HiLighter - Obsidian Highlight Note Management Tool
HiLighter - Obsidian 高亮笔记管理工具
HiLighter is an Obsidian plugin focused on highlight note management. It transforms highlighted content into manageable note cards with support for multiple color annotations, AI-powered analysis, and intelligent search features, making your note organization more efficient. Works across Markdown, PDF, and EPUB.
🌐 Languages / 语言: English | 简体中文 | 日本語 | 한국어 | Français | Deutsch | Español | Português | Русский
✨ Core Features
🎨 Highlight Note Cards Management
- Sidebar Management: Aggregates
<mark> highlighted content from current document or entire library, supporting instant navigation to original text via card click.
- Multi-Dimensional Filtering:
- Color Filter: Quick categorization by four highlight colors: yellow, pink, blue, and green.
- Keyword Search: Real-time filtering of note content via top search bar.
- AI-Powered Intelligence:
- AI Translation (Languages): One-click precise translation of highlighted sentences.
- AI Research (Microscope): Comes with multiple built-in research prompt templates (philosophical analysis, concise summary, critical analysis) and supports custom research prompts — freely add, edit, and switch between prompts to suit different deep reading scenarios.
- Flexible Interaction:
- Quick Edit: Click pencil icon to directly edit notes on cards with auto-adjusting height.
- Tag System: Support for custom tags with built-in intelligent recommendation algorithm.
- Card Collection Navigation: One-click switch to full-screen "Card Studio" mode for centralized inspiration management.
- Note Card Management:
- Locate Original Text: Click a card to instantly jump to the highlighted position in the source note for quick context recovery.
- Classification Tags: Add tags to each card for organized categorization, with support for batch tag operations.
- Batch Deletion: Enter batch mode to multi-select cards and delete them in one click for efficient cleanup.
📄 PDF Annotation (New in 2.5)
- Highlight inside PDFs: Select text in any PDF and pick a color — a translucent highlighter mark appears on the page and a note card is created instantly, with your notes, tags, flashcard review and mind maps working exactly like markdown highlights.
- Persistent marks: Every highlight is anchored to page geometry, so marks survive page turns, closing and reopening the file, zooming, and vault syncs across devices.
- Two-way sync with cards: Delete a card and its PDF mark disappears immediately; recolor a card and the mark updates instantly.
- Jump to the exact sentence: Click a card to scroll straight to the highlighted sentence in the PDF, with a brief locate flash.
📖 EPUB Reading & Highlights (New in 2.6)
- Read epubs in your vault: Click any
.epub file to open it in the HiLighter reader (turn on "Detect all file extensions" under Settings → Files & Links so epubs appear in the explorer, or use the Open EPUB book command). Your reading position is remembered per book.
- Highlight & take notes: Select text and highlight in four colors with the same menu — AI translation and research included. Marks are CFI-anchored, so they survive reopens, page turns, and vault sync; deleting or recoloring a card updates the book page instantly.
- Cards locate the source: Every highlight becomes a note card; click it to jump back to the exact sentence with a locate flash.
- Reader toolbar: outline dropdown for chapter jumps, page jump with auto-generated page numbers, and bookmarks (add the current page, jump back from the list, remove anytime).
- Two reading modes: horizontal page turns (buttons or left/right swipe) or continuous vertical scrolling — switch anytime; your position is preserved.
🧠 Mind Maps (New in 2.4)
- One-Click Generation: Import all highlights from any file as a mind map — grouped by document headings, highlight color, tag, or flat order.
- Xmind-Style Editing: Drag topics to re-parent or reorder, Tab/Enter/Delete shortcuts, double-click inline editing, collapse/expand branches, undo/redo, and associative lines between any two topics.
- 9 Structures: Balanced mind map, logic diagram (right/left), organization chart, horizontal/vertical timelines, fishbone, and catalog organization — switchable at any time.
- 6 Style Themes × 8 Color Palettes: Line shapes and widths (curves, straight, rainbow branch lines) combined with full color schemes (background, node fill/border with per-level fading borders, plus a colorful card-colored option).
- Summaries & Notes: Box topics with summary nodes, attach your notes to any topic, and jump straight back to the source highlight.
- Import & Export: Open
.xmind files directly; export to PNG, .xmind (re-openable in Xmind), a Markdown outline, or an Obsidian .canvas board.
⚡ Flashcard Review (FSRS)
- Spaced Repetition: Built-in FSRS scheduling turns highlight cards into flashcards with a due queue and per-card review status.
- Focused Review Session: Flip cards with Space, rate recall 1–4 (Again/Hard/Good/Easy), skip or archive — all keyboard-driven.
- Review Insights: Due/new counts on the studio toolbar, plus review statistics in the stats dashboard.
🚀 Quick Start
Installation
- Manual Installation (Recommended):
- Obtain the latest version's three main files:
main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.
- Place them in your vault folder:
.obsidian/plugins/hilighter/.
- Enable the plugin in Settings > Third-party plugins.
