Find detailed documentation at minimal.guide
Minimal is an Obsidian theme for desktop, mobile and tablet. Customize colors, fonts and more with the companion plugins Minimal Theme Settings and Hider. Winner of Obsidian's official Best Theme award ✨
About Minimal
- Screenshots
- Installation
- Companion plugins
- Settings
- Color schemes
- Plugin support
- Helper classes
- Alternate checkboxes
- Hotkeys
- Contributing
- Developers
- License
- Disclaimer
Screenshots
Background styles include low contrast, high contrast, and a true black option ideal for OLED devices
Helper classes for tables and card layouts allow you to create powerful workflows
Combining focus mode with image grid and image width options allows you to immerse yourself in visual projects
Minimal includes support for popular plugins like Calendar, Dataview, Kanban, Outliner, and more
Installation
To install the theme
- Open Obsidian Settings
- Go to
Appearance and click Manage
- Under community themes search for "Minimal" and click
Use
To install the companion plugin
- Go to
Community plugins and turn off Restricted mode
- Under community plugins search for "Minimal Theme Settings" and click
Install, then Enable
Have a question? Join the Minimal channel on the official Obsidian Discord.
Companion plugins
- Minimal Theme Settings plugin allows you to customize color schemes, fonts, hotkeys, and access the main feature toggles. This plugin is highly recommended for all users of Minimal.
- Hider plugin is recommended to hide Obsidian UI elements such as window frame, scrollbars, tooltips, etc. When using Hider to turn off the main toolbar (AKA app ribbon), it can be accessed by hovering over the bottom left edge of the window.
- Style Settings plugin allows you to create a custom color scheme. This plugin is optional.
Settings
The following settings can be accessed using Minimal Theme Settings plugin. Many of these settings below can be toggled with hotkeys.
Interface colors and fonts
- Background contrast — includes true black dark mode for OLED devices
- Color scheme — includes Catppuccin, Dracula, Everforest, Gruvbox, macOS, Nord, Solarized, and more
- Line width — set normal line width and maximum width within a pane
You can also use the Style Settings plugin for even deeper customization
Features
- Text labels for primary navigation — adds text labels the top left navigation, note that a translation snippet is necessary for languages other than English more on localization
- Focus mode — hides title bar and status bar
- Colorful frame — use accent color for the top area of the app window
- Colorful headings — use different colors for each heading
- Hide workspace borders — removes dividing lines for a more minimal appearance
- Trim filenames — file names are trimmed to a single line
Layout options
Controls images, tables and iframes. These settings can also be enabled on a per-file basis using helper classes.
- Image grids — turns consecutive images into columns. To make a new row, add an extra line break between images.
- Block widths — controls the width of elements by type.
Color schemes
Preset color schemes
Minimal offers color schemes that can be separately selected for light and dark mode using the Minimal Theme Settings plugin. Color schemes include Dracula, Everforest, Gruvbox, macOS, Nord, Notion, Solarized, and Things.
Custom color schemes
You can use the Style Settings plugin to customize your color scheme. To see your changes more easily, open Style Settings in a new pane by using the command palette (CMD + P by default). Using Style Settings you can customize Minimal's colors, font sizes, font styles, and many more details.
Plugin support
Most plugins work well with Minimal, but the following plugins have received special love and attention:
- Calendar
- Charts
- Checklist
- Dataview
- Dictionary
- Excalidraw
- Git
- Hider
- Kanban
- Outliner
- QuickAdd
Helper filters and classes
Image filters
Image filters can be added to create the following effects. Use them by adding the filter name at the end of the image link, e.g. ![[image.jpeg#invert]]
| Filter | Description |
|---|
#invert | Invert images in dark mode — ideal for charts and handwriting on light backgrounds |
#invertW | Invert images in light mode — ideal for charts and handwriting on dark backgrounds |
#circle | Crop image to a circle |
#outline | Add outline around image |
CSS helper classes
CSS helper classes can be added on a per-file basis using the cssClasses YAML front matter key. These classes are composable, so you can include more than one to combine effects.
