Obsidian Canvas

Obsidian put out their own barebones Whiteboarding App-like feature called “Canvas” a while back. In March 2024 they rebranded to ”JSON Canvas“.

In March 2024 I published a plugin called “Semantic Canvas” which makes Obsidian Canvases and Obsidian Note Properties aware of one-another. See my note about the Semantic Canvas plugin.

Canvas files are stored using a custom-build (but Open Source) file format ”.canvas”. It’s simple JSON, with a Graph Database-like structure. It’s a map of nodes and edges.

Example ..canvas File §

{
	"nodes":[
		{"id":"8edd2eb18bb22633","x":-725,"y":-460,"width":970,"height":1115,"color":"6","type":"group","label":"Embedding Scopes"},
		{"id":"6f4485d073444120","type":"text","text":"# Test.","x":-125,"y":100,"width":250,"height":60},
		{"id":"6ecb3caca2f6574f","x":-300,"y":-440,"width":400,"height":400,"type":"file","file":"Graphical Project Tracking.md"},
		{"id":"630672e28940268f","x":-160,"y":365,"width":385,"height":270,"type":"file","file":"Graphical Project Tracking.md","subpath":"#^fa9d7d"},
		{"id":"49cf666e52e28e24","type":"file","file":"Graphical Project Tracking.md","subpath":"#Tooling","x":-705,"y":230,"width":405,"height":200},
		{"id":"68099e202ff80fcf","type":"text","text":"# Buffalo","x":345,"y":-240,"width":250,"height":60},
		{"id":"774bb198ad025035","type":"file","file":"canvases/Exercise Canvas.canvas","x":395,"y":165,"width":400,"height":400},
		{"id":"1a7ec32d55357ee4","type":"text","text":"# Canvas Recursion","x":395,"y":-65,"width":400,"height":70},
		{"id":"282f505b11ff8cdc","type":"text","text":"### Search Target","x":470,"y":-440,"width":250,"height":60},
		{"id":"e33af1bf78938351","x":795,"y":-295,"width":484,"height":171,"type":"text","text":"# A More Substantial Card\nContains some stuff under the header. Including:\n- [x] A completed task!"}
	],
	"edges":[
		{"id":"9b8c442ebca200ed","fromNode":"1a7ec32d55357ee4","fromSide":"bottom","toNode":"774bb198ad025035","toSide":"top","label":"Works!"},
		{"id":"0d86052150747f56","fromNode":"282f505b11ff8cdc","fromSide":"bottom","toNode":"68099e202ff80fcf","toSide":"top","label":"Sadly doesn't work"},
		{"id":"9f19d3cd2e18fa5f","fromNode":"6f4485d073444120","fromSide":"top","toNode":"6ecb3caca2f6574f","toSide":"bottom","color":"3","label":"Embed to note"},
		{"id":"0b38f06899b34ca9","fromNode":"6f4485d073444120","fromSide":"left","toNode":"49cf666e52e28e24","toSide":"top","color":"4","label":"Embed to Heading"},
		{"id":"e0018e1d95a85f0a","fromNode":"6f4485d073444120","fromSide":"bottom","toNode":"630672e28940268f","toSide":"top","color":"5","label":"Embed to Block"}
	]
}

Canvas Pros & Cons §

Pros 💪 §

• Like seemingly everything in Obsidian - canvas is fast.
• You can embed items into your canvas that look and work just like notes
• You can pull content from your vault easily
  • You can also “promote” parts of a canvas to full-blown standalone notes
• Support for link labels, groups, and coloring
• The file format makes a ton of sense and seems like I could expand on it
• Everything you can do on Canvas actually works really well from the iPad
• File sizes are fairly small

Cons 🫤 §

• Canvases are very much second-class citizens - and feel like it.
  • No support for backlinks
  • Search doesn’t cover anything in Canvases
  • There’s no Frontmatter or properties support
• There’s no support for freehand drawings or anything
• “Groups” in the .canvas format don’t actually have any sort of explicit membership, it looks like it’s merely graphical overlap

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Source §

• Playing with it

Related §

• Obsidian