Documentation Index
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Shimmering Focus refines the Obsidian editor with a set of enhancements aimed at focus and clarity. The active block indicator keeps your eye on the current line, inactive pane dimming makes split-pane workspaces readable, and trailing space indicators help with Markdown line-break rules. All settings are available via the Style Settings plugin.
Active Block Indicator
The active block indicator marks the currently active line in the editor. Three styles are available, selectable from the Active block indicator (active-line-highlight) setting:
| Option | Style Settings value | Description |
|---|
| Vertical line in gutter (default) | active-line-gutter | A 3px colored border appears in the left gutter next to the active line |
| Emphasized background | active-line-background | The active line receives a distinct background color |
| Disable | no-active-line-highlight | No active line indicator is shown |
The active block indicator operates on logical lines. The Vim Mode cursorline operates on visual lines and is independent — both can be enabled simultaneously. Inactive Pane Dimming
When multiple panes are open side by side, the inactive panes are dimmed to draw attention to the active one. The opacity of inactive panes is controlled by the Dimmed inactive panes (inactive-pane-opacity) slider:
| Setting | Style Settings ID | Default | Range |
|---|
| Inactive pane opacity | inactive-pane-opacity | 75% | 50% – 100% |
100% effectively disables dimming. Additionally, when multiple panes are open, the active pane’s tab bar receives an accent-colored bottom border to make the focused pane immediately identifiable.
Line Length
When Obsidian’s Readable line length setting is enabled, Shimmering Focus replaces the default line width with a configurable value:
| Setting | Style Settings ID | Default | Range |
|---|
| Line length | file-line-width | 700px | 300px – 2500px |
Combine this with the Automatically disable readable line length on notes with tables setting (see Images & Tables) for a workflow where long-form text notes use a comfortable reading width and table-heavy notes expand automatically. Trailing Space Visualization
Two or more trailing spaces at the end of a line are significant in Markdown — they enforce a hard line break. Shimmering Focus makes this visible by rendering the indicator ··↵ at the end of lines with trailing spaces, so you can see them rather than hunting for invisible whitespace.
To hide the indicator if you don’t use the two-space rule, enable Hide trailing spaces (hide-trailing-whitespace) in Style Settings.
Frontmatter and Metadata Styling
Frontmatter (YAML properties) receives condensed, color-coded display in both Source Mode and Live Preview:
- YAML delimiters (
---) are styled in a secondary accent color with additional letter spacing.
- Property keys appear in the link accent color.
- Punctuation (colons, brackets) is rendered in bold.
- Strings, booleans, and numbers use the secondary accent color.
- In Live Preview, the metadata container is rendered as a compact bordered block with a subtle background, keeping it visually distinct from note content.
Code Blocks
The font size used inside code blocks is independently configurable from the main text size:
| Setting | Style Settings ID | Default | Range |
|---|
| Code font size | code-size | 0.875em | 0.5em – 1.25em |
Gutter and Fold Indicators
Fold indicators in the gutter use a smaller stroke width and muted color when not hovered, appearing at 0.75em size to keep the gutter compact. Hovered fold indicators shift to the accent hover color. Line numbers (when enabled in Obsidian settings) are styled to integrate cleanly with the rest of the gutter.
Search Match Highlighting
Search result highlights use a box-shadow approach rather than a background fill, which preserves the text’s background color and makes matches easier to read in both light and dark modes. The active (currently focused) search match uses the hover accent color for additional contrast.