For example, use the following code at the top of your file to enable cards layout:
---
cssClasses: cards
---
Image grids
Turns consecutive images into columns. To make a new row, add an extra line break between images. Learn more.
| Class | Description |
|---|
img-grid | Activate image grids |
Line width control for tables, images and iframes
Controls the width of elements by type. Learn more.
| Class | Description |
|---|
table-100, img-100, iframe-100 | Fill 100% of the pane width |
table-max, img-max, iframe-max | Fill the max line width (default 88%) |
table-wide, img-wide, iframe-wide | Fill the wide line width |
Cards
Using cards transforms Dataview tables into cards. Compatible with table width classes. Note that cards must be present for the other classes to work. Learn more.
| Class | Description |
|---|
cards (required) | Set all Dataview tables to card layout |
cards-align-bottom | Align the last element of a card to the bottom |
cards-cover | Images are resized to fill the defined space |
cards-16-9 | Fit images in cards to 16:9 ratio |
cards-1-1 | Fit images in cards to 1:1 ratio (square) |
cards-2-1 | Fit images in cards to 2:1 ratio |
cards-2-3 | Fit images in cards to 2:3 ratio |
cards-cols-1 to 8 | Force a specific number of columns (from 1 to 8) |
Tables and Dataview
Controls the row and column styling for tables. Learn more.
| Class | Description |
|---|
table-nowrap | Disable line wrapping in table cells |
table-wrap | Force line wrapping in table cells |
table-numbers | Add row numbers to tables |
table-tabular | Use tabular figures in tables |
table-small | Use small font size in tables |
table-tiny | Use tiny font size in tables |
table-lines | Add borders around all table cells |
row-lines | Add borders between table rows |
col-lines | Add borders between table columns |
row-alt | Add striped background to alternating table rows |
col-alt | Add striped background to alternating table columns |
Embeds and transclusions
| Class | Description |
|---|
embed-strict | Transclusions appear seamlessly in the flow of text |
Alternate checkboxes
Minimal supports a wide number of checkbox styles. These allow you to call out tasks that are incomplete, canceled, rescheduled, etc. See screenshots and details
| Syntax | Description |
|---|
- [ ] | to-do |
- [/] | incomplete |
- [x] | done |
- [-] | canceled |
- [>] | forwarded |
- [<] | scheduling |
- [?] | question |
- [!] | important |
- [*] | star |
- ["] | quote |
- [l] | location |
- [b] | bookmark |
- [i] | information |
- [S] | savings |
- [I] | idea |
- [p] | pros |
- [c] | cons |
- [f] | fire |
- [k] | key |
- [w] | win |
- [u] | up |
- [d] | down |
Hotkeys
Hotkeys are only available when using the Minimal Theme Settings plugin.
Background and borders
- Switch between light and dark mode
- Cycle between light mode styles
- Cycle between dark mode styles
- Toggle sidebar borders
Layout control
- Toggle image grids
- Cycle between image width options
- Cycle between table width options
- Cycle between iframe width options
Misc
- Toggle focus mode
- Toggle colorful headings
- Increase and decrease body font size
Contributing
If you would like add support for a plugin, or have found a bug you'd like to help fix, don't hesitate to open a pull request. Have a question? Join the Minimal channel on the official Obsidian Discord.
Plugin support
Plugin authors and developers can add support for Minimal theme by submitting a pull request. See the src/scss/plugins folder with examples of snippets for plugins that are currently supported.
Developers
Build instructions
Set up
npm install
Define local path
To build directly into your Obsidian vault rename .env.example to .env and update OBSIDIAN_PATH to the local path of your Obsidian theme folder.
To run
npm run dev # watch and rebuild on changes
npm run build # one-off build
This builds two files: theme.css, the minified distribution file (for the community themes store) which is also copied to your vault for live reload, and Minimal.css, an unminified copy saved to the project root.
License
Minimal for Desktop and Mobile
Minimal for Obsidian apps is licensed under the MIT License which allows you to modify and redistribute the code, however you must preserve the copyright and license notice in your CSS file. This includes any code you may extract as standalone snippets.
If you would like to distribute a fork of Minimal or part of its code, please keep my Buy me a coffee link present in your Readme.
Minimal is frequently updated to stay current with the latest version of Obsidian. To make it easy to stay current with the latest improvements, I recommend using Github's fork feature so that you can merge the latest changes into your fork. If you have any questions don't hesitate to reach me in the Obsidian Discord group.
Minimal for Obsidian Publish
Minimal for Obsidian Publish is a separate version of Minimal which follows the same design principles but is optimized for web. It is also MIT licensed and available at minimal.guide or the obsidian-minimal-publish repo.
Disclaimer
This theme is provided as is, and is designed for my personal use of Obsidian on macOS. As such it is not thoroughly tested across all operating systems and use cases.
This theme modifies significant parts of the Obsidian interface, so it may break with future updates. It may also be incompatible with other bits of custom CSS you have.
