Material Icons Inline

Render Google Material Icons in Obsidian using the !icon[name] markdown syntax.

Demo

Note: The animated mouse cursor seen in the demo is by Haku.

Features

• Live Preview — icons render as you type; click to reveal raw syntax, click away to render again
• Reading view — icons render in reading view and exported notes
• 2,500+ icons — full Google Material Icons library
• Simple syntax — !icon[home], !icon[settings], !icon[check_circle]
• Configurable — set any CSS size or color via plugin settings
• Works offline — the icon font is bundled with the plugin; no network requests, no API key

Installation

Via Community Plugins (recommended)

1. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for Material Icons Inline
3. Click Install, then Enable

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy the three files to <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/material-icons-inline/
3. Enable the plugin under Settings → Community plugins

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/meiorz/material-icons-obsidian
cd material-icons-obsidian
npm install
npm run build

Copy main.js, manifest.json and styles.css to your vault's plugin folder.

Usage

Syntax

!icon[icon_name]

Icon names are lowercase with underscores, matching the names shown on the Google Material Icons site.

Examples

!icon[home] Home
!icon[settings] Settings
!icon[search] Search
!icon[check_circle] Task completed
!icon[error] Something went wrong
!icon[arrow_forward] Next  !icon[arrow_back] Previous

Finding Icon Names

1. Visit Google Material Icons
2. Search for the icon you want
3. Copy the name shown below it — uses underscores, all lowercase
4. Example: "Check Circle" → !icon[check_circle]

Live Preview Behavior

In the editor, icons behave like Obsidian's image embeds:

State	What you see
Cursor elsewhere	Rendered icon
Cursor inside !icon[...]	Raw syntax

This lets you edit the icon name without switching modes.

Settings

Access via Settings → Material Icons Inline.

Setting	Default	Accepts
Icon Size	24px	Any CSS length: 16px, 1.5em, 2rem
Icon Color	currentColor	Any CSS color: red, #ff0000, rgb(255,0,0)

Invalid values fall back to the default silently.

How It Works

1. Font loading — The Material Icons font is embedded in styles.css (generated at build time from styles.src.css), which Obsidian loads and unloads with the plugin. No network requests are made.
2. Live Preview — A CodeMirror 6 ViewPlugin scans visible text for !icon[name] patterns and replaces them with Decoration.replace widgets. Decorations are removed when the cursor enters the token range, revealing the raw syntax.
3. Reading view — A markdown post-processor uses TreeWalker to find text nodes and replaces each match with an <i class="material-icons-inline"> element via DocumentFragment.
4. Styling — Icon size and color are passed to styles.css as the CSS variables --material-icons-inline-size and --material-icons-inline-color.

Customization

Change the Syntax

Edit the regex in parseAndCreateIconHTML() and buildDecorations() in main.ts:

// Current: !icon[home]
const iconRegex = /!icon\[([a-z0-9_]+)\]/g;

// Alternative: {{icon:home}}
const iconRegex = /{{icon:([a-z0-9_]+)}}/g;

Change Default Size or Color

Edit DEFAULT_SETTINGS in main.ts:

const DEFAULT_SETTINGS: MaterialIconsSettings = {
    iconSize: '20px',
    iconColor: 'currentColor'
}

Testing

npm test              # run all tests
npm run test:watch    # watch mode
npm run test:coverage # coverage report

Troubleshooting

Icons not showing in editor

• Confirm the plugin is enabled under Settings → Community plugins
• Make sure you are in Live Preview mode, not Source mode (Source mode does not render decorations)
• Reload the vault with Ctrl+R

Icons not showing in reading view

• Make sure styles.css is in the plugin folder next to main.js (it contains the icon font)
• Reload the vault with Ctrl+R

Wrong icon appears

• Double-check the name at Google Material Icons
• Names must be lowercase with underscores: check_circle not check circle or Check_Circle

Settings change not reflected

• Settings apply on next render; toggle reading view or move the cursor out of the icon token to refresh

Common Icons

Syntax	Description
!icon[home]	Home
!icon[settings]	Settings
!icon[search]	Search
!icon[edit]	Edit
!icon[delete]	Delete
!icon[check_circle]	Done / Completed
!icon[error]	Error
!icon[warning]	Warning
!icon[info]	Information
!icon[favorite]	Favorite
!icon[bookmark]	Bookmark
!icon[arrow_forward]	Next
!icon[arrow_back]	Previous
!icon[download]	Download
!icon[upload]	Upload
!icon[star]	Star

Browse all 2,500+ icons

Acknowledgements

• Mouse Cursor: The 戌神ころね (Inugami Korone) animated mouse cursor seen in demo.gif is created by Haku and is not affiliated with this plugin. You can download the cursor here.

• Icon font: Material Icons by Google, licensed under the Apache License 2.0. The font is bundled from the material-icons npm package.

License

MIT

Author

meiorz

Contributing

Pull requests and issues welcome.