Notekeeper

A Google Keep–style wall of sticky notes for your Obsidian vault. Browse, capture, pin, color, and curate your notes on a sticky-note wall — or switch to a denser card grid when you need more density.

Capture a note with a title, body, optional pin, and color — saved to the wall in one click:

Click any sticky for a full markdown-rendered preview that inherits the note's color:

Features

• Masonry card layout — every note as a card, sized to its content, balanced across columns
• Quick capture — type into the centered input, hit Enter to create a note
• Inline edit — click the pencil to edit a card without leaving the view
• Note preview modal — click any card to open a full markdown-rendered preview with one-click pin / color / archive / open-in-tab actions
• Pin, color, archive — per-card hover actions; 12-color palette
• Drag pinned cards to reorder them
• Multi-select — shift- or cmd-click to select multiple cards; bulk pin / archive / color / delete from a floating action bar
• Right-click context menu — rename, copy link, copy embed, open in new pane, delete
• Inline checkboxes — - [ ] items render as live checkboxes that update the source file
• Image thumbnails — first attached image surfaces at the top of each card
• Backlinks badge — count of incoming links on each card
• Smart search — combine free text with tag:, pinned:, archived:, color:, path:, is: filters
• Sort by modified, created, or title — pinned cards always float to the top
• Three densities — comfortable, compact, list view
• Lazy infinite scroll — fast on vaults with thousands of notes; cards populate only as they scroll into view
• Auto-collapse side panes — Obsidian's left and right sidebars collapse while the card view is active and restore when you leave
• Keyboard navigation — arrow keys, Enter, e (edit), p (pin), a (archive), x (select), / (focus search)
• Tag chips are clickable — filter by any label with one click; clear with the active-filter chip's ×
• Manage labels command — rename a tag across the whole vault and assign per-tag colors

Frontmatter conventions

Cards read these fields from each note's YAML frontmatter:

---
pinned: true
color: "#5c2b29"
archived: false
tags: [ideas, work]
pinOrder: 1
---

• pinned: true floats the card to the top
• color paints the card background (or a left border, depending on settings)
• archived: true hides the card from the default view; toggle the archive button in the toolbar to see it
• tags populate the searchable label list
• pinOrder (number) controls the order among pinned cards; updated automatically when you drag

By default Notekeeper stores pinned, archived, and color in its own data.json keyed by file path — not in your notes' frontmatter — so toggling them doesn't touch the file or bump its mtime. Frontmatter values are still read as a fallback so notes you've authored manually with these fields keep working.

Search syntax

Type any of these in the search box:

Token	Meaning
tag:foo	Notes carrying the foo tag (frontmatter or inline)
pinned:true / pinned:false	Filter by pin state
archived:true	Show only archived notes
color:#5c2b29	Notes with this exact color
path:Inbox	Notes whose path includes "Inbox"
is:archived, is:pinned	Shortcuts for the above
Free text	Matches title and path

Combine freely: tag:work pinned:true urgent

Keyboard shortcuts

When the card view has focus:

Key	Action
/	Focus the search box
↑ ↓ ← →	Move focus between cards
Enter	Open the focused card in the preview modal
e	Begin inline edit on the focused card
p	Toggle pin
a	Toggle archive
x	Toggle selection
Esc	Clear selection / exit edit mode

Settings

• Notes folder — limit the card view to a single folder (leave empty for the entire vault)
• Preview lines — body lines visible on each card
• Color as left border — show note color as a 4px left border instead of the full card background
• Pinned section header — group pinned cards under a "PINNED / OTHERS" divider
• Show image thumbnails — render the first attached image on each card
• Auto-collapse sidebars in card view — collapse Obsidian's side panes while the card view is active

Commands

• Open card view — opens the masonry view in a new tab (also accessible via the ribbon icon)
• Manage labels — opens a modal listing every tag in your vault, with rename and color actions

Installation

From the community plugin store (after approval)

Open Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search "Notekeeper", install, and enable.

Manual install

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy them into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/notekeeper/
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Notekeeper in Settings → Community plugins

Development

Source lives in main.ts. The committed main.js is what Obsidian loads at runtime; rebuild it with esbuild after editing main.ts:

npm install
npm run build      # type-check + bundle to main.js
npm run dev        # rebuild on save

main.ts, manifest.json, and styles.css are the authored sources. The main.js artifact is produced by the build and committed alongside (so manual installs work without a build step).

PRs welcome. The codebase is single-file by design — keep it that way unless the addition is large enough to warrant its own module.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.