obsidian-things: Bringing the Things Task Manager Design to Obsidian

A Task Manager Design Language Applied to a Note Editor

The premise is a transfer of visual language rather than a new feature set. The author writes that he trusts Things 3, partly because the design makes using the app enjoyable, and wanted to bring that same sense of enjoyment to Obsidian by creating a Things-inspired design that looked and felt native on macOS and iOS.

That word native is doing real work. A theme that imitates a Mac and iOS application is making a promise about rounded corners, translucency, spacing and typography, and about how the interface reads on a trackpad and on a phone. The Obsidian mobile experience is explicitly part of the scope, since one of the listed features is a quick preview and edit floating action button on mobile.

The result is a theme rather than a plugin, and the repository reflects that. The top level holds theme.css and obsidian.css, the stylesheet pair Obsidian expects, a manifest.json that carries the theme metadata, an assets/ directory with the screenshots used in the README, and the licence file. There is no build system and no JavaScript, which is worth noting for anyone who assumed a theme of this polish needed one.

Two Themes in One Repository, and Which One You Get

The README carries a note about V1 of the theme, and it also announces Things 2. Version 1 was built using code from @kepano's Minimal theme, and the README asks readers to support that work, with a link to buy him a coffee. The credits section repeats the debt and adds @chetachiezikeuzor and her Yin and Yang Theme as further inspiration on building an elegant, native-feeling design.

The current release is described as leveraging much of the newly improved design scheme released in Obsidian 1.0, and it adds the Things V1 theme's colour scheme, the floating action button, customisation options and its own unique flair on top of that base. So the repository carries two generations of the design, and the distinction matters for anyone reading the documentation.

The plugin support list is explicitly labelled for Things V1, covering Sliding Panes in Andy's Mode, Calendar, Kanban, Hider, Checklist, Todoist, Style Settings and Advanced Mobile Toolbar. In other words, the styling for those plugins is documented for the previous generation of the theme rather than for the current one, and that is the gap to keep in mind when you compare what the theme promises against what it documents.

Checkbox States Turn a Task List Into a Vocabulary

The most distinctive feature is the checkbox set, and it is a large one. The README shows a wide number of alternate checkbox types, described as allowing you to call out tasks that are incomplete, canceled, rescheduled and other states, with the full list given as follows:

## Basic
- [ ] to-do
- [/] incomplete
- [x] done
- [-] canceled
- [>] forwarded
- [<] scheduling

## Extras
- [?] question
- [!] important
- [*] star
- ["] quote
- [l] location
- [b] bookmark
- [i] information
- [S] savings
- [I] idea
- [p] pros
- [c] cons
- [f] fire
- [k] key
- [w] win
- [u] up
- [d] down
- [D] draft pull request
- [P] open pull request
- [M] merged pull request

The extras are where the theme earns its keep, since states like draft pull request and merged pull request are not generic task states but are borrowed from a development workflow. Nothing stops a vault from using them, and the states render as styled markers rather than the default box, which is what makes a dense list of tasks scannable.

Style Settings, Tag Pills and Code Blocks

Beyond colour, the feature list covers the parts of a note that people actually spend time in. Bold, italic, highlighters and block quotes are customisable through the Style Settings community plugin, which means the palette is not fixed and you can shift individual accents without editing the stylesheet.

Typography and code are handled explicitly. The theme uses the JetBrains Mono font with ligatures for code, and it provides Atom code syntax highlighting along with enhanced code blocks with line numbers. That combination is a deliberate choice for a note taking app, where a fenced block is often a snippet you will read rather than a file you will edit, and syntax highlighting with line numbers makes a long snippet navigable.

The remaining entries are markdown styling rather than plugin behaviour: tag pills for readability, checkbox styling and icons as described above, and better designed image cards. The tag pills in particular are the kind of small visual decision that changes how a dense note reads, since a wall of inline tags becomes a row of pills rather than a wall of hash-prefixed words.

Installing From the Marketplace or Copying theme.css by Hand

The recommended route is the Obsidian Marketplace, and the steps are entirely inside the app's own settings. You open Settings, go to the Appearances tab under Options, click the Manage button across from Themes, search for Things in the filter field, and click Use.

The manual route is for anyone who wants to inspect or modify the stylesheet before committing to it. You download the repository, copy the theme.css file into your vault's /.obsidian/themes directory, and rename the file to Things.css so that it has a unique name in the theme selection dropdown. Renaming is the step people miss, because Obsidian identifies themes by file name and a file left as theme.css will collide with any other theme installed the same way.

After either route you select the theme in the same dropdown next to the Theme heading under Appearances. The manual path is also the one to use if you want to track a specific release, since the marketplace gives you the latest published version while a checkout gives you the exact file in that commit.

Version Numbers, Licence and What a Theme Cannot Do

The release cadence is regular for a theme. The recent tags are 2.2.4 from 2026-06-07, 2.2.3 from 2026-04-30 and 2.2.2 from 2026-04-30, so the patch line is moving and the project ships small adjustments rather than redesigns. The repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-10-17.

The licence is MIT, and the theme is distributed through the Obsidian Marketplace with a manual fallback, so there is no build step between the repository and the installed theme. That is also the boundary of what a theme can do. A theme is CSS, so anything that needs behaviour, such as a plugin that changes the DOM beyond what the theme anticipates, depends on the theme shipping selectors for it, which is why the supported plugin list exists and why it is scoped to V1.

Feedback goes through the issue tracker and pull requests, and the author asks readers to raise issues and says he will try to answer quickly. Funding is through Twitter and a buy me a coffee link. For a team that wants a shared, stable look across a vault, the practical note is to record the version you installed, since a theme that updates itself through the marketplace can change the appearance of a shared vault without anyone changing a document.

Editorial conclusion

The Things theme fits an Obsidian user who spends most of their time on Apple platforms, wants a task oriented visual language with meaningful checkbox states, and is willing to install the Style Settings community plugin to tune colours. It is a poor fit for a vault shared with collaborators on other platforms who want a neutral look, and for anyone who needs the plugin-specific styling, since the supported plugin list is explicitly scoped to the Things V1 release. Before installing, check the theme version you are getting, because the current release follows the Obsidian 1.0 design scheme while the plugin support list is written for V1, and note that the manual route requires renaming theme.css to Things.css in your vault's.obsidian/themes directory. The theme is MIT licensed, the newest release is 2.2.4 from 2026-06-07, and the last push was on 2026-10-17.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. colineckert/obsidian-things on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: MIT
4. README
5. Releases