Daily Notes But Better

All the calendar, none of the clutter. A beautiful Calendar view to manage daily entries in one master file.

The Problem (Why I created this)

Standard Daily Notes and Calendar plugins in Obsidian often enforce a strict one-file-per-day architecture. While this works for some, it forces others to generate hundreds or thousands of tiny, fragmented .md files over time. This creates immense clutter in your file explorer, breaks the flow of reading your daily thoughts as a contiguous journal, and makes reviewing past days disjointed.

The Solution (How is this supposed to be used)

Daily Notes But Better provides a beautiful, fully functional Calendar View in your sidebar that lets you navigate and append your daily entries into a single master file (like Daily Log.md).

• No Clutter: Keeps your vault pristine by storing all your daily entries chronologically in one Markdown file.
• Smart Chronology: When you click a date on the calendar, the plugin scans your single file. If the entry exists, it jumps right to it. If it doesn't, it calculates exactly where that date belongs historically and explicitly inserts a new header for it—maintaining perfect reverse-chronological order.
• Streak Dots: The calendar automatically scans your master file and places indicator dots on days that have logged entries, letting you see your tracking streaks at a glance.
• Dual-Mode Flexibility: Prefer the old way for a specific project? You can toggle the plugin back to "One File Per Day" mode in settings, letting it act exactly like the traditional Calendar plugin.

How to do the calendar view

Once the plugin is installed and activated:

1. Look at your left Obsidian Ribbon and click the Calendar icon. Alternatively, you can open the calendar view using ctrl + p and then type "open calendar view" and start clicking...
2. The Calendar will appear in your right sidebar.
3. You can click any day on the calendar, use the < and > arrows to browse through months, and see your activity dots indicating which days have entries.

Usage

• Click any day: The plugin will instantly transport you to the appropriate line in your log file to start typing.
• Automatic formatting: The plugin automatically uses the header format you define in settings when creating a new date entry.
• Template injection: You can define a template in the settings that will be inserted whenever a new day is created.

Installation

From the Obsidian Community Plugins (Recommended)

You can install this plugin directly from within Obsidian:

1. Open Obsidian and go to Settings -> Community Plugins.
2. Turn off Safe Mode if it is enabled.
3. Click "Browse" and search for Daily Notes But Better.
4. Click Install.
5. Once installed, click Enable.

Manual Installation (Using the Git Project)

If you prefer to install manually via GitHub:

1. Go to your vault's plugin directory: .obsidian/plugins/ (note: .obsidian is a hidden folder).
2. Create a folder named daily-notes-but-better.
3. Clone or download this repository, and copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into the folder. Alternatively, use git clone https://github.com/Antigravity/daily-notes-but-better.git in the plugins directory and make sure the folder name exactly matches the ID (daily-notes-but-better).
4. Open Obsidian and go to Settings -> Community Plugins.
5. Refresh the installed plugins list.
6. Find Daily Notes But Better and toggle it ON.

Configuration

Go to the plugin's Options. You will see a Log Mode dropdown:

Mode 1: Single Master File (Default)

• Set your Target Master File Path to your chosen unified markdown file (e.g., Log/Daily Log.md).
• Define the Date Format for the headers injected into your master file.
• Set a Template path if you want specific content added when a new day is created.

Mode 2: One File Per Day

• Switch Log Mode to "multi" if you prefer separate files.
• Set your Daily Logs Folder where you want individual notes placed.
• Set the Multi-mode Date Format (e.g., YYYY-MM-DD) which is used for the filenames.

...happy logging