- Community Plugins: Search for
HiLighter in Obsidian's Community Plugins browser and install it directly.
Basic Configuration
- AI LLM API (Important): To use AI Translation and AI Research features, configure an AI LLM API in plugin settings. Supports mainstream providers including DeepSeek, Google Gemini, and Volcano Engine (Ark).
Basic Configuration
- AI LLM API (Important): To use AI Translation and AI Research features, configure an AI LLM API in plugin settings. Supports mainstream providers including DeepSeek, Google Gemini, and Volcano Engine (Ark).
- Ribbon Icon: You can control whether to display the sidebar highlight notes icon in settings.
🤖 Agent Skill: Highlight a Whole Document with One Prompt
The optional pandora-hilight skill lets an AI agent (ZCode, Claude Code, …) process a note for you: it picks the highlight-worthy sentences, assigns colors by semantics (yellow = key idea, blue = concept, green = method, pink = quote), writes a study note for every highlight, and saves everything straight into HiLighter. The skill interacts in your language — ask about it in German and it guides (and annotates) in German.
Install — copy the block below and paste it to your agent:
Please install the pandora-hilight skill from https://github.com/PandoraReads/HiLighter:
1. Sparse-clone the repo: git clone --depth 1 --filter=blob:none --sparse https://github.com/PandoraReads/HiLighter /tmp/hilighter-repo && cd /tmp/hilighter-repo && git sparse-checkout set skills/pandora-hilight
2. Copy the skills/pandora-hilight folder into your own skills directory so the skill loads in future sessions.
3. Verify that SKILL.md exists with a valid frontmatter, clean up /tmp/hilighter-repo, and tell me how to trigger the skill.
After installing, just tell your agent "highlight this note" or run /pandora-hilight. Requires the HiLighter plugin installed in your vault; the skill writes highlights into the plugin's sync file (.hilighter/sync-data.json) and triggers the import automatically.
Prefer manual? One line:
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PandoraReads/HiLighter /tmp/hl && mkdir -p ~/.zcode/skills && cp -r /tmp/hl/skills/pandora-hilight ~/.zcode/skills/ && rm -rf /tmp/hl
🔄 Data Sync
HiLighter stores highlights in a per-device IndexedDB, but it can sync them across devices through a vault file (default .hilighter/sync-data.json). Enable Sync in settings and let iCloud or Obsidian Sync sync that file.
- Auto-import: the plugin watches the sync file and merges changes from other devices automatically (~30s poll + on window focus).
- Auto-export: local changes are exported back (debounced ~20s), merging the remote file first so you don't clobber other devices.
- Deletes propagate via lightweight tombstones (pruned after 30 days).
- Add/update only: sync merges rows but never deletes rows that were not explicitly tombstoned; it does not read Obsidian Sync's
*-conflicted-* copies.
You can still trigger sync manually with the Export to Vault / Import from Vault commands.
Deep links
obsidian://hilighter?op=... supports:
| op | action |
|---|
sync-import | import from the sync file |
sync-export | export to the sync file |
sync | import then export |
open-studio | open the Card Studio |
open-view | open the highlight sidebar (add &side=main for the main area) |
Useful from iOS Shortcuts and other apps. Without a vault= parameter the URL targets the last-active vault.
🛠 Development & Build
Developers are welcome to contribute to improving this project!
- Requirements: NodeJS (v16+)
- Install Dependencies:
npm install
- Development Mode:
npm run dev
- Production Build:
npm run build
❤️ Support & Feedback
If you enjoy this plugin, you can show your support through:
- Follow Official Account: 潘多拉的数字花园 (Pandora's Digital Garden)
- Bilibili: Follow 潘多拉的数字花园 on Bilibili for video walkthroughs
- Multi-Platform Support: Also available on Weibo, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), and Knowledge Planet under the same name
- Contact & Feedback: Feel free to add VX: PandoraReads
☕ Buy Me a Coffee
If HiLighter saves you time, you can treat the developer to a coffee (scan with Alipay / WeChat):
Changelog
v2.6.3 (2026-10-28)
- Card methods and links: add Cornell, one-page synthesis, and Luhmann-style idea card layouts with named cards, structured method fields, and links between related cards. Sidebar and Card Studio cards now render method content in dedicated layouts.
- Card Studio polish: refine card headers, metadata, editing, and floating actions; add compact icon-only controls and improve card grouping and sorting.
- Mind map editing: add free-positioned cards, multi-node selection, alignment and appearance controls, and a persistent floating action rail. Improve imported-map style switching and preserve map contents when changing palettes.
- Mind map toolbar: group the fit-to-canvas action with the compact-layout control for easier access.
- Data compatibility: extend local database and vault-sync merging for card methods, titles, and relations while retaining existing highlight cards.
v2.6.0 (2026-10-26)
- Bookmarks & reading modes: the reader toolbar gains bookmarks (bookmark the current page, jump back from the list, remove with one click) replacing the old resume button, and a page ⇄ scroll mode toggle — horizontal page turns (buttons or left/right swipe) or continuous vertical scrolling, with your position preserved across the switch and scroll updating the saved progress.
