WatchLog

Track your anime, movies, TV shows, books, and manga directly inside Obsidian — with episode tracking, progress stats, upcoming release alerts, community ratings, poster/cover art, and embeddable widgets.

Features

Watchlist

• Two views — switch between a List sub-tab (rows with expandable episode/season UI) and a Cards sub-tab (responsive poster-card grid with lazy-loaded cover art and a ⋮ menu for Edit / Refresh poster). Cards is the default view.
• Full title management — add, edit, and delete titles with fields for type, status, priority, rating (0–5 stars), notes, episode count, episode duration, release date, and an external link.
• Episode tracking — mark individual episodes as watched; seasons are shown as collapsible groups with per-season progress bars.
• Skip episodes — mark fillers, recaps, or other episodes as skippable per season (syntax Season 1: 48 (33-37,42)). Skipped episodes show a purple border and a dash (—), cycle through skipped → watched → empty on click, and are excluded from progress totals. Season headers and the Edit modal display skip counts (e.g. "X to skip · Y to watch").
• Community ratings — show IMDb, MyAnimeList, AniList, or TMDB scores (with vote counts) alongside your personal star rating. Manual ⟳ refresh, plus automatic background refresh when data is missing or over 30 days stale.
• Groups — bundle related titles (a film and its sequel, an anime and its movie) into a single collapsible row. Group rating, status, and progress are computed automatically from members.
• Inline status change — change a title's status from a colored dropdown directly on the expanded row or in the detail modal, without opening the Edit dialog.
• Pinning — pin a title or group so it appears in "Now Watching" widgets across your vault.
• Sorting — two-level sort (primary + secondary) across eleven keys: date added, title, status, type, rating, priority, episode duration, progress, remaining episodes, date modified, and random.
• Filtering — exclude by type, status, priority, rating, or group; show only groups; show only unrated or unprioritized titles; show only recently released titles (past 7 days). Each filter section has an "All" toggle to select/deselect everything at once. Save and restore named filter presets.
• Fuzzy search — instant search across all title names.
• Selection mode — select multiple titles or groups for batch delete or CSV export.

Dashboard

• Per-type progress rings or rectangular cards (Anime, Movie, TV Show, etc.), plus dedicated Books and Manga cards fed from the Reading tab (pages/chapters/volumes read of total).
• A unified card combining Total, Time watched, and Time remaining in three equal segments, computed from episode counts and durations.
• Library summary: total titles and completed count.
• Suggestions panel: shortest unwatched title per type, with a random-pick button.
• Recently watched and recently added sections (last 3 each).

Upcoming Releases

• Tracker — schedule releases with recurrence (once, daily, weekly, monthly), optional air time (HH:MM), and automatic countdown labels ("Today", "Tomorrow", "in N days").
• Auto-status — any title added with a future release date is automatically marked "To be released" and added to the Tracker.
• Tick button — mark the current episode as watched and advance the countdown in one click.
• Notifications — desktop notifications fire at the scheduled air time (checked every 60 seconds).
• Reading items — books and manga from the Reading tab can be scheduled too via the "+ add" finder, shown with Book/Manga badges. A dedicated reading schedule modal tracks chapters and volumes (a single date when there is no total).
• Log sub-tab — shows releases from the past 6 months with relative timestamps.
• Maybe sub-tab — holds titles you are considering for the Tracker; add them when you are ready.
• Status bar count — an optional "N due" indicator with the plugin icon appears in the status bar (hidden when zero); clicking it opens the Upcoming tab.

Reading

A separate tracker for books and manga, fully independent from the Watchlist and stored in its own reading.json.

• Books and Manga sub-tabs — Books track pages and chapters; Manga track chapters and volumes. Each has its own status set (Reading, Completed, Plan to Read, On Hold, Dropped).
• Card grid — responsive grid of cover cards (Open Library covers for books, Jikan images for manga, or a colored fallback) with status dots, progress bars, and author. ⋮ menu to refresh the cover.
• Detail modal — cover, title, author, status badge, rating, progress editing, an Open-note button, and vault-page controls.
• Favorite Quotes — a Quotes section in the detail modal, parsed from the ## Quotes section of each item's note file and rendered as callout blocks with page/chapter references; add quotes inline.
• Custom fields — per-sub-tab user-defined columns (text, number, select) with a per-column color picker and Fill or Border display styles, editable inline in the detail modal and managed via a Manage Columns modal.
• API-assisted add — Open Library search for books, Jikan search (or MAL-ID lookup) for manga, auto-filling title, author, page/chapter/volume counts, and cover; plus a release date field with optional API import.
• Note files — auto-generated Markdown at WatchLog/Reading/Books/[Title].md or WatchLog/Reading/Manga/[Title].md with YAML frontmatter and ## Notes + ## Quotes sections, kept in sync on edit.
• Fuzzy search, filtering, sorting, and selection mode — including saved filter presets and batch delete / batch status change.

Drafts

• Monitors your entire vault for a configurable tag (default #watchlog).
• Extracts title names following the tag — supports comma-separated lists on the same line.
• Shows pending titles (not yet in Watchlist), already-added titles (dimmed), and dismissed titles.
• One-click "Add" opens a choice modal — add to Watchlist, add as a book, or add as manga — each opening the correct dialog with the draft text pre-filled.

