A simple sidebar heatmap for Obsidian.

There were no 'heatmap' plugins that I liked so I made my own. Existing solutions were cumbersome and/or did not integrate well with the Obsidian UI.

• Heatmap Visualization
  • Contribution/GitHub-style heatmap representing daily file activity
  • Colour coding based on create and modify activity
• Live Refresh
  • Scans files in the vault (or an optional target folder) capturing both creation and modification dates
  • Checks hourly
• Interactive Day Cells - clicking on a day cell gives a popup with the files for that day
• Dynamic Resizing - Responds to the UI and rebuilds the heatmap when the container size changes
• Customisable Colour Presets

Provides

• Target folder to track.
• Change leaf's title e.g. "Vault Heatmap"
• Change leaf icon (using built-in Lucide icons)
• Customisable colour presets via
  • JSON hex code array
  • Then select a desired colorway preset from a dropdown.

Each palette is defined as a JSON object with a "name" and a "colours" array containing valid hex codes. For example:

[
  {
    "name": "Warm",
    "colours": ["#FF0000", "#FFA500", "#FFFF00"]
  }
]

1. Install:

   • Download or clone the repository.
   • Place the plugin folder (obsidian-heatmap/) in your vault’s .obsidian/plugins/ directory.
   • Enable the plugin from Obsidian’s Community Plugins settings.

2. Configure:

   • Open the plugin settings to set your Target Folder, Leaf Name, and Icon.
   • Edit the JSON for Colourways or choose a preset.
   • The heatmap will appear automatically in the left sidebar.

There is not going to be any scope blowout for this plugin, but there are a few QoL features I would like to implement to make this plugin feel polished and complete.

Yes... multiple heatmaps are coming.

• Core Done
  • Folder selection
  • Palette customisation
  • Icon selection
  • Daily refresh
  • Auto-setting application - partially complete
  • Dynamic Resizing
  • Interactive Day Cells
• Core+
  • Multiple heatmaps - Folder-specific individually customizable heatmaps i.e. different heatmaps for different folders
  • UI Adjustment Settings
    • Padding adjustment - slider - will try to make automatic/dynamic to suit anyone's UI setup - may need community feedback
    • Radius of cells - slider
    • Improve the JSON input field
  • More graceful error handling
• Extended
  • Inline look-ahead folder suggest modal
  • Icon picker
  • Colourway enhancements
    • Palette gradient preview on the settings page
    • Individual palette editing - edit individually instead of the entire JSON
    • Live error checking of the JSON input

If you have any feedback, suggestions or bug reports, please feel free to open an issue on the GitHub repository.