WikiFlash

An Obsidian plugin that briefly flashes a wikilink's [[ ]] brackets — the same momentary cue Xcode gives when you close a {} block and it flashes the matching brace.

It fires in two situations:

• When you create a link — the instant you type [[ and Obsidian auto-adds the closing ]], the brackets flash.
• When you navigate into a link — moving the cursor into an existing [[wikilink]] (arrow keys or a click) flashes its [[ and ]], leaving the link text untouched.

The flash pops to full colour, holds briefly, then fades smoothly back to the brackets' resting colour — no jarring snap.

Link creation	Link navigation

It also supports Obsidian pop-out windows, so the flash keeps the same appearance in secondary windows as it does in the main workspace.

Settings

Everything is customizable under Settings → WikiFlash:

Setting	What it does
Enable flash	Turns the editor flash on or off without uninstalling or disabling the plugin.
Box colour (light / dark)	Colour of the highlight box, set separately for light and dark mode (default: a vivid yellow, like Xcode). The matching pair is chosen automatically and updates live when you switch theme.
Bracket text colour (light / dark)	Colour of the [[ ]] characters during the flash, per theme. Use white for a dark box, black for a light one.
Light / dark previews	Show separate sample flashes for the light and dark colour pairs.
Preview controls	Replay both preview animations without changing settings.
Opacity	Starting intensity before the fade.
Duration	How long the flash lasts, in milliseconds.
Corner radius	Roundness of the highlight box.
Reset defaults	Restores the default enabled state, colours, opacity, duration, and corner radius.

Respects your system Reduce motion setting (no animation when enabled).

Command

WikiFlash adds one command:

Command	What it does
Test flash	Flashes the brackets of the [[wikilink]] under the cursor without changing the note.

How it works

WikiFlash adds a small CodeMirror 6 editor extension: a StateField holds an ephemeral set of highlight decorations, and a ViewPlugin detects link creation (a doc change producing an empty [[]]) and link navigation (a cursor move into an existing link). It never modifies your note content — the highlight is a purely visual overlay that is added and then removed on a timer.

It works in Live Preview and Source editing modes. It does not hook Obsidian's link suggester, so there's no reliance on private APIs.

Privacy and safety

WikiFlash is local-only. It does not use network requests, telemetry, filesystem access, shell commands, dynamic code execution, or raw HTML injection. It stores only its own visual settings through Obsidian's plugin data API, and it never modifies note content.

Installation

From the Community Plugins browser (once published)

Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search for WikiFlash → Install → Enable.

Manual

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

Development

This plugin is hand-authored CommonJS — there is no build step. Obsidian provides the obsidian and @codemirror/* modules at runtime, so main.js is the source you edit directly. To work on it, copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into a vault's .obsidian/plugins/wikiflash/ folder and use Reload plugin while iterating.

License

MIT