NaviBoard

An Obsidian plugin that turns your bookmarks into a visual navigation board. Drop a link, an app or a note onto a free canvas and arrange it the way you arrange icons on your computer. Every item is a plain Markdown file; positions live in frontmatter, so the canvas syncs with your vault and nothing is locked in a database.

在 Obsidian 里把收藏摆成一张桌面。丢一个链接、一个应用或一篇笔记进画布， 像整理电脑桌面一样拖拽归类。每个收藏都是一个 Markdown 文件，布局写在 frontmatter 里，随 vault 同步，没有数据库也没有 sidecar。

Features

• Links become Markdown. Dropping a URL fetches the article (Readability), a tweet, or builds a site card from Open Graph metadata, then saves it as a note in your bookmark folder.
• Web pages, local apps and notes on one canvas. Drag a .app, a folder or any file from Finder and it becomes a launcher icon with its real system icon. Double-click to launch. Drag Markdown or PDF from your vault and it becomes a note card.
• Areas, ratings, arrows and text. Group things spatially, rate them, or annotate the canvas. Areas carry their members when you move them.
• Zoom that stays readable. Area names keep a constant on-screen size; captions, descriptions and titles drop away as you zoom out, so the small view is a navigation view.
• Canvases inside notes. A ```web-desk code block renders the same canvas inline, with the same capabilities.

Install

From the community plugin list

Not yet listed. Until it is, use one of the options below.

With BRAT (recommended for now)

1. Install BRAT from the community plugin list.
2. Run BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing and paste IvyYang1999/obsidian-naviboard.
3. Enable NaviBoard in Settings → Community plugins.

BRAT keeps the plugin updated automatically.

Manually

Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release, put them in <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/naviboard/, then enable the plugin.

Usage

Open the canvas from the ribbon (grid icon) or the command palette (Open web desk). Then:

Action	Result
Drop a URL, or paste one	Fetches it and adds a bookmark note
Drop a .app, folder or file from Finder	Adds a launcher icon
Drop Markdown or PDF from the vault	Adds a note card
Drag an item into an area	Writes desk_group into its frontmatter
Double-click	Opens the page, launches the app, or opens the note
Scroll / ⌘-scroll	Pan / zoom

Bookmarks are stored in the folder set in plugin settings (default 收藏夹). Local app icons are cached under the attachment folder.

Privacy and permissions

NaviBoard is a desktop-only plugin. It does not collect analytics, require an account, or send your vault contents to a NaviBoard server.

• Network access happens only for features you invoke. Importing a URL may request the source page, Open Graph images, favicon services, and—for X posts— the public FxTwitter API. Embedded web views load the destination website directly.
• Local file access is explicit. When you drop an app, folder, or file from Finder, NaviBoard stores its path in Markdown so it can open or reveal that item when you ask. It may read a local app icon for display.
• Clipii is optional. If Clipii is installed at its standard Homebrew path, NaviBoard can invoke it to convert supported WeChat and Xiaohongshu pages. Temporary conversion files are cleaned up after import.

Your imported notes and canvas data remain ordinary files in your vault. The websites and optional tools above have their own privacy policies.

Development

npm install
npm run build      # tsc + production bundle
npm run test:unit  # unit tests

scratch/parity-visual-smoke.cjs drives a real Obsidian instance over CDP and checks that both canvases keep the same capabilities.

Design constraints live in DESIGN.md.

License

MIT

NaviBoard bundles Mozilla Readability (Apache-2.0) and Turndown with its GFM plugin (MIT). Their license notices are preserved in the distributed bundle.