Review notes using spaced repetition from right within Obsidian. Mark a note for repetition with one of the built-in commands, or by adding the repeat
property to the note. Notes become "due" according to the schedule recorded in the repeat
property, and show up in a dedicated Repeat view inside Obsidian.
For example, a note marked with repeat: every week
will be due every week on the day of its first review. A note marked with repeat: spaced every month
will first be due in a month, then some time between half a month and two months in the future, depending on what you picked during its first review, and so on. The plugin automatically computes the due date and stores the result in a due_at
property. That way, all the repetition information is easy to understand and edit.
A few other goodies are available:
- You can choose to make the note's body obscured during reviews (
hidden: true
) to make one-sided flashcards. - Notes due in more than a week become due in the morning (you can configure the time in the plugin's settings), so that you can have a predictable daily review time.
- Notes are non-repeating by default, but you can also explicitly mark them with
repeat: never
to disable reviews (useful for programmatic or bulk marking).
You mark a note for repetition by specifying the repeat
property. The due_at
property is automatically added after your first review. The hidden
property is optional, and will obscure the body of your note during reviews (clicking on the note's body will reveal its contents).
A note can have a periodic or spaced repetition schedule. Notes using periodic repetition become due after a fixed amount of time has passed since the last time they were due. Some valid repeat
values for periodic repetition are of the form:
daily
,weekly
,monthly
,yearly
every day
,every week
,every month
,every year
every K days
,every K weeks
,every K months
,every K years
(whereK
is a number)
Notes using spaced repetition become due after a period that you choose during each review. To use spaced repetition, just add spaced
to the start of a note's repeat
value. So:
spaced daily
,spaced weekly
,spaced monthly
,spaced yearly
spaced every day
,spaced every week
,spaced every month
,spaced every year
spaced every K days
,spaced every K weeks
,spaced every K months
,spaced every K years
(whereK
is a number)
You don't have to edit these values directly: you can also use the Repeat: Repeat this note...
command to mark a note for repetition using a modal.
Notes become due in the morning. You can add in the evening
to the end of the repeat value if you want a note to be due in the evening instead, e.g., repeat: every day in the evening
. By default "morning" means 6 AM and "evening" means 6 PM, but you can change these times in the plugin's settings.
Notes without the repeat
property simply don't repeat. You can also explicitly mark a note as non-repeating with repeat: never
(or off
, no
, or false
), which can be useful if you periodically mark recent notes for repetition.
To review notes, open the Repeat view in Obsidian by clicking the "clock" icon, or using the Repeat: Review due notes
command. In this example, the repeat
value is spaced every 2 days
.
Clicking one of the buttons above the embedded note will update the note's due_at
and (possibly) repeat
property values.
Notes using periodic repetition will be due one period in the future relative to their previous due date. For example, if it's July 2024 and a note has repeat: every year
and due_at: 1999-01-01
, then after review the note will have due_at: 2025-01-01T06:00:00
. That way, your periodic due dates remain equally spaced even if you stop reviewing your notes for a while.
Notes using spaced repetition become due in whatever time you click relative to the current time. So, if you clicked 3 days (x1.5)
in the example above, that note would be due in 3 days. At the same time, the repeat
value would be updated from spaced every 2 days
to spaced every 3 days
.
Clicking the 5 minutes (skip)
button always just bumps the due_at
value by 5 minutes (without changing the repeat
value) so that ignoring a note for the moment doesn't change it's repetition dynamics.
The spaced period multiples (x0.5), (x1), (x1.5), (x2)
never change. Some other spaced repetition apps like in Anki or SuperMemo 2 calculate the repetition multiples dynamically. This gives you more fine-tuned repetition intervals, in some sense, at the expense of a lot more state per note. One of the design goals of Obsidian Repeat Plugin is to store all repetition state in the note's frontmatter properties, and make all of it easily understandable and editable. I think the tradeoff is good: using a fixed exponential-ish scheduling strategy still allows for a lot of flexibility for when you review, while also meeting this design goal.
All you really need to make a note repeating is add a valid repeat
value. If there is no due_at
value, the plugin will still pick up the note for review and calculate the due_at
value after the review. So you can quickly mark notes for review using this property without worrying about technical details
The hidden
property enables you to use one-sided flash cards. A note marked as hidden: yes
(or on
, or true
) will have its contents obscured until you click in in a review.
repeat
values have to be in a supported form, but still use relatively natural language. This way, it's easy to mark a note for repetition using relatively natural language (repeat: every 3 days
) instead of dealing with some computer-friendly syntax. With that said, the plugin will always save due_at
values using hours
as the repetition unit. For this reason, shortest repetition interval is one hour.
Finally, the plugin changes the frontmatter properties it uses in-place, so your other properties are never changed.
The plugin uses Obsidian's native embedding styles to display notes during reviews. So, you can customize those styles and the customizations will be reflected in the plugin. The plugin wraps the embeds in a <div class="repeat-embedded_note">
element, so that you can customize only the plugin's styles.
One useful customization (shown in the screenshots throughout) is making embedded note's titles bolder. To do that, create a new CSS snippet (via Settings > Appearance > CSS snippets) containing
.repeat-embedded_note .embed-title {
font-weight: 600 !important;
}
Go to Obsidian's community plugins list (via Settings > Options > Community plugins > Browse) and install:
- Dataview Plugin (used for querying notes)
- Repeat Plugin
- Development:
- Pull requests are welcome. If you have a significant change in mind, create an issue to discuss it with the community first. You may also find some issues with the "help wanted" tag in the Issues tab of the plugin's GitHub repo.
- To start a local dev build, run
yarn install
and thenyarn dev
.
- More Tools: The
add_repeat_to_notes.py
script from https://github.com/prncc/obsidian-scripts allows you to interactively add therepeat
field to notes in your existing vault. The Repeat Plugin will be able to pick up those notes from there.