// the find
kepano/obsidian-minimal
A distraction-free and highly customizable theme for Obsidian.
A CSS theme for Obsidian aimed at a clean, distraction-free look, with deep customization handled through a companion settings plugin rather than hand-editing CSS. Good fit for Obsidian users who want a polished minimal aesthetic and are willing to install 1-2 extra plugins to unlock it.
Customization is genuinely deep for a CSS theme - background contrast, line width, color schemes (Nord, Dracula, Gruvbox, etc.) and layout toggles are all exposed through the Minimal Theme Settings plugin instead of requiring users to touch SCSS. The cssClasses helper system (cards, image grids, table width controls) effectively gives per-note layout control that most themes don't bother with. Plugin compatibility is maintained deliberately, not incidentally - there's a dedicated src/scss/plugins folder with tracked support for Dataview, Kanban, Calendar, Git, etc. It's also been actively maintained for years with a real release process (versions.json, GitHub Actions release workflow), not a one-and-done project.
It's SCSS/CSS only, so the 'customization' ceiling is whatever Obsidian's CSS variables and DOM structure happen to expose - there's no real logic, and the theme is fully dependent on Obsidian's internal markup not changing under it. The README's own disclaimer says it's tested mainly on the author's macOS setup, so Windows/Linux/mobile edge cases are discovered by users, not caught in advance. There's no automated testing or visual regression checking - given it 'modifies significant parts of the Obsidian interface,' breakage from Obsidian updates is an accepted risk rather than something guarded against. To get the full experience you're installing three separate plugins (Minimal Theme Settings, Hider, Style Settings) on top of the theme itself, which is more setup than a typical theme install.