Obsidian plugin
Save a browser tab into your Obsidian vault as a vector PDF and a Markdown note.
Scan a browser tab into the vault, a command in Obsidian, lists the tabs open in your browser, scans the one you pick, and puts two files in a folder of your vault: the page as a PDF whose text you can still select and search, and a note with the page's text as Markdown and the PDF embedded under its properties. It is in Obsidian's community plugins as Page Scanner, for Obsidian on a desktop.
The capture is done by the web extension in your browser, as it is for the command line:
the plugin runs the page-scanner command, which asks the extension for the page.
Set it up
-
Install the web extension 1.3.0 or newer, in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc or Vivaldi.
-
Install Node.js 22 or newer, then the command, in a terminal:
npm install -g @page-scanner/cli -
In Obsidian, open Settings, Community plugins, Browse, search for Page Scanner, install it and enable it.
-
Open the plugin's settings. The four steps at the top say what is done and check again every few seconds: Node.js, the command (with the npm line and a Copy button while it is missing), Install helper, and Connect in the extension's settings, under Local agents.
Obsidian cannot run the command with its own runtime, so the plugin looks for it beside each Node
on the computer (Homebrew's, /usr/local/bin, Volta's, fnm's default, or your shell's) and runs it
on the Node it was installed for. Node, under Advanced in the plugin's settings, names one
by hand.
Scan a tab
Run Scan a browser tab into the vault from the command palette, or press the scan button in the ribbon. The picker lists the open tabs with the one in front of your browser first; type to filter by title or address, and press Enter.
In the folder set in the settings (Page Scanner by default), the scan leaves two files named
after the page's title:
-
Markdown - Wikipedia.pdf, the whole page. -
Markdown - Wikipedia.md, the note:---title: "Markdown - Wikipedia"source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown"captured: 2026-09-25T11:02:41.000Z---![[Page Scanner/Markdown - Wikipedia.pdf]]# MarkdownMarkdown is a lightweight markup language …
A name the vault already holds gets 2, 3 added, and characters a file name or a link cannot
hold ([ ] | # ^ : / \) become dashes. The note opens once it is saved, unless Open the note is
off.
Settings
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Folder | a vault folder; the vault's root when empty |
| Page size | A4, US Letter, one long page |
| Theme | as in Page Scanner's settings, the browser's, light, dark |
| Page width | as in Page Scanner's settings, the window's, A4, US Letter |
| Hide clutter | as in Page Scanner's settings, all of it, none of it |
| Open the note | on by default |
| Node | a Node.js 22 or newer to use; found on the computer when empty |
| Browser | a connected browser's label or ID, when more than one is connected |
"As in Page Scanner's settings" leaves the choice to the extension's Capture settings. The editor's own output (a crop, marks, a frame, a stamp, PDF/A) is not applied to a scan from Obsidian.
What it does outside the vault
It runs the command you installed as a separate process. The command writes each scan into the
system's temporary folder before the plugin moves it into the vault, and keeps its pairing in
~/.page-scanner/, where Install helper also puts the small launcher your browser starts.
Nothing goes over the network beyond this computer: the command listens on 127.0.0.1 only, and
the page is captured by your own browser. The plugin's source is public, at
sbd530/page-scanner-obsidian.