Shimmering Focus ⟡

A minimalistic and opinionated Obsidian theme for the keyboard-centric user.
🏆 Winner Obsidian October 2022 (Category: Theme Update).

• Features
  • Design Philosophy
  • Theme Features
  • Commands
  • CSS Classes
  • Callouts
  • Private Mode
  • Recommended plugins
• Contribute
  • Create and Share your own Color Scheme
  • Submit Bug Fixes
  • Credits

Features

Design Philosophy

• Radical Minimalism: As opposed to a minimalism of colors, this theme focuses on a minimalistic user interface: Buttons and sidebars not relevant for keyboard users are removed. UI elements that require the mouse are still accessible on hover. All hidden UI elements can be permanently re-enabled with the Style Settings Plugin.
• Condensed Display of Information: Unnecessary padding and white-space is removed, which is beneficial for small screens or higher zoom levels.
• High Customizability: Dozens of customization options available via Style Settings Plugin.

Theme Features

• Emphasis of Pandoc Citations and Footnotes. (Install the Pandoc Reference List Plugin for improved styling.)
• Alt-text of images is used as caption.
• Images can be zoomed in by clicking and holding. You can also toggle between reduced and original size via command (requires Style Settings Plugin).
• Code Blocks: Various improvements like language display, disabled wrapping, and line numbers per code block.
• Extensive Styling for the Longform Plugin, including alternative background colors and serif-fonts only for notes in longform projects.
• Distinguishable Link Types: Internal links have double underlines, external links regular underlines, alias-links dotted underlines, and heading-links dashed underlines.
• Annotation Tags: Tags that are emphasized when used inline (not in the YAML frontmatter). They are meant as visual guides for literature notes. They include: #definition, #question, #goal, #todo, #summary, #important, #main, #critique, #gap, #litreview, #quote, #agree, #disagree, #example, #data, #method, #idea, #epistemic-break, and #sidenote. To add your own annotation tags, you can use a plugin like Colorful Tags Plugin.
• Vim Mode: Explicit styling of Obsidian's Vim Mode and various style settings for vim mode, like for example relative line numbers.
• …

Commands

When the Style Settings Plugin is installed, Shimmering Focus adds commands for toggling theme features:

• Toggle Folding of URLs (Source Mode)
• Toggle between reduced and original image size (reduced size can be set in the respective style setting)
• Toggle Private Mode

CSS Classes

Add a CSS class to your YAML front matter to enable styling only for this particular note.

---
cssclass: name
---

Available CSS classes are:

• full-width: Disables "Readable Line Length" for the note.
• private: Marks note as private. See Private Mode.
• writing: Uses writing-related styling like serif fonts in the note.
• no-inline-title: Removes the inline title for that note only.
• bibliography-list: Displays lists in the style of academic bibliographies (Reading Mode).
• list-2-col-cards: Turns list items into two columns of simple cards (Reading Mode).
• remove-dataview-title: Removes the header from dataview results.

Callouts

Shimmering Focus adds a custom sidenote callout, which moves the callout to the side like a small info box. Size and "outdention" can be customized via Style Settings.

> [!SIDENOTE]
> This note will appear to the side

In addition to the sidenote-callout and the existing callouts from Obsidian Core, the theme adds the following callouts:

• URL
• config
• attachment, file

Private Mode

When the style setting Private Mode is enabled, notes with the CSS class private are garbled. Private Mode is intended to be temporarily enabled during screen sharing in video calls.

Install Supercharged Links and add cssclass to the Target Attributes for Styling in its settings to also blur occurrences of the note name in some plugins like the File Explorer or Quick Switcher are also blurred. (Note that note content may still show up indirectly via other plugins, for example in dataview queries.)

You can also use this standalone snippet together with the Style Settings and Supercharged Links plugins to use Private Mode with a different theme.

Recommended plugins

• Style Settings Plugin: Unlocks dozens of customization options.
• Supercharged Links: The theme includes various built-in styling for the Supercharged Links plugin, for example appending a "🌱" to notes with the #seedling tag. To enable all Supercharged-Links-related features, add kanban-plugin, status, aliases, cssclass to the Target Attributes for Styling text field in the plugin settings.
• For academics: Pandoc Reference List Plugin
• For macOS: Electron Window Tweaker: Position the traffic lights for even more native macOS look (same position as in Safari: X = 20, Y = 18). You can even completely hide the traffic lights by using negative values, for example X = -60.

Note
When using the theme, you can disable the Hider Plugin, since Shimmering Focus already hides far more than the plugin does.

Contribute

Create and Share your own Color Scheme

With Shimmering Focus, you can create your own color scheme with this CSS snippet. You are welcome to share your color scheme.

You can also recreate well-known color schemes and share the snippet for it, so they might be considered for inclusion in the core theme as a style setting.

.theme-light.theme-light {
    --bg-hue: 230;
    --bg-sat: 25%;

    --color-accent: hsl(184 79% 35%);
    --color-accent-hsl: 184 79% 35%;
    --interactive-accent: hsl(184 79% 30%);

    --alt-heading-color: hsl(232 34% 50%);
    --secondary-accent: hsl(28 54% 51%);
    --hover-accent: hsl(328 100% 54%);
    --link-unresolved-color: hsl(101 42% 51%);
}

.theme-dark.theme-dark {
    --bg-hue: 230;
    --bg-sat: 15%;

    --color-accent: hsl(184 79% 45%);
    --color-accent-hsl: 184 79% 35%;
    --interactive-accent: hsl(184 79% 30%);

    --alt-heading-color: hsl(232 50% 70%);
    --secondary-accent: hsl(28 63% 61%);
    --hover-accent: hsl(328 100% 64%);
    --link-unresolved-color: hsl(101 42% 51%);
}

/* Note that `--color-accent-hsl` should have the same values as `--color-accent`, and that `--bg-hue` will override the background colors you have set in the Style Settings. */

Submit Bug Fixes

Submissions in the following areas are welcome:

• Fixes for Windows or Linux (since I do not own a device for them)
• Fixes for existing bug reports
• Support for a plugin

Please use the dedicated form for submitting fixes, so they do not go unnoticed.

Credits

About me
In my day job, I am a sociologist studying the social mechanisms underlying the digital economy. For my PhD project, I investigate the governance of the app economy and how software ecosystems manage the tension between innovation and compatibility. If you are interested in this subject, feel free to get in touch.

Profiles

• Academic Website
• ResearchGate
• Discord
• GitHub
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Thanks

• This theme includes snippets or ideas from: @SlRvb, @Atlas, @CecilaMay, @DamianKorcz, @Mara-Li, @kepano, @jdanielmourao, @deathau, @MelvinTing, @EmrieCandera, @lkadre, @Chetachie, @pryley, and @joelatschool.
• Many theme features are only possible thanks to the Style Settings Plugin by @mgmeyers.
• Thanks for helping me out in my early days of learning CSS: @SlRvb, @javalent, and @NothingIsLost.