Nord Lane 1.0.0
EN
GitHub

Obsidian themeFree and open source, on the Nord palette

Everything
lines up.

Nord Lane is a calm, wide theme for Obsidian. Text, tables, Dataview output and embeds share one column, in light and dark, and your phone shows exactly what your desktop does.

Install Nord Lane View on GitHub

Obsidian 1.5 or later · MIT license · v1.0.0

The same note in Nord Lane, light on the left and dark on the right
Light · every background on nord6a, hairlines in nord4Dark · Polar Night, accents in Frost
One column
75rem
text, tables, Dataview and embeds
Table text
15 px
14 px in a pane under 700 px
Light and dark
2 modes
Snow Storm and Polar Night
Built in
Geist
and Geist Mono, nothing to install
Latin and Cyrillic
Aa Жж
Russian and Serbian included
Open source
MIT
Nord and Geist credited

01One column

Nothing juts out past the paragraph above it.

Text, tables, Dataview output and embeds share the same edges, up to 75rem, and less on a narrower pane. Live Preview and reading view look the same, so switching between them moves nothing.

Column
75rem, never wider than the pane less its gutters
Gutter
2.5rem on the desktop, 1rem on a phone
Wide notes
cssclasses: [full] takes the whole pane

Reading log

BookAuthorYearPages

One column

02Palette

Snow Storm by day.
Polar Night after dark.

Light mode puts every background on nord6a, a Snow Storm step halfway between nord6 and white, and separates areas with nord4 hairlines. Dark mode is Polar Night. Accents come from Frost, states from Aurora, and where a Nord colour is too light for small text, the text takes a darker step of the same hue.

Polar Night

Dark surfaces, light-mode ink

nord02E3440nord13B4252nord2434C5Enord34C566A

Snow Storm

Light surfaces and hairlines

nord4D8DEE9nord5E5E9F0nord6ECEFF4addednord6aF6F7FA

Frost

Links, buttons, focus, heat

nord78FBCBBnord888C0D0nord981A1C1nord105E81AC

Aurora

States, callouts, tags

nord11BF616Anord12D08770nord13EBCB8Bnord14A3BE8Cnord15B48EAD

Lighton nord6a

DoneReadingWaitingDroppedRe-read

HeadingBody textMutedA link#tag

Text steps on nord6a, raw Nord → Nord Lane: links 3.8 → 5.2:1, green 1.9 → 5.8:1, amber 1.5 → 6.1:1, red 3.8 → 5.6:1, violet 2.6 → 4.9:1.

Darkon Polar Night

DoneReadingWaitingDroppedRe-read

HeadingBody textMutedA link#tag

Body text 9.2:1 on nord0, muted 5.7:1. Accents in nord8, the brightest Frost, so links and buttons stay clear.

03Tables

One table style, wherever the table comes from.

Markdown tables, Dataview tables and the Live Preview table editor share one look: 15 px text, quiet uppercase headers, hairline rows and tabular numbers. In a pane under 700 px, tables drop to 14 px, and wide ones keep a readable width and scroll sideways.

A reading list table in a note, in Nord Lane's light mode
  1. Headers in 11 px uppercase over hairline rows. On a long table they stay in view while you scroll.
  2. Tags sit in the table as quiet pills, and numbers use tabular figures that line up on the right.
  3. Dataview tables take the same style, and Dataview's - placeholders show as a faint dash.
  4. cssclasses: [table-mono] sets one note's tables in Geist Mono, for ledgers.
Four books as cover cards with typeset covers

04Cards

Cover cards for every collection.

Optional gc-* classes turn a dataviewjs view into a grid of cover cards: books at 2:3, games in a square box, with corner badges, filter chips and a meta line under each title. A book without a cover file gets a typeset stand-in, as here.

Grid
gc-grid, 160 px columns, 132 px for books
Card
gc-card, gc-cover, gc-title, gc-meta
Extras
gc-filter, gc-badge, gc-nocover

05Dashboards

Dashboards in the same style as your notes.

nl-* classes give your dataviewjs views a page head, stat strips, pills, tables, heatmaps and timelines, in the same type and colours as your notes. They do nothing until a view uses them.

The markup each one expects is in docs/components.md.

A reading dashboard built from the nl-* classes, in dark mode

06Mobile

The same notes on your phone.

Geist and Geist Mono are embedded with Latin and Cyrillic, Russian and Serbian alike, so phones and tablets render exactly what the desktop does. Layouts follow the note pane, not the screen: under 700 px, tables drop to 14 px and scroll sideways, stat strips fold to two across, and every tap target is 44 px.

A phone in light mode with a table that scrolls sideways and Cyrillic text
Field notes, light: a sideways table, Russian and Serbian
A phone in dark mode with book covers three across
Books, dark: cover cards three across
A phone in light mode with a reading dashboard
Reading, light: stats two across

07Options

Options when you want them.

There is no settings screen to learn. Add a class to a note's frontmatter when one note needs more room, a reading measure or a ledger. Change the column, the table text or the frontmatter size for the whole vault with Style Settings or a CSS snippet.

Every option is in the README.

In a note's frontmatter

yaml---
cssclasses:
  - full        # the whole pane width
  - table-mono  # this note's tables in Geist Mono
  - prose       # reading text to a comfortable measure
---

In a CSS snippet, for the whole vault

cssbody {
  --nl-col-max: 60rem;   /* the column, 75rem by default */
  --nl-bleed: 2rem;      /* tables and Dataview past the text, 0 by default */
  --nl-prose-max: 40rem; /* the prose measure, 46rem by default */
}

08Install

Two files, one folder.

Until Nord Lane is in the community theme browser, install it by hand. It works on desktop and mobile, with no plugins required.

  1. 01

    Download

    Get theme.css and manifest.json.

    theme.cssmanifest.json

  2. 02

    Copy

    Put both files in a folder named Nord Lane, inside your vault's themes folder.

    .obsidian/themes/Nord Lane/

  3. 03

    Choose

    Open Settings, then Appearance, and pick Nord Lane under Themes.

Download theme.css and manifest.json View on GitHub

Or clone it and runpython3 build.py /path/to/vault

Tested in Obsidian 1.15 on desktop and in its mobile emulation, in Live Preview and reading view, light and dark.