Free / $19 Pro, lifetime
The Kanban board for Obsidian, still getting updates.
The archived Obsidian Kanban plugin (2.67M downloads) hasn't shipped a release since 2024 and has 551 open issues. Kanban Next opens the exact same boards byte-for-byte, keeps being maintained, and adds the two most-requested features: swimlanes and embedded boards.
Install (no Community Plugins account needed)
- Download kanban-next-0.2.0.zip
- Unzip into
<your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/kanban-next/(somanifest.json,main.jsandstyles.csssit directly in that folder) - In Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → reload, then enable "Kanban Next"
Open any note with a Kanban board and it renders automatically. Create a new one with the command palette: "Kanban Next: Create new board".
Source on GitHub.
Tag filter, priority colours, swimlanes, embedded boards — one-time, no renewal.
Why this exists
The plugin that popularized Kanban boards in Obsidian was formally archived by the Obsidian community org, with 551 open issues and no release since 2024. Its own tracker has vote counts on exactly what users wanted next — swimlanes (124 👍) and embedded boards (258 👍) top the list. Kanban Next was built from the published file format, not the old plugin's source, and ships both.
Swimlanes
Group your lanes into horizontal rows — by team, by project, by anything — instead of one long line of columns. Add a lane to a row, or a new row, straight from the board view.
Embedded boards
Drop a live, read-only view of a board — or just one lane of it — into any other note with a small code block. Useful for a dashboard note that pulls the "Doing" lane from three different project boards into one place.
Frequently asked
Will it open my existing Kanban boards?
Yes, unchanged. The format reader/writer was built directly from the published file format (frontmatter, ## lane headings, - [ ] cards, the **Complete** marker, the settings block) and verified against 137 real boards pulled from public vaults: every board that doesn't touch a new feature round-trips byte-for-byte, so nothing you've written gets silently reformatted.
Why isn't this on the Community Plugins browser yet?
The submission is a single pull request to Obsidian's public releases repo — no account, no fee, no review beyond that PR. It's queued and the release is already built and tagged on GitHub; install manually below in the meantime, it's the same code either way.
What's free and what's Pro?
The board itself — read, write, drag-and-drop, lanes, cards, archive — is free forever, same as the plugin it succeeds. Pro ($19 once, lifetime) unlocks tag filtering, priority colours, swimlanes (group lanes into rows), and embedded boards (drop a live board, or one lane of it, inline into any other note).
Is this safe to install from a file instead of the plugin browser?
Source is public at github.com/mjaack/kanban-next — read it before you trust it. It only ever touches the note files you open in Obsidian; there's no network call except the one-time licence check if you buy Pro.
What happens if I stop paying, or the server is down?
There's no subscription — Pro is a one-time $19 purchase, not a renewal. And the licence check fails open: once verified, your key is cached and Pro keeps working offline or through any outage. Only an explicit invalid key from Stripe locks it, never a network hiccup.
MIT licensed. Not affiliated with the original Kanban plugin or its authors — a clean-room, format- compatible successor.