The plugins I actually use

Obsidian has 2000+ community plugins. Most of them we don’t need. Here’s my actual working set — 9 plugins that have been with me for years and still work. Plus — a list of trendy plugins I installed and threw out.

Why “fewer plugins” is better

The first instinct after we’ve set up a basic vault: head into Community plugins and install 30 interesting ones. Don’t. Reasons:

• Every plugin is a point of failure. One breaks after an Obsidian update, and our vault lags in weird ways.
• Conflicts between plugins. Two plugins do similar things slightly differently — the vault starts behaving unpredictably.
• Cognitive load. If we have 30 plugins, each with settings — we’re burning energy on configuration instead of working with notes.
• Interest decay. Half of the good plugins die in a year (author stops maintaining). Fewer plugins — fewer dependencies.

The rule: a plugin must save us at least 1 minute a day, otherwise it’s not worth installing. Over a year that’s 6 hours — that’s meaningful. If it saves us 10 seconds once a week — throw it out.

My working set — 9 plugins

1. Obsidian Git

Covered in a separate article. Auto-commit + push to a private GitHub repo. Backup + change history. No debate — this is a must-have.

What it does: automatic commits every 10 min + push to our repo. Savings: we forget about backup as a problem.

2. Templater

Templates for repeatable tasks. Daily note, meeting notes, project setup, post draft — we create them not from scratch but from a ready scaffold.

What it does: lets us create files from a pre-built template with variable substitution (date, project name, etc.). Savings: 5-10 min a day if we keep a daily ritual.

A separate article in the series is dedicated specifically to Templater — I’ll go deeper there.

3. Dataview

Magical thing. Builds “queries” across the vault — like “show me all active projects,” “show all meeting notes from this month,” “show all tasks tagged #waiting.”

What it does: gives us a query language (similar to SQL but simpler) we can drop right into a note. The result updates automatically. Savings: instead of walking through 50 files by hand and collecting a list — we get a dashboard that updates itself.

4. Calendar

A small widget on the side: current month’s calendar, days with notes highlighted, click on a day — creates or opens a daily note.

What it does: visual navigation through daily notes. Savings: 30 seconds every time we need to find a record from a week ago.

5. Periodic Notes

Works in tandem with Calendar. Extends daily notes to weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. Each with its own template (via Templater).

What it does: gives us weekly review, monthly review in one click. Savings: structures our time. Without it, weekly review keeps being “I’ll get to it sometime.”

6. QuickAdd

Quickly add notes and tasks with hotkeys. Example: press Ctrl+Shift+A → it asks “what to add?” → we type → it automatically lands in 00_Inbox/ in the right format.

What it does: catches ideas without breaking our current context. Savings: 1-2 min a day, plus ideas don’t get lost.

7. Tag Wrangler

Helps manage tags: rename a tag across all files at once, see the full tag list with usage counts, delete unused ones.

What it does: brings order to tags, which naturally grow chaotic. Savings: minimal daily, but once a quarter it saves us from chaos.

8. Outliner

Improves work with nested bullets. Tab/Shift+Tab for nesting, dragging entire branches, fold/unfold — like Workflowy or Roam.

What it does: makes bullet lists in Obsidian actually pleasant. Savings: if we write a lot in outline format (brainstorming, plans) — significant.

9. Excalidraw (optional — for those who think in diagrams)

Drawing right in Obsidian — quick sketches, flowcharts, mind-maps. No need to switch to Miro or Figma. If we don’t think visually — we can skip it. If we do — it’s the best we’ll find in the Obsidian ecosystem. This plugin really needs screenshots to convey its power — a separate article with examples is in the works.

What I installed and threw out

A few popular plugins I installed and tossed within 2-4 weeks. Not because they’re bad — just not for me. Maybe not for us either.

Kanban. Looks cool, but in the end I always come back to lists with checkboxes. A Kanban board is work about organizing work, not the work itself.

Heatmap Calendar. Visually nice (squares like GitHub contributions), but less information than a regular Calendar. Tossed.

Citations / Zotero integration. If we’re academics or write research-heavy texts — useful. For most — overhead.

Smart Connections / AI plugins in Obsidian. Here’s the nuance: I get AI features through Claude Code in VS Code, which works with the same folder. Separate AI plugins in Obsidian duplicate and conflict, for me. If we’re not using Claude Code — the situation’s different, it might make sense.

Advanced Tables. Hints when working with markdown tables. Sounds useful, but I realized that 80% of tables are easier to ask AI to build than to edit by hand. Tossed.

Tasks plugin (with full syntax for deadlines, recurrences, etc.). Tries to turn Obsidian into Todoist. More complicated than it needs to be. I went back to plain - [ ] checkboxes + Dataview queries on them.

Various themes and CSS-snippet plugins. First 2 weeks with the vault — we want to customize. After a month — we realize the default theme works and we’re burning energy in the wrong place.

How I install new plugins — my process

When I see a new interesting plugin, I apply the “3-week rule”:

1. Day 0. Install it. Configure the basics.
2. Week 1. Use it actively. If I’m not using it — toss immediately.
3. Week 3. Check: am I really using it daily? Can I easily describe what exactly it saves me? If both are “yes” — keep it. If either is “no” — toss.

It’s strict, but it works. The vault doesn’t get cluttered.

Safe rule: install one at a time

If we want to test several plugins — install them one at a time, with a week’s pause. If something breaks — we immediately know who’s guilty. If we installed 5 at once and the vault starts lagging — start disabling them one by one until we find the bad one. That’s hours.

What’s next

Now we have a set of plugins that actually work. One of them — Templater — deserves its own article. Templates turn the vault from “just folders with files” into a real operating system: press a button → get a ready scaffold for a new project/day/meeting.

If we don’t want to miss it — follow me on LinkedIn, I announce each next piece there.