Photo Journal — Obsidian Plugin

Automatically weave your photos into your daily notes using their EXIF metadata.

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Table of Contents

• What It Does
• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Configuration
• How It Works
• Daily Note Format
• GPS & Locations
• Troubleshooting
• Development
• License

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What It Does

Photo Journal bridges your image files and your daily notes. When you drag a photo into your vault, the plugin reads its EXIF metadata, finds (or creates) the daily note for the date the photo was taken, and inserts an inline image link under a ## Pics section. If the image has GPS data, the coordinates are either appended to front-matter or added inline as MapView geo links, depending on your settings.

The Photo Journal plugin is designed to work in tandem with the map view plugin (https://github.com/esm7/obsidian-map-view) and uses the same tags and front matter parameters.

A side-panel lets you inspect the full metadata of any open image without leaving Obsidian.

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Features

Feature 1 — Auto-link images into daily notes

When a new image file lands in your vault (drag-and-drop, file copy, etc.):

1. The plugin reads the image's EXIF metadata.
2. It looks for the capture date (DateTimeOriginal → DateTime → CreateDate).
3. It finds the matching daily note in your configured folder (e.g. Dailies/2024-03-15.md).
4. If that note already contains an ![[image.jpg]] link for this file, nothing happens (idempotent).
5. Otherwise it inserts the link under the ## Pics header and keeps that section ordered from oldest image to newest image. If the header doesn't exist, it is appended to the end of the note.
6. If the daily note itself doesn't exist, it is created (configurable).

Feature 2 — Image metadata side-panel

Opening any image file in Obsidian reveals a side-panel (right sidebar) that displays:

• Date & Time — capture date, raw EXIF string
• GPS Location — latitude, longitude, altitude, and a one-click OpenStreetMap link
• Camera — make, model, lens, software
• Exposure — shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length, flash, white balance, metering mode
• Image — pixel dimensions, colour space, orientation
• All Fields — every raw EXIF key/value extracted from the file (collapsible)

The panel updates automatically as you navigate between images.

Feature 3 — GPS coordinates (front-matter or inline)

Whenever an image link is added to a daily note (Feature 1), the plugin also checks for GPS coordinates in the image.

By default, the coordinate pair is appended to the location YAML array in the note's front-matter:

---
location:
  - "37.774929,-122.419418"
  - "37.807998,-122.475000"
---

This format is compatible with Obsidian Leaflet and similar mapping plugins.

If Use inline geolocations (MapView) is enabled in plugin settings:

1. The plugin ensures your front-matter contains an empty locations key so MapView knows to scan the note.
2. It writes an inline geo link directly below each newly inserted image link, for example:

![[IMG_4201.jpg]]
[location name](geo:37.774929,-122.419418)

The label is intentionally a stub (location name) so you can rename it later.

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Requirements

• Obsidian v1.4.0 or later (desktop or mobile)
• Node.js v16+ and npm (for building from source only)

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Installation

Option A — Manual install (recommended until community approval)

1. Download or clone this repository.
2. Run the build:

   npm install
   npm run build
   

3. Copy the three output files into your vault's plugins folder:

   <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/photo-journal/main.js
   <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/photo-journal/manifest.json
   <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/photo-journal/styles.css
   

4. In Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins, disable Safe Mode if prompted, and enable Photo Journal.

Option B — BRAT (Beta Reviewers Auto-update Tester)

If you have the BRAT plugin installed:

1. Open BRAT settings and click Add Beta Plugin.
2. Enter the repository URL: https://github.com/your-username/obsidian-photo-journal
3. Click Add Plugin, then enable it in Community plugins.

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Configuration

Open Settings → Photo Journal to configure:

Setting	Default	Description
Daily notes folder	Dailies	Vault-relative path to your daily notes
Date format	YYYY-MM-DD	Moment.js format for daily note filenames
Pics section header	Pics	The ## heading under which image links are placed
Locations property	location	Front-matter key for the GPS coordinate array
Use inline geolocations (MapView)	false	Writes [location name](geo:LAT,LONG) under images and keeps front-matter locations: [] present
Create note if missing	true	Auto-create a daily note when none exists for the image date

Tip: The date format uses Moment.js tokens. YYYY-MM-DD → 2024-03-15, DD/MM/YYYY → 15/03/2024, etc.

