Hi everyone! I'm Nishant Mittal (nishantwrp (Nishant Mittal) · GitHub) from India and this summer I'll be working with Joplin on the template plugin! Abstract Joplin’s desktop app has a template feature i.e. users can make their templates and reuse the templates. For example - SWOT Analysis, Time Table, Meeting Notes, Journal, etc. and what not. But Joplin also has an awesome plugin architecture. So it would be better if we repackage the template feature as a plugin due to many reasons like Better maintainability Features packaged as plugins would be more robust The feature would’ve better scope of improvement. I basically propose to remove the existing feature and repackage it as a plugin while improving the template functionality. Project goals There are two main objectives of this project. Create a new plugin with improved template functionality Remove the template functionality from the main application Plugin Design The main improvements I plan to bring in the template functionality are as follows. Removal of Refresh Templates - Currently there is a refresh templates option in the templates menu that reloads the templates from the template directory. Removing this option and loading the templates everytime user tried to select a template would improve the usability of the feature. Default Templates - It is highly likely that most users have one or two templates that they use the most. And they want to create a new note using that template they’ll currently have to create a new note and then select a template that they want to insert. So, to make it more useful I’d like to introduce default templates feature. This feature was also once requested in the Joplin Forum, however my proposal of this feature is not exactly similar to the request of this user. The details of this feature can be found below in this section itself. Pre Installed templates - When I tried to see the templates functionality in Evernote, I found that they provide some templates by default such as Meeting Note, Essay Outline, Meal Planner, Daily Reflection etc. I personally think that it would be great if we do it too in this plugin. Save as template - Currently, if a user wants to create a new template they have to open the templates directory and create a new markdown file and maybe then use a third party editor to write the template. The point is that there is no convenient way to do so. So, I’d like to add a save as template option both in the menu and as a toolbar icon. Toolbar icons - We can include two icons Insert Template and Save as template in the editor toolbar which I believe would be the best fit. Basically, the plugin in the menu would look something like this. [image] Here, new note from template, new to-do from template, insert template would work in the same way as they currently do, the only difference being that there will be some pre-installed templates in the dropdown too. The open templates directory will work in a similar way as it does now. It open a file manager with the templates directory. The save as template option would save the current markdown content of the note after taking the name of the template as input from the user. In the default template functionality the user will be able to set two default templates one for notes and one for to-dos. And as it can be seen in the picture there are two options: new note from default template and new to-do from default template. As the name suggests they would create a new note and to-do from their respective defaults. These options also have keyboard shortcuts which would make this feature a lot more usable. Also, we can add two toolbar buttons that would look something like [image] The last two icons denote “Insert Template” and “Save as template”. In my opinion these two options would make the most sense in the editor toolbar. Documentation I’ll document the usage of the plugin in the README of the plugin repository. Also, I’ll try to use comments while coding wherever necessary to make the code easy to understand. NOTE - This post will serve as a live specification for this project, I will be updating it regularly as I work on this project.

[image] roman_r_m: A special tag reserved for templates? I did think of this. But the main problem is comprising b/w people who like the notebook idea and ones who don't prefer templates in their notebooks or as a note at all. PS: Created a topic for this Opinion on the templates should be organized - #3 by nishantwrp

[image] nishantwrp: But the main problem is comprising b/w people who like the notebook idea and ones who don't prefer templates in their notebooks or as a note at all. I suppose only the last option is problematic, the first 2 can easily be handled with a tag. EDIT Maybe you should create a poll? It's easier for users to just click a button rather than type a whole message so hopefully you'll get more responses this way.

How do I do that within discourse or should i post an link to external poll?

Thanks, created a poll. Opinion on the templates should be organized - #3 by nishantwrp

Important Links Github Repository of this plugin. Weekly Updates on this project.

Updated Plan Week 1 Initialize Plugin Framework Setup Github Actions Lint Checks Build Checks TypeScript Check (If not covered by above checks) Unit Tests if needed further Implement Notebook System Created a command to expose joplin prompt to plugins Week 2 Create the basic newNote, newTodo, insertText options. Week 3 Work on default templates functionality. Week 4 Complete default templates functionality. Introduce handlebars and make sure all the current templates are compitable with the plugin. Week 5 Create UI for variable input component. Week 6 Write parsers for variable syntax. Week 7 Complete variable feature. Week 8, 9, 10 Finalize the way to handle the transition of users to this plugin. Update documentation. Finalize and implement the way to store the templates. (Tags, notebook, etc.) Removal of original feature from the main codebase. Release the final version of the plugin.

Thanks for the updated plan, but note that removing the feature from the codebase may take a bit more time than you think as there will be a review process. It's also key to your project because if the feature is still there by the time you finish, there's no need for the plugin at all. So what I would suggest is to create a pull request to remove the feature as soon as you can. That will get things started, then the reviewing process can happen in parallel to your other tasks.

Yup sure, I'll try to create the PR next week. Just to be clear, The PR will be merged only after the plugin is complete, right?

Template Plugin

GSoC Projects Template Plugin

nishantwrp 29 May 2021 19:51 36

Please take a look at Deprecating pre-installed template feature

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Specifying note title and tags in templates Template Plugin	33	4687	20 September 2021
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Any suggestions on what plugins could be created? Features	258	27543	30 January 2026
Bounty: 50 € for a new release of template plugin Plugins	18	1269	17 September 2025
Feature Request: Allow for templates Features	2	1077	14 November 2018

Template Plugin

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