Typewriter Mode for Obsidian

Typewriter Mode is a plugin that adds typewriter scrolling (current line stays at a fixed position on the screen), a highlight for the current line, dimming of unfocused paragraphs and more to Obsidian. All features can be turned on or off individually and have various settings to customize their behavior to your liking.

These are a few exemplary screen captures:

Compatibility

This plugin is compatible with Obsidian v0.15.0 and above. It does not support the legacy editor.

Installation

To install community plugins make sure safe mode is turned off in Obsidian's settings.

From within Obsidian

You can install this plugin within Obsidian by doing the following:

• Go to Settings > Community Plugins > Browse
• Search for "Typewriter Mode"
• Click Install
• Click Enable

From GitHub

Manual

1. Download the latest Release from the Releases section of the GitHub Repository
2. Extract the plugin folder from the zip to your vault's plugins folder: <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/. Note: On some machines the .obsidian folder may be hidden. On macOS you should be able to press Command+Shift+Dot to show the folder in Finder.
3. Reload Obsidian

With BRAT

Follow the instructions in the repository of the BRAT plugin and use this repository's URL: https://github.com/davisriedel/obsidian-typewriter-mode to install the plugin.

Derived from

This plugin started as a fork of the incredible Typewriter Scroll plugin by deathau. It was turned into a separate plugin because many new features were added, breaking changes were introduced, and the code was completely restructured to make it more extensible.

The sentence highlighting was derived from Focus Active Sentence.

The writing focus was derived from Obsidian Focus Mode.

Development

The repo depends on the latest Obsidian Plugin API.

If you want to contribute to this project or make your own changes, you can do so by following these steps:

1. Clone this repo
2. Install dependencies with bun install
3. Build with bun run build
4. Create / update test vault with bun run test-vault
5. Open the test vault / reload Obsidian to see changes

You are welcome to open issues and contribute to this project!

Support this project

I am studying Computer Science at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. I develop this plugin in my spare time. If you wish to support me and the continuous development of this plugin, you can donate via GitHub Sponsors or buymeacoffee.com. I am truly thankful for your support.

Changelog

0.0.11

• New feature: Highlight active sentence (dim all other sentences, not only paragraphs)
• Reworked settings panel (now all settings can be edited, even for inactive features)
• Fixed compatibility of "Only maintain typewriter offset when reached" with "go to top" commands (e.g. vim mode)
• Fixed current line highlight position with custom line heights
• Fixed update modal scrolling

0.0.10

• Various bug fixes and improvements

0.0.9

• Completely rewrote the writing focus
  • This fixes:

    • 64 (Fullscreen focus interferes with vim mode)

    • 53 (Typewriter offset wrong in fullscreen mode)

    • 44 (Cannot access command palette from fullscreen)

    • 62 Let dropdown menu appear while writing in typewriter focus mode

  • The new implementation is based on obsidian-focus-mode available under the MPL-2.0 license. Therefore, the code in the files WritingFocus.ts and WritingFocus.scss is available under the same license. The rest of the project remains MIT licensed.

0.0.8

• Fix toggling all typewriter mode features on and off
• Fix toggling paragraph dimming and other features

0.0.7

• Fixed interference with other plugins that use iframes

0.0.6

• Fixed "Only activate after first interaction"
• Fixed bug when using this plugin inside a canvas
• Added setting to disable the plugin in canvas
• Added multiple commands to quickly enable certain features or the whole plugin
• Added update announcement dialog

0.0.5

• Fixed a bug where setting changes were not updated unless Obsidian was reopened / force reloaded.

0.0.4

• Fixed compatibility with new obsidian table editor
• Fixed bug with current line highlight in light themes
• You can now set a different color for the line highlight for dark and light themes

0.0.3

• Fixed compatibility with vim mode
• Fixed typewriter dimming on separate window

0.0.2

Renamed all settings and commands to use sentence case according to Obsidian's plugin guidelines.

0.0.1

Initial release of this plugin