Log

• A standalone tab with a unified activity timeline for both Watchlist and Reading events.
• Vertical timeline with colored dots and connector lines, grouped by day with date headers.
• Action color coding: green (Completed/Watched), blue (Added), red (Deleted), amber (Status/Rating changed).
• Source filter toolbar: All / Watchlist / Reading. Holds up to 1 000 entries.

Custom Lists

• Create freeform tables stored as Markdown files in your vault.
• Define custom columns with type (text, number, select), optional bold/italic formatting, and a lock flag to prevent accidental deletion.
• Edit cells inline (on both desktop and mobile); drag to reorder columns.
• Auto-populate Time column — any number column can pull remaining watch time (in minutes) from a Watchlist title with an exact name match. Enable via the ⏱ toggle in Edit Columns; values are cached and re-fetched on demand via the ↻ refresh icon in the column header.
• Name-cell autocomplete searches both Watchlist and Reading items.
• Each list has a Notes section rendered as Markdown.
• Pre-configure default columns in settings to apply to every new list.

Inline Widgets

Embed live plugin data anywhere in your vault using fenced code blocks:

Widget	What it shows
wl-todo	Full progress card for a specific title — status, progress bar, next episode checkbox
wl-todo:mini	Compact single-line version of the above
wl-stat:watched	Total time watched (all Watching + Completed titles)
wl-stat:remaining	Total time remaining (Plan to watch + Watching)
wl-stat:completed	Count of Completed titles
wl-stat:time	Time watched + time remaining in one card
wl-stat:time completed full	Wide triple card: Time Watched · Time Remaining · Completed
wl-upcoming:next	Next upcoming title with name, type, release date, and countdown
wl-nowwatching	Currently pinned title with name, type badge, and progress bar
wl-now-next	Wide dual card: Now Watching · Up Next

Widget state syncs bidirectionally with the Watchlist when the sync setting is enabled.

Note File Generation

• Each title automatically gets a Markdown file in WatchLog/[Type]/[Title].md with YAML frontmatter (title, type, status, priority, rating, dates, progress, external link) and a ## Notes section.
• Files are kept up to date whenever a title is edited.
• A "Regenerate note files" button in Settings scans all titles and creates any missing files without overwriting existing ones.

API Integration (optional)

• Jikan / MyAnimeList — anime search and metadata, free, no key required.
• AniList — alternative anime source (GraphQL, no key). Toggle between Jikan and AniList in Settings.
• OMDb — movies and TV shows, free API key required. Returns season-by-season episode counts.
• TMDB — movies and TV shows, free API read token required. Alternative to OMDb.
• Open Library — book search and cover art, free, no key required.
• API routing by type — map each custom type to a specific API in Settings; Anime, Movie, and TV Show have locked defaults.
• Add from URL — paste an IMDb link to auto-fill all fields.

Import / Export

• CSV export — export selected titles with 13 fields to a timestamped CSV file.
• CSV import — smart column detection, manual mapping, value mapping (status/type/rating), duplicate preview, and auto-creation of new types.
• JSON backup — full export and restore of all three data files (watch, reading, history) via a versioned format, with legacy backups still restorable (with confirmation dialog).

Customization

• Three color themes: Default, Nightfall (purple), Bluez (blue).
• Fully configurable type, status, and priority tags with custom colors.
• Configurable season palette colors.
• Reading colors — color pickers for Manga and Book type badges (Customize → Reading).
• Manual poster/cover URL override — set your own image in the Edit modal, taking priority over the auto-fetched one.
• Episode numbering mode: absolute (1→n across all seasons) or per-season (resets each season, display only).
• Dashboard card style: progress circles or rectangles.
• "Show hint banners" toggle to hide/show the informational banners in Upcoming, Custom Lists, and Drafts.

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Screenshots

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Installation

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Create the folder .obsidian/plugins/watchlog/ inside your vault.
3. Copy the three files into that folder.
4. In Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins, disable Safe mode if prompted, and enable WatchLog.

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API Keys (Optional)

WatchLog works out of the box for anime (powered by Jikan — no key required).

For movies and TV shows, you can optionally connect one of:

• OMDb — Get a free API key
• TMDB — Get a free API key

Enter your key in Settings → WatchLog → API. The settings page includes direct links to both sites and a "Test connection" button for each.

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Usage

Adding a title

Click the + button in the Watchlist header, or use the Obsidian command palette and search for "WatchLog: Add title". Fill in the title name, type, and any other fields — or use the search bar inside the dialog to look it up via the configured API.

Tracking episodes

Expand a title row by clicking it. Check off individual episodes, or use the season-level checkbox to mark a whole season at once. Progress is shown as a bar and a percentage in the collapsed row.

Using widgets

In any Markdown note, create a fenced code block with a widget name:

```wl-todo
My Favourite Anime
```

The widget renders live in Reading view. See the Widgets section of the plugin Settings for a full syntax reference with copy buttons.

Upcoming releases

Open the Upcoming tab and click + to schedule a title. Set the recurrence and — optionally — an air time. The plugin will notify you at that time and advance the episode counter automatically.

Drafts

In any vault note, write a line like:

#watchlog Some Movie, Another Show

Open the Drafts tab to see all pending titles detected across your vault. Click Add to move them into your Watchlist.

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License

MIT