This is an unofficial, community-made directory. Not affiliated with Obsidian or Dynalist Inc.

University students, grad students, and academic researchers

Best Obsidian Plugins for Students

Students can use Obsidian as a powerful academic toolkit. These plugins help with citation management, literature notes, spaced repetition, and structured note-taking for lectures and papers.

Selection Criteria

  • Supports academic writing workflows
  • Integrates with Zotero or reference managers
  • Helps with note organization and review
  • Suitable for beginner to intermediate users

Recommended Plugins for Students

ActiveAcademic
569K downloads

Annotator

Read and annotate PDFs and EPUB files directly in Obsidian.

ActiveAcademic
500K downloads

Spaced Repetition

Fight the forgetting curve by reviewing flashcards and entire notes, using spaced repetition algorithms to enhance long-term memory retention.

ActiveAcademic
821K downloads

Advanced Slides

Create Markdown-based presentations with advanced features such as themes, transitions, and embedded content, all within Obsidian.

ActiveAcademic
289K downloads

Text Extractor

A companion plugin that extracts text from images using OCR and from PDFs, enabling further processing within Obsidian.

ActiveAcademic
203K downloads

Quick LaTeX

Simplify and speed up LaTeX math typing in Obsidian.

ActiveAcademic
108K downloads

PDF Highlights

Extract highlights, underlines, and annotations from your PDFs into Obsidian notes.

ActiveAcademic
80K downloads

Pandoc Reference List

Displays a formatted reference list in the sidebar for all Pandoc citekeys found in the current document.

ActiveAcademic
546K downloads

PDF++

An Obsidian-native tool for annotating PDFs with highlights, notes, and seamless integration with Obsidian's note-taking system.

ActiveAcademic
67K downloads

Better PDF

Insert, scale, rotate, and extract pages from PDFs directly into your Obsidian notes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Obsidian for research papers?

Yes. With the Citations plugin for Zotero integration and Dataview for organizing research notes, Obsidian works well as a research workspace.

What's the best plugin for flashcards in Obsidian?

The Spaced Repetition plugin (obsidian-spaced-repetition) lets you create flashcards from markdown using the SM-2 algorithm, similar to Anki.