Obsidian View Count

View count is an Obsidian.md plugin for desktop and mobile. It allows you to track the view count for each file in your vault.

Table of contents

• Videos
• Installation
• Usage
• Dataview
• API
• Settings
• License

Videos

Basic plugin usage

Screen.Recording.2024-06-28.at.4.15.20.PM.mov

The sync view count to frontmatter setting

Screen.Recording.2024-06-28.at.4.24.16.PM.mov

The view count type setting

Screen.Recording.2024-06-28.at.4.32.03.PM.mov

Installation

1. In Obsidian, open Settings
2. Go to Community plugins
3. Select Browse
4. Search for View Count by DecafDev
5. Select Install
6. Then select Enable

Usage

Once you enable the plugin, view count data will start being tracked. You can see the view count on desktop in the status bar in the bottom righthand corner.

There are 2 types of view count. View count type

If you would like to view the view count on mobile, you will need to enable the Sync view count to frontmatter setting.

View count view

By default, the plugin will add a view to the sidebar called View count. You may access this view by opening the sidebar and clicking on the eye icon.

If the view is not open, you may run Open view count view from the command palette.

There are 2 different lists within the view count:

• A list of the most viewed notes in your vault sorted in descending order. Click on the eye icon to see this list.

• A list of the notes with the highest trending weight sorted in descending order. Click on the trending icon to see this list.

Dataview

You may dynamically query view count data using the Dataview plugin

Example 1 - Query view count using Dataview

If you have Sync view count to frontmatter enabled you may query the view count property from the frontmatter of each note.

```dataview
TABLE view-count AS "View Count" SORT view-count DESC LIMIT 10
```

Let's analyze this codeblock:

1. Render a table using the Dataview Query Language
2. Query the view-count property in each note
3. Display that property in a column called "View Count"
4. Sort the results in descending order (highest to lowest)
5. Limit the results to 10 notes

Example 2 - Query trending notes from the last 7 days using DataviewJS

```dataviewjs
const plugin = this.app.plugins.plugins["view-count"];
const cache = plugin.viewCountCache;

const TIME_PERIOD = "7-days";

dv.table(["Name", "Trending Weight"],
    dv.pages().sort(p => cache.getTrendingWeight(p.file, TIME_PERIOD), "desc")
        .map(p => [p.file.name, cache.getTrendingWeight(p.file, TIME_PERIOD)])
	        .slice(0,10)
);
```

Let's analyze this codeblock:

1. Render a table using the DataviewJS
2. Display 2 columns in the table: "Name" and "Trending Weight"
3. Query all markdown files
4. Sort the files based on the trending weight in descending order (highest to lowest)
5. Format an array of data that includes object with just the file name and the trending weight
6. Limit the results to 10 notes

The time period can be updated with various values. See the time period section below.

API

The view count plugin exposes an API that can be used to fetch the view count or trending weight for any file.

To start, you need to access the view count cache.

//Get the view count plugin
const plugin = this.app.plugins.plugins["view-count"];

//Get the view count cache
const cache = plugin.viewCountCache;

Then you can use the cache to get a view count or trending weight.

//Get the trending weight
const weight = cache.getTrendingWeight(file, timePeriod);
console.log(weight);
//output: 22

//Get the view count
const viewCount = cache.getViewCount(file);
console.log(viewCount);
//output: 5

Here are the typescript definitions for these functions:

getViewCount: (file: TFile) => number;
getTrendingWeight: (file: TFile, timePeriod: TimePeriod) => number;

Time period

The getTrendingWeight function accepts a time period.

Here are the options:

Value	Description
3-days	The last 3 days
7-days	The last 7 days
14-days	The last 14 days
30-days	The last 30 days
today	The start of the current day
week	The start of the week i.e. Sunday
week-iso	The start of the iso week i.e. Monday
month	The start of the month e.g. January 1

Settings

Count method

The method used to calculate view counts. This can be the total number of times a file has been opened or the unique days a file has been opened.

For example, consider a user that opened a file 3 times in 1 day. Using Total times opened the view count would be 3. However, using Unique days opened the view count would be 1.

A unique day is considered an opening of a file after 12 am local time.

Excluded paths

The folder paths that should be excluded from view count tracking. Please separate individual paths by commas e.g. folder1,folder2

Sync view count

The view count for all files is stored in a JSON file located in the Obsidian configuration folder e.g. .obsidian/view-count.json. When Sync view count is enabled, the plugin will add a view count property to all notes and continuously update them to match the values stored in the JSON file.

Enabling this setting makes view count visible on mobile devices.

Skip new notes

When enabled, new notes will not have a view count property added upon creation. However, if Sync View Count is enabled, a property will be added when the note is opened.

Property name

The name of the property that the view count will be stored in.

Warning

Please rename the existing view count property before updating this value. You can rename the existing property using the rename option in the All Properties view in the right sidebar.

Templater delay

The time to wait in milliseconds before adding a view count property to a new note. You should increase this value if you're using the Templater plugin and the template applied during new note creation is being overwritten.

License

View Count is distributed under MIT License