Reference Cards for Obsidian.md

Manage reference cards in a side panel and link them to your notes with {id} markers.

UI Preview

Features

• Create and manage reference cards in a side panel
• New cards animate into place from the + button (respects reduced-motion)
• Each card gets a unique, randomly generated 3-character ID (letters + digits, e.g. {a1b})
• Insert {id} markers into notes to link cards
• Click {id} in Live Preview to jump to the card
• Cards support title, tags, year, and notes fields
• Clickable links in title and notes (URLs, wiki links, markdown links)
• Paste a link into a card title to fetch the page title automatically and insert it as [title](url)
• Filter cards by tag
• While typing tags, matching tags already used on your cards are suggested below the field (↑/↓ to move, Enter to accept, Escape to dismiss)
• Optional unique-title enforcement: when off, a card can't take a title another card already has — a new card keeps an empty title and a renamed card reverts, with a warning you can click to jump to the existing card
• Sort by date added (default), citation order, title, year, or a custom order you set yourself
• Citation sort orders cards by where their {id} first appears in the current note (cards the note does not cite stay after the cited ones; IDs and notes are left untouched)
• Custom sort lets you drag cards into any order; the order is saved and kept across reloads
• Undo/Redo for card deletions
• Delete cards without touching your notes — IDs are stable and never reused
• Deleting a card (or undoing the delete) keeps the panel scrolled where you were, anchored to the surrounding cards
• Show which vault files reference a card via the ? button
• Math and code blocks are ignored, so LaTeX like \frac{1}{N} inside $…$ is never mistaken for a reference
• Configurable card font size (10–20px)
• Optional alternating card background colors: pick one of five presets for dark mode and five for light mode (they follow your Obsidian theme), or set your own two colors

Usage

1. Open the side panel via the ribbon icon or command palette → "Open Reference Cards"
2. Click + to create a card, fill in title, tags, year, and notes
3. Place cursor in a note, click + on a card to insert {id}
4. Click {id} in Live Preview to jump to that card
5. Use the sort dropdown (Added / Citation / Title / Year / Custom) and the ↑/↓ button to change card order — the choice is remembered
6. Pick Citation to order cards by where their {id} first appears in the current note; the ↑/↓ button reverses the order of the cited cards
7. Pick Custom and drag a card by its grip handle (or anywhere on the card that is not a field or button) to place it; a line shows where it will land. The order is saved immediately
8. Use the history button (or click the deletion notice) to undo the last card deletion
9. Double-click title or notes to edit
10. Start typing in a card's Tags field to get suggestions from tags you already use; press Enter to accept (a ", " is added so you can keep typing), ↑/↓ to choose, Escape to dismiss
11. Paste a bare URL into a title to turn it into [page title](url) (works with links copied from a browser page too; if the page can't be read, the pasted text is kept)
12. Delete a card with × — notes are not modified and remaining IDs are unchanged
13. Click ? on a card to see which files reference it
14. With Allow identical card titles turned off, finishing a title another card already uses clears a new card's title (or reverts a rename) and shows a warning — click the title in the warning to jump to the existing card

Installation

From Community Plugins

1. Open Settings → Community Plugins → Browse
2. Search for "Reference Cards"
3. Install and enable

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy them to .obsidian/plugins/reference-cards/ in your vault
3. Enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins

Settings

Setting	Description
Fetch link titles on paste	When a URL is pasted into a card title, fetch the page title and insert it as a markdown link (default: on). Falls back to the pasted text when the page can't be read
Title soft wrap	Allow long titles to wrap across multiple lines (default: on). Titles longer than three lines switch to a compact layout: the [id] and action buttons move to the top row and the title gets the full card width below them
Allow identical card titles	When off, a card cannot take a title another card already uses (trimmed, case-sensitive; blank titles never count). A new card keeps an empty title, a renamed card reverts, and a warning links to the existing card. Turning it off is refused while any title is still shared — the warning lists those titles (default: on)
Card font size	Adjust the font size of card content, 10–20px (default: 13)
Reference ID color	Color for {id} highlights in the editor and for the [id] badge on cards (default: link color)
Card background colors	Give cards alternating background colors. The 1st, 3rd, 5th… card uses color A and the 2nd, 4th, 6th… uses color B (default: off)
Background preset	One of five preset pairs. The list follows your theme: pick in dark mode for the dark pairs, in light mode for the light pairs. Choosing Custom reveals two color pickers

License

MIT