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How It Works

Image detection

The plugin listens to Obsidian's vault.on('create') event. Every time a file is created in the vault it checks whether the file extension is a known image type (jpg, jpeg, png, heic, heif, tiff, webp, gif, avif).

EXIF parsing

Image bytes are read via vault.readBinary() and passed to the exifr library, which runs entirely in-process (no external requests). exifr supports EXIF, XMP, IPTC, and ICC segments across all common formats.

Daily note resolution

The capture date is formatted using the configured Moment.js pattern and combined with the folder path to produce a normalised vault path such as Dailies/2024-03-15.md. Obsidian's vault.getAbstractFileByPath() checks whether the note exists. If it does not and createDailyNoteIfMissing is enabled, the plugin creates it with a minimal template including the front-matter location: [] key.

Link insertion

The plugin reads the full note content as a string and uses a regular expression to locate the ## Pics heading. It then reorders plain image embeds in that section by their effective image timestamp so older images stay at the top and newer images are added below them. When EXIF capture time is missing, the file creation time is used as a fallback. If the heading is absent it is appended with the link below it. The file is then written back with vault.modify().

Coordinates output modes

GPS coordinates extracted by exifr are formatted with 6 decimal places.

• Front-matter mode (default): writes "lat,lng" strings into the configured front-matter property (default location).
• Inline mode (MapView): keeps locations: [] in front-matter and writes [location name](geo:LAT,LONG) directly under the related image embed.

In both modes, the plugin uses a distance threshold to avoid adding near-duplicate points.

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Daily Note Format

A typical daily note managed by this plugin looks like:

---
location:
  - "37.774929,-122.419418"
---

# 2024-03-15

## Morning Pages
...

## Pics
![[IMG_4201.jpg]]
![[IMG_4205.jpg]]

The plugin only writes to the ## Pics section and the location front-matter property. Everything else in your daily note template is preserved.

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GPS & Locations

Coordinates are stored as either "lat,lng" strings in front-matter or inline geo: links in the note body.

This is the format expected by Obsidian Leaflet. To render a map in any note, install Obsidian Leaflet and add:

```leaflet
id: my-map
lat: 37.774929
long: -122.419418
height: 300px
marker: default, 37.774929, -122.419418
```

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Troubleshooting

Images are not being linked into daily notes

• Check that the image has EXIF date metadata. Open the image in Obsidian and look at the metadata panel — if "Date & Time" is absent, the image has no embedded date.
• Verify your Daily notes folder setting matches the actual folder name (case-sensitive on macOS/Linux).
• Make sure Create note if missing is enabled if the daily note doesn't exist.

The metadata panel doesn't appear

• Click the camera icon in the left ribbon to open it manually.
• The panel only auto-opens when an image is the active leaf.

Locations are not being added

• GPS data is only present in photos taken with a device that had location services enabled at the time.
• Check the metadata panel — if "GPS Location" is absent, the image has no embedded coordinates.

Build errors

• Make sure you are running Node.js v16 or later: node --version
• Delete node_modules and re-run npm install.

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Development

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/your-username/obsidian-photo-journal
cd obsidian-photo-journal

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start the dev watcher (outputs main.js with source maps)
npm run dev

# Build for production (minified, no source maps)
npm run build

Symlink the plugin folder into your test vault for fast iteration:

ln -s "$(pwd)" "/path/to/test-vault/.obsidian/plugins/photo-journal"

Then in Obsidian use Ctrl/Cmd+R to reload the app after each build.

Project structure

obsidian-photo-journal/
├── main.ts               # Plugin entry point; registers views and events
├── src/
│   ├── settings.ts       # Settings interface and defaults
│   ├── settingsTab.ts    # Settings UI rendered inside Obsidian Settings
│   ├── imageDropHandler.ts  # Features 1 & 3: EXIF → daily note linking
│   ├── exifReader.ts     # Thin wrapper around the exifr library
│   └── metadataView.ts   # Feature 2: metadata side-panel view
├── styles.css            # Panel styles (uses Obsidian CSS variables)
├── manifest.json         # Plugin metadata read by Obsidian
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
└── esbuild.config.mjs

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License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.