Bionic Reading for Obsidian

An Obsidian plugin that applies a bionic reading effect in Reading View -- the first portion of each word is bolded, creating artificial fixation points that help your eyes glide through text faster.

Before & After

Before -- normal Reading View:

After -- with Bionic Reading enabled:

Features

• Works automatically in Reading View (source/editor mode is untouched)
• Latin-only -- only processes English and other Latin-alphabet text; Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other scripts are left untouched
• Skips code blocks, inline code, math blocks, and SVG elements
• Non-destructive -- your markdown files are never modified
• Configurable fixation strength

Settings

Setting	Description
Enable bionic reading	Toggle the effect on/off without uninstalling the plugin
Fixation strength	Slider from 1 (light) to 5 (heavy) -- controls how many letters per word are bolded

Installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. In your vault, create the folder .obsidian/plugins/bionic-reading/
3. Copy the three downloaded files into that folder
4. Open Obsidian, go to Settings > Community plugins, and turn off Restricted mode if it's on
5. Enable Bionic Reading in the plugin list
6. Open any note in Reading View to see the effect

Development

npm install
npm run dev    # watch mode
npm run build  # production build