Obsidian Repeat Plugin

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).

Mark a note for repetition

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 (where K 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 (where K 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 and the default repetition interval 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.

Review notes as they become due

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.

Extreme detail about how due dates are calculated that you don't really need to know

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.

Custom Repeat view styling

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;
}

How to install Obsidian Repeat Plugin

Go to Obsidian's community plugins list (via Settings > Options > Community plugins > Browse) and install:

1. Dataview Plugin (used for querying notes)
2. Repeat Plugin

Additional resources

• 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 then yarn dev.
• More Tools: The add_repeat_to_notes.py script from https://github.com/prncc/obsidian-scripts allows you to interactively add the repeat field to notes in your existing vault. The Repeat Plugin will be able to pick up those notes from there.