ReadItLater Plugin for Obsidian

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Content Types
  • Website Article
  • Youtube
  • Youtube Channel
  • Twitter
  • Bluesky
  • Stack Exchange
  • Pinterest
  • Mastodon
  • Vimeo
  • Bilibili
  • TikTok
  • Text Snippet
• API

Introduction

Save the web with ReadItLater plugin for Obsidian. Archive web pages for reading later, referencing in your second brain or for other flexible use case Obsidian provides.

ReadItLater can do a lot more than converting web pages to markdown. For every content type there is specific template with carefully selected variables to ease up your archiving process.

What makes ReadItLater plugin great?

• Simple, but powerful template engine
• Carefully selected predefined template variables to straightforward archiving process
• Compatibility with Obsidian iOS and Android apps
• Downloading images from articles to your Vault
• Batch processing of URLs list

How to use ReadItLater plugin?

To create single note you can either click on the plugin ribbon icon, select ReadItLater: Create from clipboard from command palette or click on ReadItLater shortcut in context or share menu. You can also create multiple notes from batch of URLs, delimited by selected delimiter in plugin settings using ReadItLater: Create from batch in clipboard command.

If you want just add content to existing note, you can use ReadItLater: Insert at the cursor position command to insert content after the current cursor position.

Template engine

ReadItLater provides for every content type dedicated template that can be edited in plugin settings.

Variables

Variables are rendered in template using familiar syntax {{ content }}. Nested data types can be accessed using dot notation {{ author.name }}.

Filters

Variables output can be modified using filters. Filters are separated by | symbol. Filters can be chained, so output of the previous is passed to the next.

blockquote

Adds quote prefix to each line of value.

capitalize

Modifies first character to uppercase and others to lowercase.

{{ 'hello world'|capitalize}}

outputs: Hello world

numberLexify

Converts number to lexified format.

{{ 12682|numberLexify}}

outputs: 12.6K

lower

Converts value to lowercase.

{{ 'Hello World'|lower}}

outputs: hello world

replace

Replaces all occurrences in input value.

{{ 'Hello world'|replace('o') }}

outputs: Hell wrld

upper

Converts value to uppercase.

{{ 'Hello World'|upper}}

outputs: HELLO WORLD

Inbox and Assets directories

You can use template variables in Inbox dir and Assets dir settings to better distribute content in your Vault.

Directory template variable	Description
date	Current date in format from plguin settins
fileName	Filename of new note
contentType	Slug of detected content type from plugin settings

Content Types

Structure of note content is determined by URL. Currenty plugin supports saving content of websites and embedding content from multiple services. Each content type has title and note template with replacable variables, which can be edited in plugin settings.

Available content types are ordered by URL detection priority.

Website Article

Will be parsed to readable form using Mozilla Readability and then converted to markdown. In case website content is marked by Readbility as not readable, empty note with URL will be created.

If enabled, images will be downloaded to folder (default is ReadItLater Inbox/assets) configured in plugin settings. (Supported only on desktop for now)

Title template variable	Description
title	Article title from <title> HTML tag
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
articleTitle	Article title from <title> HTML tag
articleURL	Article URL
articleReadingTime	Estimated reading time in minutes by Readbility.js
articleContent	Article content
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
previewURL	Aritlce preview image URL parsed from OpenGraph or Twitter image <meta> property
publishedTime	Article publish time parsed from OpenGraph <meta> property or Schema.org JSON and formatted in content format from plugin settings

Youtube

Title template variable	Description
title	Video title
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
videoTitle	Video title
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
videoDescription	Video description
videoURL	Video URL on Youtube.com
videoId	Video ID
videoPlayer	Embeded player generated by plugin
channelId	Channel ID
channelName	Channel name
channelURL	Channel URL on Youtube.com
videoThumbnail	Video thumbnail image URL
videoChapters	List of video chapters with linked timestamps
videoPublishDate	Video plublish date formatted in content format from plugin settings
videoViewsCount	Video views count

Chapter template variable	Description
chapterTitle	Chapter title
chapterTimestamp	Chapter start time in mm:ss
chapterSeconds	Chapter start time in seconds
chapterUrl	Url to chapter start

Parsing of HTML DOM has its limitations thus additional data can be fetched only from Google API. Retrieved API key can be set in plugin settings and then plugin will use the Google API for fetching data.

