Usage

Requirements

• Obsidian 1.4.0 or newer.
• The Bases core feature enabled.

Installation

From community plugins

1. Open Settings → Community plugins.
2. Search for Bookshelf.
3. Install and enable.

Manual install

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Copy them into <Vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-bookshelf/.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Bookshelf in Settings → Community plugins.

Creating a bookshelf

1. Create or open a .base file.
2. Add a view.
3. Set the view type to Bookshelf.
4. Open the view’s options and configure at least an Image property (see Configuration).

Adding books

Any note matching the Base’s filters becomes a book. A typical book note looks like this:

---
title: The Pragmatic Programmer
author: '[[David Thomas]]'
cover: https://example.com/pragmatic.jpg
rating: 5
status: read
---

Cover images

The cover property may contain:

• An external URL: https://example.com/cover.jpg
• A data: URI
• A vault-relative path: assets/covers/book.jpg (resolved via Obsidian’s resource path)

If the cover property is missing or empty for a note, Bookshelf renders a colored spine with a vertical title instead. Spine colors are derived deterministically from the title, so the same note always gets the same color.

Grouping books across shelves

Set groupBy on the Base to split books onto multiple shelves. Each group becomes a separate shelf with a header showing the group label and the number of books. Without a grouping, all books appear on a single shelf labeled “All Books”.

Displaying properties under books

Any property added to the Base view’s display order is shown under each book. The cover property itself is skipped to avoid duplication.

Properties whose id or display name contains “rating” are styled with a dedicated rating class.

Wikilinks ([[Note]] or [[Note|Display]]) inside displayed property values are rendered as clickable internal links and routed through Obsidian’s standard link handling — Ctrl/Cmd+click opens them in a new tab.

Interactions

Action	Result
Click cover	Open the note in the current tab
Ctrl/Cmd+click cover	Open the note in a new tab
Right-click cover	Context menu (open, new tab, reveal)
Click a wikilink	Open the linked note

Commands

The plugin does not currently register any slash commands. All configuration happens through the Base view’s options panel.