Word Frequency is a plugin for Obsidian.md that counts the words in the current note and displays word frequency counts in the sidebar.

Use Word Frequency to identify keywords within a note that can later serve for SEO, résumé skills, or general writing. Use the blacklist feature to hide and ignore words from the counts and display.

The words and their frequency counts display in descending order, having the most common word at the top and the least common word at the bottom. Special characters do not count as part of the word.

On the ribbon (typically on the left side of the desktop window), select the Show word frequency sidebar icon that looks like a paper with a bar chart.

Alternatively, open the Command Palette, type Show word frequency sidebar, and select the Word Frequency: Show word frequency sidebar option.

This should open and display the sidebar (typically on the right side of the desktop window) with the word counts. If the words and counts do not display, click inside a note so the plugin knows which note to use.

Use the text input field at the top of the sidebar to filter the list of words. Only words containing the characters in the input field will display in the list with their counts.

Clear the text input field to reset the filter and display all available words.

When browsing the display of words and their frequency counts, click the trash can icon to add that word to the blacklist or ignore list. This word will no longer display in the sidebar.

The blacklist is adjustable through the Settings interface.

Some words should be part of the counts, and they might not appear often enough to warrant a place in the display. For those situations, notice at the bottom of the sidebar display, below the list of words, is the Current Frequency Threshold. Words in the note content must occur at least as many times as the frequency threshold to display in the sidebar.

The frequency threshold is adjustable through the Settings interface.

There are currently two settings for this plugin.

1. Blacklist Words
2. Frequency Threshold

The plugin has some words set as default blacklist words, like the, and, and to. Use the text area to add or remove words to the list.

When clicking the trash can button in the sidebar, the plugin adds the word in that row to the end of this list. In case of a mistake, remove the word from the settings text area.

This limits the results in the sidebar such that the word must occur at least as many times as the frequency threshold.

The default frequency threshold is 3, and is easily changeable. For large notes, consider using a threshold of 10 or more.

The plugin is fully functional. To assist people more with its use, here are some ideas for the developers to implement.

• add word search filter
• add maximum display count for sidebar
• change ignore (add to blacklist) icon

If you'd like to contribute to the development of this plugin, fork the repository and submit a pull request.

Ensure the code has sufficient tests.

If there are any issues or problems with the plugin, create an issue if the issue does not already exist.

The hours that go into the design, development, and testing of plugins is often overlooked. If this plugin helps you or you are feeling generous today, please consider supporting my development through a donation. Every little bit helps.

Obsidian is a great and powerful note-taking tool that has many amazing plugins to help people use Obsidian better. Compiling a list of keywords within a note was not doable, so someone needed to create a plugin to count the words in a note and display their counts in the sidebar, and I am that someone.

To determine a good skill list for a résumé, gather the qualifications or requirements from 10-15 jobs, and find the most commonly used words within those job descriptions. Of course, filter out the words that do not need to be in a skills section, like experience. Having all these descriptions in a single note allows the chance for a plugin to scan the note and display all keywords or skills to include in the résumé.

With Word Frequency, finding skills for a résumé is as easy as pasting qualifications from job descriptions into a single note, putting spaces around the slashes (since the plugin removes / and merges words together such that CI/CD becomes CICD), and activating the plugin.

The words and their frequency counts display immediately on the sidebar, allowing easy access to see which words show up the most, and making keyword tracking quicker.