Image Gallery Plugin

An Obsidian plugin that displays all images in your vault in a beautiful gallery view with OCR text search capabilities. Supports both local and remote images.

Features

• Gallery View: Display all images from your vault in an organized gallery layout
• OCR Text Recognition: Automatically extract text from images using macOS Vision framework
• Smart Search: Search images by their OCR content or contextual information
• Support for Multiple Formats: Works with both local images and remote image URLs
• Context-Aware: Shows which notes reference each image and surrounding content
• Batch Processing: Efficiently process multiple images with configurable concurrency

Installation

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release files (main.js, manifest.json, styles.css)
2. Copy them to your vault's plugin folder: VaultFolder/.obsidian/plugins/image-gallery-plugin/
3. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins

Development Setup

1. Clone this repository to your vault's plugin folder
2. Install dependencies: npm i
3. Build the plugin: npm run build
4. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin

Usage

The plugin automatically scans your vault for images and provides:

• A gallery view accessible through the ribbon icon or command palette
• OCR text extraction from images (macOS only)
• Search functionality to find images by their text content
• Context information showing which notes reference each image

OCR Features

The OCR functionality uses macOS's Vision framework and supports:

• Multi-language recognition: Optimized for Chinese (Simplified & Traditional) and English
• Automatic language detection
• Caching: Results are cached to avoid re-processing unchanged images
• Context extraction: Captures surrounding text from notes that reference images
• Advanced search: Support for phrases, negation, and OR operators

Search Syntax

• "exact phrase": Search for exact phrases
• -word: Exclude images containing this word
• word1 OR word2: Find images containing either word
• word1 word2: Find images containing both words

Development

Building

npm run dev    # Development mode with file watching
npm run build  # Production build

Project Structure

• main.ts: Main plugin entry point
• ocr-service.ts: OCR functionality and image text processing
• styles.css: Plugin styling
• manifest.json: Plugin metadata

Requirements

• Obsidian v0.15.0+
• macOS (for OCR functionality)

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Make your changes
4. Test thoroughly
5. Submit a pull request

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

Author

Julian Zhang (@forrestchang)