• What?
• Why?
• Setup
  • Requirements
  • Download
• Run
  • Getting Started
  • Usage - all the arguments
• Output Directories
  • Flatter Structure
  • Grouped by User name
• Likely Questions
  • How do I update repos I have already downloaded?
  • What order are plugins and themes downloaded in?
  • What if there is an error?
• Alternatives

Clone every approved Obsidian.md community Plugin and Theme - to read and search the source code and learn from the community.

This is a Python3 script to download a local copy of all the published community Obsidian plugins and themes, to be used as a large body of example code.

It inspects these files, and then downloads (clones) all the repos listed in them:

• community-css-themes.json
• community-plugins.json

I cannot put it better than the author of the similar project luckman212/obsidian-plugin-downloader:

As an absolute beginner to TypeScript, and a lover of Obsidian I often want to take a look at how someone has achieved a certain feature, called on an API, etc. A quick way to do that is by searching through the existing codebase of the ever growing library of plugins out there.

• Python 3.6 or above

1. Download the Latest Release.
   • Choose one of:
     • "Source code (zip)"
     • "Source code (tar.gz)"
   • If you can't see them, click to expand the "Assets"
2. Expand the downloaded Source Code file
   • This will give you a folder name such as "obsidian-repos-downloader-0.1.0"

The script to run is obsidian-repos-downloader.py

Depending on your platform, here are some example ways you might need to run it:

obsidian-repos-downloader.py
./obsidian-repos-downloader.py
python3 obsidian-repos-downloader.py

Running obsidian-repos-downloader.py --help gives this output:

usage: obsidian-repos-downloader.py [-h] [-o OUTPUT_DIRECTORY] [-l LIMIT] [-n]
                                    [-t [{plugins,themes,all}]]
                                    [--group-by-user] [--no-group-by-user]

Clone repos included in the obsidian-releases repo, to provide a body of
example plugins and CSS themes.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, --output_directory OUTPUT_DIRECTORY
                        The directory where repos will be downloaded. Must
                        already exist. (default: . which means "current
                        working directory")
  -l LIMIT, --limit LIMIT
                        Limit the number of plugin and theme repos that will
                        be downloaded. This is useful when testing the script.
                        0 (zero) means "no limit". Note: the count currently
                        includes any repos already downloaded.(default: 0)
  -n, --dry-run         Print out the commands to be executed, but do no run
                        them. This is useful for testing. Note: it does not
                        print the directory-creation commands, just the git
                        ones
  -t [{plugins,themes,all}], --type [{plugins,themes,all}]
                        The type of repositories to download: plugins, themes
                        or both. (default: all)
  --group-by-user       Put each repository in a sub-folder named for the
                        GitHub user. For example, the plugin
                        "https://github.com/phibr0/obsidian-tabout" would be
                        placed in "plugins/phibr0/obsidian-tabout"
  --no-group-by-user    Put each repository in the same folder, prefixed by
                        the user name. This is the default behaviour. For
                        example, the plugin
                        "https://github.com/phibr0/obsidian-tabout" would be
                        placed in "plugins/phibr0-obsidian-tabout"

The script always creates a plugins/ and themes/ directories for its output.

There are the command-line arguments to determine the structure inside those directories.

By default, or when the argument --no-group-by-user is supplied, all the downloaded repos are placed side-by-side. They are prefixed with the username of the developer who wrote them.

For example, running this command (limiting the output to only 4 repositories, for brevity)....

obsidian-repos-downloader.py  --limit 4

... gives this directory structure:

plugins
├── agathauy-wikilinks-to-mdlinks-obsidian
├── aidenlx-alx-folder-note
├── aidenlx-better-fn
└── aidenlx-cm-chs-patch
themes
├── ArtexJay-Obsidian-CyberGlow
├── auroral-ui-aurora-obsidian-md
├── bcdavasconcelos-Obsidian-Ayu
└── bcdavasconcelos-Obsidian-Ayu_Mirage

8 directories

When the argument --group-by-user is supplied, all the downloaded repos are placed in sub-directories named with the username of the developer who wrote them.

For example, running this command (limiting the output to only 4 repositories, for brevity)....

obsidian-repos-downloader.py  --limit 4 --group-by-user

... gives this directory structure:

plugins
├── agathauy
│   └── wikilinks-to-mdlinks-obsidian
└── aidenlx
    ├── alx-folder-note
    ├── better-fn
    └── cm-chs-patch
themes
├── ArtexJay
│   └── Obsidian-CyberGlow
├── auroral-ui
│   └── aurora-obsidian-md
└── bcdavasconcelos
    ├── Obsidian-Ayu
    └── Obsidian-Ayu_Mirage

13 directories

This is now done automatically, via git pull, for repos that have already been cloned.

They are downloaded in case-insensitive alphabetical order of the repository's GitHub URL, so effectively in order of user name and then repo name.

Sometimes it is not possible to update a repo, for example of there are edited files on the local machine, or the name of the remote branch has changed (such as from 'master' to 'main').

The script accumulates a list of errors, and prints them on completion.

The easiest way to deal with such errors is to delete the downloaded repo, and run the script again.

Example error output:

The following errors occurred:
updating Slowbad/obsidian-solarized
command:    git pull --quiet
in:         /Users/clare/obsidian-repos-downloader/themes/Slowbad-obsidian-solarized
exit code:  1
stdout:     
stderr:     Your configuration specifies to merge with the ref 'refs/heads/master'
from the remote, but no such ref was fetched.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a growing number of alternative mechanisms for downloading Obsidian repos:

• konhi/obsidian-repositories-downloader:
  • Requires Node
  • Downloads plugins only
• luckman212/obsidian-plugin-downloader
  • Written in bash, and a number of other freely-downloadable tools
  • You use a console GUI each run, to search and control which repos to download
  • Downloads plugins only