TL;DR: Steps on how to set it up for Linux Mint Cinnamon Desktop Environment.

Problem Statement

In my most recent Obsidian obsession, I started looking for widgets - both mobile and desktop that display my notes, more specifically my DO and TODO lists. The journey has culminated into this post.

My proposed solution, as the title suggests, is going to be for desktop, specifically the Linux Mint Cinnamon environment. Nevertheless, I did find some interesting applications for mobile devices in my Literature Review.

Requirements

  • See and edit my Obsidian notes at a glance from a Cinnamon desklet

Literature Review

IPad & IPhone

Widgets for Obsidian

Looks promising. However, I don’t have an IPad or an IPhone, nor do I plan on getting them soon.

Android

Obsi

Lots of great reviews. Unfortunately, the current version does not support any widgets.

Linux Mint

Zilch…Looks like we’ll have to come up with our own. I’ve been recently getting my hands dirty trying to develop a Cinnamon applet anyway and this new project will look great on my pile of unfinished projects.

Fortunately, before resorting to the nuclear mindset above and diving right into development, I explored Cinnamon’s existing Note desklet by schorshii and was able to duct-tape a solution that fulfils my requirements well enough.

Tutorial

Viewing & Editing

  1. Download and add the Note desklet by schorshii. Desklet

  2. Provide the Path to note text file as the note you want to the desklet to display. Desklet configuration

  3. In the Command for editing this note (on mouse click) add xdg-open obsidian://open?vault=your-vault-name&file=your-file (You can simply get this link by right clicking any note in Obsidian and use the Copy Obsidian URL option)

  4. Theoretically, you can add as many such desklets as you want (I have only tested with two.) Desklets

Syncing

I am going to leave syncing directly from the desklet as future work. Let’s be honest - since there are 4 different syncing methods (of which I use Git), I might never get around to it.

For now I’ve just added Obsidian to my startup so that the notes sync on startup and set the Auto Pull Interval (minutes) to 5 under my Git plugin settings.

Limitations

  • Desklet does not update automatically on file change from different device
  • The desklet does not render markdown
  • Opens Obsidian on click - does not allow direct edits in desklet

Conclusion

Usually the projects I take on turn out to be a lot more complex than they seem, this was the exact opposite. I guess this is the power of open source, open standards and configurability. And yes definitely me being content with the limitations.