Obsidian Plugin

The Obsidian plugin turns wikilinks to task files into interactive widgets. Link to a task from anywhere in your vault and see its status, project, dates, and other metadata inline. Check off tasks without opening the file.

Features

Interactive task widgets — Wikilinks to tasks render with checkboxes, status indicators, project/area, and due dates
Status colours — Coloured borders show task state at a glance (blue for inbox, yellow for in-progress, red for blocked)
Check off tasks — Click the checkbox to mark tasks done without leaving your note
Convert checklist items — Right-click any checklist item to turn it into a Taskdn task file
Inline title replacement — Display the task’s title frontmatter instead of the kebab-case filename, with a status-coloured border

Installation

Community Plugins (Coming Soon)

The plugin isn’t in the Obsidian Community Plugins store yet. Once available, install it by going to Settings → Community Plugins, searching for “Taskdn”, and clicking Install.

Until then, use one of the methods below.

Using BRAT (Recommended)

BRAT (Beta Reviewer’s Auto-update Tool) handles installation and keeps the plugin updated automatically.

Install BRAT from Settings → Community Plugins → Browse, search for “BRAT”
Enable BRAT in your Community Plugins list
Open the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl+P) and run BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing
Enter the repository: dannysmith/obsidian-taskdn
Go to Settings → Community Plugins, find “Taskdn”, and enable it

Manual Download

Download the latest release:

Download obsidian-taskdn.zip
Extract the zip file
Copy the extracted files (main.js, manifest.json, styles.css) to your vault’s plugin folder:
```
YOUR_VAULT/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-taskdn/
```
Create the obsidian-taskdn folder if it doesn’t exist.
Restart Obsidian
Go to Settings → Community Plugins, find “Taskdn”, and enable it

Make sure Wikilinks are enabled in your vault settings.

Configuration

Open Settings → Taskdn to configure:

Setting	Description
Tasks directory	Path to your tasks folder (default: `tasks`)
Default status	Status for newly converted tasks (default: `inbox`)
Show desktop button	Whether to show the “open in desktop app” button
Exclude patterns	Files to ignore, supports wildcards
Use task title as inline title	Show the title frontmatter instead of the filename in the inline title
Sync filename with task title	Also rename the file when the inline title is edited

Usage

Taskdn tasks rendered as interactive widgets in Obsidian

Link to task files using standard wikilink syntax:

- [[call-dentist]]
- [[review-quarterly-report]]
- Check out [[website-redesign]] when you have time

Works in both Live Preview and Reading mode. Tasks in bullet lists behave like native Obsidian checklists—completed tasks get strikethrough styling.

Inline Title

By default, Obsidian displays the filename as the inline title at the top of documents. For task files, this means you see buy-groceries instead of “Buy groceries”. The plugin can replace this with the human-readable title from frontmatter.

Setup

Enable Settings → Appearance → Show inline title (Obsidian’s native setting)
Enable Settings → Taskdn → Use task title as inline title

Status Border

When enabled, a coloured left border appears indicating the task’s status:

Status	Border Colour
inbox	Blue
icebox	Cyan
ready	Green
in-progress	Yellow
blocked	Red
dropped	Pink
done	Green

Editing the Title

Click the inline title to edit. When you finish (press Enter or click away), the plugin:

Updates the title frontmatter
Sets updated-at to today’s date
Optionally renames the file (if “Sync filename with task title” is enabled)

The standard Obsidian behaviour of renaming the file is intercepted—your edits go to the frontmatter instead.

Filename Sync

Enable Sync filename with task title to rename files when editing the inline title:

Filenames are converted to kebab-case (“Buy Groceries” → buy-groceries.md)
Obsidian updates all wikilinks automatically
Duplicate names get a number suffix (buy-groceries-2.md)

When It Applies

The inline title replacement only activates when all of these conditions are met:

The file is in your configured tasks directory
The file is not matched by any pattern in the exclude patterns list
The file has valid frontmatter with both title and status fields

For all other files, Obsidian’s normal inline title behaviour applies—edits will rename the file as usual.