN button at a new tab (default) or at the page panel.

0.4.5

• Fixed: in dark mode the table header no longer shows a light background — it now follows the page background like the rest of the table.
• Fixed: column headers now align consistently between editing and reading mode (header text is vertically centered in both).

0.4.4

• Fixed: long, multi-line text cells now edit in a textarea, so the full wrapped text stays visible while you type — previously a single-line input scrolled the text sideways. Shift+Enter inserts a newline; Enter saves.

0.4.3

• Fixed: clicking a pill cell again now closes its tag selector (previously only an outside click or Esc would).
• Fixed: the inline text/number edit box now matches the size of the cell you click, instead of a fixed size.

0.4.2

• Changed: the optional Notion-style toolbar snippet no longer uses the :has() selector, avoiding the performance cost of broad selector invalidation. Once enabled, the snippet now restyles every Bases toolbar (not just GoodBases views).

0.4.1

• Changed: the Notion-style toolbar restyle (blue "New" button + icon-only Sort / Filter / Properties / Search) is now an optional CSS snippet (snippets/goodbases-notion-toolbar.css) rather than shipping in the plugin, so GoodBases no longer restyles Obsidian's core UI. See Installation → Optional: Notion-style toolbar.

0.4.0

🎨 New — per-value color picker. Click the colored square next to any value in the pill select menu and pick a color from Notion's palette. Your choice is saved (persisted to the Pinned pill colors option) and applies everywhere that value appears.

Also in this release:

• Changed: cell content now wraps by default.
• Changed: colored pills use Notion's exact light- and dark-mode palette values.
• Changed: restyled the Bases toolbar for the Notion-style view — a Notion-like blue "New" button and icon-only Sort / Filter / Properties / Search, scoped so it only affects this plugin's views.
• Fixed: the inline edit box no longer lingers after you click away from a cell without changing it.

0.3.2

• Added: the project landing page, demo GIF, and a Buy Me a Coffee funding link.

0.3.1

• Initial release: Notion-style table view — colored pills, inline cell editing, the pill select editor, pinned pill colors, hover-reveal OPEN button, grouping support, and view options.

Disclaimer

This plugin is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Notion Labs, Inc. "Notion" is a trademark of Notion Labs, Inc.; it is used here only to describe the visual style the view emulates.

License

MIT