- EPUB reader toolbar: an outline dropdown (jump to any chapter), page jump (auto-generated page numbers with a slider and exact-page input, cached per book), and a "resume last reading position" button. Outline/page/card jumps never overwrite your saved reading spot, so resume always points where you actually left off.
- Card order: highlight cards for the current epub now follow the book's reading order (CFI position) instead of creation order; the studio's source-order sort uses the same comparator.
- EPUB reading & highlights (fixed): EPUB files in the vault now open in the HiLighter reader — the view previously stayed blank because it was not registered as a file view and never received the file. Select text to highlight in four colors, cards jump back to the exact sentence with a locate flash, and deleting or recoloring a card updates the book page instantly. A broken book now shows a readable in-view error with a retry button.
v2.5.1 (2026-10-25)
- AI model setup: Presets now prefill the whole form (only the API key is left to enter). A "Fetch model list" button pulls the live model IDs your key can actually use, and common product names (e.g.
deepseek-v3) are auto-corrected to real API model IDs. On a 400/404, the error message now lists the models available to your key.
- Kimi fix: New Kimi keys only serve
kimi-* models (preset default is now kimi-latest), and k2.6+ only accepts temperature 1 — each model can now set its own temperature in the editor.
- AI explain: The text-selection toolbar gains an "AI explain" button that writes a short annotation straight into the note box. The full-text AI analysis panel was removed.
- Fixes: The preset picker is now scrollable, and the settings page keeps your scroll position after edits.
v2.5.0 (2026-10-25)
- PDF highlighting: Select text in any PDF, pick a color, and a translucent mark appears on the page while a note card is created. Marks are anchored to page-relative selection geometry, so they survive page turns, reopens, zooming, and vault syncs — independent of the PDF renderer's internals.
- Jump to the exact sentence: Clicking a PDF card scrolls to the highlighted sentence and flashes it for ~1.2s (previously page-level only).
- Two-way sync: Deleting a card removes its PDF mark immediately; recoloring a card updates the mark instantly.
- Fixes: Repaired a long-standing crash in PDF highlight capture (page anchors were never saved), an overlay repaint feedback loop, and custom highlight colors not tinting sidebar card stripes.
v2.4.1 (2026-10-24)
- Plugin directory fix: Reverted the manifest name to ASCII-only "HiLighter" (the community directory rejects non-ASCII names and hid the entry). The bilingual description is unchanged.
v2.4.0 (2026-10-24)
- Mind maps (new): A "Mind Map" entry in the card studio imports all highlights from a file as a mind map — grouped by document headings, color, tag, or flat — with Xmind-style editing: drag to re-parent, Tab/Enter/Delete shortcuts, collapse/expand, undo/redo, and associative lines between topics.
- Mind map structures & themes: Balanced/right/left logic layouts plus org chart, horizontal/vertical timelines, fishbone, and catalog structures; six style themes (line shapes, widths, rainbow branch lines, node shapes) and eight color palettes (background/line/border schemes with per-level fading borders, plus a colorful card-colored option).
- Mind map integration: Highlight cards stay linked to their nodes (edits re-sync, deleted cards are flagged), nodes can jump back to the source text, and maps auto-save with debounced persistence.
- Mind map import/export: Import
.xmind files (modern and legacy formats, first sheet); export to PNG, .xmind, a Markdown outline, or an Obsidian .canvas board.
- Markdown notes: Gallery cards and the enlarged card dialog now render note Markdown (with a write/preview toggle in the dialog).
- UI languages: Added Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian (partial translations with English fallback), plus a "Follow Obsidian language" option.
- UI polish: Unified studio topbar typography and heights, palette icon on the theme selector, transparent scrollbars in the sidebar and studio, and a back-to-top button in the sidebar highlight list.
- Data: Mind map documents persist in IndexedDB (schema v5, additive — no migration needed).
v2.3.0 (2026-10-23)
- Card Studio: Added source-order sorting as the default, responsive card layout, consistent excerpt height, direct editing in the enlarged card dialog, and Markdown export for individual cards or full groups to a configurable vault folder.
- Themes and cards: Refined theme and light/dark styling; Ocean, Forest, Galaxy, Sunset, and Rose use color-dot accents instead of left color rails. Removed the “My Note” card label and refined color aliases, pin placement, and review status placement.
- Flashcard review: Improved card dimensions and text scale, with clearer review flow and rating states.
- Highlight notes: Added a note entry point to the selection toolbar, Cmd/Ctrl-click and double-click triggers, and note previews on highlight hover.
- Images and settings: Fixed image rendering while editing notes; added paste/drop image support and a configurable image folder.
- Studio tools: Added group export and a back-to-top control, and improved grouping/filter layout behavior.
"Let highlighted notes become the catalyst for inspiration." — HiLighter
