Mindmap NextGen

Obsidian plugin to view your notes as mindmaps using Markmap.

A similar plugin is available for Visual Studio Code.

Table of contents

• Usage
• "More options" menu
  • Pin/Unpin
  • Copy screenshot
  • Collapse all
  • Toggle toolbar
• Frontmatter
• Settings
  • Coloring approaches
  • Line thickness
  • Highlight inline markmaps
  • Use title as root node
  • Markmap settings
• Other features
  • Checkboxes
  • LaTeX
• Installing
• Contributing

Usage

Open the command palette (cmd/ctrl-p) and begin typing the name of one of the 2 commands.

What's the difference between a pinned and an unpinned mindmap? A pinned mindmap is linked to a single Markdown document. An unpinned mindmap will update based on whichever document is the last one you clicked on.

You can also insert mindmaps inside your document using a Markdown code block tagged with "markmap". For example:

```markmap
# Mindmap
## Mindmap
```

"More options" menu

This is the menu in the top right of each tab.

Pin/Unpin

Switch the tab to unpinned, or pin it to the active document.

Copy screenshot

Copy a PNG of the mindmap to the clipboard. Background and text color are configurable in settings or the document's frontmatter.

Collapse all

Closes all mindmap nodes, leaving just the root visible

Toggle toolbar

Show or hide the toolbar in the bottom right of the mindmap

Other Features

Checkboxes

Checkboxes will be displayed in the mindmap like so:

# Housework
## Main
- [x] Dishes
- [ ] Cleaning the bathroom
- [x] Change the light bulbs
- [ ] something else
## [x] Also works on titles

LaTeX

LaTex expressions will be rendered in your mindmaps. Surround an inline expression with a dollar sign on either side.

$\frac{\partial f}{\partial t}$

Or use two dollar signs for a multiline expression.

$$
\frac{\partial f}{\partial t}
$$

Frontmatter

Some settings can be set in each document's frontmatter. Frontmatter settings take precedence over global settings, when set.

The plugin will use any of markmap's settings except for extraJs and extraCss).

Example:

---
markmap:
  screenshotTextColor: #28F48D
  highlight: true
  titleAsRootNode: true
---

Settings

Coloring approaches

There are three approaches to coloring the branches of the mindmap for you to choose from, either in plugin settings or each document's frontmatter.

Branch coloring

This mode will choose random colors per branch. "Color freeze level" decides at what depth the branches will stop changing colors.

Depth coloring

In this mode, branches are colored based on their depth in the mindmap. You can choose the first three levels' colors, plus a default color for levels deeper than three.

Single color

In this mode, all branches are the same color.

Line thickness

Set line thickness for the first three depth levels, and a default thickness for levels beyond that.

Highlight inline markmaps

Frontmatter setting: highlight

Add a background to inline markmaps to make them stand out from the rest of the page.

Use title as root node

Frontmatter setting: titleAsRootNode

Generate mindmaps with the title at the bottom level, so you can avoid repeating the title.

Screenshot settings

Frontmatter settings: screenshotTextColor, screenshotBgColor

Decide what colors the screenshot function will use.

Take screenshots via the "More options" menu.

Markmap settings

There is a section in the plugin settings for adjusting the shape and size of different parts of the mindmap. It might seem confusing at first. You'll have to fiddle around with different combinations of settings to get it the way you like.

Installing

Search for "Mindmap NextGen" in the Community Plugins section in your Obsidian settings.

Compatibility

The obsidian version I have tested is v1.0.3, which is recommended to use at least version v1.0.0.

Manual installation

1. Download the latest release
2. Extract the obsidian-mindmap-nextgen 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
4. If prompted about Safe Mode, you can disable safe mode and enable the plugin.

Nightly Installation

Before anything you will need the following tools installed on your machine:

• NodeJS
• NPM (comes with NodeJS)
• Git (optional)

1. Open obsidian
2. Go to Settings > Community plugins.
3. On Installed plugins you can find a folder icon in the end, click on it:

4. Keep this folder open.
5. You can directly click HERE to download the zip file. Or you can go to this repo and click on the green icon "CODE" and then "Download ZIP".
6. Go to your Downloads folder, or wherever you have downloaded it.
7. Extract the zip file.
8. Copy the extracted folder to the folder you have open on step 3.
9. Go to that extracted folder and open it on terminal (On Windows you can Shift + Right Click and then "Open Command Prompt Here" or "Open Powershell Here", and on Linux just Right Click and click on "Open terminal here").
10. Run npm install.
11. Run npm run dev.
12. Go to Settings > Community plugins on Obsidian.
13. Reload the plugins folder, and then enable "Mindmap NextGen"

Contributing

Pull requests and issues are both welcome and appreciated. 😀

If you would like to contribute to the development of this plugin, please follow the guidelines provided in CONTRIBUTING.md.