Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Community Plugins.

If you’ve been using Obsidian for a while, you’ve probably noticed that the core app is intentionally minimal. That’s by design. The real power comes from community plugins, and that’s exactly what we’re covering today.

Community plugins extend Obsidian beyond its built-in functionality. You install them directly from inside the app, through Settings, then Community plugins, then Browse. Before you can do that though, you need to turn off something called Restricted mode. Once that’s off, you can search for any plugin, hit Install, and then Enable. That’s the standard flow and it takes about thirty seconds.

If you ever need to install a plugin manually — maybe you’re working offline or testing a custom build — you can do it by copying the plugin folder directly into the dot-obsidian plugins directory inside your vault. The folder needs to contain at least two files: one called main dot js, which is the actual plugin code, and one called manifest dot json, which tells Obsidian what the plugin is. There’s also an optional styles dot css file if the plugin has its own visual styling.

One thing worth flagging before we go further: community plugins run real code on your machine. That’s what makes them powerful, but it also means you should only install plugins from sources you trust. It’s good practice to glance at the plugin’s GitHub repository before installing — just to get a sense of who made it and how actively it’s maintained.

Now let’s talk about the plugins themselves. The wiki lists nine plugins considered essential for a well-run vault.

First is Dataview. This one lets you treat your vault like a database. You can write queries that pull information from your notes and display it as dynamic tables, lists, or calendars, all driven by the frontmatter fields in your notes. The key thing about Dataview results is that they’re live — they update automatically as your vault content changes.

Next is Templater. Think of this as a much more powerful version of Obsidian’s built-in templates. It supports JavaScript scripting, date functions, and the ability to pull in file metadata. So you can do things like automatically stamp a note with today’s date or insert the folder name as a tag when you create a new file.

Then there’s Calendar, which adds a monthly calendar widget to your sidebar so you can navigate your daily notes visually by clicking on dates.

Obsidian Git is a huge one for anyone who wants version control. It automatically commits and pushes your vault to a Git repository on a schedule you define. Great for backup and for teams.

Excalidraw brings full drawing and diagramming capabilities right inside Obsidian — no need to switch to a separate tool.

Kanban lets you create kanban boards inside ordinary markdown files, which is a neat trick if you’re managing projects in your vault.

Tasks is your task management layer — it adds support for due dates, recurring tasks, and queries that let you pull task lists from across your entire vault into one view.

QuickAdd is designed for speed. It lets you capture quick entries, run macros, or append content to specific notes without breaking your flow.

And finally there’s Linter, which auto-formats your notes every time you save. It keeps your frontmatter consistent, cleans up spacing, and enforces a consistent markdown style across the vault.

Let’s talk about those code examples in the wiki. The first one is a Dataview query. In plain terms, it’s asking Obsidian to build a table showing two pieces of information — a status field and a date — for every note inside the Wiki folder that has been tagged as a reference type. The results come back sorted from newest to oldest. You’d drop this query into any note and Dataview renders the table for you automatically.

The second Dataview example is simpler. It produces a list of all notes tagged with the word project where the status is currently set to active. Again, this updates live as things change.

The Templater example shows what a template file might look like when you create a new note. It automatically fills in the creation date in a year-month-day format, tags the note with the name of the folder it lives in, and uses the file’s title as the main heading. All of that happens the moment you apply the template — no manual typing required.

When it comes to keeping your plugins up to date, you go back to Settings, then Community plugins, and your installed plugins are listed there with Update and Uninstall options. If you want Obsidian to check for updates automatically every time it starts, there’s a toggle for that called Check for updates on startup.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.