Hover Highlight

An Obsidian plugin that adds a soft cursor glow effect to Canvas, creating a subtle dot-grid spotlight that follows your mouse.

Features

• Dot-grid spotlight — two overlaid dot grids (base gray + lit white) with a CSS mask creating a radial glow effect
• Smooth cursor following — configurable lerp-based animation for buttery-smooth movement
• Fade animation — glow fades out when the cursor stops moving
• Customizable settings:
  • Glow radius (50–500px)
  • Dot brightness (1–100%)
  • Cursor follow smoothness
  • Fade animation toggle
• Performance-friendly — uses requestAnimationFrame, GPU-accelerated CSS transforms, and will-change hints
• Canvas-only — activates only when viewing an Obsidian Canvas

How it works

The plugin replaces the default Canvas dot background with a dynamic spotlight:

1. A base grid of gray dots is always visible at 40% opacity
2. A second grid of bright white dots is masked with a radial gradient centered on the cursor
3. The mask smoothly follows the cursor via linear interpolation
4. When the cursor stops, the mask fades out over 800ms

Installation

From Obsidian Community Plugins (once published)

1. Open Settings → Community plugins
2. Disable Safe mode
3. Click Browse and search for "Hover Highlight"
4. Install and enable

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy them into your vault's .obsidian/plugins/hover-highlight/ folder
3. Enable the plugin in Obsidian Settings > Community Plugins

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Enable glow	Toggle the dot glow effect	On
Glow radius	Size of the glow in pixels (50–500)	120
Dot brightness	How bright the lit dots appear (1–100%)	50%
Smoothness	How smoothly the glow follows the cursor (lower = smoother)	0.12
Fade animation	Fade the glow out after cursor stops moving	On

Development

git clone https://github.com/raito1chi/hover-highlight.git
cd hover-highlight
npm install
npm run dev       # watch mode
npm run build     # production build
npm run lint      # type check

Structure

src/
  main.ts         Plugin entry point, canvas detection, lifecycle
  spotlight.ts    Core dot-grid renderer with CSS mask animation
  settings.ts     Settings tab UI
  styles.css      Dot layer styles

Compatibility

• Requires Obsidian v0.15.0+
• Works on desktop and mobile

License

MIT