iA Writer in Obsidian
I used to be a big iA Writer user for writing on the go. I recently wanted to go back to that experience and came this close to buying the latest edition before realising that all I'd do is point it at my Obsidian vault anyway.
So I spent an hour or so with Obsidian and Claude and have replicated iA writer in Obsidian. Here's how I did it
Typewriter Mode
The majority of this functionality is added by the Typewriter Mode plugin by Davis Riedel. It provides a toolkit of features such as "dim paragraphs" and "keep the current line centered" that I use.
Install the plugin to get started.
Next, update the settings to match what I have by replacing .obsidian/plugins/typewriter-mode/data.json with the following:
json
The iA Writer Font
I wanted Obsidian to feel just like iA Writer, and using the iA Writer font is a big part of this Thankfully the fonts are available on GitHub. Rather than installing the font locally, I chose to embed it in my stylesheet so that it syncs with my vault to all platforms.
Here's how to do it:
- Open your Obsidian vault folder on your computer.
- Navigate to
.obsidian/snippets/(If thesnippetsfolder doesn't exist, create it). - Create a new plain text file named
ia-writer-font.css. - Open it in any text editor and paste the CSS below into it.
css
- Save the file.
- In Obsidian, go to Settings -> Appearance -> CSS Snippets and toggle
ia-writer-fontto ON. You may need to reload the app for the snippet to show up in this screen.
This snippet embeds the iA Writer font, and makes it active any time the Typewriter plugin's focus mode is enabled.
Toggle Writing Mode
The final part was the trickiest. I wanted to enable Typewriter scrolling and dimming, focus the editor, and enter Writing Focus, but only in edit mode. I explored using Commander for this, but ended up writing a small custom plugin.
The plugin can be triggered in both preview and source mode. It enables typewriter mode, and does not try to re-enable it if typewriter mode is already enabled. When triggered again, typewriter mode is disabled and you're returned to your original file mode.
To use this, add it to your .obsidian/plugins folder:
bash
main.js:
javascript
manifest.json:
json
You'll need to reload Obsidian after creating these files, then head to Community Plugins in settings and enable the new plugin.
Then finally, bind a keyboard shortcut to trigger the mheap focus mode: Toggle mheap focus mode command. I use cmd+shift+W (for Writing).
Fin
Now you have iA Writer, but in Obsidian. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.