Graph Background

Customize the background of Obsidian's global and local graph views — solid color, gradient, or image — all from the plugin's settings page. No theme switching, no manual CSS snippets.

Install (manual)

1. In your vault, go to .obsidian/plugins/ (create the plugins folder if it doesn't exist).
2. Create a new folder inside it called graph-background.
3. Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into that folder.
4. In Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins, make sure "Restricted mode" is off, then refresh the list and toggle Graph Background on.
5. Go to Settings → Graph Background to configure it.

Your folder should look like:

.obsidian/
  plugins/
    graph-background/
      main.js
      manifest.json
      styles.css

How it works

• Background type: pick None, Solid color, Gradient (linear or radial), or Image.
• Image source: either pick a file already in your vault, or paste an external image URL.
• Fit: cover / contain / repeat (tile) / center, for images.
• Apply to: choose whether it affects the global graph, the local graph, or both.
• Readability overlay: a Dim slider and a Blur slider — these only affect the background layer, never the actual graph nodes/links/labels, so your notes stay easy to read on top of busy images.

Changes apply live — no need to reopen the graph view or restart Obsidian.

Notes

• This relies on the documented Obsidian "CSS bridge" classes for the graph view (.graph-view.color-fill), which Obsidian itself provides specifically so themes/snippets can recolor the graph's WebGL canvas. The plugin uses this to make the canvas's own background transparent, then layers your chosen background behind it.
• Because this depends on Obsidian's internal graph view markup, a future Obsidian update could in theory change those class names and require an update to this plugin. It's been built against current (mid-2026) Obsidian releases.
• Works on desktop and mobile.