Content template variable	Description
videoDuration	Video duration in seconds
videoDurationFormatted	Formatted video duration (1h 25m 23s)
videoTags	Formatted list of tags delimited by space

Youtube Channel

Title template variable	Description
title	Channel title.
date	Current date in format from plugin settings.

Content template variable	Description
date	Current date in format from plugin settings.
channelId	Channel ID.
channelTitle	Channel title.
channelDescription	Channel description.
channelURL	Channel URL on Youtube.com.
channelAvatar	URL of channel's avatar (thumbnail) image.
channelBanner	URL of channel's banner image.
channelSubscribersCount	The number of subscribers that the channel has.
channelVideosCount	The number of public videos uploaded to the channel.
channelVideosURL	URL to channel's videos on Youtube.com
channelShortsURL	URL to channel's shorts on Youtube.com

X.com (Twitter)

Parser use X Publish API to fetch data.

Title template variable	Description
tweetAuthorName	Post author name
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
tweetAuthorName	Post author name
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
tweetURL	Post URL on X.com
tweetContent	Post content
tweetPublishDate	Post publish date formatted in content format from plugin settings

Bluesky

Parser fetch the content from Bluesky API.

Title template variable	Description
authorHandle	Post author handle
authorName	Post author name
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
content	Formatted post content with embedded content. If enabled, replies are appended.
postURL	Post URL
authorHandle	Post author handle
authorName	Post author name
likeCount	Post like count
replyCount	Post reply count
repostCount	Post repost count
quouteCount	Post quote count
publishedAt	Post publish time

If enabled in plugin settings, you can fetch also replies.

Reply template variable

Content template variable	Description
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
content	Formatted post content with embedded content.
postURL	Reply URL
authorHandle	Reply author handle
authorName	Reply author name
likeCount	Reply like count
replyCount	Reply reply count
repostCount	Reply repost count
quouteCount	Reply quote count
publishedAt	Reply publish time

Stack Exchange

Title template variable	Description
title	Question title
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Note template variables

Content template variable	Description
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
questionTitle	Question title
questionURL	Question URL on selected StackExchange site
questionContent	Question content
authorName	Question author name
authorProfileURL	Question author profile URL
topAnswer	Formatted first answer
answers	Formatted other answers

Answer template variables

Content template variable	Description
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
answerContent	Answer content
authorName	Answer author name
authorProfileURL	Answer author profile URL

Pinterest

Title template variable	Description
authorName	Pin author name
date	Current date in format from plugin settings.

Content template variable	Description
date	Current date in format from plugin settings.
pinId	Pin ID.
pinURL	URL of pin.
title	Pin title.
link	Pin link.
image	URL of pin image.
description	Pin description.
likeCount	Pin like count.
authorName	Pin author name.
authorProfileURL	URL of Pin author page.

Mastodon

Title template variable	Description
tootAuthorName	Status author name
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
tootAuthorName	Status author name
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
tootURL	Status URL on selected Mastodon instance
tootContent	Status content

If enabled in plugin settings, you can fetch also replies.

Reply template variable

Content template variable	Description
tootAuthorName	Reply author name
tootURL	Reply URL on selected Mastodon instance
tootContent	Reply content

Vimeo

Title template variable	Description
title	Video title
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
videoTitle	Video title
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
videoURL	Video URL on Vimeo.com
videoId	Video ID
videoPlayer	Embeded player generated by plugin
channelName	Channel name
channelURL	Channel URL on Vimeo.com

Bilibili

Title template variable	Description
title	Video title
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
videoTitle	Video title
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
videoURL	Video URL on Bilibili.com
videoId	Video ID
videoPlayer	Embeded player generated by plugin

TikTok

Title template variable	Description
authorName	Video author name
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
videoDescription	Video description
date	Current date in format from plugin settings
videoURL	Video URL on TikTok.com
videoId	Video ID
videoPlayer	Embeded player generated by plugin
authorName	Author name
authorURL	Author profile URL on TikTok.com

Text Snippet

If your clipboard content is not recognized by any of above parsers plugin will create note with unformatted clipboard content.

Title template variable	Description
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

Content template variable	Description
content	Clipboard content
date	Current date in format from plugin settings

API

To invoke functionality from other plugins we provide an API. You can access it via this.app.plugins.plugins['obsidian-read-it-later'].api which is an instance of ReadItLaterAPI class defined in src/ReadItLaterApi.ts.